314: Stephanie Mehta - "The Editor"

Stephanie Mehta of Fast Company

What makes leaders three dimensional.

"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT

Episode 314: Stephanie Mehta

Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.

This is Season 3 - “Leading The Future.” These next few months are going to be chaotic. Industries are being reformed, culture is being redefined. New rules are being written and rewritten. It’s happening already. Decisions are being made today, literally today, about how to compete for talent and relevance in this new world. So, how should leaders lead as we meet a world of new possibilities and expectations?

Stephanie Mehta is the Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company. They study, explore, analyze and report on innovation like no other media brand.

Stephanie has been a writer almost since birth. Like the rest of us, she’s learned how to lead through trial and error and experience and asking and listening.

“So Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, spoke out about the Georgia voting rights bill. We interviewed him for Fast Company very recently. He spoke out, he said, because he realized he had to speak out on behalf of his 75,000 employees. Delta is the largest employer in Georgia. It's the largest employer in Atlanta. I believe it is the largest employer of black Georgians in the state. Ed Bastian’s point of view, as he articulated it to us, was, "I was speaking out on behalf of my employees."

Leadership used to be a two dimensional, top down, hierarchical practice. I say. You do.

Today, it is a three dimensional role, powered by a leader's ability to use influence and in which they are the visionary, the guide, the architect, and the storyteller, as well as the supporter of multiple constituencies.

The old days when leaders had absolute control over what they offered an opinion about and what they didn’t, are gone. Today, the leader is expected to have a point of view or to be clear - and credible - about why they don’t.

The best way and, in fact, the only way, for leaders to navigate this complexity, is to establish a set of principles that guide them in moments of crisis and consternation.

For instance, you can choose to be a spokesperson for your employees, as Ed Bastian said. Or you can choose not to be. But once you’ve said you are, then you have to be every time. In the good times and the bad ones.

There are no rules about the set of principles that you choose. No hard and fast guidance on when you should speak and when you shouldn’t.

Except this.

If you take the time to define your principles now - when things are quiet and the microphone isn’t being pushed in your face - you will dramatically increase the chances that what you come up with when the heat is on, will be clear, consistent and compelling.

Three words by which to measure anyone’s leadership.

And which increase the chances that whatever you say, you can live with the consequences of having said it.

Here’s Stephanie Mehta.

Charles: (03:22)

Stephanie, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Stephanie Mehta: (03:25)

Thank you, Charles.

Charles: (03:27)

Tell me, when did creativity first show up in your life? When were you first conscious of creativity as a thing?

Stephanie Mehta: (03:34)

I went to a Montessori school as a preschooler, and I have very distinct memories of creativity being part of the curriculum. I wouldn't have used those terms when I was three years old or four years old, but it was a very creative environment in which to learn. And I came to appreciate the importance of creativity as a tool for learning and play as a tool for learning. And so very early on, just had an understanding of creativity as part of a process.

Charles: (04:19)

And how did you express yourself?

Stephanie Mehta: (04:22)

Through writing, amazingly enough. Writing and reading. I was very lucky that I had a few teachers at that school who would sometimes sit me down away from the other children and show me words and cut out words from books and magazines and newspapers, and we would assemble them into sentences. And again, wasn't really aware that it was… that I was being taught anything, but they gave ... there was a sense of wonder about words and about reading. And so for me, I think that I expressed my creativity through words. Whether I had written them or someone else had, it was sort of assembling them into sentences and stories.

Charles: (05:16)

What do you think they saw in you that had them pull you aside?

Stephanie Mehta: (05:21)

I think they sensed maybe a little bit of ... I don't consider myself an introvert or an extrovert. I display characteristics of both. But around other children, I could be quite shy. And so perhaps they saw my shyness and they saw this exercise as a way to engage me.

Charles: (05:56)

Were you a risk taker growing up?

Stephanie Mehta: (05:58)

No. No. I was not a risk taker at all. I was a pretty obedient child. I'm the child of two immigrants. My father was born in India. My mother was born in the Philippines. And we were a very close knit family. I have a younger brother, he's 22 months younger than I am, and we did everything together. And so I feel like making my parents happy and being an obedient kid was something that was probably very innate in me, but also just kind of part of our family culture.

Charles: (06:39)

Did you always know you wanted to write? Did that stick with you throughout your education and academic life?

Stephanie Mehta: (06:44)

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I knew I always wanted to have writing be part of what my career would be. I don't think I ever articulated that I wanted to be a journalist, but I knew that I would want some form of writing to be part of my profession, whether it was book publishing, which is what I thought I might do when I started college, or a legal degree that would have writing cases as part of the day-to-day work.

