Increasing the Influence of Safety Across Your Organization

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Deborah Barrett, an Ethics, Compliance & Operations Executive who holds a Master's Degree of Science in Business Ethics and Compliance.

Deborah uses her extensive experience working in corporate settings to help EHS professionals avoid getting lost in complex enterprises. It can be easy to become just another number in large organizations, especially if you are a new starter or remote working is widespread.

She shares extensive practical guidance on how to increase the visibility of safety across your organization. Securing executive support, strategic networking, committee participation, and effective presentations are just some of her recommendation she explores.

Deborah encourages HSE professionals to focus on promoting the benefits of safety and finding natural allies within your company to help achieve your objectives. Not only will this raise the profile of safety management - it will also enhance your career development.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," a podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport.

In other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff. ♪ [music] ♪ Hi, there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." Safety managers work in all kinds of different organizations, but large multinational corporations are a beast of their own. For someone just starting out work in a complex enterprise setting, I imagine there's a concern about getting lost or being just another number in a faceless corporation.

But there are ways to use corporate structures to improve your ability to increase the influence of safety across the organization. You just need to know how to navigate the structures and the systems in the enterprise world. Our guest today has been doing that, just that, for her whole career, and she has some tips about finding and building opportunities within large organizations.

Deborah Barrett is the VP and Chief Compliance Officer at Qualcomm. She leads the company's ethics, compliance, and business resilience functions and holds a master's degree of science in business ethics and compliance. She has extensive experience working in large corporate settings. Deborah joins us today from San Diego.

Welcome.

- [Deborah] Great. Thanks, Mary. I so appreciate the invite to join the podcast and, basically, join the discussion, because I think the topic is relevant for most professionals. As you mentioned, large corporations can be pretty tricky to navigate. I started out in the oil and gas industry, with Amoco. Then I got into telecom for 14 years.

And then, most recently, I work in the tech industry for a semiconductor company. And so, you know, most of these companies have thousands and thousands of employees. My current employer has operations in 38 countries. So you're not just dealing with domestic issues and understanding the culture and business customs in your own country, but you actually have to kind of navigate how things get done across the globe.

So very interesting topic, and I think we're going to focus on this throughout the podcast, but I mean, there's lots of tips and tricks. But I do want to acknowledge that a lot of employees who have even started, you know, over the last two and a half years, have been onboarded remotely, and so they don't even have the benefit of, like, being in the office to have their colleagues, you know, point them in the right direction.

And so there's no time like the present to discuss this topic and figure out how you can make a name for yourself and contribute successfully to your company's success, regardless of the size and complexity.

- Yeah, that's a great point and something I haven't thought of. But yeah, when there's no water cooler, it's hard to have those kind of spontaneous interactions that really help people build a team. So although you're not a safety professional per se, there are a lot of similarities between compliance and safety in terms of where they fit in an enterprise setting, and there are similar challenges that both teams face.

Can you talk a little bit about those similarities?

- Absolutely. I think I'm going to start first with one of the benefits that I identified. You know, when I was first asked about this podcast, I think there are certain functions within a company or a corporation that draw individuals that want purposeful work. You know, it's not just about the paycheck. I mean, they take their job very seriously.

And I would say, you know, ethics and compliance, environmental health and safety, business resilience, generally draws people that want to do work that has meaning. And so I do see a connection there, and so this was, you know, a pretty exciting opportunity to talk to this kind of audience.

In terms of the challenges, there's also very similar challenges. We are working in roles that do not generate revenue for the company. And so, how can you, as an employee or a leader, garner the support that you need, the resources that you need, the funding that you need to be successful and to do the very best job that you can for the company?

So there are obviously...it can be difficult, especially in a remote work environment, when you don't already have those relationships, but for those that, you know, have been at the company for a while, I think, you know, just some general recommendations are figuring out who the individuals are in the organization that have influence, whether that's in your own function or outside of your function.

I work with many, many different functions within the company because our program is global, and we have a very small team. So we actually have to rely on people that don't report into our function to assist us with things that are going on in the international offices. And when the business resilience function joined my team a couple of years ago, what we noticed is that both the compliance team and the business resilience team have very similar go-to people in every office.

