Episode Transcript
Jim Cuene 0:02
Welcome to business drivers the podcast dedicated to helping you be a more effective digital leader. Each episode, we connect you to leaders and ideas that unlock new growth both professional and personal business drivers is presented by Farren and I'm your host Jim Keane. Our guest for this podcast episode is more Charles more as a consultant who focuses on digital product management. She also does product coaching, and she does some advising to help leaders figure out how to make important business transformations. This episode would cover a lot of ground we touch on organizational awareness and getting more effectiveness as a team, but also how leaders can learn to navigate through orgs. Think of, for instance, how to navigate the matrix, we talked about how it's actually possible to teach this skill. We also hit on the topic of how to talk to your team, and be empathetic as the company's navigating hard organizational change events. I might also pitch this discussion as another and what might be turning into a mini series of business drivers that is liberal arts, people who ended up doing digital leadership. So English writing rhetoric majors, here's another one. It's another case study for book nerds who make good in the world of digital. One note about the audio, we've recorded this live and in person. And you can hear the background noises of a sorta busy hotel lobby, it doesn't get in the way the talk though, we should be able to hear everything just fine. Finally, we're starting to plan our next season of business travelers. And we'd love your feedback, tell us what you're interested in what you want to learn more about, and what else we should be covered. Thanks so much for listening. Some more, tell me about the work you're doing today.
Maura Charles 1:39
I work with a lot of teams, mostly at large enterprise, fortune 500 type companies. And I work with teams who are either in the middle of changing the way they work. And often that's, that's digital work. So that would be could be websites and apps or systems that are underlying some kind of consumer experience. And I work with those teams, again, in the middle of the have those kinds of work. And while they're trying to improve the way they they work together, or optimize it. And I also help companies set that kind of system up from the very beginning.
Jim Cuene 2:16
And are they typically change programs specifically? Or is it more about a shift to a product model?
Maura Charles 2:24
It depends on the client. So a lot of my media and ecommerce type of clients are already kind of in a product model of sorts, it just may not be well defined, right? So they may not have a playbook, they may not have a philosophy about how they work, but they are in it. So sometimes it's changed from within, which is we're already doing this, but we're not we're not sure that this is the most efficient way to do it. Like how do we improve? And how do we continuously improve?
Jim Cuene 2:52
So in some cases, it's zero to one, like, let's get this thing started. Yeah. And then in other cases, it's good to great, like, let's take what you're doing and make it even better. Yep, more? How would you explain what you do to a civilian or to somebody that isn't as enmeshed in the world of digital products as you are?
Maura Charles 3:11
Well, at the heart of what I do, it's really about helping people work better, right? So that it doesn't actually matter what kind of work they're doing. Like if they're building something like a website or an app, or if they're, if they're building a whole content management system to run, you know, a major publication. The truth is that what I really do is help teams work better together to do those to do that work. And so sometimes that's highly technical, it's helping them understand, you know, how to how to work in those that kind of technical structure. But other times, it's just, you know, regular leadership, like management consulting, in a way, right, helping them understand like, this is, this is how you could be working better together. This is what's underlying some of the challenges you may be having as a team like, basic kind of, again, basic human stuff.
Jim Cuene 3:59
If you had to boil it down to a word or two, it sounds like you'd say you're a coach. Yeah,
Maura Charles 4:04
I think that that's, I think that's fair. I think I coach at all different kinds of levels. And that's where it can get confusing, because I could be coaching somebody who maybe has never done what product management, which is my, the kind of poor of my expertise. I do have clients who are want to get into product management or who they've been promoted into a product management role. But they've never done that kind of work before and said they don't have the mindset yet. And they need they need some coaching on that. But on the other hand, I also work with SVPs and VPs, who have a lot of product experience, but maybe don't have the bandwidth to help their teams perform better. And so they'll come to me and they'll say, what I really need for you to do is to like, level up my team either coached them to to understand what good looks like, help them understand what best practices are, help them build, like a team, you know, a great practice within the organization. Then so that it can be sustained. So that even if there's turnover or you know, or people move into different roles that there is some kind of framework left behind that they can use.
