Psychological safety for men when requesting non-traditional working conditions

Introduction

In this episode, our The 100% Project host Hilary Lamb speaks with Jono Willis, General Counsel, Lion New Zealand and Lion Little World Beverages on the “Breaking Dad” research series into the psychological safety for men when requesting non-traditional working conditions.

Jono has been with Lion since 2012 and assumed the role of General Counsel , Lion New Zealand and Little World Beverages in 2018. Jono’s role has him sitting on the executive team for two of Lion’s business units: Little World Beverages, Lion’s fast-growing international business with operations in the UK and USA, and its well-established New Zealand business. The dual role requires managing two very distinct teams with different strategic visions and ways of operating, and working across multiple jurisdictions. Jono brings a commercial and pragmatic approach to his legal role which combined with his strong technical skills sees him as a trusted and key strategic advisor.

Jono has been a loud and proud advocate for improved parental policies for a number of years. Jono is a passionate believer that having workplace policies that give parents the choice to equally share parenting is an important component to achieving fairer outcomes in the workplace. Jono is a hands-on dad to his young toddler, Pippa, and took three months parental leave to be the primary caregiver when Pippa was five months old so his wife Kate, also a lawyer, could return to work.

• Transcript

  Hillary Lamb: My name is Hillary Lamb, and this is The 100% Project podcast series. In this series we are talking about psychological safety for men, specifically when requesting flexible working conditions so that they can share in home and family responsibilities. Our new research, ‘Breaking Dad’ has found that men don’t always get a good reception from employers and colleagues when requesting this flexibility. So we’re exploring the personal stories of men who have firsthand experience of making these requests.

  Today I’m talking with Jono Willis, Legal Counsel for Lion in New Zealand. Welcome Jono.

  Jono Willis: Thank you, Hillary. Great to be here.

  Hillary Lamb: Great to have you to talk to Jono. Thank you for your time. So can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?

  Jono Willis: I am based in New Zealand and Auckland and I’ve been with Lion for almost nine years now. I am the General Counsel for New Zealand, and also the UK and the US. I have a wife, Katie, who’s got a very busy role as a lawyer at a law firm where she’s a partner and we have our lovely daughter Pippa who’s 18 months old.

  Hillary Lamb: So 18 months old, I guess she is starting to grow and develop her own personality and character at the moment. So it’s something, obviously you’ve enjoyed spending a bit of time with her as she’s been growing in that first 18 months.

  Jono Willis: Yeah. She’s getting a huge amount of personality at the moment. At the moment she’s going through a real finding herself and finding her voice.

  My sort of parenting story is, um, because both me and my wife both have jobs and careers that we take quite seriously we always had a real focus on wanting to both be heavily involved in the parenting and share that between us. So my wife took parental leave for the first five months when Pippa was born and then she went back to work and I then stepped back from work and took three months parental leave looking after Pippa myself. Which was one of the best three months of my life. It was great.

  Hillary Lamb: What prompted you initially to decide to take, or apply for, that extended parental leave.

  Jono Willis: My wife and I, Katie, have always talked about how we wanted to approach parenting. And we both, it was important to us that we shared that between us. And with Katie’s career where it was, she’d only just become a partner at a law firm, so it was going to be a hard time for her to step back and she wanted to continue the momentum she had in her own career. And so it was just, for us, it was about not only was it something we both want to do for our child, Pippa, in terms of both of us being there and present, but it was also about being equal and fair from a career perspective and making sure we both had the right, you know, fair amount of opportunity and shared the workload, so to speak, of parenting between us so that it didn’t impact our careers.

  So we made a decision pretty early on. We talked about it before Katie was pregnant, but, uh, you know, pretty early on in the pregnancy we aligned that Katie was going to go back to work sometime in the first six months. And then I was going to then take an extended period of being the primary caregiver.

  Hillary Lamb: Were you a trailblazer at Lion? Were you one of the first men to apply for extended parental leave?

  Jono Willis: I’m certainly the first to actually utilise Lion’s paternity leave policy. So just before I went on parental leave, Lion did roll out a new parental policy, which allowed the primary caregiver to have three months fully paid if they became the primary caregiver at any time in the first two years.

  Hillary Lamb: How did they make you feel when you approached the organisation and asked for that period of leave?

  Jono Willis: My leader was really supportive around it and then everyone in and around the organisation that I had a touch point with was very supportive. So I was very lucky on that front, but I’ve heard many different stories of people from different businesses where policies were in place that didn’t have such an open arms approach to someone looking to take advantage of the policy.

  Hillary Lamb: It’s great that the leaders in the organisation were really positive and approachable with regards to that. But some of the research that we’ve done, specifically with ‘Breaking Dad’, it’s uncovered that there are in many cases, passive aggressive or micro behaviours from colleagues where men do decide to take extended parental leave because it’s not the norm.

  So were there any behaviours that you saw or you received from colleagues, either big or small, that may be indicated they were either unsupportive or maybe just surprised by your request to do that.

  Jono Willis: Oh, absolutely. So I’d say firstly, the vast majority of the feedback I got was overwhelmingly supportive. The thing that probably caught me the most was people would say things that they thought were casual or even a bit funny, but they didn’t realise the implications of what that could potentially have on someone’s thought process about taking parental leave. So it would be things like, um, saying things in a slightly demeaning way about taking time off or, you know, having a break or stepping back, as if its not going to be as hard as your normal day job, which I think shows a bit of disrespect to how full on full-time parenting is. And there was a little bit of that, but it never came from a place of malice, I’d say, Hilary. So there’d be the odd sort of jovial comment, but it was more people trying to have a laugh or to be friendly.

  But actually, the impact of those sorts of comments is to put doubt in people’s mind and to feel a bit belittled about what they are doing. I’m pretty robust when it comes to those things but it still even impacted me when you sort of hear those sorts of comments. I suppose one of the lessons I took was if anyone’s taking those leaves, those little easy jokes that you think are a bit funny aren’t actually helpful at all.

  Hillary Lamb: You mentioned there about doubting or potentially doubting what you’re doing. So did you respond to those in any way or did you think, “Oh, well, I won’t make a big thing about it”? How did you respond to that?

