Name: Built to Scale: The Future-Ready HR Masterclass
Uploaded: 2026-02-12T20:00:51.767Z
Duration: 1 h 21 min 16 s
Description: Built to Scale: The Future-Ready HR Masterclass

Transcript for "Built to Scale: The Future-Ready HR Masterclass": Welcome in, everyone. My name is Ashley Collyn. I'm on the marketing team here at Rippling. We're really excited to have you here for this conversation. You are participating in our Built to Scale Masterclass series, which is designed to give you an inside look at the people systems behind the world's most iconic companies. And for today's session, we're gonna hear from Doctor. Fredrik Fert, who was Google's first Chief Innovation Evangelist, in conversation with our rippling host, Vanessa Kakush. Together, they unpack how he's advised leaders at some of the world's most recognizable companies on how to move from reacting under pressure to building with intention and how small, deliberate rituals can actually shape how work feels over time. As you listen to the conversation today, we encourage you to reflect on one question, which is what's one small shift you can make to help your organization feel more intentional by the end of the year? So I'll give you a few moments to think about that. At Rippling, we spend a lot of time partnering with HR teams who are turning ideas like these into real systems, rituals, and ways of working every single day. And one of the other ways that we're actually able to support this is through our exclusive HR community, and we actually have an upcoming roundtable that's gonna be all about burnout, so I wanna make sure to extend the invitation to all of you. If you're interested in applying for the community and attending the event, please scan the QR code on the screen. And before we jump in, just one last thing I want to learn from you to be able to understand what kind of follow-up would be most helpful in terms of conversation or resources. So go ahead and look at your poll section of your screen on the right hand side. There should be a poll popping up and go ahead and answer that for us so we know how to best follow-up with you. And now, let's hear from Vanessa and Doctor. Fredrick Fert. Thank you all for being here today. I guess we can just get started. I'm Vanessa. I'm the I'm the content manager for HR and storyteller at Rippling. And our mission is to free smart people to work on hard problems. And so I'm really excited to be here for today's conversation and, of course, to have our very special guest, Fredrik. He is the former and first chief innovation evangelist at Google and currently the award winning author of What's Next is Now, which you all have a copy of. And he's done incredible work mentoring and empowering HR leaders and teams from companies like Google to the NBA to the United Nations and so many more. And so he's here today to share his wisdom, his lessons, and his stories, and to empower us all to embody the future ready mind state. And yeah. So thank you all for taking the time to come this early morning. I hope you're enjoying the breakfast. And thank you again, Fredrik, for coming all the way here to New York. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, I'm very excited to share with all of you today. So thanks for coming. Thank you all. I don't know if you guys noticed, but at the front, we put up two whiteboards with two questions that were very intentional. The first question is: how do you feel now? And the second is, how do you want to feel at the end of 2026? And so I saw a few few answers, but I guess I'm gonna ask you, Fredrik. How do you feel right now? Yes. And obviously, knew that question. So I was thinking about an answer, like, for the whole morning. But my emotions kept changing too, how I feel. But two words came up all the time, and one is about feeling honored, just being honored to be amongst you and spend some time with you. Right? That's always a great gift that that I'm very grateful for to receive. So honored and being grateful would be my my two words. How are you feeling? I think my feelings have also just been fluctuating this morning, but it's been it's been good. I feel very I feel two things. The first is almost a sense of, like, awe that this whole event came together and just seeing everyone here and the space. Huge shout out to the team and Mary Mack who helped organize all of this. And I also feel, I guess, uncertain, you know, how is this conversation going to unfold? Also, just state of the world we live in. There's a lot of chaos. But, yeah, I think I'm feeling those two things. Perfect. How are you feeling? As nobody put up their feelings on the board, I want to ask you directly or anybody talked about their feelings when they met somebody new or like when they had breakfast. We all feel influenced by the outer climate, right? Not just the beautiful weather or if it's cold or warm, but the general climate that we're in, right? If it's a political climate, if it's our company, if it's our culture that we are part of in our organizations, that influences how we feel, right? And we get like literally drawn away by it, you know, from time to time. But nobody talked about how they want to feel in the future, right? Which is fascinating to me because that's something we actually have control over, right? If I want to feel more excited, more calm, free, more connected, more loved, whatever it is, right? I can ask myself what can I do today to move towards that feeling? Because