Jim Cuene 5:09
So that's really, really helpful. And I'm guessing this is exactly what you studied in college. This is what you wanted to do when you started your
Maura Charles 5:15
career. Yeah, yeah. Studied. I studied musicology and nonfiction writing. So this is this is perfectly aligned to that
Jim Cuene 5:24
work. Well, as a fellow liberal arts nerd, I have to ask, what are you using from your liberal arts days? In the world of digital today? Like as you're kind of coaching or advising or guiding or supporting digital leaders today? How are you relying on your liberal arts skills?
Maura Charles 5:40
Well, I think what I learned as a, as a writer was really a lot about storytelling and a lot about understanding kind of the nature of what's happening in any given situation. Yeah, right. And so I think, when you're digging into these transformations, or you know, these change situations, you're trying to figure out well, what's really going on? And sometimes it's what happened before. And sometimes it's where do we want to go? And so I think helping people to understand that storyline, you know, we hear all the time that storytelling stories is kind of at the core of leadership and being able to tell stories, it's important man as a modern leader. And so I think being able to do that, as somebody from the outside often can help these companies that can't, can't see the forest for the trees.
Jim Cuene 6:24
Well, I have a little bit of a, it's a blog post that I'm starting to write about the actual literal application of storytelling tools to create internal corporate communications, because I remember once I was telling an old, an old boss, like, I think I've lost the plot. And I didn't realize how useful of a metaphor that was. And he kind of actually took me through and he said, alright, well, let's talk about it. What's the narrative? Who are the heroes? Where's the conflict? You know, what are the chapters? And he actually kind of took me through that. I'm like, Oh, my God, that could actually work. So we'll come back and talk about that. That's
Maura Charles 7:00
great. Yeah, when I first was starting to go out on my own as a consultant, I spent a lot of time thinking about that, then trying to try to find my story. And then what I found was that it was the working with teams, and particularly, you know, I didn't want to do product strategy. I didn't want to actually like build products, I really specifically wanted to help teams and individuals perform better and get what they needed to perform better, whether that's shifting their mindset, or actually, like upskilling on something.
Jim Cuene 7:27
Yeah, yeah, boy, we might have to do round two, because I would love to hear you talk about how you help people get sort of re centered in their own story and re centered in the narrative. And I like to kind of find themselves, yeah, it is
Maura Charles 7:42
a big piece of the puzzle, right? Because they often can't see, like I said, can't can't see where they're coming from don't see, they also don't see all the other kind of stories around them. Right. So one of the things that I'm passionate about just kind of the psychology of all of this leadership stuff. And what I'm finding as I coach individuals in particular, is that people don't usually understand other people's motivations. They think they, you know, they make assumptions. I've been told that in my own as I've been coached myself that, you know, I think you're making a lot of assumptions. And so I've learned to kind of challenge challenge assumptions. And I often challenge my clients to do that. And I think the reason is, because you again, there's so many different variables about what somebody's motivation may be. And I think there's this this emotional intelligence concept called organizational awareness, which is really understanding the kind of what's what's going on in the NFL organization. And I think that's one of the ones that is a blind spot for so many people, particularly individual contributors, or early like first time managers, because they don't know what questions to ask. They don't understand that, you know, where the urgency may be coming from right? Where the strategy might be coming from, why maybe they've been told that this is a goal for the company, but then they are asked to do other work that doesn't seem aligned with those goals, like,
Jim Cuene 9:01
how do you teach that?
