Dr. Jeremy Weisz 21:48
No, that’s super interesting. And I think if you look at companies, I bet Intrapreneurs play a huge role in moving those companies forward. And I’d love to hear how did Edelman foster that incubation? You know, you always hear with Google that they have, you know, 25% time they can work on other projects. And like that’s how Gmail was created.
And there’s all these other things. How did Edelman kind of foster that incubation or intrapreneur spirit?
Nithya Ramachandran 22:20
Yeah, I think it came down to culture. Like, I don’t think it was necessarily it wasn’t around like specific initiatives necessarily. I think it was around culture. I think it was around thinking about problem-solving versus like even though like and it’s interesting in the PR space because you actually rarely get a brief from a client. It’s usually a call and like, oh God, we need a thing.
So it’s also being able to problem solve. It’s being able to like read between the lines. And I think a lot of that innovation is around that. Right. Just because you don’t have, you know, four walls and an incubator or a lab or something like that doesn’t mean that you don’t necessarily you can’t, you know, flex some of those skills.
And when we really think about innovation and thinking about outside the box, it’s being able to look at problems differently and be able to solve them. So I think a lot of it came down to culture and the people that worked there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:10
That makes sense. I, you know, I want to go. We were talking before we hit record about maternity leave, and I’d love to know, what did you do to prepare? Because, like you were saying, you know, you could be gone for ten months. What did you do to prepare the team and the company before you’re on your motherhood journey, I guess.
Nithya Ramachandran 23:37
Yeah. Great question. So yeah, for context, for the non-Canadian listeners in Canada, you can actually take up to 18 months parental leave that’s covered in part in some way by the Government of Canada. Most people in Canada tend to take about 12 months. And there is a big shift happening to because you can also split the 18 months amongst two parents. So there is a big wave of, you know, one parent taking 12, one parent taking six, for example, at the other end of it.
I ended up taking roughly ten months or so. So it is a substantial absence from your role from your organization. There is business continuity planning that does need to happen. The benefit within agency a lot of time is okay, cool. You get staffed on client projects that are project-based and, you know, you just hand off the project and go.
There’s some benefit there when it comes to parental leave. But in my role it’s slightly different. So for me a lot of the preparation came down to it was around people and it was around setting them up for success. So I went on parental leave. I think around like November 30th of 23.
So for me, the big focus of that October, November was making sure that my role ended up being split up. I think around 5 or 6 people. We didn’t just do a direct replacement hire, which is also very common to do like a parental leave cover. So we split up my role into different fractions. So it did become an add on to certain people’s roles.
That was one part of it. The second part was really outlining what the responsibilities of different parts of those roles were. So by taking my various responsibilities and bucketing them out, as it were, and then the third bucket of that was making sure they were set up for success. Right? So these were the documents, the tools that you need.
These were the lessons learned. This is the ideas for how you can run this in the next X amount of months. And you and you know what I would say the fourth one is trust, right. You just have to set up folks for success and have the trust and the confidence that the work that you’ve been able to do to date, you know, they will be able to continue and go forward and trust their best judgment to take that forward. And so for me, I completely disconnected.
I was like, all right, go forth and conquer. Kind of shift it, shift it off and let them do their thing. And you know, there are a lot of parents when they’re on leave, stay connected. They’ll check emails, things like that. That’s their choice for me.
I really kind of disengaged and took that opportunity to heal, to spend quality time with my family. And so when I came back, which I feel like might be a follow-up question, when I came back into the role, I really spent the first almost three weeks, four weeks. Just listening, just understanding. So I did a bit of a listening tour with a lot of folks to understand what went well, what didn’t go well, what their ideas for improvement were. Went back to some of those documents and were like, okay, so what happened?
What were the iterations? What were the insights? What were the learnings so that we could set up the next year? Really? Well, one of the nice things about coming back at the end of the fiscal is that I could almost use that as an excuse to listen, learn and then apply to the next year’s planning. So there was, again, timing played a lot in my favor upon return as well. Sorry, I probably stole your question.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:01
No, I was going to go back to well, we’ll talk about after you got back, but I’m curious, you know, you split these things up with five different people. What would be an example of something? It could be an example of something that was hard for you to like. Oh, my God, I’m not like, I’m this is my zone of genius. I don’t know if anyone can do this.
