Leading for an audience of one
Jordan Raynor sits down with Janeen Uzzell, COO of Wikipedia, to talk about how Janeen manages the tension between “hustling” and “trusting” in God, how to build diverse teams that boost your bottom line, and what it looks like to show your kids that you really believe in them.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week, I bring a conversation with a Christ follower, who is pursuing world-class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits and how their faith influences their work.
Today’s guest is a true treat. Her name is Janeen Uzzell and she's the COO of the Wikimedia Foundation, better known by their product, Wikipedia. Maybe you've heard of it? Janeen has been listening to the Call to Mastery for a while. She sent me an email. She said, “Hey, if you'd ever want me on, I’d be happy to do it.” It’s like, “Are you kidding me? How quickly can you record this thing?”
She's a world-class leader. Today, she's leading a 500-ish person team at Wikipedia. Before that, she spent 18 years at GE, where she was the Head of Women in Technology. Janeen and I, we recently sat down, we talked about our shared love of the musical Hamilton. That's going to come as no surprise to you regulars here on the podcast. We talked about how Janeen manages the tension between hustling and trusting in God to produce results. We talked about how to build diverse teams that boost your bottom line, a topic that's very relevant during this Women's History Month.
Finally, we talked about what it looks like to show your kids that you really believe in them. Not just tell them, but really show it to them through your actions. Guys, you are going to love this conversation with my friend, Janeen Uzzell.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:55] JR: Janeen Uzzell. Longtime listener, first-time caller. Welcome to the Call to Mastery.
[00:02:00] JU: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:02:02] JR: Yeah, this is awesome. Hey, so you have #WhoTellsYourStory in your Twitter bio. Can we just talk about Hamilton for the next hour?
[00:02:11] JU: Please. I would win. Listen –
[00:02:15] JR: All right. Is this a duel?
[00:02:18] JU: You know what? I caught myself. As soon as I said it, I'm like, “Wow, why are you so competitive? You just had to go out the gate with a fight.” It's like, I didn't even mean to go there, Jordan. If somebody puts something in front of me, I'm like, “You want some of this?”
[00:02:31] JR: That’s right. No, I respect it. I think we should have a Hamilton trivia duel.
[00:02:36] JU: Listen, I love Hamilton. Here's the thing. I can't keep up with the cadence. I have seen Hamilton more times. First of all, love Broadway. Love musicals.
[00:02:45] JR: Yeah, me too.
[00:02:46] JU: Love Lin-Manuel. Love In the Heights. Love Hamilton. Man, I probably could pay some kid’s tuition with all the time I spent in there. If I could just get my rap game up and my cadence, then maybe I’d get a side seat.
[00:02:58] JR: You and I were talking a couple weeks ago, just about – we just went real deep right off the bat, talking about the fact that I'm the father of these three young kids; one of whom is black. I'm always looking for parenting advice in general. More specifically, I'm always interested in how parents talk to their kids about work. When we spoke a few weeks ago, you told me that you just had this incredible father. I'm curious, what he told you growing up about your future career.
[00:03:29] JU: First of all, it's such a blessing that you're raising daughters, and there's so many great stories that can be told around daughters that are raised by great fathers. I am one of them. The #WhoTellsYourStory, while it is certainly a nod in about to the great stories of Lin-Manuel and Hamilton, it actually has been for me, a movement in my commitment to ensure that our stories are told and that the people and the voices that share them have an opportunity to bring accuracy and validity to the truth of stories. I didn't realize until my father was deceased, that there were so many things about him that I didn't realize I didn't know and needed to know.
It's been the stories of my family members and my aunts and others that have helped me to learn some of the great things about my dad when he was younger. Working at Wikipedia, a place where stories are told by everyone, for me, it's very important for me to ensure that the perspectives that you get when you read Wikipedia are, because content and information has been told by accurate sources. That's where Who Tells Your Story comes from.
I had an amazing father. When I was growing up, you're asking me what stories did he tell me that had helped to shape my career? I wonder, if it's because he didn't put a pin in anything for me. He was just like, “Sure.” “Dad I want to –” “Okay.” “Dad, can I?” “Yes, you can.” With everything that I put in front of this man, he never shut down. I used to always say, I want to save the world. I had no idea what that meant. I was it in love with the world. I had a globe in my bedroom as a kid. My siblings are older. I think, one of my older siblings had left it behind and I just loved it. I would read their encyclopedias, and they had these encyclopedias that you could – it would have words and definitions and phrases in the front, and then you could convert them into different languages.
I would write a sentence, like I am happy and then converted into French and think I was speaking French. I thought I was a linguist and everything, all at eight, nine and 10-years-old. I fell in love with the world. I told my dad, “I want to save the world. I want to change. I want to do something that matters.” He was like, “Go do it.” He was like, “Don't you come back, until you finish doing it.” That's what he used to say to me. He said it when I left for college. He said it when I graduated from business school. There was just so much confidence in the way that he would look at me.