  Jono Willis: Um, with a big laugh and smile and a “Oh yeah, we’ll see”. So that’s normally how I responded if I was being honest about it, but again, the vast majority of people were very supportive of it. And the people who did that, I would honestly say it came from a place of, you know, maybe ignorance is a word that’s a bit too harsh, but it often came from people who hadn’t been primary caregivers themselves, or maybe didn’t even have children. So they didn’t really understand. I must say that the people who had children, or were a little bit more closer to what parenting really meant, that was much less likely to be a line or a joke that came out of them.

  Hillary Lamb: Yes, I guess it’s human nature isn’t it. You can’t really understand the situation until you’ve been in that position yourself. So part of the benefits of men taking more parental leave, gives them much more insights into what the majority of women go through when they take parental leave.

  Jono Willis: One hundred percent Hilary, and I think that’s something that was really telling for me. So if I step back before I went on parental leave and I think about one of the reasons why I think dads taking parental leave is a great thing, not only do I think it’s a good thing for the children that you have to share that, but if we really genuinely believe in breaking the glass ceiling and having 50% of women in senior roles and changing some of those gender imbalances we have at a senior level, I really do think that the fact that it is women that often have to carry the vast majority of the time on parental leave is one of the things that makes it harder for them to get to that position. And if we have more sharing of parenting between males and females, I think that will help create a more equal place in the workforce.

  Now that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing if a mother wants to take 12 months to be the primary caregiver herself, that’s a choice thing, but it shouldn’t be something that society expects of anyone.

  And then I listen to the second part that sort of flows from that. I think the more men that take parental leave, the more understanding they are of being in the shoes of the primary caregiver. I felt very secure in my role and good about where I was at in life. So I was going on parental leave from a pretty strong base, feeling pretty secure, and I was only away for three months. That’s not a huge amount of time. And when I came back, even I had quite significant self-doubt. In terms of, I was worried about who’d been in my role, how well they’d been doing my role while I was away, you know, whether people were wondering, you know, what did I actually do when I was here? You know, what value was I bringing? I started questioning my own value that I brought and it was probably all slightly irrational thinking, but it was thinking that certainly went through my mind.

  And Lion did a great job of supporting me on my return, which helped, but it got me thinking, “Sheesh, if I felt that from a pretty secure place and only your for three months, man, it must be hard for a primary caregiver coming back from parental leave” and made me really understand how much harder it is for mums who have come back but also any other dads that take parental leave. It’s a challenge and you need to put a framework in place to help those people return to work and to make them feel secure coming back into their roles.

  Hillary Lamb: I think you’ve raised some really good, significant issue there to be addressed. Before touching on your return to work, how did you feel during the three months that you took off?

  Jono Willis: Yeah, I had a pretty telling moment. Um, it was my first week on parental leave and I was still on their leadership team WhatsApp group, and a message came through saying that we had just suffered a major cyber attack over the weekend and that everything was shut down. We couldn’t brew, we couldn’t sell, we couldn’t do anything.

  And a cyber attack, obviously, if someone’s got into your personal data, there’s a lot of legal issues. And I rang my leader to be like, “Hey, do you need my help? Do I need to get involved in this?” and my leader said to me at the time, she was like, “You are the primary caregiver for your child. You can’t be looking after your child as well as being involved with work. We’ve got this. You go enjoy being a dad and looking after your daughter and we will cover this”. And it was really telling for me and I can’t overstate how important it was to me to know that actually I was going to be given the space to be a dad and focus on being a dad and they weren’t going to try and make me keep doing parts of my role and keep me sort of trying to carry both of them. Cause that would have been unmanageable. So that was, that was great.

  And then, so the second thing was you do sort of want to stay across what’s happening though. So very early on my key business partners that I work with, but also my leader, they chatted to me about what did I want to stay close to? How did I want to keep in the loop? And we agreed a framework effectively for how I would still be kept in the loop. So I had monthly catch ups with my leader, and I also had a couple of matters where I stayed being copied to just so I was across them, even though I wasn’t having to do the work. And that made me feel like I was across what was happening. I wasn’t completely in the dark, but I knew I had the support of the business to focus on being a dad, which was, which was right for me.

  Hillary Lamb: It’s easy to try and have a foot in each camp, isn’t it? You feel maybe an obligation, even though you’re on leave, to check your emails regularly and talk to people and find out what’s going on. The way that Lion have approached, it sounds as though it really helped you to disconnect, but still know that you were in the loop with some of the major issues that were going on. Did you find that easy to step into that process of, you know, my role is as primary caregiver to my daughter, I’m going to let the business run or did you still, emotionally, try and keep a foot in each camp?

  Jono Willis: The first week or two, it was hard. The first week or two, you’d still be seeing emails or you’d be copied to emails and you’d want to respond or get involved. Um, or people would be calling your mobile with, you know, questions, not knowing that you are on parental leave. So in those first couple of weeks, it was hard to emotionally disengage from work, but once you sort of got comfortable in your new role and got comfortable with how you are going to deal with those queries that came in, and frankly, you started getting copied to less emails as you stopped being responsive to them and being all over your inbox. I very quickly got quite comfortable in being very much focused on being the primary caregiver to Pippa. And so much so, I’d say that by the third month I was on parental leave, I was very much engaged on parent life very much more so than, um, being in my inbox all day, every day. So, you know, the old habit, when you’re in a job like I am, is to be pulling your phone out and scrolling through your emails and as time went on, my screen time, and my screen report will tell you, I was looking at my phone a lot, lot less.

  Hillary Lamb: Was there any thought of applying for a further extension of your leave?

  Jono Willis: I’ll tell you what, my last month, it was quite funny. Another lockdown hit here in Auckland and I just happened to be down in Wanaka, which is down in the south island of New Zealand. It’s a beautiful part of the country. And so I didn’t go into lockdown cause it didn’t have any COVID cases. So I had this amazing month where I was, and it’s beautiful scenery, I was going on these walks with Pippa in a front pack each day and finishing the day having a beer with Pippa at the Speights Ale House on the waterfront of Lake Wanaka.

  And I did think long and hard. I was like, “This is pretty good”. I was certainly living a pretty good life at that point, but I wanted to get back to work. I wanted to get back into it. So I was happy. I was happy to end when I did.

  Hillary Lamb: Yeah. Perfect. So do you think you were treated the same way as a woman would have been treated had she been taking parental leave? I mean that societal norm it’s just, “Oh yes. You go off on parental leave, this is what you do. It’s fairly standard”. Do you think you received maybe more attention because you’re a man?