Us. What was one example where you hear something that we gave to one of the team members to execute on or to be, you know, responsible for?
Nithya Ramachandran 27:33
So with my role. So I play a dual role of president but also chief strategy officer. So I also run our strategy and creative team. So with that one it actually did involve a hire of a fractional VP of strategy. Now Kubernetes is brilliant.
So being able to bring her in. But honestly with that one I felt really bad because our overlap was only five days. So I felt like I was rushing through a bunch of stuff and like maybe not setting her up for success. Upon reflection of just like, oh my god, here’s a bunch of stuff. Go forth and conquer.
But without the benefit of time on that side. But that’s an example of one of the big pieces. So literally the department, like the strategy department of the agency, is one of those elements that, yeah, I had the handover.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 28:22
Strategy, I feel like is a difficult thing in general to hand over. What did you do? Did you just, like, download your brain into videos? Like how did you actually in five in a very short period of time, at least do the best you could to get someone up to speed?
Nithya Ramachandran 28:39
Yeah. So, you know, the brilliance of now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 28:41
That’s like your decades of knowledge distilled down.
Nithya Ramachandran 28:46
The key is hire people smarter than you. So I hired Nat, who was smarter than me and had decades or more in different types of agencies in a similar type of strategy role. So our kind of transition and training was just really around how our agency did things. So it was more focused on templates, process tools. But our transition was actually a here’s a bunch of stuff I would like actually for you to break and make better.
Here’s some like iterative drafts of things. But this is how you can take and make better with your brilliance. So for me, it was more important to hire somebody smarter Because I will not. I will not. I hate being the smartest person in the room.
I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. And so, yeah, being able to collaborate with her before and now since I’ve been back has been super refreshing and eye-opening. And I’ve been able to learn which is which. I really love.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:36
How. So when you got back, I’m curious how your role changed. You know, in my mind I’m thinking, okay, I’m going to come back. They don’t need me. I’ve handed it off.
They’ve been doing all this stuff for ten months. They don’t need me for these things. Right. So which is a good thing. And then you’re. And I’d be thinking, okay, where do I fit in now? So how did your role change when you came back? Yeah.
Nithya Ramachandran 30:00
Great question. I would say so. I’ve been back now almost exactly three months. I wouldn’t say the timing is this, but there’s definitely has been three phases.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 30:07
You can just kick your legs up on the desk now like I’m relaxed.
Nithya Ramachandran 30:10
I got a paycheck and go home. I mean, stay at home. Yeah. So I’d say phase one was what I mentioned before, that kind of wading in the water, listening, chatting with people and getting a sense of what’s changed, what hasn’t changed, what’s iterated, what we could do going forward. So that was really phase one.
It was exciting, you know, catching up with folks, etc., I think. And maybe this, this follows that kind of storming, norming, forming methodology too. The second phase of this was actually a lot of frustration. And why I say that is because, as you rightly point out, of course, over ten months the organization had to build systems and processes to survive without me. Of course, that is exactly what needs to happen.
So those systems and processes keep going. But I had to figure out which systems and processes do I need to pause, break hit, reset on. But the problem is I didn’t realize that. So it was just a lot of frustration, to be really honest, of like, what’s happening? Why are we like it felt like there were two people.
I was stepping on toes. There were multiple people doing multiple things. So when I had that realization With, you know, in conversation with a really great friend of mine who would also come back from maternity leave last year. She went through a very similar thing, and she’s the one that pointed out this idea of like, they had to build systems without you. So how what needs to change pivot, stop, reset, break going forward.
And when I had that moment that unlocked a lot of things for me. So that was helped me have conversations in service of what needs to shift, what needs to change, what do I need to come back and what needs to stay because it actually worked better as status quo. And then I think now we’re in this third phase of like coming along, chugging along. Things are now working well because we were able to have that realization. But I think a lot of times we don’t talk about reintegration of parents when they come into the workforce.
A lot of organizations, some organizations might do like some onboarding. Some organizations have like buddies. But I would say something to really think about is one like, do you actually need to re onboard some of your people, like if they haven’t been at work for 12 to 18 months, they probably forgot the file naming system. You know what I mean? Like the ways of working within an organization, do you need to onboard them?