Charles: (07:22)

What's the joy you get from writing? What's the satisfaction?

Stephanie Mehta: (07:27)

It's not always satisfying. I'll be honest. There are times it's very hard and frustrating. I'm sure you can empathize, and anyone who's listening who writes knows the tyranny of the blank page. But I like that it is a framework for articulating ideas. And as a writer and as an editor, there's a great satisfaction when, just like when I was a kid and there were all of those words spread out on this conference table or this small learning table in front of me, and then you're able to assemble the words in a way that makes sense, I think as a writer and even as an editor, when I see the words and the structure all come together, it's very satisfying.

Charles: (08:18)

You're one of the people that have come through a discipline, in your case, the writing discipline, and ended up in a leadership position. It happens to a lot of people in the creative industries. How do you define leadership?

Stephanie Mehta: (08:34)

I define leadership as helping people achieve their best. If I'm successful as a leader, it's because I have done everything in my power to either help a colleague achieve their goals, moved obstacles out of someone's way so that they could do their best work, and in some cases, it's helping people discover that what they're doing might not be the right thing for them and helping set them on a path that brings them joy and success and happiness in whatever they ultimately decide to do.

Charles: (09:21)

And obviously the last 15 months have made that really difficult, I mean, created all kinds of constraints and obstacles in the way of that, in the pursuit of that. Has your definition of success changed over the last 15 months? Have you sort of had to reevaluate what success looked like?

Stephanie Mehta: (09:38)

Yes and no. I still think that success is helping other people achieve their goals. What those goals are has changed or had to be modified a little bit. I'm so incredibly lucky at Fast Company. Every single person I work with, primarily the editorial team, but I could say the same thing is true of my colleagues in sales, my colleagues in what we call direct to consumer, but used to be called consumer marketing. People were imbued with an incredible sense of purpose. And so I never had to cajole people around performance or professional goals. Where I felt like I had to do more work and probably still failed people is trying to get them to achieve some sense of balance over the course of the last 15 years. 15 months, excuse me. It felt like 15 years.

Charles: (10:42)

It sure has, yeah.

Stephanie Mehta: (10:45)

But encouraging people to take time off, to find time for their families, to be able to clear their heads. And I did not lead by example, which is part of the problem. I think that I probably could have done a better job myself of disconnecting. But the ambition remains the same, which is to help people be their best. It just seems that the definition of being your best has had to be modified given the circumstances.

Charles: (11:23)

And you talk about being guided by a sense of purpose. Presumably that was in place before the pandemic started. And you guys were clear about what that was.

Stephanie Mehta: (11:31)

Yes. I think there was a clear sense of editorial purpose. The pandemic probably heightened the sense of purpose in that Fast Company is... it's an interesting platform because we write about a lot of topics that are must-reads for certain communities, but adjacencies for other communities. I think about our design coverage. For people in the design world, we are a daily destination because they know that they're going to get information that's really important for them to understand as they go about their work. If you're a marketer or a tech company executive, it may not be a must-read, but it's certainly something that can enlighten you.

I think what happened during the pandemic is that, and this is not just true of Fast Company, I think it's true of a lot of editorial platforms, we became must-reads for a broader swath of readership. People really looked to us for information. And sometimes it was something as mundane as, help me understand why I should wear a mask. And if I am going to wear a mask, what's the difference between an N-95 mask and a bandana that I put over my face? So there was a real sense that readers were looking for verified, fact-checked, reliable information. And at a time when journalism was getting pilloried, at a time when science was getting pilloried, at a time when facts were getting pilloried, people who worked for Fast Company not only felt a sense of purpose, but I think they felt a sense of being mission critical.

Charles: (13:25)

Yeah. I think it's one of the things that's really helped some companies through the last 15 months, certainly, when they've had that sense of purpose or mission or vision, call it what we will. But I think that that reference point has been invaluable. You guys talk a lot about innovation. You focus a lot on innovation. Innovation is one of those words that everybody says we need to find a different word, but in fact, we can't find a different word because it actually is the right word, I think. How do you define innovation?

Stephanie Mehta: (13:50)

We define innovation really broadly. There is a sense, I think, among certain pockets in the business world that innovation is just product innovation. It's new. The new, new thing. We think of innovation as product innovation, process innovation, business organization innovation. Innovation can happen in any part of your business, in any sized company, in any age company, in a company of any size and scale. So we define innovation really broadly. And for me, I sometimes struggle to articulate it, but it's really about a measure of improvement that is more than incremental. It's really about laying the groundwork for something that could be potentially transformative.

