Evolving the culture for an agile workforce

Podcast Transcript

Anita Sands:

Hi JJ. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Thoughtworks Podcast. I am so delighted to have the chance to chat with you.

Johanna Jackman (JJ):

Anita, it's always a pleasure spending time with you, so thank you for the opportunity.

Anita:

Now of course, if JJ's accent doesn't give her away in the first sentence, like myself she is not originally from the United States. You are originally from Australia, JJ.

JJ:

I'm Australian. Born in the UK, though. Born in the UK, raised in Australia.

Anita:

Right. Tell me a little bit about your journey, just kind of in terms of how you ended up at Pure Storage. What were your stopping points along the way?

JJ:

Yeah. Like most Australians, we want to get away from Australia, so I ended up being fortunate enough after I graduated actually, after several years of working in the mining industry, working for Microsoft in EMEA. That brought me to the US and from there I went to LinkedIn and had five fabulous years at LinkedIn and then this opportunity at Pure Storage came up, and I'm like, "Wow, Pure Storage, that's an opportunity, let's do it." That's my little jumping pods.

Anita:

Oh, that's fantastic. You stepped into this global chief HR officer role a few years back. You're in a post IPO, publicly traded company that's scaling and preserving its culture and all of that good stuff. So, plenty of work to do and then came 2020. I will say, JJ, as a board director at Pure Storage, and of course I should have said maybe upfront, that's how we know each other, but as I look across all my companies and the responses that they all made to the pandemic, and the crisis, the way in which you and your team stepped up and responded, and the speed, agility, and effectiveness of it was just outstanding from my vantage point. Can you just tell our listeners here a little bit about what you did this year? I guess specifically now as we look forward, some of the learnings that you picked up along the way.

JJ:

Yeah. Thanks, Anita. We were very fortunate, actually. Our sales kickoff happens in February each year, and we were hearing a lot of noise coming out of China and Asia in particular, so as the head of HR, most concerned about our employees traveling internationally into America. We got a tiny little team together in January, and we started to really nut out the details associated with how do we protect our employee base and keep everyone safe?

It was only about four of us, but we ended up, today I think we have about 12 people on the tiger team, and it was really this team that came together and looked and anticipated about the journey ahead. We met every morning at I think it was 6:00 a.m. initially, every day, and we've got people represented from both Europe, as well as Asia. And really started diving deep. Of course, no one really knew anything. It was just a lot of noise in the system so being able to sort through that, first and foremost,. You know, our priority was the safety of our employees. 

Maybe my days of working in the mines as soon as I graduated came into effect, because that's all about the safety and health of employee base there. To this day we continue to meet, this time three days a week. I mentioned earlier the importance of anticipating, and giving our employees a really clear roadmap and keeping them overly informed. We deliberately let in and over-communicated in every capacity. We're very fortunate, because Charlie Giancarlo, our CEO of Pure, he actually had his own personal crisis during this time. He was one of the early adopters of COVID.

He went in the early days and had to do a trip to Spain and came back, and unfortunately he ended up getting COVID. But him having gone through that personal experience himself, he became very quickly a strong advocate for being conservative during this time. I really marvel at it, because of the actions of a tiger team, and the agility in which we put things in place, we were able to also pivot our company strategy during this time as well.

For us, it wasn't just about survival and trying to get through a pandemic. It was also pivoting our business strategy into cloud and data management and data services, and we are so excited about the year ahead.

Anita:

The way in which you guys managed to orchestrate a strategic kind of pivot in the middle of a pandemic. My observation from the board just really energized people. We'll touch on that, JJ, in a little bit. But just going back to now out of 2020, we look ahead, the implications for CHROs are not by any means done and dusted, right? There's a lot of lasting effects to all of this, and I think some of it being workforce planning, and employee location. What are some of the considerations now? Some of I guess the more strategic imperatives that this has brought to your function and your thinking, as you look to the future?



JJ:

Yeah, a couple of things there. One of the recommendations that we had made several months ago was knowing that this pandemic was going to last for quite sometime, was it reasonable to have all this real estate available? We had these leases that we had been locked into. Fortunately, we were able to get out of these leases, so that really freed up some aspects there in terms of real estate planning. And being fiscally responsible. We made some conscious decisions there.

Now, if I look at Pure, it really has made a shift in terms of how they think about workforce planning. Previously, Pure had quite a strict in-office culture. People were expected to live near the office and come in, with the exception of our sales force, they were expected to come into the office four or five days a week. Whilst there were exceptions that were made, most people were expected to adhere to the actual policy.