  Jono Willis: It’s a challenging question because I probably haven’t thought about it in much detail, but if I reflect on that, I’d say, yes I did get treated differently. I probably got given more encouragement and support and you know, “good on you and well done” maybe than a mum would have, because there’s more expected for mum to do it. I mean, I don’t know that cause I’ve never been in the shoes of a mother. But I do feel like there was a bit of over and above, you know, support for me.

  And partly maybe that’s because I was the first one of the first males within our organisation to be taking the paternity leave. It was more known and talked about, so it could have driven it a little bit, but if we get to a world where there are more men taking parental leave and it’s more evenly shared off the back of people like me being supported into it, then I don’t think that’s a bad outcome in the long-run.

  Hillary Lamb: I was going through my head, “How do I feel about this, Jono getting more attention than a woman?” because women do it all the time and they’re supposed to be able to, you know, move from the working environment, look after the children and go back and slot in seamlessly back into work. You know, why should a man get more attention?

  But I think as you said, the more visibility that those situations are getting or more visibility they’re having, uh, and normalising it, I think more men will take up that opportunity.

  Jono Willis: I think that’s right. And I think, back to what we were talking about earlier, that’s going to mean more men having more genuine empathy for what a mother’s going through when she’s leaving work and coming back than they otherwise may have, which is going to be helpful in the workforce.

  And it means more men taking parental leave, hopefully, in the long run which equally brings, you know, positive outcomes. And I think if I think about what I’ve seen in New Zealand in particular since I took my paternity leave, I know of at least five other guys within the business, who’ve gone on to take paternity leave.

  Each of them reached out to me pretty soon after I’d taken it, asking me about it, how it had worked, how I’d approached my leader, what feedback I’d receive, and a bit nervous about it, I’d say, to start with. And I was very glowing in my recommendation of taking it and saying that I’d had all the support I could’ve hoped for, and it was great to see other guys taking it up.

  And I’m really, really excited that it hasn’t just been me who’s done it and talked about it, but there are more and more men within our organisation taking up the policy. I think it’s a great thing for everyone, and for Lion, in the long-run.

  Hillary Lamb: Definitely. Have you heard anything that, you know, the reaction of their employers was, “Ohh, not sure about that? We’ll have to check it out”. Or being maybe less supportive than the reaction that you received?

  Jono Willis: Yep. I absolutely have. A friend of mine, he worked at a law firm and they had a policy and he double checked the policy that allowed for a primary caregiver, for the male, to take that and be paid for an extended period.

  And then when he approached his leader about it. They were not very supportive at all. They made it clear that while it was a policy, it wasn’t the expectation that it would be taken up. He was let know that it might impact his ability to get his next promotion or progression and made to feel very, you know, questioned in his decision-making and taking that. Which I just think is absolutely outrageous because the whole point of these policies, if they’re not supported, then they’re literally just being put up in lights and window washing to try and recruit people in a misleading way, or to pretend that they’ve got a better approach to inclusion and parenting and diversity. So I think, and I’m casting aspersions here, but while some companies have the policies, not all of them live by those standards to the same degree that I think Lion genuinely has.

  Hillary Lamb: It’s one thing, having the policy in place. It’s another thing somebody actually coming in, applying for it, and what the reality is of that. So that’s what our ‘Breaking Dad’ research found, is that not all employers are accepting of those requests. And interesting you were saying that the men were anxious about going to their employers and asking for extended parental leave. So organisations have to really talk about what benefits there are of having men taking parental, leave, sharing their family responsibilities.

  But one of the things there you mentioned intrigues me a bit – your colleague, or the person you were talking to – said that their manager told them it may affect future leadership opportunities, future promotional opportunities, which is something that women worry about all the time. It’s out of sight, out of mind. So how do you feel about that? Having heard that from somebody else and applying that to maybe women who go through this every time they take 3, 6, 12 months off, has that been something that you’ve thought about since then?

  Jono Willis: I must admit I probably had a bit of a blind spot, Hillary. There are things that you know about that are unfair or that are tough on other people, but you don’t truly understand it until you see it for yourself in some ways. And it sad that that’s the case, but I I’d say I absolutely had a bit of a blind spot for how hard it was for women or men taking parental leave and the doubt that would put on them about whether it’s going to impact their future career prospects or whether it’s going to make it harder for them to get promotions or grow their role within a company. But looking at it now, absolutely I can see why people would have those concerns and without the organisation putting in place really clear frameworks that go wider than just the leader and the person taking leave, where there is a wider organisational response to support someone going on parental leave, that’s always going to be the case.

  And so I think that you not only have to do that, but even if you do that, people are going to have those doubts. Because people do worry that when they’re away, it’s going to impact their career. So if you know that no matter what you do, people are going to have concerns, that means that you need to be doing even more. You know, that means that organisations need to be taking even bigger steps, more overt steps to give comfort to those people that they will still be front of mind, they’re still going to be on the talent matrix. They’re still going to be considered when they’re talking about their benching for key roles. They’re still getting feedback at achievement review time for the work they did in the three months before they went on parental leave. They still have a development plan that they’ve got in place that is relevant. All of that stuff should still be there and then it should be a conversation with the person going on, parental leave about how much they want to be engaged with those things while they’re on parental leave. Because some people will want less and some people will want more for making sure that they know that all of those things are available and they will still be in the system and considered for all opportunities. It’s critical.

  Hillary Lamb: You seem as though you’ve had a great number of insights from actually walking in the shoes of mostly women in the past. So the research has found that men need to be involved in gender issues if we’re going to accelerate the pace of change and as you said, give women the opportunity to take on promotional opportunities and more leadership opportunities.

  So you’re a leader and an influencer within your organisation and, no doubt, within your industry and profession as well. So what do you think you’ll do with those new insights that will benefit women and of course, men?

  Jono Willis: Yeah, it’s a good challenge, I suppose. I suppose what I’ve been doing to-date has been every opportunity I have to talk about my experiences and the blind spot that I had, which I just talked about, about how I didn’t realise just how hard it is, and I think continuing to talk on things like this. To share with your network. To talk to your influential people within your own organisation and other organisations. You just to take every opportunity you can to spread the message.

  So I know when I talk to law firms that we work with, our external law firms, I often talk about it with them and ask them what they’re doing. And it’s about taking the opportunities you have to share your views on that. And, um, what I’ve found interesting is that the more people see it working for Lion and they see the positive response happening to us by putting in place policies that help support men and women going on and coming back from parental leave, the more it sets the standard. And the more that a standard is set, that becomes a competitive advantage for recruiting key talent, hopefully that forces more organisations to follow suit and it becomes a cultural norm.