Charles: (14:55)

What do you think are the attributes of leaders that unlock that? And second part of the question, do you think those attributes have had to change over the last 15 months?

Stephanie Mehta: (15:05)

It's a great question, Charles, and I think they're really related. We have seen the most innovative companies. And again, it's not just technology companies. This can be at consumer packaged goods companies. This can be at insurance companies. It can be at nonprofits. There is definitely a willingness to take ideas from every corner of the company, that innovation is not just the purview of your R&D department. It's not just the purview of your highest-paid engineers. It's not just the purview of your executive team. Time and time again, we see that the most interesting innovations tend to come or come in organizations where every employee at every level of the organization is empowered to present new ideas and to get an audience for those new ideas. And then the second part of it is, I do think that a big part of innovation culture is flatness. It's not just that any employee at any part of the company can present an idea, but it's that there is a healthy respect for the security guard if she wants to come to you with an idea about how to do things better.

And that really ties into your second question, which is about how leadership has had to change over the course of the last 15 months. I can't speak for every company. I sometimes feel like I'm in a bit of a Fast Company bubble because we do tend to talk to executives who are a bit more introspective and can be a little bit more raw, but leaders have had to be really vulnerable over the course of the last 15 months and show their vulnerability. Let me put it another way. Leaders, we're all vulnerable, but the most successful leaders, the ones that have connected with their employees during this time period, I think, are the ones that have shown some degree of vulnerability and some desire to connect with their employees on a more personal and human level.

Charles: (17:16)

And do you think that's going to sustain? I've noticed the same thing and I'm curious to know whether you think that's going to go on being part of the makeup of the most successful leaders. Do you think that people will expect that now of their leaders, or do you think there'll be a reversion?

Stephanie Mehta: (17:30)

I think employees absolutely are going to come to expect it. Now, leaders may revert. There are a lot of leaders who probably are secretly longing for the good old days where they could just issue a memo or do a video message for their employees, blast it out, and then scurry away to their corner office or their home office. But employees will expect it, and the ones that have options about where to work are going to think about where they want to spend 10, 12, 14 hours of their day. There's also a generational shift. It's interesting to see, and I'm not even talking about, like, millennials. I'm just talking about even sort of people from the Gen X generation who are taking over for people who are in their 60s and in some cases sort of late 60s, early 70s. In more traditional industries, that transition is now starting to take place.

And I just talk to executive after executive, who says, "I have a lot of respect for my predecessor, but we just can't do this the same way anymore." One leader I talked to said that he has an analyst in his organization who, when he took over as CEO, had heard that an analyst wanted to come in half an hour later every day because she had a special needs child that she wanted to take to school. And under the old way of doing things, that was forbidden. She was prohibited from doing that. And this executive said to me, "She's a high performer. She gets her job done every day. Who cares if she comes in half an hour later?" And so it was so simple for this executive to say, "Let's just make an accommodation." But as I said about my Fast Company bubble, there are so many organizations still in the US and worldwide that have these very rigid policies. And sometimes it just takes an executive coming in and saying, "This makes no sense. Let's help our people be great."

Charles: (19:53)

So do you think flexibility is at the heart of successful businesses going forward? Does that have to be built into how you're going to take your company forward these days?

Stephanie Mehta: (20:03)

It certainly feels to me like flexibility is going to have to be really important, whether it's flexibility in how you accommodate your talent or it's flexibility around how you measure success. Coming back to your question earlier, Charles, we've seen that we live in a very uncertain world and what constitutes success is … it can vary minute to minute, almost. And so the companies need to be flexible on the upside and the downside, right? If something advantageous comes along, they need to be able to mobilize and be flexible and throw a lot of resources at an opportunity. But when challenges arise, they also need to have the flexibility to accommodate everything from someone unexpectedly getting sick, which is a real life issue, to a downturn or a disruption in your supply chain. I mean, these are all things that we've seen in the last 15 months that are very real.