then I'm actually shaping my future which is such a big word, right? Like shaping the future. What does it actually mean? But if I'm very clear about where I want to go, how I want to feel in the future, I can make things happen. And so we're in a beautiful area here in in New York and if you go down and you walk around you see Diane von Furstenberg, a shop she owns here or like other beautiful stores. So if you want to be if you want to feel seen in the future, right, and we all want to feel seen somehow, right, we want to be recognized by our family, friends or co workers, You can probably go into that store, buy some cool clothes, right? And then walk down the streets and maybe you feel seen. But that's not really how we should take care of our future, just buying clothes and like take care of our outside. We would probably go inside more and trying to take care of like how can I change this inner climate that's constantly changing, that's constantly evolving? And I think that's what we want to focus on today. We can't change the outer world. At least I can't. I don't know about you Vanessa. I don't think I can. Yes, but we can, you know, take care a little bit more about our inner climate. So, that's going to be our focus. Yeah. That's the intention. It's to really find a way to bridge the gap between where we are now and where we want to be. But it doesn't depend on external factors. It's completely in your control if you focus on that almost indescribable feeling within yourself that is the only constant you really can hold on to in your life when there's so much chaos happening in the world and, like you said, volatility. Well, I know that you've written your book, What's Next is Now, where you've distilled all of your wisdom and you've, I guess, put the answers in here. But, yeah, can you tell us about how can people bridge that gap between where they are now and where they want to be? Yeah, I don't know if it's wisdom. Always feel like wisdom makes me feel old. Okay. But it's things I've learned, right, from incredible people that I had the privilege to work with. Yes. Across the world and just my own experience. So I wrote this as a guide from literally moving how I feel now to how I want to feel in the future. Right? And then put an umbrella over it where I feel like this is this is how we shape our future. Right? And so everything is is in the book how we can how we can move from how I feel at the moment and how I want to feel in the future. But what about outside the book? Yes. So, a funny story. A lot of people tell me and keep telling me like, you know, it doesn't matter what's outside on the book. It only matters what's inside. Right? And I try to challenge that because I feel the cover really matters. And you just gotta judge a book by its cover, you know? You always have to judge a book by its cover. That's how we do it, right? We walk into a story and we judge it immediately. Do we like the font? Do we like kind of like, you know, the layout? Whatever it is. So, I've been working with an incredible designer friend of mine, very close friend, for about six months and how we can make that cover something that really speaks the whole story about what I want to cover in the book. And so if you want to take that book just very briefly and just hold it kind of like in front of you. What do you see? Look very closely. It should be you. Yes, you can you can go a little closer. Yes. And take your time, but there should be a silhouette of you appearing at some stage because it's a mirror. And that mirror is very unclear, right, by design. So you can't see clearly. And that's exactly when we think about the future. Right? We can see it clearly. Mostly it's that metaphor of a fog that we literally see when we want to look into the future. Right? And so that's the first thing, right? You should see yourself. And I want to remind people that the more they look into that mirror, the clearer the picture gets. Because now you start seeing like, oh yeah, that's a silhouette, that could be my ear. Right? The second thing that you just mentioned, Kaden, great to meet you, is probably you want to say it. What did you see? Yes, yes and I saw a lot of people actually shifting the book around, right? And then something beautiful appears, right? Some beautiful colors rainbow colors. And that is really speaking to like shifting our perspective. If we look at something from a slightly different angle, right? If we look at a situation maybe from a bird's eye view or look more closely at something. Right? If we shift our posture and look something from the from the underneath or from the top. Right? From the left to the right. The situation usually doesn't change but you change in what you see. So that's the second thing: shifting your perspective to see something more beautiful. And then a third thing is: for me the future is not a perfect shape. It's not a circle, it's not a square, it's not something that is already done. But the future is shapeable. So this is why you have this kind of like unusual shape in the front. So, what you should see here is the person who is responsible for the future and that is you. And you can create a better future by changing and shifting your perspective, by looking at things differently. Maybe more optimistic. That's what we heard. That you are very optimistic. And that you have the power to shape a future that you want to live in. So, you don't have to read the book. You just need to look at the cup. That's a good book to buy. Wait, you know what it just reminded me of? I don't know if anyone here remembers this scene from Kung Fu Panda. The scroll. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Okay. No. You know? Yeah. So, like oh my god. I forgot his what's the what's the name of something Lin? I anyways, the the evil character was, like, on this he was trying to, like, you know, find the answer, and he wanted the scroll. And this scroll was said to, like, solve all his problems and make him, like, the most powerful person. And he does everything to find the scroll. And then he he gets the scroll finally. He opens it up. Mhmm. And it's a mirror. And he's so mad. Throws it away. It's like, I thought the scroll had the answer. Yes. It's that the answer No. No. No. No. I don't think it's a super I think that it was that the answer was the scroll was a reflection to show that it was him. Like, he is the answer. And I think it just reminded me of the cover because it's like everyone holds the power to create their own life or whatever they really want. Like, that answer is always inside of you. It's not outside. Yes. Love that story. Thanks for sharing. And I have to watch the movie. Yeah, you gotta watch the movie. But it's interesting, like, how, you know, somebody expects to find an answer in something, right? And we all live in a world where we look into AI, we look to our boss, we look to our friends, to look to politicians, to whatever it is, right? To find an answer for what we're looking for. Mhmm. And then we have to look, you know, in the mirror. Yep. It's blurry, right? And we're unhappy, we're unsatisfied, right? We think like, no, the answer should be outside somewhere. Hopefully today you're gonna walk out this room and find the answer in the mirror, in yourself. And I think that when I first, like, grasped that concept, it was so very, like, blurry or foggy in terms of like, okay, what does that really mean? Like, how do you actually live that? But I like how, in your book, you really break down the six dimensions and you're able to kind of create frameworks for people to operate under. And I think that's like the biggest thing that I learned. It's being able to have these practices to really live that. And yeah, I think also just that inner climate that you're talking about, where you can always return to those frameworks when things outside of you change. So, like the fog, for example, that I know that we're going to get into a bit. Absolutely, yeah. So recently I have been able to be in a similar building like this very tall beautiful building Frankfurt. Actually the tallest building in the city and it was the CEO of a bank. Let's put it that way. And so we went to the elevator and we went up and obviously they're sitting in the highest floor. That's where the CEO office is. We went up and so we looked at each other and you know awkward like elevator moment like what are you going to talk about right? So he looked outside and he apologized and I looked at him like what are you apologizing for? He's like oh I'm so sorry we don't have a great view today. It's very foggy outside. That's fine yeah I don't think you can control the weather right like it's just, you know, it's okay. Yeah, but usually we have a beautiful view and I'm so so sorry that today we don't have any good view for you. And we talked about that for the rest of the day because that was really the metaphor for how he is experiencing the world right now, right? Not seeing clearly where the bank should go, where he should lead the employees towards, right? And then apologizing that he cannot make the fog go away. And so I'm happy that now we have a beautiful view today, which makes it a little bit more easy. But this is really what I experience in many many organizations and many companies, right? People are looking to the outside and they sometimes apologize they're getting frustrated and whatever it is that they can't see clearly. But rarely people look inside like how is it looking inside you? What's your inner climate about? And so in the book when you don't throw it away right because you're unhappy with the mirror you open the book and there are these six dimensions that I help people to explore and actually practice like optimism. Everybody asks, you know, now people to be more optimistic. Right? Maybe you as well. Right? You ask your people in your company. You need to be to be optimistic. Right? Or you need to be more open. Open to change. Open to a new idea. Open to a new strategy. Or being more curious. Asking better questions. Or another dimension to experiment. We ask of our people like you need to experiment with AI, you need to try it out, right? That's the way to find it out. But then people usually look at me and they look probably at you too like how can I be more optimistic? How can I be more open, more curious? How can I experiment? And so there's some practices in there that really guide people towards living those dimensions, being more optimistic. And it's incredible how people really change when they live by these dimensions, Because now they're moving away from complaining about the fog that's outside or apologizing and getting excited about what they can actually create when they understand their inner climate a little bit more. I think that it would only be fitting to also go into your story and kind of weave through how you built these dimensions for yourself, like optimism