During this past year and the crisis itself, I marveled at how our employees have really pivoted and the resilience and adaptability they had to a mostly work from home environment. Like, many, many companies have had to do. Now they've adapted. We at first were very concerned about things such as productivity, et cetera, but we marvel at how the workforce has indeed adapted to this. It's given us an opportunity to really think about, "Wow, okay. The world has changed."

I'm a firm believer that once you make a step forward, you don't really go back, right? This is evolution. You just keep moving forward. That gave us an opportunity to really dig deep and think about what is best for Pure in this digital era? We, through some extensive interviews of key stakeholders, we are likely putting forth a stance to say we will be a hybrid. What that means is while the sales workforce will continue to be mostly remote, but the rest of the company it will likely be a two to three day a week commitment.

That gives the employees opportunity to continue putting their best and brightest foot forward, and addressing certain things that had popped up when it was a five day in the office environment. Things such as stress levels. Reasonably high stress levels for people, having to commute to work, what would typically be without traffic, a 10 minute journey, would sometimes be an hour, an hour and a half journey. I think this level of flexibility and adaptability has had to take place. If we are to continue to attract the best and brightest, we've got to be an agile workforce.

Anita:

Yeah. I mean, so critical. But JJ, I wanted to ask you, one of the things that has always struck me about your leadership style and I think it was particularly evident in how you dealt with this past year, is you're incredibly empathetic. That's a way in which you lead, it's one of the values I think you live, and I know you've spoken about as the year unfolded, but even as we look ahead, being concerned about people's surge capacity, and genuinely what do employees need? I mean, how did you keep your ear to the ground on that?

JJ:

Yeah. That is something that I have increasingly become passionate about. I'm a firm believer in compassionate leadership, so putting yourself in the shoes of others and seeing things through their lens. That's certainly been tested for all of us, as leaders and as professionals in the workforce. But as I look back at the past year, this year has been rife with just so many, many things. It's not just the pandemic itself. It was things like natural disasters. We've had hurricanes and bushfires and-

We've also had the civil unrest that has really sunk so deep into all our souls. We've had the recession that is seeing unemployment lines where families are struggling to pay for their mortgage and put food on the table, and this is a very, very real thing. I mean, I've been doing skip levels and small chats with team members who are facing this as a real issue. And then of course coupled with everything else, you've had some world leaders that no matter what their political opinion, that's made a mockery out of the very institutions that are meant to protect us, as well.

This compressed on top of that, compressed on top of that, all this is happening in what we would see as our ordinary lives. So, things such as our births, marriages, deaths. For myself, aging parents who need attention in a country that I'm not able to get to.

It's been incredibly tough and so if I think about this concept of surge capacity, human beings are as I mentioned earlier, quite agile, but they also reach their point. Research shows that any of us can manage through a crisis for about six, seven, maybe eight months time, and that's just one crisis, not alone all these compressed things in this period of time, that we know despite the fact that we have vaccines coming out, we also know that we're going to be in this situation still for a while more.

The question then comes to all of us: What are we really doing to look after ourselves? What are we really doing to take care of ourselves? And I think in the business and the craziness of the world in which we live, we've forgotten how to do that. The question for all of us is how do we lead by example? How do we create that space for others? And that gives them permission to take care of themselves.

Anita:

Oh, wow. So, so powerful, JJ. You and I have also talked about how that sentiment of focusing on those kinds of things, taking care of yourself and being willing to show that as a manager and a leader, that comes a little more naturally in other cultures than other countries, than perhaps it does in the US. Where here the culture tends to be very driven, and as I said, busy is the new crazy, but nevertheless busy is busy. I read just the other day how COVID didn't hit the pause button, it hit the reset button. Wouldn't it be so nice if it did set the reset button for many of us here in the United States context to say we don't have to go back to those frantic lives, and more importantly, we absolutely have to invest in taking care of ourselves.

I think then JJ, but knowing what that involves is not always immediately obvious to people. I know when you and I talked about it, as you said, yeah, I've needed a moment of replenishment the other day so I was out for a 10k run, and I was like, "Ah, yeah, that would have given me a heart attack. For me, replenishment is lighting a candle and curling up with a book". The point is it does mean different things for different people, right? I think that's fair to say.