And so it's less about the function and probably more about the people and how dedicated they are and how responsible they feel for making sure that the company is successful, that the employees are well taken care of, you know, protected. And so I would say pretty much any initiative that we work on, we are working with the other functions. We work closely with HR, on the people side.

We work closely with accounting. You know, again, on the compliance side, there's a lot of issues relating to financial reporting and things like that that we care a lot about. So we have to have a good understanding of the accounting. But the great thing about these relationships is that it gives you a broader view to the company, to your business, how things operate and how things get done, and sometimes you can learn from other functions.

If you see a leader in the organization that seems particularly effective at getting things done with lots of different groups that they have no authority over, I mean, that's the person I want to hang with and that I want to have in my network, because that's a very valuable skill to have when you are working in a function that is often resource-constrained, funding-constrained, and so...

- And I was going to say, too, I think there's a bit of an invisibility factor in that, like, for safety people, if you're doing your job well, then you don't hear about safety because there aren't injuries, there aren't incidents, right? And so it's, like, well, you want to do your job well, but when the incentive may be that you're a little less visible, I imagine that's similar with your experience as well.

- Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. First of all, I mean, we're talking not just about safety but also about career and professional development. And you know, earlier in my career, I definitely have an operations mindset. I feel like if the company doesn't know my team exists, that's because I'm doing a very good job.

You know, we didn't have any break. No, everything's still operating. And so, while that is a great measure of performance, it's a terrible career development tactic, you know. I mean, you won't get any recognition. No one knows you exist.

And so I actually just got off a workshop regarding how to constructively promote your contributions, especially when you might not be on the highest-profile project in the company or, you know, initiative. And so the audience was putting out a lot of different great ideas. And I mean, the operations teams were very focused on making sure you can measure your performance, and then, depending on what industry you're in, I'm in tech so I work with a lot of engineers, they want to see numbers, metrics, you know.

And so making sure that you can present your contributions quantitatively for an audience, I think, then it's less important that you're on a high-profile, sexy project, and people start to see that, while you're quietly behind the scenes, doing all of the good work, these are all the benefits for the company, you're not getting regulatory fines, your employees are safe, on the compliance side, you don't have people going to jail, things like that.

So it's something to get used to. I mean, I'm pretty uncomfortable. I'm not a salesperson. So, I mean, talking about, you know, how great my team is doing is really difficult, but I think the further you get into your career, the more important that becomes, and especially if you desire, you know, to continue to move up and get into a leadership position.

- You touched on this a little bit, but I want to get a little bit more into cross-functionality. Compliance teams, like safety managers, need to get buy-in from the workforce but also from the C-suite to secure funding and resources for their programs. So when you say cross-functional, what do you mean by that, and why do you think that that is an important approach to take?

- Sure. In this case, I'll use an example from my business resilience team, because this was a group that got, literally, zero attention from the executive suite, and it's actually why they asked to move on to my team because I report into a committee of the board. From a compliance standpoint, that's a very common reporting structure so that you can be independent.

Whatever you're working on, you don't want to have an executive pressuring you to make a decision one way or the other that may not be in the best interest of the company. So, from a business resilience standpoint, I inherited a team that had been buried, like, quite deep in our real estate and facilities organization. And what they were looking for was executive support and recognition that the function was important, because, if the executives don't think it's important, it's highly unlikely that the different groups that we support are actually going to be cooperative and work with us.

So the first thing we did was we decided who we wanted as an executive sponsor of the program, and in this case, because part of the program is business resilience and the other part is IT service resilience, I reached out to the chief information officer, and I asked him if he would be co-chair of, you know, our program.

And he was very flattered to be asked. I mean, I know he's a very busy individual, but the reality is he came to us from FedEx, which, I mean, if you think about a company that has exceptional operations, I can't think of, you know, a better organization.

And so we just thought he would be a really great sponsor. And he has been just that. I mean, when we need funding for a project, he goes with me to the head of engineering and the CFO, and we talk through, you know, why we need the funding or why we need headcount. And the discussions are so much different today than they were three years ago because our executives are more educated on what this group even does.