or compulsive curiosity, like from your journey. And I think there's one quote that I love from Steve Jobs, which is: You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. But when you're in it, you don't know. You just have to trust that it's going to work out. But then, not only like Well, actually, sorry. Let me add another point, which is you can't connect any dots if you don't collect them. So, I'm really curious to go into what were the dots in your journey that you collected and that you continued to persevere through? Yes. Like, take me back to the beginning before Google, before Stanford. Oh, how far back? So, I always was admiring this quote, right? And I think everybody knows it in a slightly different way. Like Steve Jobs saying, we need to connect our dots, right? They're putting different ideas together to emerge that something new emerges. But I always wondered like there must be something else because what if I don't have enough thoughts to connect? Yeah. If I don't have enough experiences or ideas that I can connect to something really, really new. And so I made it kind of like I made an effort to really connect as or collect as many dots in my life that I could. Meaning I was throwing myself really into so many experiences that I always like went to bed in the evening saying like okay today I collected you know 80 dots or like a 100 dots which are like new ideas, meeting new people, right, getting an awareness of myself and how I feel and all of those things to be able to connect more dots eventually. And so that's basically what I help people and organizations do is just collect more dots. Having more experiences, right? Having more experiences with AI, having more experiences with other people, having more experiences with yourself, right? To be able to connect them dots eventually. And so I think that's something that everybody can probably do a better job in is collecting those dots and really throwing themselves into different kind of experiences. And today we're going to explore two or three experiences that might feel very very different for you that you've probably never done but that help you to really be able to collect those thoughts to maybe go home today and say like oh okay I can connect this to something else in my work, in my life, in my relationship whatever that is. So it's going to be uncomfortable but you're going to be fine. So we're in a safe space, don't worry. But we're just gonna explore something today that's hopefully helping you to collect some more dots in your life. To get out of this routine and autopilot right that we mostly are on because our mind just feels comfortable when we do the same things over and over again. Right? We run our meetings the same way, we talk to the people the same way, we start our emails or end our emails the same way, right? We use the same tools all the time. This is not where you collect more dots. You have to throw yourself into different kind of experiences. That's what we're going to explore today. Do you want to share an example of some moments in your beginning of your journey, too? I know that you actually did a PhD in HR and business. And I'm curious, how did that also prompt you to then getting to Google? And, like, what was the story before that, too? Yes. Again, like, using that quote, like, looking backwards, it all makes sense, right? Of course, yeah, you get a PhD and then you, you know, work at Google and then you, you know, become a professor and then you write a book and like everything makes perfect sense, right? Yeah. But there's all these nuances where like, it was really hard for me to get a research position at Stanford. It took me actually 86 applications. Whole US, I think I basically wrote to every single university I was admiring in The US. And 86 said no. And it took me a very long time to eventually get someone at Stanford saying like, this guy sounds a little crazy, right? We're really not sure what he wants to do, but we give him a give him a shot. But that feeling, first application, you send it out, right, with a reference letter from a friend of mine who was a professor with like, you know, resume, like everything. You send it out and you wait. No answer. The discomfort. The discomfort. The impatience that comes up. Second application. No answer. Third application. And then, like, I remember one week, like, all the no's came in. Right? No, no, no, no, no. And I just didn't give up. I kept trying because I felt like, you know, how can I get something if I don't try? And so overcoming this feeling of being rejected, not being good enough, not being like, you know, probably not good enough, yeah, and that feeling and putting that to the side and said, No, I'm just going to try and try and try and move on. Got me to all of those places. And I think that's something where looking back, nobody sees, right? But looking forward you really have to get comfortable with. And so that's I think something I give to my kids now When they say like, you know, I can't do it or whatever it is, I said, you need to try. That's the only way to find out. And even to CEOs, right? When they feel like, you know, we're not sure where we're going to go, try it, right? And see where it leads to. Should we give it a try to do something together that might be but a little bit we're gonna try it. So what I want you to do is I want you to stand up for a moment and, you can choose any place to stand in this room. You need a