Charles: (21:17)

I think it's a really important and interesting reference point. I was talking to Faith Popcorn the other day for the podcast, and she made the point that the definition of rich has changed over the last 15 months, financially changed. It used to be that it was perceived as being just under $2 million made you rich. And now apparently it's perceived as being just under a million dollars makes you rich because people are changing what's important to them. And they're thinking, do I really need the money? I'd rather sit here and read a book, or I'd rather spend my time doing something that's really meaningful to me. And I think that's a challenge that companies are going to be confronted by more and more. I think it's going to be interesting to see whether that sustains, whether the pandemic has fundamentally changed society and the way we like to spend that time, or whether that bounces back and we all get back on the treadmill in just the same way. Within that context, what do you think the office looks like a year from now?

Stephanie Mehta: (22:08)

I think a year from now, the office will be probably at about two thirds capacity. There are people who have permanently relocated from their home offices and they're living in a place where there's just no physical footprint for their company. That certainly happened at Fast Company and I know anecdotally that it's happening all across the country. People are not only moving to sort of smaller cities, but in some cases they're moving to rural areas or states where there's not a major corporate presence. And so there will be diminished capacity. You've probably seen, and your listeners have seen all the studies and heard the various reports about companies that are reorienting their offices for more collaborative work. So we've already been in that sort of open floor plan model. I think there will be sort of more conference rooms and more space for gatherings and also more opportunities for people to find private, quiet spaces to work.

So a combination of ... I think the days of like the cubicle farm are gone, in terms of the physical footprint. You're going to see lots of cool, flexible spaces where people can come together and work. One company that Fast Company recently wrote about, Okta, which is based in San Francisco, they're retooling all of their offices and the furniture is going to actually have like electric outlets in it, so that no matter where you take your cozy chair, you'll be able to plug in. And if you need to go into a quiet room, you can take your whole workstation with you there. And if you need to be in a conference pod, you can take yourself and your stuff there. So much more flexibility. And the office will be a place for collaboration and for group work.

Charles: (24:26)

Given the likelihood that we are going to see more focus, if not total focus, but more focus on the individual, what do you think the challenges to leadership is? Because obviously there was always this sense of the organization does it this way. People typically generally have to fall in line. My sense is it’s going to be less of that. What do you think the challenges facing leadership is going forward?

Stephanie Mehta: (24:48)

Tons of challenges. I mean, one is ... I'm going to start with the external facing first, which I know is not the question you asked, but I think a lot about how leaders still have obligations to a lot of external constituencies, whether it's ... I mean, customers are the obvious constituency, right? You're ultimately going to have to make sure that your customer is happy and that you have someone to sell to. But obviously shareholders are going to be closely watching to see what these organizations do and how they're going to be spending their money and spending their resources and how they're going to bring people back to work. And not every shareholder is going to care about the employee as individuals. They're just going to be looking at the bottom line.

You have lawmakers, and I think we are starting to see more and more pressure in some quarters on wages and will lawmakers start to require more companies to pay a $15 minimum wage? So there's that piece of it. And then there's the communities in which we operate and whether that's environmental groups, or in the case of a big ... You and I were talking about cities. In the case of New York or a Chicago, companies really have to care about the public education system in the cities in which they operate. I mean, there are just huge, huge, external challenges.

And then you layer on the internal challenges. And the things I hear over and over again from executives who are managing through this brave new world are the challenges around communication. You can't over communicate with your employees, but people are really afraid of saying the wrong thing, because it can go sideways really quickly with employees. There are big challenges around fairness and equity. We're starting to see more and more companies really grapple with pay structures that have disadvantaged women and people of color, because typically they'll sometimes come in at lower pay structures and then they just never catch up. So there are challenges around equity.

And then just in terms of big buckets, there are really big challenges around creating a culture that enables your people to thrive, but also enables you to do all of those things that will allow you to serve your external constituencies, your customers, your shareholders, your communities. So those are just a handful of the challenges that executives we talked to have surfaced. And then industry by industry and company by company, there's probably really specific examples.

Charles: (27:51)

Picking up on one of those points, there's a growing expectation, it seems, that executives and leaders are supposed to have a point of view about every social injustice issue, incident that takes place. Do you think that's a reasonable expectation? Is that going to go on being the expectation? Where do you see that falling out?

Stephanie Mehta: (28:11)

Yeah, again, I'm just going to sort of read back what executives I've talked to have said about this topic. And these are people who have really thought about it very carefully. I think employers and CEOs and executives are going to have to have a point of view [about social issues] and speak out as a representative of their employees. So Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, spoke out about the Georgia voting rights bill. We interviewed him for Fast Company very recently. He spoke out, he said, because he realized he had to speak out on behalf of his 75,000 employees. Delta is the largest employer in Georgia. It's the largest employer in Atlanta. I believe it is the largest employer of black Georgians in the state. And so his point of view, as he articulated it to us, was, "I was speaking out on behalf of my employees."