Now, let me, JJ, go back to culture. Because again, it's a big part of the role that you play at Pure Storage, but Pure has always been a company that's prided itself on its culture. I do think it was one of the hallmarks of its success. But you coming in when you did a few years back, I think you had some really great observations around how the culture had served us well to that point, but wasn't necessarily going to serve us well going forward. Could you maybe share some of your general thoughts on culture, but then specifically what you observed at Pure and what you've done to push the envelope on the cultural side of things?

JJ:

Yeah. I think culture means different things to different people. For me, the lens is how do you create a healthy organization? How do you create that healthy culture? At Pure, we really base it on our values. The values don't change. But the culture evolves. If I look back at when I first joined Pure, it had an amazing reputation for being nice. It was a lovely culture. Very, very respectful, which felt good for the first little while, but then when you dug deep, certain things started to drive me a little crazy. Things such as being very consensus driven. Rather than the speed and quality of decision making, it really was about, "Well, have we socialized with this?" If a decision gets made, then we have to revisit it because someone else didn't jump in with their thoughts.

That slows. If we want to win, if any of us want to win in this world, then we have to be also decisive and move forward once the decision is made. When Charlie, because Charlie joined six months after I did, and he and I spoke a lot about the importance of driving a culture of accountability. I've seen the shift over the past couple of years towards one that is indeed accountable. There's certain things that we're trying to get better at. Making sure that we know how to prioritize, reminding each other that healthy tension does exist within a team.

However, having that debate, then decide, then deliver, is all about teamwork. That teamwork is actually one of our core values, so that's an example of how a company culture can evolve. However, the values remain the same.

Anita:

I love that, JJ. I mean, that's a brilliant wisdom card right there. Debate, decide, deliver. You'll see that someday, JJ. You may or may not know this story, but obviously I was on the board when you were recruited, and just to your point, when they were pulling together the spec for this new global CHRO, because of the consensus driven nature of things, everybody gave their two cents on what they thought this person and this role needed to look like. When you did that across an entire management team, you ended up with a spec that was like the length of your arm, and basically like this is the unicorn. We are looking for a unicorn, right? Just goes to show how special you are because we found our unicorn, but it did take a long time.

JJ:

Well, Anita, I have to share something with you. So funny you say that, because a year before I was still working at ... I was a VP at LinkedIn, and a year before Pure had actually reached out to me.

Anita:

Oh, I didn't know that.

JJ:

No, they did. They did. And so 12 months later they reached out again, I'm like, "What have you all been doing?"

Anita:

Boy, do you need a head of HR if you're still looking for one after a year. Oh, my God. That's so true. You mentioned earlier that in the middle of it all, you guys announced a change in strategy. Or at least what we could call a big evolution in strategy, and for a lot of our listeners here today, JJ, they're leaders across organizations and they are helping to drive maybe digital transformations and those kinds of changes and strategies, as well.

Anita:

I mean, what prompted you to change strategy midway through a pandemic? I mean, I've been really surprised about how that roll out has gone, so maybe you could share that with our listeners.

  To me, it always comes down to leadership and Charlie had a vision in his mind and he's brought in some amazing leaders. Like Kevan Krysler, our CFO, and with members of our board, as well, how do we pivot this organization? The pandemic did accelerate things. I mean, being forced to go digital, being on Zoom and I know we all suffer Zoom fatigue, but it forced our salespeople as well, to do business in a very different way to what they've had to do previously.

And then conversations with our most recent acquisition, Thoughtworks, and what they offer, really propelled us to think, "Wow, okay. Well, we have a lot of upside from a revenue perspective," as we think about subscriptions and bookings and the automation that comes with that. It made just logical business sense, and now we're beginning to see that the momentum and velocity just pick up in a very, very exciting way.

Anita:

Yeah, people are energized by that kind of renewed sense of purpose. Earlier on in one of my special podcasts I had Alia Bojilova join me, who I know you've met, as well, JJ. She talked a lot about that, about how things like a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, all those things that we would tie in with culture, that they are very energizing for people in the right way, and can be very replenishing for people, as well. It was just incredible. Pure was like a living example of that for me. Something I'd heard Alia talk about in theory. That's very exciting.

JJ:

It's so true. I remember Mark Garrett at the beginning, earlier this year actually, when we were all in lockdown, and his experience when he was a CFO at Adobe, and when they shifted their business strategy and the momentum that it picked up. I heard the excitement in his voice. I'm like, "Whoa, yo. What is this about?" We all cottoned on and here we are. 