Maura Charles 9:03
I think part of it is giving them examples of times when it's of what it's been like in other places, and some of it is helping them diagnose it like real time. So showing them you know, or just challenging them to think about it. So I was coaching somebody recently and she was so frustrated with something that was happening in her organization and I so I just sat with her, we broke it down. I gave her I actually gave her kind of a checklist of things to think about. And it was you know, kind of the different the mindset of the people around her but also what their motivations might be whether they had like social pressures or where they they had some kind of internal pressures or me kind of go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like some of this stuff could be physical, right, you're sick, you're having a bad day you feel you feel you didn't sleep well, and your boss does something stupid the next day because they you know, they were tired. So understanding human nature, psychology is actually really critical to this kind of to every kind of work but especially Like for product managers, I would say, and people who work in product teams, because the dynamics between the individuals are so critical to how well the team performs. And so if you're an individual in that system, and you don't have organizational awareness, it can be really challenging to figure out what's going on. And you have to know what's going on to know what you actually really do need to prioritize and to be successful in a business.
Jim Cuene 10:23
Yeah, and you can't understand why you are or are not being effective if you don't understand the organization in which you are trying to be effective.
Maura Charles 10:32
Exactly. And understanding your kind of direct managers needs and also their managers needs and what their motivations might be really helps, right. So if you're, you know, I've been at several companies that have been acquired, for example. And when you're in acquisition mode, everything is different, and you don't, as an individual contributor, because I've managed a lot of them, too. They don't see all of the things that are happening in the, you know, the closed meeting rooms, and things like that. And so what they don't know is a lot. And so again, they're saying, Why is this happening? Why is this happening? And they're constantly has a lot of those kinds of questions about not understanding, like why an organization might make a decision. And so when I was a leader, and inside some of these companies, I would be very transparent with my teams as much as I could and say, there are things you don't know yet. And you know, and just trust me, you'll have to trust me that this is the right move. So maybe it's, I don't know, replac, forming a system that you didn't want to replatform right then. But there, they don't understand why we're doing it. Now. We had all these other things we wanted to do this year, why are we doing this now? And helping them ask them? Like, see, you know, what, there's a potential acquisition out there. Like we were preparing ourselves, we're a publicly traded company, and we're preparing ourselves for, you know, for acquisition, there are some things we have to kind of like ducks, we have to get in a row before we can sign that paper. And then they're like, Okay, you know, what, fine, we'll do it. And look, I was one of those people, too. I remember, I remember one, you know, asking my manager once, you know, being pressured to do this project and thinking it was a terrible idea. And I, and I said to her, I said, Can you just explain, like, I just need to understand, do I really need to do this? And she said, You really need to do this. I promise it'll be worth it. And she was right. And so some of that is built on trust, right. And you know, trust is really important to, to business relationships to be successful, particularly between managers and their teams. But I think learning when to when to question and when to just ride the tide is really important. Yeah, boy.
Jim Cuene 12:31
So you work a lot with digital product leaders or product leaders in general? Yes. Just to set the level here. Pretend like I'm a Marketing VP that has never really heard about digital products. So try to explain to me what they are, and why I should care if I'm like the marketing, VP?
Maura Charles 12:52
Sure. So digital products are the technologies and systems and experiences that enable your business, right? So it could be, like I said earlier, it could be a website, or could be an app, it could be all a system, an ecosystem, all of those things. The reason you care about them as products is because they need to be thought of as products rather than worked on in silos. Because if you if you think about them as one central thing, this product, as opposed to, you know, a website that could potentially be owned by 10 different verticals in your matrix organization. There's a comprehensive kind of single way of looking at that product. And so it's, it's just really important to have one person with some ownership owner, we talk a lot about ownership and products, it's really important to have single points of ownership for products so that you can keep a consistent strategy and so that you can build on that strategy. And you can really understand your customers and your goals.
Jim Cuene 13:55
So let me just play dumb for a second, like, Alright, I'm a Marketing VP, I've got all these IT people I've got, they keep talking to me about their portfolio of projects, like, aren't they just getting shit done for me? What by getting those projects done?