I believed him. I think the same about our heavenly father. One of the things that I wish I did better growing up, was remember the eyes of my dad, when he would look at me and how they would sparkle and he’d just be like, “You can do it.” Because the world will come for you, Jordan. Unfortunately, it's going to come for your daughters. I hate that it will. The truth of the matter is that, things happen and you get into environments in the workplace and it's not always easy. Sometimes, your confidence can get scratched down and peeled away a little. You'll need to remember the words of dads and others that speak great things to you.
[00:06:50] JR: Yeah. To your point, it's not just the words, it's the way in which the words are delivered. It's the body language. You talked about your father's eyes. I'll never forget, the first time I met with a guy who's now one of my great mentors. We were about to have our first kid. I sat down, I knew he had kids. I'm just making small talk, like you do with everybody when you're about to have a baby. I'm like, “Oh, what advice do you have for young fathers?” Thinking he was going to say, “Sleep when they sleep,” or whatever. He just sat back in his chair, was really thoughtful. Folded his arms and he’s like, “You need to make sure that your kids really know, genuinely deep down know that you believe in them.”
I was just like, “Who is this guy?” I loved him for it. It's true. It's not enough for me to tell my girls, “Hey, you can do whatever in this world.” They got to know that I believe it. It's in tone. It's in the eyes. I love that.
[00:07:49] JU: Absolutely. My father used to spin me around in the dancing and the way he would slap his leg and laugh, even when I was an adult, when he would see me in a magazine, or I'd show him an interview. He just slap his leg and just say, “My goodness. Oh, my goodness.”
I realize now that there's no way that a man that grew up in the south, traveled north as a part of the Great Migration, sang a lot of music in a group with his brothers, owned a gas station, was a laborer, we were wealthy by no means. I know that he wanted good. When he got married and had children, he probably said, “I want my children to do good and I want them to be good people.” I know that he could have never imagined, he'd be turning the page and see his daughter and see words and see comments and things. What that did for him, that sparkle, he believed in me and I believed in me, because I knew what he said.
[00:08:54] JR: What a beautiful testimony. We’re releasing this in Women's History Month. I read an interview you did in Black Enterprise. We talk a lot on the podcast about the necessity of mentors. You were talking about the story where your mentor gave you some advice that you said, you wish you had learned sooner in life. Do you remember what that was? If so, can you share it with us?
[00:09:18] JU: Oh, my goodness. I will say this, I've been given some amazing advice that I wish I had used earlier. I don't know which one it was. I do know this. I had to be talking specifically about Paula Madison, because she's been a great mentor to me and someone that I met when I joined GE, and my first woman mentor. That means a lot. When you're a woman in technology, you don't have a lot of female mentors. I want to say that it was the advice to bet on myself.
[00:09:48] JR: Yeah, that's it. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah.
[00:09:51] JU: Was that it? Wow. Okay. Yeah, because I've been given a lot of advice, but the one that's the thread that resonates through all of it is betting on myself. That goes anywhere from who I am as a woman in the workplace, to who I am as a leader and a family member and in anything else. It's having a chance to have that same sparkle in my eye that my dad had. To remember and to have that for myself and to know that the rooms that I walk into, I'm there. I don't have to then try to prove to myself how I got there. I'm in the room. I need to bet on myself and know that I'm there to do good. It also just means making sure that I give as much to myself and my own goals and my own dreams and desires as I give to everyone else's.
[00:10:46] JR: That’s good. You're unequivocally a world-class leader in business. You got way more than the requisite 10,000 hours of purposeful practice there. There's a lot that goes into being a great leader. I'm curious, what specifically you think you're disproportionally good at. If you were forced to teach an online course to other leaders on a topic, what would the topic be?
[00:11:09] JU: I am great at connecting. What I mean by that, the way that it ties into to the world of business and otherwise can be by way of partnerships, collaborations, the way that teams work together. I know for sure that when I am given a team that needs to be lifted, when I have been given a process that needs to be improved, when I have been given an opportunity that needs to be built, putting the right people together, the diversity of teams, learning to see the different components of different people to create a synergy that will work, and then taking something to the next level, maybe in the area of a change management is something that I'm really good at. Now, I lose interest quickly.
[00:12:09] JR: Me too.
[00:12:10] JU: I'm not often there for the long haul. Seriously. I have these three things, Jordan, that are very specific to me. Once I learned them, it changed the trajectory of my career. I know for a fact that I am called into spaces to learn, to lead and to leave. The leaving part is very interesting, because I cling to people. I connect very quickly. I usually end up making friends and comrades. I also lose interest. I'm not the person that's around for the long haul. While you might look at my career at GE and say, “Yeah, but you were there for almost 18 years.” I was. I just worked in almost every business when I was there. I was two years, five years. You can do that at GE and have a great career. That's what I did.