little bit of space. So yeah go go far to the window to spread out. So I want to put you in that state of mind where you just you're unsure what's gonna happen. I think everybody's now at that stage, right? It's like, what are we gonna do? And at the same time, we're gonna do something that feels maybe awkward in the beginning, feels very uncomfortable, you're not sure what you're doing, but I want you to just remember to keep trying. So what we're going to do is we're going to walk. And we're in New York City. And if you're like me from coming from California, from other places, you come to New York, you see people walk differently. They walk very fast. They don't look at you. They mostly look on their phones. Right? And there's an incredible speed here that people have. So what we want to do today is we want to do an opposite walk. We want to take a very slow walk. I forgot. And New Yorkers know exactly where to go. My friend and myself, we needed to stop like four or five people because we didn't know where the subway was. And it's really hard to stop someone, right? Because they're rushing by and saying, Wait, wait, wait, wait. So they all know where to go. Right? We didn't. So we want to now walk very slowly without having a goal. We're not sure we're gonna, you know, walk this way or that way or how far we're gonna get. So we're gonna take half steps and with every step you're just gonna take a breath breathing in and breathing out. Very simple. Then you take another half step. Then you take another half step. It's gonna feel really awkward, but that's the point. Yes. And when you're at that feeling of like, What am I doing here? I have to go to this meeting or I have better things to do. Just take a deep breath in. Do another half step and maybe then close your eyes. You ready? Perfect. Alright. Whenever you're ready take your first step half step. If you feel comfortable, your eyes and just feel that balance. Alright, wonderful. Just stay where you are. You probably experienced some emotions, right? Awkward, feels different, not sure where we're going to go. You watched other people How are they doing it? Now I want you to turn to someone that's standing next to you and just face them. Now, we're going to do something that maybe feels for a New Yorker very uncomfortable because we're going to look that person in the eyes. Just start looking them in the eyes. Choose one person and then just look them in the eyes. There's nothing you have to do. Your gaze wandered away, maybe just bring it back, give it another try. Just take in how it feels to be seen, being present, paying attention. Alright. Thank you. Can you give that person a high five? Are sure they're negative? I'm more. I'm worried. I'm Abby. What? You're just that was such a weird up. That was definitely experience. Yes, it's so fascinating, right? Like, who found this challenging? Like, both, like, walking slowly and then looking into the eyes. Yes, which is fascinating to me. I don't find that challenging because it's something very human. You all work in HR human resources. We'd want to walk fast, right? Yes, not looking people in the eyes. So I've done this same exercise only the eyes looking part at one of the big big fours consulting company leadership team 35 people, one room And I challenged them to do it for five minutes. Just looking at each other? We did it for almost a minute. Tears, people walking out the room, not looking at each other. And you could see that these five minutes told you more about that leadership team than any survey, any kind of interview, any whatever it is observations. Because you knew that there were some dynamics in that leadership team that needed to be fixed, needed to be resolved, needed to be worked on. And so for me, it's always fascinating because looking someone in the eyes doesn't mean that, you know, you're or it means in the first couple of seconds that you see someone. But what happens then is that you see yourself. Your emotions, your own emotions are basically coming to the surface. It's like looking in the mirror. Mhmm. And so doing that more often really helps you to not just challenge yourself, but really understand your inner climate. What am I really feeling now? What am I really feeling going into this meeting? What am I really feeling coming out of this meeting? What am I feeling talking to an employee? What am I feeling talking to my boss? My friend? To my partner? And just having that awareness is powerful because that puts you in a position where you not just understand, but then you can change or shift. The awareness. It's crazy because I just realized how not often or little that we take the time to pause and like really, like, see someone. Like, we always say, How are you? Great. Nice to see you. Like, it's like fast. It's like transactional almost. It's like, you just say, I'm good. I'm good. But when do you really, like, actually sit there and see the person say, no, but like, how are you? Like, how are you doing? And I just feel like there's this pressure of go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, it's easy to not pause. And so that really made me realize, like, there was a moment where I was, like, looking at the person and then I could really see them. And I was like, woah! Like, it took a moment, like, it took some time. And so, it's just, like, something to think about. Absolutely, yeah. This is why we also don't see a lot of these post its, right? Because people