And then I would say for anybody that’s the leader or the manager of somebody on parental leave, it’s coming back very specifically to your question of like, what’s the role, what’s changed and what hasn’t, because you can’t just come back and assume everything’s the same. It’s actually a really common philosophy with expats when they move to a different country and then come back. Reintegration is harder sometimes than moving to a new country, because when you move to a new country, you go in with the mindset, new language, new food, new customs, new ways of working, right? But when you come back to your country, there’s this almost unconscious thing of like, wait, why isn’t this exactly the same as I left it? Things that my friends have moved on.
Things have happened. It’s a very similar experience for parents reintegrating in especially if months of being not there or, you know, prioritizing a different part of their life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 33:13
It’s a very interesting stress test for a business to experience that because and I’m sure stuff when you come back, things are functioning better. And there’s things like you said, wait, why are we doing that? And you need to change it or break it. So it’s. Yeah.
Thanks for sharing those phases. I do want to talk about community building and what you do as a company. And you could let me know if we should start with Mondelez or we should start with there was a large sports organization I know you worked with.
Nithya Ramachandran 33:44
Yeah. So for us, you know, when we were really thinking about what we excel in and of course, every company hopefully is thinking about their unique sales proposition, their value proposition to clients. For us, we realized it was really around community. It’s not it’s about building community. It’s about igniting community.
It’s about moving community, right. You know those proof points being in the communities? Well, we’ve helped build with, you know, Black Health Initiative, with the sponsorship industry, with our platform called sponsorship acts. But what we also realized is, you know, as the world has gotten more and more fragmented, as algorithms and the internet have created more niche audiences and communities, that’s what people are finding belonging, right? Inherently, they find it in community.
And that community is based on location, based on interest, based on whatever the different pieces are. Right? So for us as an agency, it’s really thinking about how do we make brands and clients relevant in those communities and how do we create movement and momentum within those communities so that there is those relevant connection points to our client as well? So, you know, we had a really interesting problem to solve with, you know, a large national sports or international sports organization where, you know, they’re not necessarily building a women-based teams at this organization, but they wanted to think about how do we integrate women fans, right? How do we mobilize and activate women fans into the sport.
Right. And so those are the types of questions we like to try and solve. Because when we think about community, it really is culture, right? Like I always love to say like I am not the sports person. When somebody starts talking about sports at work, I say hashtag sports.
But the thing I love about sports is fan culture. There’s an obsession about it, right? There’s such a passion that follows it. And as a very proud bandwagon sport fan, you know, I love getting wrapped up into that as well. So that was a really that’s a really interesting problem that we’re working through and solving through is how do you engage more women in this specific sport and in this specific culture. Right. And it’s all around. How do you find common ground? How do you find those inroads? How do you activate with the right partners to find that relevance?
Right. So that, you know, it could be something that becomes part of their day-to-day, part of their routine, part of their interests and their hobbies where they can find new community as well. So that that’s kind of where our ethos lies as an agency. And that was just a really interesting problem that we were that we’re solving and working through right now. But it’s a lens that we try and take with all of our with all of our clients.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 36:24
What are some mistakes people make when they’re trying to build community? Because obviously organizations come to you. They’ve maybe been trying very a variety of things over the years. What are the mistakes you see companies making with building community.
Nithya Ramachandran 36:40
Not understanding the community? So I think a lot of it is they try and slap it together, right. They just say, well, we have a campaign. This the power dynamic to be really frank. Right. It’s we’re the brand. We’re the company. We have this campaign. We have this thing to offer here. There’s this community.
Just go do it. And they try and slam it together. But that’s literally like a car hitting a wall, right? Because it’s not thinking about what are the needs, the wants, the values, the Behaviors of this community, and what are we trying to effect and how what are we trying to change. So it’s really around how do you find those integration points so that you can mesh, that you can connect meaningfully together.
And it’s without that insight, without that understanding. That’s when it just it comes up flat, right? It comes up like, why is that thing here? Why are these people here. Right. Like really easily. It’s like, say you’re like a music festival, right? Or a food fest. It’s like it’s a very easy example. All of us have been to one.
Right. So the city put something on. There’s a music festival, food festival. Say it’s a jazz fest. You have a brand that just comes in and I don’t know, they’re like selling paintballs and you’re like, why are they here?