  I mean, that’s the ultimate goal is it becomes a societal norm that shared parenting is normal and that it is a choice of the parents about how they want to do it, but it is not looked at any differently whether you’re a male or a female taking it. It’s a decision for the parents and what’s best for that particular parental unit. Because right now, it is looked at differently, which I think is just wrong. And then secondly, the frameworks we have in place, both from a legislative support, you get in terms of the government support you’re given, but also a lot of the policies within organisations are structured in such a way that you’ve got to be the primary caregiver in the first few months, which effectively rules out men. So we’ve got these structural setups that mean that it’s not going to be shared equally. And that’s a problem. So the more we can create a shift and the norms of people’s thinking and create the structures to make sure it can be done equally, the better.

  Hillary Lamb: I’ve read a lot of research that says the majority of men, and we’re talking maybe 75% of men who are fathers, want to spend more time with their family. So I guess my question is what is stopping them? If 75% of men would like to spend more time – obviously, economics come into play because unfortunately in a lot of organisations, men still are in a leadership position, so they are paid more than the women. But if we can address that separately, what is it that stopping men from taking this time off?

  Jono Willis: Yeah, I’ll start with the structural point first and then I’ll talk about the mindset that that creates. So let’s take a Joe Blogs company in New Zealand or Australia that has a parental leave policy that says you are entitled to three months parental leave if you’re the primary caregiver. To be the primary caregiver, you must have predominant care for the child from day one, effectively. Now that means that if you choose to breastfeed your child, it is almost impossible for that to be the male. And that means that the way that that policy is viewed, if you are a male is I don’t want to be the primary caregiver from day one, that’s not going to work for us as parents, and therefore that’s not an option available to me. There might technically still be an ability for them to take an extended leave for example, to do it, but that’s a whole different mentality and thought so if you go to approach your organisation and say, I’d like to take six months extended leave to look after my child, it doesn’t have the same feeling of absolutely that will be given and support that you have if it’s applying for a parental leave policy.

  So I think that because we have this structural setups that aren’t fair men feel like they don’t have that option and then they feel like the only option they’ve got is to apply for an extended leave. And extended leave is, as a general rule, not as well supported and as it is often not looked at in the same way, in terms of it being seen as a bit of a jolly, if you’re taking extended leave, or can be. So people feel like it will impact their career prospects, they might feel like it means that it won’t be supported by their organisation and they don’t want to ask. So I think for me, if you solve that structural problem and make it a norm, then you’ll see more of it.

  But then I think the second part I’d talk to is the flexible work thing, I think is the other key one. That’s an interesting one to look at. I mean, all of the data that I’ve seen suggests that women are much more inclined to take up part-time and flexi roles over men. And I think that’s the next sort of frontier too, is how do we have more men working four days a week. More men doing co-sharing roles so that they can do more of the parenting.

  And, um, and I kinda think that’s the other part. That it’s almost expected more of women to take the part-time role as opposed to men. So that’s the other part I think we need to start encouraging and pushing towards.

  Hillary Lamb: Yes, absolutely. I agree with both of those. So what can we do? And I think men in particular, because you know, women have been banging on for this for ages, but what can men in particular do to start promoting this, to start making these changes and encouraging them to take more of the parenting role?

  Jono Willis: Really good question. I think the first thing is I’d be encouraging when men are looking for new roles, or looking to move in the workforce, they should be asking companies what their policies are towards parental leave and flexible working structures. So make that something that is clearly driven regardless of gender. So men are putting pressure on employers to think about that as part of their policy.

  I think that we should be more overt in celebrating men that take out the flexible work or parental leave policies. So often when you look at even the pamphlets or the language that’s used in these policies, it’s got hidden gender bias in it, often towards the females taking up those policies. So we need to be very considered in the language we use to show that it’s for both.

  I think lastly, we need to just be very clear and sharing with people that it is absolutely accepted and encouraged for you to look for flexible opportunities that work for you and your family and parenting styles. Because I think right now there’s a lot of men out there who will be very keen to take up such policies that either don’t know they’re available or they think they’re going to be disadvantaged.

  Hillary Lamb: So Jono, having gone through this experience the first time, if you do choose to have any more children, would you do it all over again?

  Jono Willis: Absolutely. When we do have another child, I’ll definitely take on another time of parental leave. How I structured it though, I don’t know. So I suppose one thing that’s awesome about the Lion policy, which I like, is you don’t have to be a full-time primary caregiver, five days a week to get access to the policy. So some of the other people I’ve talked to have taken up parental leave since I got back from it, have done it differently.

  So the way the policy works is you can get fully supported, full pay for three months, anytime in the first two years. So say their, their wife or partner took a maternity leave for the first 12 months, some of them have taken a day and a half a week for a year or two days a week for six months. So there are multiple different ways you can actually structure it so that you can get dads more involved in parenting. Which I reckon is, is great because it means that there are more opportunities and different ways to do it, that work for more people and more families.

  Hillary Lamb: You are one of the few men now who are taking the opportunity to have this extended leave and your experiences are so valuable for the men. And I guess when we started we talked about psychological safety for men, so about having the opportunity to ask without being demeaned or feel embarrassed, and this visibility is going to make it more normal. But do you think that men spending time with their young children specifically, do you think, the time that they spend with those children will be reflected in children’s behaviour. Do you think there is a longer term impact of doing this as well?

  Jono Willis: There’s no doubt that that’s the case, right? So like, if you go to a micro level on an individual family unit, it may not be the case with everyone because some families are brought up differently. But if you go to a macro level, I think if you have more men where it’s normalised to be the primary caregiver looking after their child, more children will see that as normal. So I think it’s a no-brainer that that will be creating positive change.

  Hillary Lamb: Jono, I think you’re right. And it’s been a pleasure to talk to you about your experiences on taking extended parental leave both from the business perspective, but also about, you know, spending time with Pippa, with your daughter, and how much you enjoyed it.

  Jono Willis: Look, it’s been great talking to you as well and I hope plenty of people out there listen to this and get involved and hopefully feel a bit better about taking the opportunity to be a dad and take parental leave… and more companies get better policies in place.

  Hillary Lamb: Absolutely, and I think we all need to start advocating for that to make some change.

  Jono Willis: Thank you so much, Hillary.

  Hillary Lamb: If you’d like to find out more about our research and our podcast, please visit our website for more information.