don't want to share their feelings, They feel like this is something I protect. But it's the most powerful thing to do because then you can really also see someone else. You can see someone fully as you described. Yeah. And so, in my leadership coachings, I sometimes just sit with people and look them in the eyes. This is enough. You don't need to ask a question, you don't need to, you know, share something. You just need to recognize how are you feeling at the moment, right? And you see everything. You can feel how they're feeling when you're present. But it's interesting too, how I really think you can only see another person clearly, like their humanity almost, if you see yourself first. Because how you see another person is really a reflection of how you see yourself. And so, that connection you have within yourself is something that enables you to connect with anyone in your organization, in your personal life. Absolutely, yeah. And so, maybe a good practice to take home is: first thing in the morning, resist that temptation to check your phone. Because I always feel like, you know, we're checking the phone the first thing in the morning and we're still in our pajamas and we allow like a thousand people literally into our bedroom Were we not dressed yet? So we allow these ideas, these people, these opinions, everything coming at us. And what does it to us? It basically pushes us around in different emotional states without even recognizing how do I feel actually this morning. Do I feel impatient? Do I feel excited? Curious? Do I feel like connected or lonely? And so just taking like literally three breaths or whatever it is thirty seconds in the morning just checking in with yourself. How do I feel? Every morning is different. Every morning you feel different. So, when we took, my friend, Florian, we took the elevator this morning in the building and you said something interesting. You said This is the slowest elevator I've ever been in. Right? Is that correct? And then we went into this elevator and you have these beautiful screens, right? And you want the elevator literally to stop because you want to look more at that beautiful kind of like moving images and all of those things, right? It was like a theater in there. Which is like interesting, right? In the one situation you want to have the elevator go faster, in the other situation you want to have the elevator go slower. And this is life! Yeah, you can't always choose what the elevator you're going to get into You will be literally can go out, you're trying to fix the elevator, right? You make it go faster, change the algorithm, whatever it is. Instead, because you can't mostly fix an elevator. I worked with an elevator company and it's really hard to do. But what you can do is you can check with yourself like, why am I impatient right now? Why is that driving me crazy that the elevator is going slow? Funny story: when I worked at this elevator company called KONE in Finland, We were looking at things like you know how can we make people really enjoy elevators, Especially when they have to wait and you push that button, you push it you know twice, then you push both buttons because you don't know what's going to actually happen. At least I do. And then you know things they invented was not to make the elevator go faster but they put a mirror on the doors so that people can look at themselves. They can check how do I look today, right? They put hand sanitizers outside, you know, sanitize your hands, right? There's some music. All of those things, great ideas that make you literally move away from being impatient, hating the elevator, to being okay that the elevator doesn't go that fast. And for me that's fascinating, yeah. Wait, I haven't Okay. Well, I had two questions, but Okay, I'll say one in a second, when we go into the organizations, because it reminded me of you can make changes to your organization almost like you can see an organization like an elevator. Like, you can design the elevator. No one's stopping you. But before I get there, want to ask about another question, which was, okay, so say I wake up in the morning, Right? And I feel I can feel this feeling that's like anxiety or just like fear for no reason almost. And you know you feel it and you don't like how you feel it. Or you don't like that you're stuck in this feeling. You're like, 'Ugh, I don't want to feel this way.' But like, what do you do about it when you know that you're in it and you at least have the awareness? But then, how do you really move through it without being consumed by it? Anybody has an answer? Yes, what would you do? Yes. I'm a believer that you can change IQ, especially when you wake up in the morning, sleep from a bad dream or something that cause you anxiety. But the first thing you have to look at, how grateful your life is. And it could be the simple things. You're breathing. You're alive. You're healthy. It doesn't have to be anything about your career. It doesn't have to be anything that's materialistic. Just the simple things that we avoid, and we can't afford it. And those things that, for me, you talk about the phone. I charge my phone in the kitchen. I don't keep saying, Andrew. Yeah. And I the first thing that I wake up every morning is really how grateful I am to the life that I have. And I'm grateful I am that I'm healthy, and I'm grateful that my kids are healthy here. You know, I have you have a life. It doesn't have to come with anything