Like, this has nothing to do with the Jazz Fest. Now, maybe if it was like an EDM fest and they were throwing the paint in the air, because that’s part of EDM culture, that makes a lot more sense, right? So it’s really just making sure that there’s relevancy. That’s how you can really make it authentic.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:02
And then with Mondelez, what did you do with them?
Nithya Ramachandran 38:06
Yeah. So we did this really cool campaign called Snack to the Beat with Mondelez. So this is with a couple of the brands, including, you know, Sour Patch Kids and Chips Ahoy. You know, a lot of and well known knowledge. Mental health crisis is an all-time high.
But youth mental health is particularly an issue at an all-time high. So Mondelez really wanted to do something that galvanized the Gen Z audience instead of just like, here’s some Sour Patch Kids, but being something a little bit more relevant, right? I mean, Sour Patch Kids might solve some problems, but not all of them. So, you know, we partnered with TMH, which is the Canadian, one of the Canadian foundations that focuses on mental health. We also partnered with Johnny Orlando, who’s a musician, and really tried to build this campaign and this platform where the Gen Z audience could feel connected with not just the brand, but the topic at large.
So again, it again, it wasn’t just, hey, Sour Patch Kids. We’re like, sponsoring this thing. It was how do we create these integration points where, you know, Johnny Orlando actually spoke with folks at Cm-h, spoke with healthcare practitioners, with patients, interacted with fans so we could bring these important topics to life. It wasn’t just like I’m doing a TikTok and bouncing. Which a lot of times happens, like I’m doing a performance, but really creating that relevancy and that authenticity for this community.
So it created a it wasn’t just a cool experience. I went to a Johnny Orlando concert. It was I got to meet this person who I’m a fan of their music, and we got to talk about something that was real, that was affecting me in my life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 39:46
Nithya, first of all, I have one last question. I’d love to hear you know your maybe a lesson you learned from business mentor could be Mark Harrison, it could be someone else or both. Before you answer that, I want to encourage people to check out thet1agency.com to learn more about what they’re working on. And you can check out more episodes of the podcast as well. So Nithya, talk about maybe a mentor or two and maybe a lesson.
Nithya Ramachandran 40:18
Yeah, I think one a previous manager that I had, her name is Becca Young, also still a great friend. I learned a lot of stuff from her, from the from the strategy mindset. She’s the one that really trained me in, in on strategy. But she taught me about a couple of things that I still hold really, really close. One was around boundaries, to be really frank, and I would say that she taught me around boundaries from a strategy perspective.
Right. She was like, in order to do really good strategy, you need thinking time. And sometimes that thinking time is you’re going to spend two hours staring out the window and 15 minutes writing that deck, because you just need that time to think. And I think, you know, she was talking very specifically in coaching on like, how to write a strategy deck, but I think that’s also just a really good lesson for us to think about in the way that we lead our lives now, especially as thing has, things have become quick, virtual. Everything is back-to-back zoom calls or teams calls all the time.
It’s how do you set those boundaries to actually think, to do really good work that time that you need for yourself? Because we can’t keep managing based on a calendar. We need to manage our time based on capacity, right. So I think that was one big, really big lesson that she taught me that I that I’ve maintained to, to date. The other thing that she really taught me was like standing up for what you believe in, and sometimes that gets you in trouble.
Like when she was my previous manager, she stood up for me in, in a, in a leadership team meeting when somebody said something incorrectly about me, she stood up to her entire senior leadership team, including her, her boss and bosses, because she knew that was inherently the right thing to do. So she taught me a lot about courage. She taught me a lot about standing up for what’s right, acknowledging that it still might get you in trouble, especially in a in a corporate setting. But that the importance of staying true to what’s right and to yourself is it’s paramount what’s going to help you go to sleep at the end of the day as well. So something she gave me a lot of sense of agency to, to actually speak up that part of, of my mind and my being, of being up for what’s right and standing by it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 42:28
Love it. Nithya I’m only the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey, your lessons. Everyone can check out thet1agency.com to learn more and we’ll see you next time. Nithya. Thanks so much.
Nithya Ramachandran 42:40
Thanks, Jeremy. Appreciate it.