[00:12:56] JR: A lot of people would look at that, because I'm the same way. I don't stay in one place for a long time. I think, this is the exception of my career that this is the work I really see myself doing for the next 50, 60 years. 60 may be a stretch.
[00:13:10] JU: That’s a lot of time.
[00:13:11] JR: That’s a lot of time. Some people would look at that as a negative. It's like, “You should settle down and stay planted in one place.” Did you struggle with that? Or from an early age, were you like, “No, this is just who I am. This is how God's wired me”?
[00:13:24] JU: Oh, no. I've struggled with it. It is the one thing I asked God about, because I'm like, “You have wired me to be one way and then put a calling on my life that's completely different. You have literally wired me.” I mean, my siblings used to tease me and call me Velcro, because that's how close I was to my parents.
I mean, I love it. I love people. My friends have been my friends for 30 something years, I'm super close to my family. It's innate in me to connect. To leave a thing is never easy for me. However, I also know that this is something that I've been learning in a course that I've been taking for Christian CEOs and women's course, Women's History Month here. We've been talking about being spiritual stateswomen.
What I'm learning is that leaving a thing isn't bad. It doesn't mean just dropping the mic and walking away. In my career, I know that when God calls me to leave a thing, it's always to leave it better than I found it. Usually, to leave an experience for other people that honors him to leave a way of work, that is a good reflection on solid leadership. Then to sometimes leave some of the things about myself that he needed to shed behind as well. Those things have started to surface for me, and I'm learning them. I'm hoping that it makes believing a little bit easier.
[00:14:50] JR: No, that's good. Hey, you talked about diversity of teams a minute ago. I want to go back to that. We're recording this in March 2021. Last year, in the wake of George Floyd's murder, we saw a lot of organizations step up and react by committing, recommitting to diversity and inclusion initiatives. It almost felt to me, like the motivation behind a lot of that was guilt and obligation. I'm not saying it’s bad. In a lot of ways, I think that's good. I felt like, part of what was lost in that conversation was the fact, provable, verifiable fact that diversity is good for the bottom line. You've been in real businesses; Wikipedia, GE. How have you seen diversity be good for business?
[00:15:36] JU: As an engineer, I can tell you and having worked on products in GE, more specifically, a handheld ultrasound product that we used to have a great impact on maternal and infant care in the emerging markets. Having the diversity of people and thought and skill sets and problem solving makes for better outcomes in every way.
One group of people, one type of people cannot solve the entire world's, or an entire community’s problem. If you even think about your daughter's, all three of them are probably very, very different. One of them cannot solve something like, dinner for everyone. It's probably always going to be potatoes. I want my fried. I want my baked. It's always different. When you start with a team that is approaching a problem from a Western, a global, sometimes different faiths, people have been raised in different lifestyles, they've had to approach solutions in very different ways, you will always have an outcome that speaks to more than a singular group of people. That is the way that the world looks and that is the way that we should be solving. Every organizations and products, I could name a lot of them, that are not doing that, or creating a customer experience that to me is very, very biased.
[00:17:11] JR: Yeah. You mentioned this ultrasound product, you guys brought to market at GE and these developing countries. Specifically, is there a story you can recall? It's like, “Oh, yeah. If we didn't have that person from that background on the team, we would have created an inferior product.” Can you remember a story from that experience?
[00:17:28] JU: I can. I spent almost eight to 10 years of my career working with handheld ultrasound. It's a big part of my life. The work that you look back on, and you say, “I'll never forget this. This is an experience that will shape the rest of my career.” Here's one of the things that I can remember clearly, when you think about handheld ultrasound, it's like, this is going to be the stethoscope of the future. It'll go in every doctor's lab coat pocket, and they'll carry it around, and they'll use it and they'll be able to do basic scanning on patients.
When we started to look at it for the emerging market, we started to think about solar power and how complex the machine would be, so that if we were training non-traditional users, they're called task-shifted users. Meaning in another country, they may not have a radiologist. They may have a person that's been trained to do basic scanning, and that's acceptable in that region of the world. We're working on the science and the technology and how to deploy it in the training.
One of my colleagues, Colol, who's from Calcutta, he says, “Well, a nurse midwife in India is an Asha worker. She wears a sari. She doesn’t have pockets. Where is she going to put it?” I'm just sitting there like –
[00:18:49] JR: Oh, yeah.
[00:18:49] JU: No, you don't understand. This product is going to be amazing. He's like, “Yes. But a sari doesn't have pockets. Where will she carry it?” I mean, we wouldn't have thought that.
[00:19:00] JR: I would have never known that. Yeah. How would you know?