else besides the simple things that we are healthy, we are pretty way. Those when when you start incorporating that in everyday morning, no matter how anxiety it is, it goes away Yeah. With a few simple breathing. And it works for me. Well, it's there's actually, like, science behind it because you can't can't physically, like, feel fear if you're feeling an emotion like gratitude. Emotion is emotion. Your body does not know the difference between Exactly. Yeah. And it also doesn't know what's you can create it. You can create it. So, like you said, you you are able to create a new feeling. So those are the changes you can make. I love yeah. They change that. And I'm I'm a huge believer because I do it. And every once in this morning that you wake up and it's just, oh my gosh. I'm late to work. My alarm did not go up. Whatever it is. So you can take it takes literally three minutes to change your ECO. And it will it will take it will go with you for the rest of the day. And you get better at it. Yeah. Right? First morning, it starts like, what am I grateful for? Come on. Whether it's horrible outside, you know, politics are crazy, like everything, right? But if you focus and just as simple as thing, right? The room is warm, right? And if that still doesn't work, I have a trick because what I do is and I also have a really hard time not to check the phone in the morning first thing but what I did is I asked my 10 year old daughter to send me three things every day when I'm traveling that she is grateful for. And so, you know, that's the first thing I read in the morning and it's very cute. I have to read it to you. Tell her I every love that ritual. So, she doesn't have a phone, if you're asking. She uses mommy's phone, but we have a separate chat group. One thing I liked is I got to go to another dance. I liked that we did art in class. What I didn't like is that you're not here again. So she always puts in one thing that she doesn't like, which is totally fine. But for me, it's a great reminder that these are the smallest things. But the practice of sharing those, right, helps to make my day start very different than I would go on CNN, you know, NBC, whatever it is, right? Or reading like an email that I don't know what's in it, right? I know exactly that these will be three things that make me smile for a moment. So it's a great practice that we can all try and you can do this in the morning and you can do this in the evening. There's research behind it that it actually shifts your way of thinking after thirty days. Thirty days you're moving away from that question what's the worst thing that can happen today? That's what we always think about, right? We always put these horror scenarios out there because our mind really wants us to prepare for everything horrible. Survival. And we change the question from what's the worst thing that can happen to what's the best thing that can happen today. I love that. And just that little intention change. Absolutely. Yes. Okay, this is a perfect segue into what I wanted to ask you about, because you've worked I just put some of the logos of the companies that you've worked at or that you've helped also empower teams at and HR teams and leaders. And we have a room full of people leaders and HR leaders here today. So obviously, I see HR as kind of the collector of dots or the connector of dots, the dots being like the humans of the company and the organisation. Obviously, a lot falls on HR's plate and some of it is like the fog you don't have control. But now that we're talking about these little practices, I think those are things that shape these organizations and make them incredible places to work at and that people enjoy being at. So, I want to ask you, from your experience working at incredible companies like the UN, NBA, Google, what's the common thread between these inner climates of these companies? Yes, yes. And it's fascinating. It's always the same. You walk into and yesterday we just walked into the NBA again and the day before at the Stock Exchange. You walk into this organization it's always the same because you walk the floors, you walk you know the entrance and then you see every in every organization usually one thing and that is the values or the principles or a mission statement. Usually either people wearing them on t shirts, it's on big screens, it's on posters or it's on the wall. These are the values that we really hold high in this company. So when walking into this organization, it's always great that they have values because it's important. And I think there's some pride in it too. Because in your organization you have values too. Some have like three, some have like 10. You know depends. Some can be remembered, some not so much. But it's really something that you can be proud of. But when you walk these halls of these organizations, you see people and then you can immediately spot if people are living those values or not. And then you can go further because when you ask people like so how are you bringing those values to life? How are you showing up according to these values? Most organizations don't have a response. So like, we don't know, is it not enough to have those values? No, I don't think so because you know people need to be able to live those values in an all hands meeting, a one on one, in how they write emails and how they communicate and how they work together, how they collaborate. And so put some effort into translating those values