Now, COVID helped a lot as well because, when COVID came, suddenly, everybody's like, "What are we going to do, you know? Is the business going to shut down?" And, you know. So it was front of mind. So I mean, we sort of had an alignment of the stars, and we got lucky, but the reality is we've gained really good traction. I mean, we did not have any plans in place for some of our engineering teams, and once our executives understood what we were working on and why, we got the support that we needed to get those plans in place and make sure, if we do have another major disruption, we won't have engineering labs going down.

You know, if we have specialty equipment in one country, we have to have a redundant facility in another country, just in case it's location-specific. You know, again, that's one way to kind of work yourself up the chain and figure out who can have influence in the area that you're in. I think, for companies with manufacturing, they already understand how important safety is, and so that's probably not a hard sell.

But my company did not have...we're a fabless semiconductor company, so we actually didn't own our own manufacturing. But we purchased the company that had about 4,500 employees that were in manufacturing roles, and when they looked at things, like our code of conduct, they were like, "Where's the focus on safety?"

You know, I mean, they really just redlined and, you know, gave us all of these great suggestions that, honestly, just weren't in our DNA before we purchased this company. And so, you know. And we use them a lot on the business resilience side. You know, when we want manufacturing to go down in Munich, you know, and then, suddenly, everybody's like, "Wait a minute, what?"

You know. "What do you need?" I think it's, you know, those kinds of strategies that can help you elevate your program, and like I said, try to secure the funding and the resources that you need to be successful, and also to get recognition for your work.

- That sort of speaks to your focus on operations, right? When you and I spoke before, you said that operations is really a key area for people to understand. Are there any other teams or functions that you think might be a natural fit with safety to sort of get aligned with, to learn more about?

- So I can speak to my own company, because I'm pretty familiar now after, you know, 14 and a half years, with how it's structured and who does what. And as I mentioned, we were not involved in manufacturing until recently, but I think manufacturing operations is obviously...I mean, and safety may already report in there. I'm not sure, but we have a real estate and facilities group that works very closely with our safety managers.

We have certain engineering teams that are, for instance, using equipment that needs to be tuned. We have third parties coming in. So we do have...well, we call them EH&S, but environmental, health, and safety personnel, that are involved in the scope of work for those projects, you know, sometimes overseeing those projects.

But you know, again, the majority of our facilities are like corporate offices. So I think safety, you know, is an issue if we have a construction project going on. Another emerging area that's been very interesting in tech, from a safety standpoint, is the autonomous driving. We have a pretty bit group of engineers that are developing that technology but then a whole other group that's testing it, so looking at their protocols and procedures for testing, and if we have a failure somewhere, you know, making sure that that gets back to the right group and that we don't just keep forging on.

I think safety is becoming just, you know... it is a function that most corporations, at least in tech, which I'm most familiar with, can't live without, because we're just getting into areas that, you know, involve human safety. So you have to have the highest level of respect for that area.

- Let's say that our listeners are nodding their heads, and they understand the importance of this kind of cross-functional approach, like seeing allies, working with other people, but maybe they don't know where to start if they're working in a siloed situation, and networking is frankly hard for a lot of people.

So, what would you suggest to either an individual or a safety team that's trying to kind of branch out and build those relationships?

- So, Mary, I'm just going to put it out that I am not the best networker in the whole world, as I mentioned. I am an operations person. I'm very focused on the task at hand. But I did learn that if I want to move up in the organization, which was my career objective, that I had to look up.

I had to figure out who the decision-makers are. I had to figure out what my network should look like to, you know, support the career that I wanted to have. And so my compliance role is into the legal department at my company, and unfortunately, I have a team of partially lawyers, partially accountants. I have business resilience experts.

Not too many lawyers, you know. So, does even my department care about what we do? You know, that's very difficult, because they don't deal with it day in and day out. I think some of the tactics that we've taken to create a network for our group so that we can be successful, for one thing, is recognition programs. We always say, doing things the right way is not ever the easy way or the fastest way.

And so, when we see employees that are going above and beyond to get things done the way the company would want them to get done, you know, integrity is, like, the foundation of everything that we do. If we identify employees that emulate, you know, that value, are getting things done the right way, we recognize them.

We have what we call the Lead the Way program, and we have more than 1,000 employees that are involved in that program now. And whatever issue we happen to be dealing with, that's kind of our first go-to group, you know, for support. If we have something going on in Israel, you know, who do we have in the group in Israel, you know? And let's figure that out so that we've got some intel on the ground who also understand what we do and are pretty committed to the mission.