[00:19:03] JU: Here's the thing. I have friends that wear saris, but I just wasn't thinking about that. As soon as he said that, I'm like, “Duh, that makes total sense.” What is that going to mean? We had a very simple push back. The machine itself, we had made it in a cream color. Nice and beautiful and pristine and white. It's just beautiful and shiny. Someone said, “When you are working in an emerging market that's very dusty, the machine will get dirty very quickly. I want to be proud of the product that I bring to a pregnant woman when I'm giving her a scan. I don't want to show up with a machine that's gotten dirty, because of the way I have to transport it. Could you make it darker? We just want it to be dark.” I'm like, “No, life is bright.” They’re like, “No, that's not what we want.”
[00:19:53] JR: All right. Real practical, because I think a lot of people are bought into this idea that diversity builds better teams and better products. How do you do it? How do you do it in an intentional way, that is legal, that is fair, that is not offensive? How do you intentionally build more diverse teams?
[00:20:13] JU: First and foremost, you have to be willing to commit to the time. Diverse teams are not quick and easy to build. It requires time to find the right people. It's not because they're not out there. It's just because the market, and the way that resumes are written in interview practices aren't always built with diversity in mind. The commitment is with, I always say it's where you go. Meaning, where are you recruiting? Who you send. If you're sending someone that doesn't look anything like the community that you're interviewing in; you don't send an older guy in a three-piece suit to recruit software engineers that wear hoodies and flip flops all day. They're not going to be drawn to one another.
Who you send, what you say, the way that you're talking and communicating. Also, what the companies are offering matters so very much. Not negotiating is going to be a challenge. I did this when I lead women in technology for GE. There's so much of who we were, as your grandfathers, great, great company that we had to change when we began to have a tech model.
Ensuring that, there's some very practical things, Jordan, like you talked about. The way that resumes are reviewed, or the way that job descriptions are written, there's software that you can use and run-on job descriptions to ensure that it pulls out bias and that you're not using wording that could be read, or interpreted differently in another language, or for someone whose first language isn't English. We're all remote now. Resumes and places where you're working are global. You may send out a job description and someone could be reading it in Bangalore, and you want to make sure that the wording and the way that you're describing the role does not create a sense of separation for a person.
Then when you're interviewing, what do your interview teams look like? If I'm a black woman in technology and I show up to interview and it's an all-white male team, first of all, that would be typical of my experience, because that's usually what has happened in my past. How much more likely am I to be a better interviewee, if I have a community that looks diverse; diverse in age, diverse and gender, diverse in hair color and culture and style. It shows me that the company that I'm working for is willing to take a chance on someone that might not be the norm. Then it shows me that if I stand up in a circumstance and present an idea that's not traditional, that I might not get blocked, or shut down for it. These things are critical. That's what building a diverse team needs and that takes time and intentionality.
[00:23:04] JR: Yeah, that's good. Those are really practical tips. We touched on race. I would argue, one of the other main headlines of the last year has been any erosion of the definition of truth. Wikipedia, you're running a crowdsource platform. Obviously, you guys can't verify every edit to tap it on the sites. The whole model, be impossible. It'd be an impossible impediment to scale. I'm curious as a leader, how have you thought about wrestling with the tension between the desire to scale the accessibility of information and the natural desire for that information to be accurate? This tension between accessibility and accuracy, how do you guys think about that?
[00:23:49] JU: Well first, January made 20 years for Wikipedia. We are teenagers no more.
[00:23:54] JR: Founded. Founded and people don’t know this, in Florida. Great state of Florida. There you go.
[00:23:58] JU: Founded in Florida. Jimmy Wales. That's right. We are 20-years-old now. What was once thought is impossible, creating an online encyclopedia that would be supported by volunteers. Here we are now, more than 50 million articles across 300 languages, more than 250,000 editors that contribute every month to our projects. Viewed more than 1.5 billion times every month. 1.5 billion devices view Wikipedia every month.
It's all amazing. 6,000 times every second I love the stats on wiki. We do use AI and bots to help monitor. Our community is very, very active in the space to ensure that we are monitoring and managing things like disinformation. I will say that one of the things that we say about Wikipedia is if it happens in the world, it happens on Wikipedia. The other news sources that write about things are the citations that are used to ensure that the articles on Wikipedia are valid. One of the things that I talk about, particularly when I'm sharing around who tells your story, is that it's important that the entire world tell the stories of the world, so that we can have the content that we need to ensure that the articles on Wikipedia are accurate, particularly in areas of diversity, non-traditional stories.
Usually news is, it's not difficult to find a story about a white male, or a white woman that is done something and you might see their article on Wikipedia. It's not as easy to find stories about black women in science, or black men in business, so that they too can have biographies, or content, or information on the site. It is a collaboration of all of the news sources, and then the accuracy is supported and determined that way as well.
[00:25:59] JR: Yeah. You mentioned there’s 250,000 editors. What's that roughly as a percentage of registered Wikipedia users?