  Thank you for listening today.g today with John Thompson, who is a partner in the finance and digital practices at Oliver Wyman in New York, and previously managing director at Accenture in New York for a number of years.

  Welcome John and thank you for speaking with me today.

  John Thompson: Thank you Hilary. Glad to join you.

  Hilary Lamb: Can you begin by telling us a bit about your role, your organisation and your previous role?

  John Thompson: I am a partner with Oliver Wyman. If you’re not familiar, it is a strategy and management consulting firm, 5,000 employees, about 25 countries, a well-respected organisation and work with just about every industry on every continent.

  We are seen as a niche provider and I think as part of that, we at Oliver Wyman spend a lot of energy very thoughtfully selecting talent to join our team, to partner with our clients in driving change and helping them.

  At Oliver Wyman, as a partner, we’re all expected to play a role in defining what our future looks like, determining how we can bring new leaders in to drive toward what our clients need, and so this topic is highly relevant. We’ll get a little bit more into how I see that and how we see that at Oliver Wyman, but I think the criticality of building talent from the outside and inside is critical to any good company’s success.

  Part of that, as we look on career paths, and even outside of the firm, is figuring out how do we move in a direction that moves toward the centre? Gender is top of the agenda for that.

  Hilary Lamb: With Oliver Wyman, would you say that your leadership currently is fairly gender diverse, or is it more, being a management consultant, is it more male-dominated?

  John Thompson: It is regretfully much more male-dominated and it’s an issue, it’s a topic that’s been on management’s agenda for a number of years. I joined about two years ago with Oliver Wyman, and even in my prior life at Accenture, it was something I would say for me that became aware of probably 10 or 12 years ago.

  Our leadership at Oliver Wyman has made it a priority in a few ways. By raising up the level of our Chief Diversity Officer, so we actually have a new leader in London who is female. She is helping, not only with refining the targets, but also in educating the likes of myself and others for how we make not just the big changes, but the smaller changes as well, so that these things start to come across.

  But if I look at ourselves in the mirror, I would say at the lower ranks we definitely have a much more representative, diverse look. When we look at gender as representing what’s more of what we’re seeing out in the world obviously, but as we climb the ladder, we have a problem and when we get to the partner level it is a problem. As we get to the top level itself of the senior leaders within the company, it’s even worse. I think we score ourselves with a long road ahead, but I would say we’re spending a lot of time and energy on it.

  Hilary Lamb: That’s really interesting, and it’s good to hear that you’ve prioritised by putting in a female leader to focus on the gender issue within your organisation. We will get to ask you some of the tangible things that you want to implement, but because the world is a different place at the moment, there will be conflicting priorities across businesses, which is understandable.

  The first question is, will leaders pay attention to gender equality as they rebuild their business after COVID-19?

  John Thompson: I’ve got a few thoughts…  I think, the first is on a positive side we were looking at, I believe, a lot of disruption, a lot of disruption to come. At least in North America, a lot of larger organisations made a commitment to employees to hold on either terminating or driving much change, and their commitment aligns with things returning to normal.

  It’s hard to define what that will be in these worlds, but what it is translating to is, as people are returning to work, companies are preparing, or they have already started to launch, what they will change. And that does come in the way of divesting certain parts of the organisation, trimming the fat, moving jobs to lower cost centres.

  In the midst of this disruption, there’s going to be opportunity to place leaders. Good leaders will fall aside, or be pushed out, or will retire. And we know that there’s an aspect of managed attrition and unmanaged attrition. Whenever there’s this degree of disruption, there’s a degree of unmanaged attrition.

  We have good people that are leaving that no one wanted to leave. They must be replaced. And this is one opportunity, where I believe there is the “okay, because we need to fill this role, let’s go back to one of our priorities, which is gender diversity and look to make that happen”.

  I think back to your question of are we seeing that it’s still a priority, or do they want this to happen as we recover? I think there’s another aspect too, of what’s in it for the corporate world? In other words, there are tangible benefits that companies realise for why they want to make this happen.

  As we’re seeing companies being forced to make new strategic changes, I think they’re mixing in the “okay, if we’re going to do it, let’s rip off the band aid and we’re going to try to do it right”. Now again, I’m referencing, the companies that do have the wherewithal, and the ability to take a step back and recognise we may have a three to five-year period before we’re back to where we’d like, but we’re going to take the opportunity to rebuild.

  There’s a subset of companies that fall into this category. And I think, again, they’re going to look at how do we rebuild for the future? And how do we do that with the spirit of longer-term economic growth?  From my limited knowledge, the gender aspect is key to this. It may be an 8 to 10-year period for when you have gender actions and how long that might take to manifest for that new leader, who in this case is, we’re thinking about females at a leadership level, right?

  How the trickle-down of the impact of that new leader, being a female, being in place to attract new talent or mentor, or bring other pieces along. Again, I say eight to 10 years, you may have better data, but making those bets now is very important.

  And I think we’re seeing a number of companies taking this time as a moment to reset their strategic build. Now there is another set of organisations that I think are taking steps just to stay alive. And for those companies, I think they probably have a number of strategic initiatives that were on the docket, but they probably have come to a spirit of “how do we just keep food in people’s mouths as much as possible?”.

  And that’s going to come into the flavour of needing to balance how do we keep people employed and how do we continue to meet the objectives of our stakeholders, especially for a public company?  It’s not just about costs, but it’s going to manifest itself that way for companies that have a bad scenario.

  I think for this other set of companies, I think we’re going to see where they have to drop the veil of many strategic initiatives and just go into the mode of self-perseverance. For those companies, I would imagine a world again, not until they can come back and strategically rebuild, will they have the opportunity to properly address gender issues. Those companies are probably at greater risk. Will they even survive? Will they continue to go?

  My last comment, I think in that scenario, we do see sometimes where leadership is distressed, where they are making decisions that are easier to criticise for the right reasons and are often made for maybe sometimes wrong reasons. It’s hard to predict how those will play, but I think we’ll see a number of casualties in that area.

  Hilary Lamb: I think there are going to be a lot of organisations who are just going to try and retain the people that they have just to keep money flowing, keep their clients and their staff, as long as they possibly can.

  But I guess the question for you is, what is the business case to strive for gender equality? And why do you think that’s a priority for some of the leaders?