That's one way you can grow your network, and it's not very expensive. You know, the company has, like, a recognition program that's almost like a social media recognition where you go in and you give thank-yous. And you know, everybody in your organization sees them up the chain, sees them. So you know, it's a good way for employees to be recognized for the work that they're doing that they may not be getting any recognition for within their own group.

Like, executive sponsors, that's another thing that I would recommend, depending on where you are and what you're trying to do. You can always look to governance of your program as a way to beef up support and reach out to executives that you think could be effective in driving your goals and objectives, and it's not likely someone that's in your functional area.

But I would definitely choose wisely. Make sure you're selecting someone that is an influencer at your company. They don't have to be an expert in what you do. That's what you get paid for. That's another tactic that we have taken. And then, just on a professional network basis, I always say, "Look big." Quantity does not equal quality.

So you have to be really strategic about it. I actually despise networking. I almost relate it to politics, or at least I did years ago. Now, I understand, that's not what it is at all. I mean, these are mutually beneficial relationships. Even though, years ago, I mean, I was terrified to go and ask someone above me if they would, you know, consider mentoring me or sponsoring me, and I think the message there is you'll be very surprised to find that most people are very flattered to be asked to be part of your professional development and will be interested in that and will have a completely different perspective than you have and different experiences that they can share that help you understand what's going on around the company and be able to speak to things that are, you know, top of mind for people above you.

So another thing we've been working on, at least within my team, is, you know, kind of our elevator pitch so that when we do run into somebody that we're impressed by that we think can help our mission, you know, we can...it just rolls off the top of your tongue what we do for the company, you know. So they can quickly place us, "Oh, I know. You're the group, you know, that does this."

So I think that's another great tactic, is just to have a really concise elevator pitch that you can make if you happen to bump into somebody that is, you know, one of the folks that you're interested in having in your network or helping your function.

- Yeah.

- I can't think of any [inaudible] right now, but.

- Well, I've got a bunch that you had mentioned before we'll go through, and you can kind of elaborate on them. Just as you were talking about executive sponsors, it occurs to me too that if you were to ask someone to mentor you or be a sponsor, and if they say no, then maybe that's not the person you really want. Like, you want the person who wants to give back, right, who wants to help boost the next generation, as it were, right?

- Absolutely. And I mean, again, this goes back to purpose. I usually have seven or eight mentees at all times, I mean, and they're all over the organization. I have somebody in India. So those calls are rough from a time zone standpoint, you know. But I'm always very flattered that they ask, but I would not agree if I didn't get just as much out of the relationship.

I always learn from people that are in different places than I am, because, you know, I have my own lens. But oftentimes, when I'm able to look up and see how others are, you know, seeing things through their lens, it's just... I feel like it helps me grow. It helps me think about problems differently and how to solve problems differently. So, yeah, you're absolutely right.

That's not an easy thing to do but very important, and think about it more as an objective than as, like, some social thing, you know.

- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. It doesn't mean that they like or dislike you. It's not about your likability. It really is a professional situation. So, okay, I'm going to go through and talk about a couple of things that you have mentioned before. You may have mentioned them already today, but maybe you can expand on them a little.

But the first one is finding natural reporting structures within enterprise organizations.

- Yes. I mentioned this because, as I said, I report into legal, which is not great for my entire organization, I mean, my business resilience organization. Legal doesn't really even know what they do, and so I want to make sure that we're supported, you know, across the board.

And so, when you start looking at the different groups that they work with routinely and then who the influencers are in that group, that's usually how I try to decide who we need to partner with, you know. So let's say we're struggling with, for instance, Shanghai, you know, was shut down because China has a zero COVID policy, and we literally had employees stuck in the office for 60 days who couldn't shower, because that's where they were when the lockdown started.

And then we were hearing about our other 2,000 employees who did get home but then couldn't leave their homes to grocery shop or do all that. So my BR team, my business resilience team, was trying to figure out, "How do we get food to employees? How can we swap out the employees that were in the lab and couldn't leave once the lockdown started?" And you know, so our natural partners in that exercise were HR, because HR is familiar with the unions there and whether or not we could leverage them to get food, you know, to employees, because we had heard that they were able to make bulk purchases and do bulk deliveries so the government would let them in.