Anita:

It's the right thing to do and now with acquisition you've got a real bit of momentum behind you. But JJ, let me just expand a little bit further into another element of culture that I know that you've written about a lot, and I always ... I thought this was a really interesting perspective, but you wrote a lovely piece about the relationship between culture and customer experience, and the relationship between I guess the employee experience and customer experience. Could you share some of that with our listeners? I thought that was one of the most interesting pieces that I'd read in a long time.

JJ:

If we all take a step back and think of the best customer experience you've ever had, and there's several examples I can draw upon, and I mean, I know that I use a lot of Apple products, and why do I use them? Because they're simple, I can follow the instructions. You know that even if you have a hiccup, you can call their help desk and get absolute, beautiful customer service. By the way, their packaging's phenomenal. I just love anything that looks pretty. I'll buy it.

Anita:

It's sensory, right? It looks good, it feels good.

JJ:

Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I want for our employees. I think of our employee base as our customers. I think of our candidates as our customers, and when we look at the customer satisfaction scores for our Pure Storage customers, it's very high. The satisfaction score's very high. At the moment, it's 85. When we look at our employee voice survey results, our own employee voice survey results, they're also very high. It's 86.

So, the fact that if we have a healthy organization who respect, who's got that mutual accountability, who has their eye on the long-term goal, and we know the tone of excellence, then we will treat our customers like that. So, we treat each other like that, we treat our customers like that. The two go very much hand-in-hand. When you hear about some of the sloppy experiences of some companies out there, and you dig a little bit through Glassdoor or any of those surveys, you think, "Okay, there's a correlation here." What does it mean for all of us to provide brilliant customer service?

Anita:

Right. And this loops right back, JJ, to what you were talking about at the outset, around when you think about the state that your employees are in right now, after such a difficult year. If they are feeling depleted, if they are feeling tired, if they now really do want some kind of flexibility in their work model going forward, all of that stuff you have to pay attention to, according to your argument, because eventually that will filter through to the customer experience on the other side of the equation.

JJ:

Yeah. You're absolutely right. Again, how do you create space for your employees to replenish, refresh, so that they can in fact be their most creative and innovative self? Because I do believe, Anita, that each of us are born beautiful and talented. I really do. And being given permission to explore that, given the space to do that, is something we all deserve.

Anita:

Oh, I love that. I love how you framed that. It's interesting because Alia spoke a little bit about that. She touched on the topic of curiosity which as you know is one of her things. And one of the points she made was that we are all born curious, right? You look at any baby or any child and they're just so innately curious. And it's not that we lose it, actually, as we get older. It's more that we end up in environments that actually constrain our curiosity and constrict it a little bit. I think sometimes, her encouragement to our listeners was rather than trying to drive curiosity or creativity in your organizations, think about the ways in which you might actually be impeding it. What are the systems? What are the processes? What are the people even, that stand in the way of that happening? I thought that was a really interesting perspective.

JJ:

Alia and I have not discussed this, actually. This concept. But years ago I read a book, it's a very simple book. It's called The Nibble Theory, and it's based on the viewpoint that you and I share, which is we are all born curious and creative, but as we grow up, as young people, we have a tendency as adults to squash the creativity. "Don't do that, no that's a silly idea." Dismissing it. Slowly their big, beautiful, creative, curious bubble starts to be eaten away at, a little like the Pac-Man. By the time they get to university and graduate, they're restricted. So, how do we end up breaking that barrier down so that they can step back into that space?

Anita:

Yeah. Love it, love it. Now, let me lean on you a little bit for your functional expertise here on two areas. One is, JJ, a lot of the folks who are listening today are executives or maybe coming up the ranks and they are driving change which is never that easy, but it's something you've done a lot of, as well. What's some of the advice you give to people that are trying to lead change in organizations?

JJ:

I think leading by example is really, really important. I think bringing people along on the journey, so one of the things that I learned over time is the importance of transparency. Because transparency about whether it be a process, whether it be a project, whatever the situation may be, if you're transparent about it, then people know what the landscape is. Transparency builds trust. If you have the trust of your employee base or you've created that level of followership, then they will follow you and where it needs to go. The big magic card that I would offer up to everybody is lean in with transparency.

Anita:

Right. I think that's right. This word of trust keeps coming up, time and time again, in all of these conversations. JJ, I will add just one thing that I've seen you do so effectively. You are great at holding people's feet to the fire around making the story easy to understand. If you have some ambitious change agenda, or initiative, or strategy, or whatever, if literally it's not Sesame Street simple, then I guess that's one of the ways it's going to be very hard to be transparent when people find the story to be very convoluted and not quite sure what he or she is saying. I guess it's maybe another side of the same coin, perhaps.