Maura Charles 14:06
They are but often they're not necessarily building the right thing. So the real big benefit of product management and our thinking of you know, in a product mindset, is that you're constantly questioning the status quo. Are we building the right things? Who are we building for? Is it still the same customer it was yesterday? What's changing in the landscape, and understanding all of that and aligning it with like what your business goals are, or could be or should be, is something that you really need in an organization, you need that one person because you can't have five different leaders owning a product and having different opinions about what it's for, or what its core goals are? Because that's how you drive value. Having 1.1 point of contact there helps the company drive value from its products. Yeah, one
Jim Cuene 14:52
of our clients right now at Ferren is about to redo their website. The conversations been around Who's going to be the owner of this website? And the right now they're they're all saying essentially, we're all going to be owners. Like, it's not gonna work
Maura Charles 15:08
marketing PR, they don't know who else could be in the mix. But definitely marketing PR comms are always in the mix there.
Jim Cuene 15:13
Yeah. So this is my chance to explain to them a product mindset versus a project mindset. And it's been, it's been really interesting to kind of see their eyes open up. So the other question I would, I've heard Occasionally, when I talk to people that are product leaders, I talk about this project to product transformation is women, aren't we just talking about good management? What is different in a product management mindset from just straight up good management? Or is it a Venn diagram where it's really a socially overlapping?
Maura Charles 15:48
Venn diagram? I think, I think there are specific social and human skills that are more important for product than then maybe they are for all kinds of management, or leadership. But I think the differentiator is understanding user experience. So so when you look at there's like, there's like a traditional product management Venn diagram, right, which is like technology, user experience, and, and business goals. And so when you when you bring those three things together, the product is right at the center of it. That's, that's kind of the typical way of describing it. So understanding, being able to understand user experience and customer, whoever your customers are, whether that's an internal customer, or an external customer, or a prospect is critical to this kind of management and leadership, right? Not all leaders do that not all leaders understand the customer. Although there are often companies again, this is like another area of people, everybody wants to own the voice of the customer and an organization that's a, that's another tricky one. So but product can can have that. But they can also understand the technology side of things. And they are also deep into the strategy of the business and what the goals are. And the vision is for the business, kind of the desired outcomes are at any given point in time, right. And when that's changing constantly, which it is, product management, as a discipline gives you the flexibility to change and to pivot and to constantly be revisiting what your goals are, right. And so I think one of the biggest differences that I see, particularly at these large companies that are used to, you know, building out a project based roadmap where they've got, you know, a 12, they've got a plan their budget for the year, and they are planning it probably six months before the year starts, sometimes even longer. So you've got like an 18 month runway there. Something like COVID hits, and your entire roadmap blows up, or you know, you it's the entire world as it stopped and maybe your businesses has been affected dramatically by that or not. But it's but almost many businesses were affected by something like that. And so the question becomes, then, how quickly can you pivot. And if you have hundreds or 1000s of employees working on projects, that may no longer be important to the business, it's a lot harder to mobilize them than if you have them in discrete product teams that have ownership over a particular piece of the business. Yeah,
Jim Cuene 18:12
that makes a lot of sense. You know, as you were describing that, I was thinking about it as a little bit of a shift in focus. I think a product management mindset is driven by consumer or user or market outcomes. And a p&l mindset is really looking at organizational financial outcomes. How do you optimize for the organization's financial outcomes versus the bet that I think you have to make when you're a product lead, or is if we get it right for the user, if we get it right for the customer, if we get the right customer outcomes, everything else will happen down
Maura Charles 18:49
the line exactly. And that's hard for organizations to visualize. Because despite the fact that they often don't measure success of projects that they are doing, though, in the in the old school way, it's a lot harder for them to see the returns quickly on switching to this kind of product model. So one of the things that a lot of companies do is that they'll run when they do do some kind of product lead innovation, they will actually do it as some kind of incubator within the company or pilots that they can, you know, they can test that out in a certain number of areas so that you can get some learnings and get some wins and use that as an example for the rest of the organization. Right. And so, I mean, many companies have been doing this for many years. Some are just starting it. But you know, I was at a publishing media company many years ago that was doing this and they did it with one brand. They took one one of their media brands and they started there. And we took all of the engineers who were all on one floor at that point. And we brought that brought a few of them onto a team and to a cross functional teams. So we had a product manager, we had a lead engineer, we had other you know, additional engineers, we had somebody from editorial who was actually a representative on that team and that team tested out the concept and experimentation and a culture of experimentation is so important in these product organizations, because, again, you're trying to prove little things all the time you have hypotheses, and you want to prove out that you might be right without spending a million dollars every time. And so a big part of that shift is yes, it will eventually affect your p&l. And you, we can't tell you how yet, we have to try some things, we have to test the waters, and we're going to try a few things. And then we'll figure out what the big rocks are and where we want to invest. And maybe now you're investing in teams rather than projects. And you're investing in the in in products that these teams are managing, right? And so if you find out that one in particular product is really profitable, maybe you invest more there, or maybe you know, that's where you put your superstar employees, because you know, you need, you know, you need some really good talent to drive that forward. Or maybe that's where you expand it into multiple product teams, because, you know, they've proven that this is this is where the bang for the buck is.