So that was one thing that we did. And then our safety, EH&S team, was negotiating with the government to try to get our employees that were in the labs swapped out, you know. So that was a team that we were working with, I mean, many, many meetings a day to try to find a solution there so that employees could go home to their families. And we found volunteers that were willing to go in.

Tons of paperwork. You know, how do we get them to respond in a way that the government will accept? Very strange in China, we had to use WeChat, which, you know, we don't love because it's government-owned, you know, but on the other hand, that's what they were demanding, so that's what we did. And you know, fortunately, with all those groups working together, including the engineering leads that are in Shanghai, we were able to get some of those just human need things, you know, type things done, and I think that's very rewarding for everyone because we were so worried about them.

And now, we're prepared if this problem or this lockdown moves into one of the other cities, because we also have offices in Beijing and Shenzhen. And so, you know, we kind of have a roadmap now of how we'll deal with those kinds of issues if they were to occur again, but it's certainly not one function. I mean, we had so many groups involved in those initiatives, and everyone's very proud to be involved in that kind of work when it's helping employees.

So you know, it's very rewarding, so.

- It sounds like, then, it's not necessarily, like, safety should always look to such and such department but rather really like, "What's your goal here? What's your goal?" So in this case, there was a very specific goal, and the partner departments kind of...

- Migrate in and out.

- Yeah. Well, it became obvious, right? It's like, "Well, it's people, so HR," you know. It's not that hard to identify them if you're looking at project goals.

- Exactly. And it may be different by initiative, but again, the good news is your job becomes way more interesting when you're starting to understand other areas of the business and how they look at business challenges. I think it's a great learning experience, so.

- Okay. I have one...we've talked quite a bit about executive sponsors and mentorship, but I did want to ask, because I'm not clear on it. What would you say is the difference between a mentor and an executive sponsor? Or is it just semantics?

- No. There's actually a pretty significant difference from our perspective.

- Okay.

- A mentor is someone who is going to help you with professional development, tactical, you know. I want to influence decision-making. I want to be a better public speaker. I want to be a better subject matter expert in some, you know, tech area. I want to learn how to network, you know.

How do you do? I see that you have a very large network and, you know, you're able to influence things, how do you do it? A sponsor, and it doesn't have to be an executive, a sponsor is someone who is willing to put their own reputation on the line to recommend you for promotion, high profile projects, dropping your name in terms of, you know, who you believe are, you know, movers and shakers, or whatever you want to call them in the organization.

And that can literally be anyone in any group, but they have influence in the organization. And if they're willing to put themselves out there for you, like if a job comes up and it's a really good, you know, big job, you putting in a call to the head of that area and saying, you know, "Are you willing to sponsor this person?" And if they're not, they should be honest with you.

I mean, a sponsor is really someone who gets to understand your capabilities and is willing to use their own network and their own reputation to help you progress in your own goals.

- Okay. So it sounds to me like a mentor kind of gives advice, whereas a sponsor advocates, like, actively advocates for you.

- Yep. That's how I look at it.

- Okay.

- And that's kind of how I differentiate the two.

- Okay. So I'm going to move to a different area. You had mentioned participating in committees. Just in general, and then we'll talk specifically about some kinds of committees, but how does committee participation help?

- So, I mean, committees are developed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they're trying to solve a problem. Sometimes, I'm on way too many, to be honest, but I'm in some because I'm very interested in the area, and then I'm on others because I have to be just because of the functions that I'm in. I chair one committee.

I chair our corporate ethics committee, and it's a very tactical committee. We look at internal investigations and how we're going to remediate the situation, you know, what kind of corrective action we're going to take. So that's a pretty tactical committee. But I'm also on our company's ESG committee, on the steering committee, and so that's environmental, social, and governance.

And this is an area that used to kind of be a nice-to-have, but now, at least in the U.S., regulations are forcing companies to report on their ESG progress in certain ways. So I think companies have to be more transparent. I think there's a lot less whitewashing of what the corporation is doing to help society.

So that's a committee that I actively pursued, because it's something I'm interested in, and I wanted to have influence on the company because it's a passion of mine. I'm also an executive sponsor for one of our employee networks that we call Q Women, Qualcomm Women. And that's another passion project for me.