JJ:

I agree. I always tell people if I can understand it, then the vast majority of people will understand it. I think I shared this with you. I did this with Charlie recently. I'm like, "Charlie, explain such and such to me." He went on this monologue of events that I'm rather perplexed with, and our CFO, Kevan Krysler, said the same. He's like, "Well, let's simplify this a little bit" and sure enough Charlie came back the following week and reimagined how it could be.

That connected with me. I think you and I have discussed this before, as well, the importance of connection. Whether it be connection to customer, connection to your employee base, if people are connected to a purpose, a common purpose, then again, that will create a level of followership as well. Back to what you were asking about change management. If you can simplify things for people and if you can create that common connection, you've got 99% of it baked.

Anita:

Of the buy-in. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. JJ, let me maybe just touch on a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts in the industry that we work in, which is diversity and inclusion and belonging. Give me your perspective on the relationship between DIBs and running a successful business.

JJ:

Well, I think all of it starts with belonging. It's that connection piece, as well. If people feel that they belong to an experience, then it's going to increase the ownership around it. So often we start with the diversity and we start with the inclusion, but I think we really need to start with the B, the belonging aspect of things. Once a person feels like they belong to a cause or to an experience, then they're going to be committed. Then they're going to follow it. Then they're going to be part of it, and they're going to be more curious and more creative, because they feel psychologically safe.

Anita:

Right. Right. And are there things you think managers can do to help foster a bit more of that sense of belonging among their employees?

JJ:

Yeah. It's such an interesting question, actually. I think that they've got to explore themselves first, right? And how comfortable they are. Because I can see when a leader or a manager talks about this topic, when they're comfortable, and when they're not. So, for them to be able to really speak with confidence about a topic, they've got to get comfortable with it. That's my conversations that I have with my leaders. How do I make them feel safe so they explore it, so they feel confident enough to talk about it?

Anita:

Oh, that is so good. That is so good. And it reminds me of a couple of things, but again, Alia talked about awareness, right? That importance of self-awareness. Before you can ever get to belonging, right? You need to have that level of who I am and what I bring to the table, and what kind of gives me my sense of belonging, as that kind of then the starting gate from which then you can think about other people's sense of belonging. I mean, this call for managers to be willing to be vulnerable, right? With people. We're right back at trust again, right? Vulnerability and trust and transparency all being key elements of what kind of helps to solidify that culture of belonging.

JJ:

Absolutely.

Anita:

Yeah. Amazing. JJ, you and I have sponsored a lot of women's initiatives at Pure and beyond. You've focused also on young careers, but I think some of the data we're now seeing is pointing to this being a particularly challenging time for women in the workplace and for working moms in particular. Have you observed that? Have you observed the peaks and troughs of our female employees' experience this year?

JJ:

Yeah, I have experienced it in terms of just having some heart to hearts with some employees. It's interesting. I had one situation with an employee who she's a rather young mom, her husband was hit by COVID in terms of his small business folded and she needed that space that we've spoken about today. So, we haven't really had an official level called compassionate leave, but we did create compassionate leave for that situation.

I think our policies have had to be agile to meet the employees with where they're at today, as well. The other thing I will say is we measure the employee health cycle twice a year, and we have seen a negative intent to stay of females increase over the past six months. Some of it I also think is related to a little what you and I were saying, as well. There's been so much stuff that's happened, and people are tired. People want a fresh change and I think people will think the answer to that fresh change is looking for a new opportunity.

And bearing in mind, again, we have very high employee voice survey results of 86, and our NPS is actually 92, so very, very high marks all around. But the fact that this need for a refresh and a restart is so obvious. 

Anita:

Yeah, you the old adages in people's mind, change is as good as a rest, but it may not be, right? Yeah, and Alia talked about that, as well. She talked about that quasi-litmus test for belonging, and when you're starting to feel all of these external pressures and all of these external pulls from your environment or your circumstances, that even the most loyal of employees will start to ask that existential question of, "What's holding me here? Why am I continuing to go with this?" Another important reason to double down on purpose and belonging, right?

JJ:

Well, I think you see the change, as well. I mean, certainly the real estate market in my area is just booming because people are... you know, it's the change. It's fresh starts all around. To what you're saying before, the grass is not necessarily greener. You're still going to have to cut it, no matter what sort of house you buy.