  John Thompson: I have a simple rule that, or lens that I’ve used, and it’s one that our company uses as well. If I use the term, what’s in it for us, and I don’t mean to make it too pedantic, but I think there are a few things. One, by having individuals with a different perspective, we get to a better 360-degree point of view, that especially in a world as a consulting firm, we’re trying to connect with our clients and help them determine where to go or what to do.

  So, if we come forward without that full lens, then we’re not in the best position. Gender definitely plays a front row seat with that. That first dimension of how do we enable the best perspective, it is by having a balanced portfolio, or a balanced team, and that team needs to have leaders at all levels that can keep individuals engaged, motivated.

  Again, I keep using the term ‘attract talent’. That’s a very big thing for us. In our sector specifically, and I think in many sectors. Because there’s not a person in that company who looks like you or comes from a similar background, there’s a subconscious deterrent to go join that company.

  The exact opposite applies when there is someone of that background, and you meet them and that “I came because you were here and I can associate with you”. So, we know that to be true and I’ve seen that firsthand many times, and we drink from that water cooler aggressively.

  I think the second piece we see is, when we are working with our clients, and again in a consulting world we’re often connecting to help define our value, but we’re connecting with individuals. By having the individual who is on our side, communicating with the buyer, and if that person again has similar characteristics or aspects that can connect, statistics tell us that human connection yields a better outcome. So again, if I say what’s in it for us, where there might be a woman leader who is a buyer, we find sometimes that they’re more comfortable to buy from another woman.

  It’s certainly going to work with many others from our organisation, but sometimes that key relationship is better off to align where the comfort level would be. And in simplest of terms, it gives us a greater opportunity to increase our sales or client connect.

  I think the third piece I would say, and again, this sounds a little simple, but it’s just the right thing to do. In other words, I think, we all do many things because it brings us some value, but I think when we take a step back, we know it’s right to have that full perspective. We know its right to say “yes, you are just as capable as this person”.

  We know when we look at certain statistics and we see them balance, we can take a step back and say, what are we doing wrong because we know this shouldn’t be the outcome? But I don’t know that every other company looks at it in the same way. I think in its simplest terms it just as equally applies to other dimensions of diversity. If my math is correct, we still have about a 50/50 gender split and I think this metric is more optical than others where somebody can enter the room and often survey, and it may be subconscious where they see an imbalance, or just by looking at a list of names on an email thread, and whether it’s a conscious or subconscious reaction, it is a reaction.

  I guess to bring it back around. I do think that there’s a number of things of what’s in it for us. And I do think that, the leaders that I work with at my company, and at my prior company, and even with my clients, I truly believe based on the rhetoric and the dialogues that we’ve had they see it as important.

  I’ll share another story. A lot of the work that we do is project-based. We may have three, four or five individuals, or larger, that interact on maybe like a three-month term for a client. And as we are compiling individuals to serve on the team, we’re looking at a number of things; skill, background, perspective.  And as we’re going through what we call an ‘internal staffing process’, we are looking at do we have a gender balanced team? Do we have a diversity balance chain from other dimensions of diversity? Now what we will do if we don’t have that, we will go back and say, why not?

  One of the things that I love about this process is we may come back and say, we need bank engineers that understand credit modelling, and we can’t staff a gender balanced team right now, because everybody’s tied up. We have just these three people here, and we need to support our client. Or we may come back and say, it actually turns out that the top three people right now are male and there are no other females that have that discipline.

  Our outcome may be that we staff an all-male team, but the other outcome is we go to our recruiting team and say, we need to change this. Like, action required, now! So, it’s an observation point for us. If we can’t solve it in the near term for how we support our client to trigger a discussion with HR and recruiting to say, you should be looking at this, but we’re now seeing this problem manifest itself. What are we doing to make that different? So, it opens up the opportunity for a new requisition or something else, which is also very powerful.

  Hilary Lamb: You’ve either had a very clear lived experience or aware of the research, because your explanation of why you’re doing this is obviously very strong, very valid. One of the things that we’ve come across many times in the past, is that leaders tend to recruit in their own image. I think you mentioned that to see diversity within a business, encourages talent to join your business. But have you had a struggle within your business of your leaders and managers resisting the change that you’re trying to push through?

  John Thompson:  Yes. I’ll give you two examples and how we’ve looked at them. I would say I’m not sure we’ve solved it exactly.

  The first example is on the external recruiting, and for example, a partner to come into Oliver Wyman would typically meet with eight to 10 other partners before we make a decision. HR plays a very heavy role in coordinating that, reviewing messages, et cetera. HR is helping with unconscious bias. Just to make certain, that when we’re looking at a candidate, and let’s say it is a female candidate, and we’re going through things, if somebody comes back and says, we think they may be a little soft, it’s a red flag. HR will have a discussion… “Are you saying that because the candidate is a female, or can you be more specific and why is that a problem? Is that maybe not an advantage?”

  I use that one example, there are many, many others, right? We’ve gone through an intentional training exercise with all of those who recruit for the unconscious bias, and HR will review things to double click where there might be perceived that that’s occurring.

  That’s one step we are taking, there are many others that we need to do. I think we’ve been upping our game as it relates to how do we attract leaders who are female and get them into the ranks.

  As we’ve been looking at numbers, the number of candidates that apply on their own accord are much higher skewed to male. And so that’s an action we need to take differently. I’ll tell you, in my prior company at Accenture, they had, I think at one point they tripled the referral bonus for a diversity candidate.

  It was maybe $10,000 for a partner, but $30,000 for a diversity partner. You’ve never seen so many people open their Rolodex, but it was so powerful. Now, the company did not change their criteria for bringing it in, but what in that case was the problem was just simply identifying candidates with whom to speak.

  So that was a fairly clever exercise that was very effective. The other example I’ll briefly share, when I was at Accenture, we were also looking at career progression. We were looking at that career point of moving into the partner rank, and by the way, Accenture, I think is actually very well ahead of many others.

  They have a 50/50 target by 2025 and have made it a priority across the board. One of the aspects was exactly to our discussion, we need to promote the right balance so that it is continuing to attract the right talent and keep the right talent. So, there was a heavy push on “we need to move along in the commercial channels in the way that we intentionally began”.

  Every year there was “this is the target we want to hit”, but the rhetoric I thought was very cleverly done. What was stated was “this is our expectation, we don’t have enough female candidates, but we do expect 30% of all individuals that are promoted this year are female, but do not promote anybody unless they have the right skills”.