But if you think about each of these committees, most of the members are now part of my network. Most of the members do not work in my functional area, so I get to learn about what else is going on across the company and also hear different perspectives on the same issue that I'm looking at. And so I do think participation in committees is, number one, good exposure from a career standpoint.

It allows you to have influence on different areas of the business that you may not get if you're not directly working in that area. In general, I think it gives that area a good exposure. So I like committees because it's a way to garner support and attention to something that you're working on.

- So, for safety professionals, you mentioned that you thought a good move would be to look for an enterprise risk management committee.

- Another committee I'm on, yes. So enterprise risk management is something that publicly traded companies must have in place. Most of the companies I've worked for have an enterprise risk committee, and basically, it's a cross-functional group across the organization, so again, a great group of people to work with and learn from that are getting together to identify the top risks for the corporation.

And basically, what we do is we identify the risk, we identify, I should say, the level of risk, the likelihood of that risk occurring sooner rather than later, who the owner is going to be or the executive sponsor, who the operational owner is, so that's someone that has to demonstrate what you're doing to mitigate that risk that's been identified, and we actually certify those things on a quarterly basis that we're doing what we said we were going to do.

But when I think about safety, at least within my company's top 20 risks, business resilience and emergency operations is one of the top 20. So, how do we deal with the conflict in Ukraine? You know, what kind of impact was that to our business? Well, we had just acquired a company that was based in Ukraine one month before the conflict started. So you know, that rose as a risk that wasn't necessarily anticipated.

But we meet quarterly. We talk about changes. Sometimes we have shifts of a risk, you know, from the top 20, we'll move one down and move something else up. But again, I can't think of too many companies that don't have safety as one of their top risks and top priorities, especially if they have manufacturing.

So that's one of the tie-ins that I thought might be interesting for this group, is getting involved in your company's, you know, enterprise risk management program. Smaller private companies may not have as formalized of a program, but it's highly likely that they are identifying the risks and that safety is one of your top priorities, so.

- Yeah. And I would think that's also a really natural fit. I mean, it's kind of in the DNA of safety professional to spot risks, mitigate them, you know. And so, I think, as a professional, you could show yourself being really valuable because you know how to do this.

- Exactly. Showcasing your knowledge. I think if your company has a good safety record, that's something that we now promote in our ESG reporting. You know, how many accidents did we have? You know, we have a ton of reporting in that area, but it's just, again, another way to showcase the great work that you're doing that might not be getting, you know, kind of a normal day-to-day recognition.

ERM is, you know, at least for publicly traded companies, a really, really big area of focus, especially because that's what we used to determine what we're going to disclose in our financial disclosures on a, you know, quarterly and annual basis. So there's a lot of scrutiny of them. To me, it is a natural fit for safety managers to be somehow involved in that process, looking at those risks, identifying how high up the safety risk goes, and then being able to report on what you're doing to mitigate those risks.

And assuming you're doing a good job, then recognition for the great work you're doing.

- Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you talked a little bit about recognition programs. I don't know if there's anything to add really. You talked about how you do yours.

- Trying to get support, it's a great way to, I guess, pay it forward, you know. I mean, when people help us, it's a way for us to recognize them, in addition to little, you know, tchotchkes or plaques, or whatever we send out. Also, unsolicited, we provide third-party feedback for their annual review. So if we have somebody that we think is going above and beyond to support either compliance or business resilience, in addition to recognizing them as part of the program, we also go out of our way to try to make sure that we provide feedback in their performance review so that that's, at least, factored in, given that this is often work that is, you know, done but not seen.

Yeah, beyond that, I just think it's a great way to continue to encourage employees to see the importance of these areas and also to be supportive.

- Yeah. No, I'm sure that's very much appreciated. Another one that you had mentioned earlier was liaison program, and this is specifically for global organizations.

- Yes. I have to say that because we are a global company, and I have lived in the U.S. my entire life. I was not very familiar with, you know, business customs, cultural customs. So if you are a centralized function that is responsible for training, guidelines, you know, any kind of infrastructure to support your program where you need employees to be aware of it and educated on it, you have to make sure that your content is customized to the country, or else, it doesn't really resonate.