Anita:

It's true. Grass is greener where you water it, right?

JJ: Exactly.

Anita:

I heard a very funny one. This is a little bit off piece here, but a sort of motivational speaker, and he was talking about the importance of wellness and health and the food you eat and all this kind of stuff, and then his last point was around love, right? Just the importance of the people you love and if you don't have somebody special in your life yet, then loving yourself and all that.

But then he went on to say, "If at any point you think the grass is greener elsewhere, don't go there, because you might come back to find that somebody else has been mowing your lawn."

Anita:

Pay attention to the ones you love. I had never heard that before.

JJ:

I have not. I think that's rather clever. 

It is a good one. JJ, let's maybe end on an optimistic note. As you look to the future now, maybe I'll ask you on a personal level, then on a leadership level, what are you taking from this year that's kind of like a good learning that you're packing into your folder of great learnings in life? What kind of makes you optimistic for the future as you look ahead?

JJ:

Knowing that people are incredibly agile and resilient. I think people just continue to amaze me. I am just in awe of human beings, and how they can rise to the occasion, and how adaptable they are. We all got tested this year. We got tested in big ways. The fact that we continue to put our best foot forward, and really lean in with each other, is truly remarkable. It's that compassion. I'm seeing more compassion today than I've ever seen before. And I'm not talking just about Pure Storage, I'm talking about humanity.

Anita:

Yep. I really couldn't agree more. I do think we're going to see ... There'll be these kinds of points of inflection. If you look back at Peter Drucker's work on The Effective Executive, in that kind of industrial era type stuff, I just feel there's a point of inflection here whereby there's a whole other kind of model for leadership that's going to emerge as the new and the next, and the best model. It's going to include way bigger elements of humility, vulnerability, empathy, compassion, and then I think curiosity and a lot of other things, as well. But I was looking at some ... I think it was Gartner data, JJ, last week, about ... I'm going to write a piece on Forbes around this, but the sort of new employee deal.

One of the things about what employees want coming out of this is yes, flexibility, but personalized flexibility, right? As you say, you've got to meet each employee where they're at. The second is this alignment around social justice and being a good corporate citizen and the corporation being a good citizen in the world. And then this third thing is this deeper connections. So, employees care if you care about their mental health. And employees care if you care about the fact that their husband's business has gone under. They care that you should care about if there's real hurt in their community.

I think, JJ, to be fair, a lot of that was coming your way anyway with millennials becoming the majority of the workforce. Some of the stuff that we would have put under the future of work banner is now like you've said, it's not the future of work, it's just work. It's not digital business, it's just business. But I do think that that stuff is here now, and it's here to stay.

JJ:

Yeah. I agree. I had a conversation yesterday with our head of benefits and she's got some recent data from Lyra, who's our mental health provider. And what we're finding is generally speaking that it's millennials and Gen Z, so my son's age, for example, 17 years old, they're the ones who are really struggling over the past. The research is showing that they're the ones who are really struggling.

It's not the baby boomers, it's not people who are my age. It's the next generation, and I think part of it is the millennials are the ones who, ... For many parts, a lot of them are also struggling with being parents and not having the level of support and having to look after their kids and not being able to send them to school. And having to deliver on their work productivity, and having to keep the house running. I mean, similar to what I was saying before, all these compressed issues.

I think the most remarkable thing, again, as I was saying, is when I see managers, when I see leaders who are really leaning into support them in ways that they've never been able to lean in before, and it's happening, and it's magical, and that's when I say we are going to get through this together. We're going to get through it together.

Anita:

Yeah. You said something the other day, JJ, it's stuck in my mind, you said we have to give permission to ourselves to do what it takes to get through it and to replenish ourselves and take care of ourselves. And give permission to others, which I think is what you're just referencing there, in terms of managers and so forth. Well, JJ, that just leaves me feeling buoyant and optimistic about the future, and about the future of leadership, and the future of Pure Storage. My friend, I cannot thank you, again, enough for joining us.

Our unicorn CHRO, and JJ, for all the compassion that you bring, not only to your role and to Pure Storage, but to beyond those four walls in our broader industry, and our community as a whole. You are just one of those joyous energies to have out there in the universe, and I feel so grateful to be part of your force field. Thank you, again, and I hope you'll come back and talk to us another time.

JJ:

I would love to. Thank you so much, Anita, for having me.

Anita:

You got it. Take care.