And so that to me seems like the lens through which a lot of these CEOs will speak out. We heard a lot of executives speak out against the travel ban against majority Muslim nations that the Trump administration tried to implement at the beginning of that term. And many of the CEOs spoke out. And now, whether it's convenient air cover to use your employees or not is an open question. But the way they framed it was, “I have a lot of employees who are affected by this ban. It is affecting my people. It's not only affecting my business, which is sort of one lens at which to look at it, but it's affecting their wellbeing. They're worried for their families. They're worried for themselves. And therefore, it hurts my business and it hurts my people.” So to me, that's the framework we're going to see a lot of executives use when determining whether or not to speak out on something.

Charles: (30:22)

It's very complicated, isn't it? Because the stuff behind that kind of analysis is three-dimensional because, using him as an example, he comes out and declares against it. Immediately, the Republican legislature in that state passed a tax on jet fuel, which had the greatest effect on him, which affects their share price, obviously. And so suddenly there's a spiral down that path, and then people are paying attention to, fine, but are you supporting lobbyists who are supporting members of Congress who are supporting limiting election rights? And so you really, once you decide to get into that, you've really got to be prepared to be in it, and you can't do it as a PR event anymore. You've got to make sure that it's fundamental to how the company is going to show up and to your own leadership, I think. Is that true?

Stephanie Mehta: (31:10)

I think that's very true, Charles. And I imagine we will see inconsistencies. We've already seen companies that said … there are lawmakers who were not full-throated in supporting the primacy of the Biden presidency, the people who raised questions about it, we're not going to continue to support them with lobbying dollars. And then you go back and you look, and sure enough, through one way or form or another, some of these lawmakers are still getting money from some of the biggest corporations. And so a hundred percent there are going to be inconsistencies and we're going to see executives working this out in real time in front of our eyes.

Not to be too Pollyanna-ish about it. I do still think it's better than the alternative. It's better than executives just burying their heads in the sand and ignoring issues that really do affect their people, their communities, and in some cases, their brands. There are a number of brands out there in the world that have built their brand value around a core set of beliefs. Everybody loves to trot out Patagonia. When Patagonia sees legislation that they think is going to impact the quality of the air or quality of the environment or roll back environmental policies, their customers expect them to speak out on that, as do their employees.

Charles: (32:55)

Yeah. I think leadership has never been more three-dimensional. I think it's never been more challenging because there is no rule book at this point. None of us have ever gone through the pandemic, none of us I think have ever really gone through that marriage to the kind of political times, the social awareness that we're going through. And it strikes me that leaders are going to have to be, I think, more open with each other, in fact, and more collaborative with each other, perhaps in a way they haven't been before. And to your earlier point, vulnerability, I think, is going to be important, not just through the lens of how they show up to their employees, but I think the willingness to call each other and say, "How are you dealing with this?" Even within competitive environments, I think is going to be really important because there are no best practices at the moment. There are only somewhere between moderate practices and pretty bad practices, I think. And so there's a lot of room for improvement and a lot of room for growth. What are you afraid of?

Stephanie Mehta: (33:50)

I am … I'm afraid of letting my coworkers and my readers down. It's not that I hold myself to such a high standard, but it's, as you said, as people who sort of have oversight of an organization or have people who sort of look to you for decision-making, it's really easy to screw up. I probably screw up more times a day than I succeed. But if it's a micro screw up, people are forgiving. The systems are forgiving. I do worry about making the wrong call on something significant that would hurt my coworkers' ability to do their best work, or would cause our readers to lose faith and trust in us. And as you know, all it takes is one bad story, one badly edited piece, one ... It's hard to earn trust and it's easy to lose it.

Charles: (35:30)

How do you lead?

Stephanie Mehta: (35:33)

I try to practice some of the things that we've talked about, which is vulnerability, saying I don't know when I don't know, asking lots of questions and trying to be really inclusive, just trying to make sure that everybody has a chance to say what they think. Again, I say that. I'm sure that there are people in the organization who were like, "She's never asked my opinion," but I really do hope people feel that they can come to me and that they can speak up when they see something that they really think is not in keeping with our values.

Charles: (36:15)

Stephanie, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm a big fan of Fast Company, and I think personally, my estimation is you're doing a terrific job, so thank you so much for being here today.

Stephanie Mehta: (36:25)

It was so much fun, Charles. Thank you for inviting me.

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