And so we've identified what we call liaisons in every country where we have more than 100 employees, and that person is, like, our lifeline to how things work in that country and looking at anything that we've put together to make sure that we don't have anything in there that is going to be completely off-base.

I mean, before, I had a team and all of this infrastructure in place. Years ago, I did training for Latin America, and I had this big business example about, you know, "Be careful if you're taking customers to golf, you know. Under U.S. law, that could be viewed as bribery, you know." And immediately, an employee, you know, raised his hand, and I'm like, "Yes?"

You know. And he said, "Golf is not a big thing in Latin America." And I'm like, "Okay. I still have another example. I'm sorry. Okay. What do you do there?" You know. So, somewhat a little awkward. Now, I have a liaison in Latin America who looks at my communications, looks at my content, and customizes it for the local teams so that it means something to them.

So I love having liaisons. We also have what we call regional compliance committees, but we've added them to those committees so they will give us agenda items, like what is top of mind for the local team right now so that when we develop the agenda for each quarter, we can make sure we're factoring in things that are important to them or that they want to touch on during the meeting so that it's not so U.S.-centric.

Again, also allows us to recognize that person in front of the whole committee and say, you know, they have a speaking part on the agenda, you know, and they're able to provide their own updates, depending on what's going on in any given quarter. So I think it serves, you know, kind of a multitude of objectives.

- Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah, it gives a voice. And that actually leads into the next thing I wanted to talk about. I think that it's crucial if anyone wants to reap the benefits of cross-functional work to think about inclusion. I know that you're really passionate about psychological safety and inclusion. So, can you talk to us about why?

What's the importance there?

- I'll come at this one from a compliance example. I think that if you don't build a culture that feels safe, safe to raise ideas, safe to identify concerns, these are all things that go underground. And then they become a potentially huge liability for the company. So I'm very focused on...we call it a speak-up culture.

So if you see something, say something. And I can only put my name behind that if I think the employee will actually be safe in reporting something, you know. No retaliation, you know. We talk about this all the time. They can't be managed out for raising a concern, you know.

You can't start micromanaging them because they've raised a concern that you don't really want to address. So I do think that, for my own team, I just try to make sure that I create the safest space that I can for them to innovate, raise ideas that, you know, we may or may not pursue. It depends.

But the whole team can look at it, and we can see how valuable that might be. I think, without safety, the more quiet or reserved people don't even have a voice, you know. And so, unless you create a space and you actually sort of ask them to contribute, you may miss out on ideas that are just outstanding. I have a very diverse team.

Half of my team is Chinese nationals. I absolutely recognize, what I learned about that culture is that women are not going to raise their hand in a large group, you know, to ask a question. They're just not going to do that. So you have to create a space where they feel comfortable talking, and that might be after the meeting, you stay after a few minutes, or you know, open up the floor to them and say, "Do you have anything to add?"

so that they feel comfortable and, you know, like they're being invited to contribute. So I have quite a few different nationalities on my team. I would say, majority women, so that means I have to make the men on my team feel comfortable as well, speaking up, and you know, feeling comfortable contributing. Usually, it's the opposite in tech, but it just so happens that, if I'm doing a recruiting, I end up, you know, recruiting...I have a lot of women on my team.

So that might be a bias I have to address. So again, I think it's fascinating to have a diverse team. I think it's so much more interesting than just having people that look like you, think like you, you know, tell you you're great, and say yes to everything. I would rather have people that have different ideas, different experiences, and who will challenge me to think differently.

You know, it's just way more interesting, and you don't get that unless you have safety within your team, the culture of your company. And when you do have people in the organization that are bullies and that shut down conversation, if you're in a position and you're courageous enough, I would strongly encourage you to call that stuff out if you can, because that employee may never speak up again.

I mean, that's what ends up happening when someone has an experience like that, so. And I don't necessarily mean calling them out in a large group but afterwards, you know, just bringing it to their attention that they shut down a discussion, that employee probably does not feel like they're going to be comfortable speaking up again and look at, you know, what you could lose going forward.

So I think those are good lessons for people who aren't as sensitive about that stuff.

- We've talked about work benefits and professional development, and that sort of thing. What has your journey into this kind of cross-pollinated, unsiloed work style meant to you personally?