  As we went through the process, HR came back and said “if you cannot meet our target objective, then again, we need to sit down with recruiting, we need to sit down with HR, and we need to talk about the recovery plan, so that next year we don’t have this conversation again”.

  It puts the ownership back to the leadership team to say “if you can’t find 30% to promote, that means you are not doing your job to attract the candidates who are of the right nature”. And it worked very well. Everybody pivoted toward, we need to do the right things. For example, there were certain moments where there might be a leader who was at the brink of leaving, for all the right reasons. And it was, maybe we need to give a little bit more of an incentive for that person to stay than we normally would, because it was a diversity candidate, and this really puts us back. If I have to go to HR and tell them I don’t have a candidate to promote, that’s painful, I don’t want that.

  It created a personal objective, so that on a day-to-day basis, we were taking actions that kept our annual processes a little bit more aligned.

  Hilary Lamb: There’s an awful lot there that you’re obviously focused on with regards to gender equality. The ‘what’s in it for me’, giving you a bigger bonus, is I think something that’s very clever and obviously people will take action. It’s really hard to get people to make recommendations for candidates within an organisation, but making sure that they’re going to benefit from doing that is very smart. And it’s obviously worked well with you.

  I recall reading something that Atlassian did as well. They changed the wording in their job advertisements to attract women; there are certain words that women are attracted to within an organisation.

  Is there anything else specifically that you’ve put in place that you’re doing or planning to do in the business to ensure that focus remains on gender equality?

  John Thompson: Many companies may have this, but I believe we’ve done it in a different way. We’ve created a group, we call it “Women at Oliver Wyman, WOW”. And it is a group of women and allies, male allies that are focused on this topic, but it is much broader than how do we get our numbers where they need to be.

  It includes things like work life balance, what’s important to individuals, and it has also a heavy social aspect to it and let’s have fun together. It includes programming different topics that may be unique to the “WOW” group, so a lot of those pieces are coming around balancing families. Obviously in our world, and I think in your part of the world as well, there’s still a heavy predominance where females are carrying much more of the burden of family life and the household activities.

  So, a lot of the dialogue has pivoted consciously away from ‘we just need to get more women here’ and it is pivoted toward ‘how do we make this a really awesome place to be a female’? One of the things that they’ve done stylistically is brought the awareness of individual females who they themselves have a unique story, or something that’s interesting going on at a more internally publicised level.

  For example, highlighting where someone may have done something very interesting outside of work. We all read these stories every day of where someone has achieved something that’s just remarkable, and it’s somewhat inspiring. Maybe enough to invoke you to do something, but we’ve done a very aggressive job of focusing on female leaders.

  And through that process, we brought awareness of female leaders in other offices that we may not normally interact with. It’s gotten really almost to a fun point where there’ll be posters around our office of other leaders, and you start to feel like you get to know these individuals without ever really working with them.

  And they’re not necessarily the leader. We’re also picking the new 23-year-old that just joined our Berlin office. And as you read about what’s interesting to her, or how she may have certain aspects of what she does in her day-to-day job that are superlative, it builds this sense of… I think there’s a subconscious sense of wow!

  Women are doing great things here and it’s a great place for women to be. And to me, it’s inspiring. I believe if I were a younger female, who was questioning if it’s the right environment, I believe it’s highly inspiring.

  I’ll share, if you ever want to go look, I think this is so much fun. For the International Women’s Day last year, they developed a campaign of “What is My Super Power?” and it was a cute way to come back and just describe what aspect that individual valued. But they took images of different women at all levels of career and dressed them up like superheroes and let them tell the story in that way.

  https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-culture/inclusion-diversity/women-at-oliver-wyman.html

  The reason I share this detail with you, is it feels so much less about we need to get to our numbers. It feels so much more about we’re celebrating individuals, who by the way are females of all levels, and isn’t it amazing what they’re doing!

  But the story isn’t about ‘as a woman I did this’, the story is about ‘as an individual at Oliver Wyman I did this’. It’s a neat way that they brought a lot of attention to how people can be successful, and they’re subconsciously bringing out how females are making a career at Oliver Wyman, a great place to work for themselves and for others.

  Hilary Lamb: Yes, that’s a really interesting story, John, and I think it’s important to talk about the detail. They say it’s the micro-behavioural changes that are sometimes the most significant. So, the off the cuff remark about, “token womanism” or some of the behaviours that in some places, men still have towards women, it’s those micro changes of behaviour that we need to focus on.

  And I love the fact that you are promoting women, not as successful women, but as successful individuals, because there shouldn’t be any difference in the expectations of men or women when they’re in there to do a job. I guess some of the things that women need, women appreciate as being offered by organisations, things like flexibility that has been pushed on a lot of organisations during the COVID pandemic.

  So, did you transition to homeworking during that period of time? And if that’s something you think, because it’s something appreciated by women, that you’re going to retain as one of your future strategies.

  John Thompson:  We pivoted very hard to work from home, and we proved it to ourselves that it was much more effective than we ever dreamed it could have been. If somebody came to us two years ago and said, “We want you to do an assessment, could it work?  How hard would it be to make it happen? What are all the risks?”. The assessment would probably have come back fairly grim. By being forced to do it, we remarkably did it extremely well. I think a lot of companies did, and I think we all surprised ourselves.

  I’ll tell you, as I’ve spoken with women colleagues, in many cases there’s still this default to where the woman has more household duty or family duty responsibilities. I would say, a number of females that I work with have mentioned this still exists. “Because I’m now at home all the time that burden has exacerbated itself.” I would say, regretfully, many of the females that I work with, have shared even though they can do their job from home, they’re finding the demands of being mum, or wife, or cook, or cleaner, because everybody’s in the house more, and we’re all on top of each other, has added a new dimension of stress and challenge. We’ve not solved that. I think maybe a new frontier coming out of COVID, where even though companies may figure out a way to solve it, I do think as a society this has put a new stress for how people are going to need to balance that.

  Hilary Lamb: That’s an interesting perspective. Normally you think of women wanting to have more flexibility, meaning remote working from home because of home responsibilities. We’re still seeing that women do probably twice as much work in the home as men do, but that’s an interesting perspective, “take me out of that environment and it’s actually better for me”.

  With the family responsibilities, home responsibilities, aged care, we are hearing that a lot of women still appreciate that flexibility, whether it’s where you work, when you work, how you work, but also that puts pressure on line managers for managing deliverables.

  Is that something that you’ve addressed? Is that something that your line managers are coping with well, or they’re struggling with?