[00:26:09] JU: It's more than 250,000 editors. That number is up and down, because at Wikipedia, we do not – we don't have to log in.
[00:26:18] JR: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
[00:26:19] JU: We don’t follow. We don't track you. That's why you don't see adverts in your emails when you check things on Wikipedia. That's the model of it being an open source and free knowledge platform. Open editing is one of our – actually, is one of our greatest strengths. There are more than 30 million registered Wikipedia user accounts. That's not to say that we're tracking that. That's not what I mean. It's just people – some people do use usernames to edit Wikipedia, but you do not have to. That's why I say, the numbers are loose in them.
[00:26:55] JR: Yeah. I'm a big believer in doing things that don't scale for the people who help you scale. For me and my context as an author, that's my super fans; the people who are sharing my books, buying them for their friends. I'll send those people handwritten notes. I'll send them videos, personal videos for their birthdays, whatever. Doesn't scale at all. That's okay, because they're the people telling 10 of their friends. For you guys, it's your editors. There's 250,000 editors. I'm curious, what do you guys do to recognize and thank and support that community? What are some of those unique things?
[00:27:26] JU: First of all, love our community. I love this question, because it's so important to give back to the people that literally give so much to ensure that Wikipedia is successful. There's a lot of different ways that we support our community. We have grants that are used to fund various events. For example, edit-a-thons that communities host, where they may say, “For Women's History Month, we're going to be hosting an edit-a-thon every Friday and we're going to write about women in science, or women in technology, women in the arts, women in sports.” We'll find, you can get grants to maybe if you're gathering, maybe not in COVID, but outside of that together to buy food and to have a DJ and to rent out a location. They may rent a museum and have it in a cool space and we pay for all of that.
We offer training for our communities, as they want to learn about editing, as they want to learn about how to run smaller chapters, or communities of Wikipedians. We offer training and leadership and how to do that well. We also host events. We have a trust and safety team, so we're always watching out for the safety of our community. That matters very much. We've had to support members of our community, who often have put themselves in harm's way to edit into support Wikipedia. We are there for them from a trust and safety way.
Then annually, we host Wikimania. It is the most. Unfortunately, we weren't able to gather in Thailand, due to COVID last August. We're looking forward to when we can come together again soon. This is an event that is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedias from all over, from newcomers, to long tenured, Wikipedians can register. They come. We're together for a week in really awesome locations, hosting workshops, hackathons, edit-a-thons, trainings, all kinds of things. It's an opportunity for the community to gather, to celebrate one another.
We're hosting a bunch of virtual birthday parties, all year long for our 20th year. We're sending communities grants to buy cakes and to make celebration and lots of swag, and stickers. The things that matter to our community, we try to make sure that we do them. I think, the most important thing that we commit to with our community is listening to them. We communicate on a wiki. That's where we post all of the work of the foundation, everything from our annual plan and how we budget the funding all year, to our universal code of conduct and work that we're doing in the organization. Our community can see what we do. There's pure transparency.
[00:30:15] JR: Yeah. Just giving them a genuine seat at the table, that is what matters. I find that with my launch team. That that's where I really committed with my super fans. Just giving them access to what's coming up and giving them the ability to provide feedback and help us steer what's going on with my books. I love it.
Hey, Janeen, you're super disciplined. I'm curious what your day looks like, from the moment you wake up, to the moment you go to bed. What's a typical day in your life look like these days?
[00:30:40] JU: Well, as I look at my calendar right now, it is looking really busy. I love to work out. No, I work out. I choose to love it.
[00:30:55] JR: I love that.
[00:30:56] JU: Because I need to do it. I do. I love working out, in the sense that it's good for my body. I start my day with a workout. I found a community online to be able to work out with even in COVID, because I am definitely a metabolic type of person. I'd like to be in a boot camp. I'm one of those 5:30 in the morning in the boot camp, going from station to station. I love weight training. I have had a trainer. In my day, which was last year this time, I was dead lifting 235 pounds, squatting a good 250. I miss my trainer. I look forward to getting back to that. I really like the competitive nature of working out.
Also, the sense of community. I always start my day with some fitness. I know some people work out end of the day. For me, I got to hit it in the morning and keep me going. I also am committed to my devotion time. It is better for me. It is better for the people that have to deal with me. I must, must, must just bring my mind under subjection, to be quite honest with you. My mind is it's a battle. I want to ensure that I'm being a reflection of what I believe and who I believe in, which is Jesus Christ.
I also want to be solving tough problems under his direction. I want to bring my best self to the people in the communities that I get a chance and the privilege to touch. That's important to me. I have a community of friends and we are doing a Bible study. Maybe every 10 weeks or so, we'll be doing a Bible study virtually. Sometimes in the morning, I'm catching up on my homework and using that as a way to do my studying. Right now, we're studying the Book of Kings. We're studying Elijah. We're going through it bit by bit. It’s good learning. That's it.