- I think I started seeing the value of cross functions and how to get things done when I worked in telecom. I had a cross-functional team reporting into me. I had construction, I had real estate professionals, I had property management professionals, operations professionals. Most of our operations folks were ex-military, so there's a certain mindset that goes with that, chain of command, you know, very tight service level agreements for handoffs from group to group.

We had to be more formal in that setting, little bit less than my current role. And I just saw that if you had a whole group focusing on the same, you know, eight milestones for the quarter, you could literally get something built in on-air. I mean, you would see the benefits of all of those groups coming together toward the same objective, you could see it in 90 days.

So, to me, that was just fascinating, because I actually like to work on things where you get pretty immediate gratification. I mean, who doesn't? But that's where I kind of learned the importance of every group having equal weight. So if you have a problem in one group that's, you know, upstream, that's going to affect everybody downstream. And if you know it's going to happen, I think you should be honest.

You should let them go. "Hey, you're going to be working, you know, at midnight, on Christmas eve, so that we get these particular facilities on air by, you know, 01/01, because that was what we told the company we were going to do." But when you have a trustful, safe work relationship, you can do those kinds of things. You can have puts and takes throughout the schedule, and the team still works together to get it done.

I mean, after that, I was just kind of obsessed with how you can get things done with so many different groups. I mean, RF engineering, construction, network operations, telco, you know, as well as external parties. I mean, we also had to work with municipalities, you know, so government officials, utilities.

I mean, these are not easy organizations to work with, and so all of that has to come together. And to me, that's just fascinating. I think that that's when I first became obsessed with being involved in projects or work that required many different functions or groups to work together to make it happen.

- I have a few other questions that I ask all of our guests. The first one is the University of Deborah. So here's how it goes. Now, I understand that you're not a safety professional, but certainly, you've worked with them, and you understand a lot of their rules. If you were to develop the curriculum to train tomorrow's safety professionals, and setting aside all things like regulations and, you know, PPE, that kind of the technical stuff, what core soft skills or human skills do you think that they would need the most, would you put the most emphasis on?

- Some of the things we've talked about already, I think, they do very important work, but it's often work that goes unseen. I would focus on how they can constructively promote their work whenever there's an opportunity. Obviously, if you go too far with that kind of thing, sometimes you can, you know, get the reputation of being, you know, braggadocious or something like that.

But I think it's really, really important to have your elevator pitch to be able to quantify what you bring to the table, quantify your contributions. So that's one thing I would train on. Another thing, I think you can have a whole session on how to strategically network, either for progressing your program or for your own career.

I mean, I think it's really, really important, and like I said, I used to sort of lean on heavy workload as a crutch to say, "I don't have time to network," but the reality is, if you just keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, that's on you. And so I do think being able to network is important.

Figuring out who your go-to cross-functional partners are so that you can learn a little bit about their area and then figure out how to actively have them promote, you know, what you're doing in your area always, you know, I think, makes it much easier for your program to get the press that it needs, you know.

I'm trying to think what else. Because I think subject matter expertise, you know, we do spend a lot of time training on that kind of stuff, but most of the folks I'm working with at this point, I mean, they are subject matter experts. They need help with influencing decisions, you know, public speaking. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention, Mary, that I just thought of, highly technical experts often, when presenting, use a lot of detail.

And depending on who your audience is, if you're presenting to executives, I would highly, highly suggest that you be able to boil your message down to, like, three bullets. And I know that's a really hard thing to understand, but I had an executive say to me once, "Get rid of the first 20 slides. Twenty-one is the only one that I want in. This is what I pay you for. I don't need to know what all this stuff is, you know."

And so really know your audience when you have the opportunity to present. Make sure that the level of detail is appropriate, because if not, you may not even get to your key message or the thing that you're trying to get support for, because you lost your audience, you know, five minutes in. So I guess that was another lesson learned for me that was really compelling that might be helpful for the group.

- Awesome. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks to Deborah Barrett for joining me and to our listeners for tuning in. And who loves to work cross-functionally? That's right, the Safety Labs team. Thanks to them for their collaborative work to build such a great podcast. ♪

[music] ♪ Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at slideproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe. ♪ [music] ♪