  John Thompson:  I’d say two things… We are addressing them as well as we can, we definitely have kept, I’d say, a very open dialogue around deliverables or things that need to be done. If there’s any problem now, or in the future, there’s flexibility to adjust.

  So, our clients understand that we’ve set the tone across the board. I think one of the things we’ve observed, we’re seeing where the individuals may have a very operational role when they were in the office, they may have had access to a printer, maybe two oversized computer screens, maybe an assistant down the hallway, could physically do things in a much larger space, where that’s very hard to do at home without a printer, maybe one screen, not that same level of support.

  What we have been finding is that people are having to do more transaction processing, and that has translated into approximately a 20% increase in the amount of time people are spending to get their job done. So, if somebody was typically doing an eight-hour day, they’re spending nine and a half hours a day to do the same work.

  I think many of our clients are rapidly moving to figure out how do we improve processes? How do we digitise these items that before it was okay, was acceptable, now it’s not.  What our clients found was that their people were actually still getting the same throughput done, they were just working longer hours themselves, and it’s not sustainable.

  Especially, in the case where one may be a caregiver and have many other obligations outside of a work day.  That’s an area that we have worked on ourselves. We’ve rolled out a lot of new tools, very rapidly, new support calls. We have more people on the support line, so we can get these problems solved for you more quickly if they come up.

  We’re going to continue to see this as a priority for companies, where they have a lot of people in operational roles that have been inconvenienced by the realities of working from home.

  The last comment I’ll make here, I think Hilary, we did a survey and somewhere between 1.7 to 1.8 is the factor we see a woman being more likely impacted by COVID in their job, than a man. That could be lay off, or it could be in some cases driven by the fact of, ‘I was already at the brink and this is no longer sustainable. I need to step away and prioritise the focus on my children, or I need to step away and focus on other family obligations’.

  To me that’s sad, because I think it arose against the direction of what we’re doing. I have a few colleagues who, as a family sat down and said, our children are not going to go back to school this fall. And we need to provide more oversight. We need to be here for them.

  And one of the parents seems to step down, and that’s happening to be more of the mother than the father. I think there, for many right reasons or wrong reasons, people are rebalancing life in general, but I think a lot of the casualty may be on the female side. So, to that in general is probably going to be a push-back as a relates to what we see in the workforce.

  Hilary Lamb: We’ve seen that in Australia, that most of the research shows that it’s women who are resigning from positions, taking over the childcare or the aged care.

  Do you know if you’ve lost more women than men during the last six months? John Thompson: I know that within our company, we’ve not terminated anyone. We have guaranteed job protection. I do get notifications of who’s leaving. It feels balanced, but I see the notifications for our geography. I don’t see it for the broader group. I will share, a number of people are also taking the opportunity to just re-examine life.

  I’m sure we’re going to see a number of adjustments. I fear more of them would be negative than positive toward the objective of what many companies are moving toward in gender equality.

  Hilary Lamb: I was reading an article; it was an interview with Melinda Gates. She was saying that at this point in time, we should be demanding more from our leaders and the way to build back is to put women straight in the centre.

  So, should we go further than gender equality? Should we prioritise women’s issues? It’s harder to separate work from home, especially as a lot of organisations are continuing to allow remote working. Childcare comes into it, homeworking comes into it. As we rebuild organisations, and life in general, should we be focusing even harder on women’s needs and push that priority further up?

  John Thompson: Hilary, I think we should. I’ve not thought about it from that dimension, but as you speak, and I think about the rhetoric that we have internally. We have been compiling and working to take action, to embrace further this reality of work from home for many people to be the new normal. And I would say within our organisation, we’re examining what that means.

  All of the challenges you listed are on the list. And I think to your point, they impact women and men differently. I would anticipate more times than not the mother, in a traditional family, was often the one who probably was staying behind to care. I think we need to look at the new lens of what does that list look like in a work from home environment?

  Already some of my colleagues say, I really want to eat lunch with my children, and I need to help them wrap up their school day, but then I’ll be back online. Then after dinner, I’ll come back online for an hour or two.

  Putting it to different slots of the day where it allows for that better work life balance. We’re already doing that where somebody requests it on a desired basis. I think we’re going to see more of that come along where there’s definitely the willingness to decompose a traditional nine to five day and allow flexibility.

  I think the Melinda comment is very wise on many fronts. Why would we wait to solve that? Why would we not take this moment of disruption? We know that billions will be spent by many organisations individually to solve this. Let’s put this to the top of the list, because as it relates to the equation of gender equality, it will have a large impact.

  Hilary Lamb: Yes, absolutely. We at The 100% Project, we’re just completing some research called “Breaking Dad”. What that means is a lot of instances, men would like to have more flexibility. They’d like to have more time with their families. So, focusing on some of these issues, which may appear to be female-oriented, may in fact benefit fathers, the male workforce in general. So other things may come out of this.

  John, you seem as though Oliver Wyman and Accenture, previously, are really at the forefront of creating an environment, which is female friendly, or at least very diverse. Do you see yourself as a leader in the American culture, or is this something that you’re finding a lot of businesses are tending to focus on?

  John Thompson: I think we are a leader in the American culture. I believe we rank in a top 100 places to work for women. We’re rated on how far we’ve achieved and the things that we’ve instantiated. I do believe, however, going to the CEO of any major company that’s public, this is one of the top agenda items.

  The question is how far they’ve gotten in their progress, and how much they’ve been able to architect. I had the opportunity to facilitate, about two and a half years ago, across organisation dialogue. It was a few different companies, spearheaded by Accenture and a Japanese bank, and I was the facilitator on the topic of gender diversity.

  The Japanese bank was very quick to state it is very different in North America than Japan, culturally. I think culture and company will all be on different timelines, but the larger companies that I speak with all appear to appreciate what ‘good’ looks like and that they’re moving at their own pace toward what that is.

  The companies that have started to appreciate what’s in it for them, and what’s in it for their teams, I think have stepped up the pace. They see the tangible, a value to the bottom line. I think in summary, people know the concept is right. I think people are at different levels of awareness and different levels of achievement. I’m hoping that COVID brings a new opportunity, as Melinda Gates references, to say why would we not make this part of the build back strategy? It’s important.  It’s an opportunity we didn’t have before.

  So, let’s take it.

  Hilary Lamb: Thank you so much for your time today, John. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

  John Thompson: Thank you.