Now, I always the night before, take a look at my calendar. Inevitably, especially since I'm on the East Coast right now and a lot of my team is on the West Coast and globally, something's always changed, from the time I go to bed to the time I wake up in the morning. I'm looking at briefing docs and meeting notes.
We're in the middle of annual planning now working on our budget, because our fiscal year begins in July. Budget is due to the board. We're working on that. I'm usually reviewing Slack. We use that as our async way of communicating. I don't spend as much time on email. Man, my Slacks are piling up, even as we speak. I'm responding to Slacks and then preparing for a series of meetings.
We're doing some big interviewing right now, hiring some VPs and some senior levels. In fact, we're currently hiring a VP for DEI for the org, to level up a bit more. Those interviews require more senior interaction. I've been involved in some interviewing slates and that takes time. We're in the process of our promotion practice. Lots and lots of meetings. Then, I handle a lot of media and external work.
Now, I am the type of person, Jordan, that my EA, she's been with me since GE. She came with me over to Wiki and knows me well. She puts assignments into my calendar. I'll have things in my calendar that will say, “Review this doc, submit this survey, complete this for the board,” because I also serve as a volunteer on Mercy Ships, a board that I'm very committed to.
[00:34:27] JR: Oh, cool. Yeah.
[00:34:27] JU: I may have to read board docs and things like that. She puts that in there. Then there'll be something in there like, you've got 20 minutes, go for a walk.
[00:34:34] JR: Yeah. I love that.
[00:34:35] JU: I love that. Yeah, I love that.
[00:34:36] JR: That’s your to-do list. Your calendar serves as your to-do list.
[00:34:40] JU: Yeah. I put it all in there, because I don't have time to find things in multiple places.
[00:34:43] JR: Yeah. No, no, no.
[00:34:44] JU: I also do some work into the evenings, because my CFO is based on the West Coast, so that means that I’ll break, maybe at 6 or 7, have some dinner, call my mom, she's 89, have a chance to chat with her. Then, I'll usually jump back on for a couple of calls, especially because we're in planning season. On my best day, I get to end the night watching The Office reruns, because I love that show.
[00:35:07] JR: I love it.
[00:35:10] JU: Then I'm asleep in a chair somewhere.
[00:35:12] JR: I love it. Or Hamilton for the 85th time.
[00:35:14] JR: I’m always listening to Hamilton always. Absolutely.
[00:35:18] JR: Hey, so you've listened to the podcast before. You know we talked a lot about how the faith of our guests influences their work. I know you're really passionate about operational excellence. Do you see a connection between your passion for excellence and your faith as a follower of Jesus Christ?
[00:35:34] JU: I do. I believe that it's important to be excellent always, because you never know what God is setting up and what opportunities he's creating for you. I believe it aligns with, to whom much is given, much is required. I believe it aligns with the diligence of the way God would speak. Even in the Old Testament, build an ark, build it like this, do it like this. I'm like, “Oh, that's a project management plan.” I love it.
I also will say this, though, as much as I am tied to rigor and that is my job and it's what's important, in my personal life, I am learning that letting go, letting go to the freedom of God, allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me is critical as well. It's something that he's working with me on, so that everything isn't – it can't be that if it's not right, it's wrong. Maybe it's not like this today, because it's a part of the journey.
I believe it. I believe it in the diligence. I believe in leading in a way that supports effectiveness and uses people's time well. I believe that that's something that God would want for me and for us as well. I try to tie them. If I'm doing life well, then there's no separation between who I am spiritually, who I am as a COO, who I am in any way.
[00:37:04] JR: I think one of the challenges for people like you and me who are just extremely driven, is you want to – you just have that drive to be excellence as a response of worship. You believe it's a response of worship. Reminding yourself that regardless of the results, you have peace, because God loves you just the same. That's the gospel. We did nothing to earn salvation through Jesus Christ. Thus, we could do nothing at work, or in any other area of life to lose it. That gives you peace. How do you think your work could be different if you didn't have that source of peace? What would that look like for you? Can you even envision that?
[00:37:45] JU: It actually makes me very, very sad, because I know how hard I am on myself in general. I think that I would be utterly miserable, as with the people that are around me, if I didn't have this peace and this confidence and this assurance that even when I get it wrong, there's forgiveness, there's grace, there's mercy, grace under pressure. I can't imagine, because again, it's already a pole – there's already tension points for me. I know this. I know that God is telling me, it is well and yet, I am still giving myself a pretty hard time. I battle with myself in a really tough way, that I don't think that it would be a good life for me, if I didn't have this grounding, because it's still something that I renew and work on every single day, sometimes throughout the day.