Jim Cuene 21:02
Yep. So as you're coaching people to move into this model, and be effective in this model, how are you teaching them what to forget about the old way of doing things, and the new things to adopt? So give me an example of like an old mental model, or an old management or leadership habit that needs to get dropped, so that somebody can be effective as a product leader?
Maura Charles 21:26
Well, I think timelines, number one, is timelines, because everybody wants to know when you're going to deliver something in the old model. And you cannot know that in this new model, because you don't know what you're building yet. So for example, if you're shifting from this in a zero to one model, and you're you're starting from a company that has maybe hundreds of projects every year that they fund, they now don't know, they have, first of all, they have to look at these hundreds of projects that were planned and decide if they're going to continue with any of them, if any of those will become features, or epics or you know, things that are going to be part of this, these product teams. But we really, and I strongly advocate for a kind of roadmap that's not necessarily even quarterly, but more of like a now next later. So and that's how I organize all of my life. Now I have Trello boards that I use for, you know, what I'm going to focus on right now, which means like maybe today or tomorrow. And next is, you know what, when I have time, I will get to these, and then later is I might do this stuff later. This I think is what it's important now later is like, we think that's going to be important. It's not important now, we will either get to it, or we'll decide that something else is happening. And so you're constantly moving that stuff kind of across your board, right? And it's it makes it a lot easier to move things into the now that might be more important to the business at any given point in time. And that's the I think the hardest thing for people to get their head around is, but I don't know when I'm going to be deliver somebody, some one of my clients the other day, somebody said something like, well, how are we going to know what they're doing? How are we going to know what these teams are building, and it's like, but you'll know when they release it, and it helps your customers,
Jim Cuene 23:09
you'll look at the backlog. So it's interesting that you are talking about, you know, moving to the left, moving to the right, and sort of the Trello boards in the backlog. I just literally today I'm wrapping up and engagement with a client where I think the most valuable thing that they'll take out of, I gotta be careful how I say, one of the valuable takeaways is that mental model of a backlog. And that idea, the other piece that came out of it was the idea of, we'll get to it in the next sprint, or we'll consider it an X sprint. And they were really troubled by not having a super granular 18 month roadmap. And their leadership was concerned, like where's all the rest of the stuff. And so we had to teach them this idea of like, it's all there. It's on the board. We know it's important. We've got it sized, we have a sense of importance. But we can't get to it all right now, because we only have enough cycles to get through this next sprint. And that that's a whole different mindset. It is
Maura Charles 24:09
it isn't it relies a lot on an agreement about how companies prioritize their work or how teams specifically prioritize their work. And one of the reasons that I advocate so much for experimentation and for trying small, you know, small pieces of things, building MVPs, and really getting some small pieces of functionality out there is if you can figure out if you can measure, if you have data that shows that something small is or is not valuable, then you know what you need to build next. And again, you know, it's not useful for a company to know exactly what a team is going to deliver if the software that they're going to deliver is useless or does not help the customer or is an incremental improvement after millions of dollars of investment I've seen I've seen that time and time again, where they build something a team build something And they say, Oh, we thought this is what the customer wanted. But actually, it turns out that they really didn't. And how did how does that happen? And so one of the questions I get a lot, when I'm talking to clients, or prospective clients is like, how do I keep that from happening? Again? How do I keep my team from building things that are not helpful, that are not useful, that are not viable or valuable? And this kind of mindset about roadmapping is usually at the root of that. But the prioritization stuff is tough. Because everybody has different ways of thinking about what's important. And I think we talk a lot about team agreements and helping helping teams kind of decide like, well, what are we gonna use for our, let's say, prioritization rubric, right? Like, what are the things that we that we think figure into this weight, and then you can have some kind of data that's not isn't kind of affected by personal feelings, right? You can say you can sit again, because there's always like the I have a gut feeling that this is that this is right, well, okay, great. Let's turn that, that gut feeling into some kind of data that proves that there might be value there. So what are those? What are those things for your business? And they're different? They're, they're very different in different businesses, right. And so and also with different kinds of customers?