[00:38:44] JR: That is the secret, right? It's daily steeping yourself in your values. For you and I, that's every day in scripture. You got to renew your mind on a daily basis. Hey, you mentioned in an email to me that this podcast has just been an encouragement to you to quote – I'm going to read this quote over here. To, “Perform for an audience of one, the Lord Jesus Christ. I can tell you that in the tech industry, that's challenged each and every day.” I'm curious, how specifically that's challenged for you and how you react to those challenges.
[00:39:17] JU: Yeah. It's challenged I’ll say, particularly in the tech industry, because that's what I know. Because Jordan, techies, I mean, they have big egos. They build big stuff. They make big things move. They make a lot of money doing it. There are billboards that literally say that as you drive down the Silicon Valley highway, they say it with a bit more profane language, but they're up there.
There's a lot of arrogance and ego. When you can look at a problem, build an app, solve it, make a ton of money, walk away, go get back on the beach. To remind yourself that you're performing for an audience of one is humbling and it's a reminder that in myself, I'm not any good. Even if I'm smart, even if I'm a great problem solver, even if people want to work for me, and I work for a big brand and have a big title. All of it is from the goodness of God and I never want to get to a place where I'm feeling, or seeing that in any other way.
I've seen it. I've been around it. I don't like it. I probably done it sometimes, and I want my story to be a very different testimony, because I believe without a doubt that my workplace is the platform that God has given me. This is the place where he has called me to serve. This is ministry, vocation and avocation have crossed. This is where I am going to live out some of the work, the purpose that he's called me to. I have to honor it, in the same way, that whether it's the people, or the things that he exposes me to, the things that I get to know in here, I can never take that lightly or for granted. That's why I say that.
[00:41:04] JR: Amen. Very well said. I wrote about this in my first book, Called to Create, which I wrote for Christian entrepreneurs. I come from a tech background, too. In tech startup culture, hustle is the mantra. Just go harder, work harder, hustle, hustle, hustle. I think there's biblical support for working hard. Colossians 3:23, work heartily as unto the Lord. Actually, just yesterday, I was looking through Paul's letters. The amount of time Paul talks about how hard he worked is really staggering. Yeah, we're called to hustle.
For the Christian, we have to wrestle with this tension that we actually don't produce any results. Any, right? All throughout scripture, this is crystal clear, Old Testament, New Testament, God produces results through us. One of the tools he uses is our hard work, but we are just tools in his hand. That's what brings about humility. I think, rest too. I'm curious if that's been your experience, if rest is an indicator as to whether or not you've gotten that tension right between trusting and hustling.
[00:42:13] JU: Rest. I actually named – I'm in Florida at my home here. I named this home the Sabbath House, because it's supposed to be my getaway place, a place of rest, to get me out of the hustle and the bustle. It's intentional, because resting for me is something that I have to practice, both physically and mentally. Isaiah talks about in returning and rest, you'll be saved in quietness and confidence, you'll find strength.
I read scriptures like that out loud, myself and remind myself that I don't have to always be moving. The Bible says, I can literally just be quiet and trust. There's situations like that. I'll be very candid. One of them is today. I have a meeting today. I want to be all in. I don't want to get in there and toss it upside down. All my spirit is feeling is that I need to be quiet and to trust and show up a little bit differently, because I think there'll be an expectation that that tension will be there.
That takes humility. That means I'm performing for an audience of one, because I want to show up in a way that I think I deserve to show up. I want to maybe not be quiet and rest. I know that that's where the answer is. All of these things to me, there's excellence in that as well, Jordan, because there's the excellence of that doesn't align with what I'm doing operationally, or with OKRs, or what I know about technology. It’s the excellence of what I'm believing about the Word of God and how applying that to my life. I'm saying it out loud right now, because I need to make sure I'm practicing it this afternoon.
[00:43:49] JR: Man, I wish we had time to talk about OKRs. I love the goal. I love the goals and you pray more.
[00:43:54] JU: Yeah. You want to go there? I love it.
[00:43:55] JR: Do you? Did you do OKRs at GE?
[00:43:57] JU: No, we did not. At GE, we were Six Sigma. All of us were trained in Six Sigma. Many of us were black belts. Then we moved to a process called fast works. When I came over to Wiki, I knew we needed an operational rigor and I also knew that it was important for me to not bring all of the GE practices. Every process doesn't work everywhere. I decided to go with OKRs. I love measure what matters. I recently was in a podcast and in an article with them, talking about the journey of what it meant to start two years ago, bringing in OKRs to wiki. We are currently working with one of our consultants on our OKR 2.0 process. We're about to give it a refresh and –
[00:44:43] JR: I love it.
[00:44:44] JU: It's going good. I'm watching how our leaders at the organization are committed not just to hard work, but to doing the right work and then knowing when to pivot and to do things differently. Everyone's working hard. It's just, are we supposed to be doing that?