Jim Cuene 26:10
Yep. And so tying back to an earlier thing that you mentioned a little bit ago, part of the benefit of a product centric model is that if you're data driven, and outcome driven, you can be focused on building the right things at the right time. And you're not building things because somebody three levels up said, I want it this way.
Maura Charles 26:28
Oh, yeah, my favorite thing to do is to convince to convince a leader that the thing they wanted to build is actually not the right thing. And for them to have some humility and to realize that you know, what, there is some there is some value, you just saved us some money. And you know, I love to doing that as an internal employee too. Because obviously, that, you know, that's a great way to prove your value to to leadership is to say, I know we think this is the right thing to build. But let's let's just challenge that. Let's play it out. Let's, let's talk about what the other things are, that are, that are potentially the things that we might work on or build this year. And let's check our assumption, again, is that is that really the thing we want to invest our time in this is how long it's gonna take. One of the things I really love doing with teams is like estimations, t shirt sizing, right? So small, medium, large, extra large, if something's an extra large, and you know that there's not going to be a ton of return on it, it's really easy to start to say no to that kind of work once you flip to this model.
Jim Cuene 27:24
Yeah, yeah. As you're teaching people how to be more effective leaders in general, and in some cases, specifically about product leadership, what is the lesson that you have to keep teaching over and over and over again, like a, like a personal leadership lesson? Not like how to get the org going. But like, as an individual who's trying to make that happen, what is a lesson that you have to keep teaching.
Maura Charles 27:45
So something that seems really basic, but turns out to often be at the root of a lot of challenges that I see on teams particularly is roles and responsibility? Clearly, defining roles and responsibility is one of those things that everybody thinks is a waste of time, or they just do it once, and then they're done with it, right. But a lot of times when you're dealing with either, you know, challenges in team dynamics, or delivery, or disruption, or a lack of productivity on a team, or in an area of the business, often, it's because there's some kind of misunderstanding or misalignment about what somebody's job is, or whose job something is right. And particularly as you're shifting into new into a new model. And there's, there's often a, again, a lot of assumptions that people make about like, oh, well, this person does that job, the product manager should do that. Or you know what, the engineering leaders always done that, why doesn't that person get to do it anymore? What does this product owner do versus the Scrum Master? What did you know? Who's scheduling the events? And who's? who's managing all that? Who? How do we engage with stakeholders? So literally understanding what the roles and responsibilities are of each team member, and then coming to an agreement as a team, about what your team values are, how you're going to operate? How you want to communicate how you all agree to communicate with each other? How do you communicate with key stakeholders? And how do you get the that kind of data that you need to do the to do the work? That it's it's basic stuff, it's, but it's table stakes? And if you don't do it, right, you have to do it over and over and over again?
Jim Cuene 29:22
Yeah, one of the most effective teams I've ever been on was really good at that internal team communication, that constant checking in of like, how are we doing? Are we communicating? Well, are we are we clear about all of these important things, and they're always checking in on who's, hey, you're supposed to be doing this. I'm supposed to be doing that. Let's make sure that we're really good. So as you're thinking about the work ahead of you, you've seen a lot of the patterns happen over and over and over again. At a certain point, you have to be getting a little bit of fatigue where you're like, Oh my God, this again. So how do you stay resilient? How do you stay sort of engaged in this knowing that this is important work?
Maura Charles 30:04
For me, it's just about the people. And so making connections with new people is actually what motivates me I, I really enjoy working with other people who are passionate about getting it right. And so I think, you know, everybody's different. So I'm constantly meeting new people, I'm connecting with them, understanding what their concerns are, and understanding where they're coming from. And I think that that's what drives me,
Jim Cuene 30:27
you didn't say it. So I'm not I don't want to put words in your mouth. But you've got like this orientation of I am here to help you, and I'm here to not serve you. But my experience can help you go from here to here. That's exactly right. And I think it's really easy to lose that. It is, but
Maura Charles 30:43
but again, I'm kind of people driven, I've just always been, you know, sociable, and, and interested in other people and love to just connect. I love that human connection kind of idea. And so, again, it's like when I got one of my favorite things about going into a new client is that I'm getting to meet new people and figure out what their you know, what their needs are like, what are their pain points? How can I how can I help?
Jim Cuene 31:05
Yeah, and that's got to be especially enjoyable if you actually liked the people. Exactly. But I met you're such a pro, you can find a reason to see opportunity and an upside and every situation.
Maura Charles 31:17
Yes, and also the positive and everybody, right, I've worked on some really toxic teams everybody has, but finding the kind of the one thing about that person that you find impossible to work with, that you actually really like about that person is kind of a nice, nice moment and to try to remember that and to try to try to find that the good or assume assume positive intent.
Jim Cuene 31:39
Right, right. Right. All right. So a wrap up question that we typically ask is what is one book or podcast that is non work related that you recommend and why? Well,
Maura Charles 31:50
you know, podcast, the only podcast I listened to regularly is, wait, wait, don't tell me. The NPR quiz show. I've been listening to that for many, many years. And I still do listen to it almost every week. But I would say books are probably much more important to me now. I'm trying to I'm challenging myself to read a lot more I would say a couple years back, I was probably barely reading a book a month and now I'm reading I don't know maybe four or five books a month
Jim Cuene 32:18
Oh, wow. Fiction, Nonfiction or
Maura Charles 32:20
both. And so so I you know, I kind of have three or four books going at the same time. And right now, I am planning a trip to Savannah. And so I am listening to the audiobook version of John Brown's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil which brilliant, brilliant work of nonfiction. Okay, but reads like fiction. And I read it many years ago, and I've seen the movie a bunch of times, but this time, I want you to listen to the audiobook version of it. And I'm I'm just entranced and I'm so excited to travel again. So I'm really enjoying that.
Jim Cuene 32:54
I'm glad you mentioned that because we're looking at Savannah next spring, so I might I might go get that. That'd be good.
Maura Charles 33:01
It's a it's a good one as a nonfiction writer, I as another My Little side gig, I really enjoy just reading really well written stories that are that are real.
Jim Cuene 33:11
That's awesome. Well, hey, Maura, thank you so much for doing this and sharing your knowledge. I really appreciate it.
Maura Charles 33:16
Thank you for having me.
Jim Cuene 33:19
Thanks for listening to business drivers presented by Ferron Find us at Hello ferron.com. To learn more about the work we do sign up for our newsletter and find articles and resources to help you grow as a leader. Or find us on Twitter at Hello Ferran or on LinkedIn. If you liked what you heard, please tell a friend. It's the best way for us to grow our audience. We'd love to reach more people with the work that we're doing. And if you have ideas or advice or feedback, or complaints, please reach out to us on Twitter or send us an email at biz drivers at Hello ferron.com That's bi Z Dr. IV ers at Hello farren.com Until next time, this is Jim Keene saying thanks
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