[00:45:01] JR: Yeah. By the way, if you're listening, you're like, “What the heck is an OKR?” OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. It's just a goal setting framework. As Janeen has made clear, as Google has made clear and lots of other amazing organizations, it is a goal setting framework on steroids. I love it. We use it here at Jordan Raynor and Company. Actually, I'm writing about this for my next book that's coming out in October. I actually set OKRs personally, and I encourage other people to set personal OKRs, so much more to come on that.
All right, Janeen, three quick questions to wrap up. Number one, books that you tend to recommend, or gift most frequently to others. What are they?
[00:45:40] JU: Well, I haven't given this one yet, but I will. As a GE alum, of course, I'm currently reading Hot Seat by Jeff Immelt. So good. Oh, gosh. I worked for GE under the entire Immelt regime. I really enjoyed working for Jeff. I have pinged all my colleagues, you got to get this book. I will be sharing Hot Seat. That is one that I will definitely give.
I've given this book to someone. It's called Good Girl, Gay God. It is by Jackie Hill-Perry. She talks about how God transformed her life. It's just a story that I love about perspective, because to me, it teaches you not to judge. It's also about forgiveness and how God can use your past life to walk in His plan. I really love that book and have encouraged and share that with other folks.
I have a fun book I gift and it's called We're Going to Need More Wine. It's by Gabrielle Union. It's a fun girlfriend book, because I feel in my head, she's my bestie. She literally at the end of the book, I was mad that her phone number wasn't in there. I was like, “Gabby.”
[00:46:48] JR: Gabby. Girl. Girl, hit me up.
[00:46:50] JU: Right. Absolutely. Because the whole book, you're talking, like you're just sitting after work on the linay and I'm just like, “Oh my gosh, I love this book.” I was telling people. I was like, “Seriously, if you need a friend, Gabby is your girl. Read her book.”
[00:47:04] JR: Gabby’s there. Gabby is there for $12.99. She’ll be – That’s a great answer. All right, guys. You can find all those books at jordanraynor.com/bookshelf. Okay, Janeed, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith influences their pursuit of world-class work?
[00:47:21] JU: I have never been this stumped, because I feel like there’s so much –
[00:47:23] JR: It’s a tough question.
[00:47:25] JU: Yeah, there's so much of an opportunity. I would say, anyone from the Christian CEO forum, which is a group of believers that are CEOs. I would love to hear from Mr. Coor of Coors Brewery, because he has an incredible journey, being a Christian of a family-owned company, that is a beer company. I want to hear what that was like and what it meant to grow up, building work in that space and then coming to Christ. I'd be really interested in that.
There's a business woman that I know, named Cheryl Bachelder.
[00:48:08] JR: Yeah. I know of Cheryl. I don't know her personally, but we have a lot of mutual friends. I’d love to get Cheryl on here.
[00:48:13] JU: I know her personally. Call me. I would love to hear you have a conversation with Cheryl.
[00:48:19] JR: Yeah. All right, tech Cheryl. I got another friend of mine who's reaching out to Cheryl. We'd love to have Cheryl on. She's welcome anytime.
All right, last question. You're talking to an audience of people who love Jesus and want to do great, great, great work in service of others. What one piece of advice do you want to leave them with, people across a bunch of different vocations?
[00:48:39] JU: I'm going to leave them where we started Jordan, which is, I want to encourage them to take a bet on themselves. Because in everything that has happened in your journey thus far, God has been betting on you. He has bet on you from the moment he sacrificed to Sinai Calvary. He has said from the very beginning, “You are my priority. Everything about you matters.” Every place that he causes you to go, if you believe that is lead and ordained by him, he wants you to believe that he's called you to show up in that space and to be well for him.
Regardless of what others may think, regardless of what the world may speak to you, regardless of how others may show up in that space, take a bet on yourself, which is betting on the belief that God has prepared you for such a time as this. Then walk in it.
[00:49:38] JR: I love that. Janeen, I just want to commend you for the important ministry you do every day. You did at GE, you do at Wikipedia, just serving your team's well, serving your customers well. Thank you for the ministry of excellence that you administer every day and for doing it in a peaceful Sabbath, restful way for the glory of God and the good of others.
On a personal note, as a father of three daughters, thank you for just being an incredible example. I'm going to share this episode with my girls as they grow older. Hey, if you want to follow Janeen, you're pretty active on Twitter, right? Is that where you're most active?
[00:50:15] JU: Twitter is my jam. Please follow me on Twitter.
[00:50:16] JR: Twitter is your jam. I love it. Janeen Uzzell. J-A-N-E-E-N-U-Z-Z-E-L-L. Of course, we'll have the link right here in the show notes. Janeen, thanks again for joining us.
[00:50:28] JU: Thank you, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me. Stay safe and stay well.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:50:32] JR: I hope you guys loved that episode, as much as I did. Hey, if you're enjoying the Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed, do me a favor, take 30 seconds and go rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Call to Master, you guys. I'll see you next week.
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