into rituals to really help organizations to not just have those values on big boards or like on the posters, but bring those values to life through rituals. And I learned that from sports organizations because I was the innovation coach for the German Soccer Association and I worked with them for quite some time to create rituals. And I learned it also from the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team, The most famous and most successful rugby team in the history of rugby. And everybody knows probably that ritual they do before they actually start playing. Right? This hookah dance. Right? They shout out things I don't understand. They look with like weird faces and they, you know, dance a dance that I probably would have a hard time to dance. And everybody believes that this is the ritual that makes that team successful. It's not according to them. There's another ritual that is fascinating which actually brings their values to life and that is a ritual where they always clean up their own locker room by themselves. Now that sounds for a lot of people very simple. Sounds like okay I clean up my my stuff at home too. But when you look into sports and sports organizations, there's not a lot of teams that clean up their own locker room, especially if you're successful. You have your people who do that. In that team, they don't. From the head coach to the most junior player they take their time after the game to all help together to leave the locker room spotless. No matter if it's their own stadium, no matter if it's the competitor's stadium, no matter if they won or lost. And what that brings to life is that they feel as a community. They feel as a collective where everyone is equal. There's not one that says like I don't clean up, right? Because I earned my position. No, everybody helps. It's all hands on deck. The second thing is what they bring to life is respect. Because they want to show respect to the competitor where they were allowed to play to the space they were in and all of those things. And the third thing is they want to have a closing to the game because then they can say like okay we're done we cleaned up we can focus on our next game. And fascinating because if you watch the last soccer World Cup, I'm not big into sports so I I don't know if it was the last one or the previous one. You could actually see that the Japanese fans of the Japanese soccer team were doing the same thing. They cleaned up the stadium and those pictures and videos went around the world. They went viral because it was so surprising for a lot of people that the Japanese soccer team just lost I think three-zero or whatever it is and the fans were cleaning up the stadium. It's a cultural thing. It's a ritual. They want to show respect. They want to you know have an ending to this. Say look okay we're done here we cleaned up and we can focus on what's next. It's incredible because that ritual really brings values to life in a very powerful way. And I want to share a couple of other rituals that I partly developed but also partly learned in some organizations. One that I created was a ritual and I don't know, Sidney, if that's still around at Google. Welcome and hello. It's the Penguin Award. One team, quite a big team, the leadership team came to me and said like you know Frederic, our team is not taking any risks anymore. They're just playing it safe. They don't want to try anything new, always do the same things, they're doing it in a good way, you know, no complaints there. But we want the team to show a little bit more risk taking. Right? Try some new stuff. And so we thought hard like how can we build a ritual around that? And I was once on a ship called the Entrepreneurship. I didn't come up with that name but I feel like it's still a brilliant name. Entrepreneurship. Stanford students, students from Chile, we sailed to the end of the world and we saw penguins. If you see penguins, it's fascinating because they're all standing in a colony on a nice shelf and there's one penguin that jumps first into the water. It's the courageous penguin because that penguin risks their lives because they don't know if they're gonna be they're gonna be food or become if they're gonna find food or become food, right? It's a 50% chance. And the rest of the colony waits patiently and says, okay, is that coming up again? Or is it a big bloodbath. Oh no. Or did they find fish, right? And then they jump into the water too. And so we basically got just a small figure, $5, a penguin. And every other week we gave it to the person, like Kali, because she took a risk. She tried something new. New technology, new process, new project, new customer, whatever it is. Got the penguin, big ceremony, read out like why she was so brave and courageous and so forth. And then she was able to give that penguin to another colleague after two weeks. A little penguin did go a very long way because after a couple of months you actually could see and we did surveys that people took more risks. Wow. Because they felt recognized for it. And the recognition was not just for being successful but for taking risks. And that is a very simple $5 ritual that you can introduce that happens every other week that is driven not by you as a leader but by somebody in the team because it's going to be handed from team member to team. And people proudly put this little penguin on their desk because then everybody knew, they're the risk taker. They're the courageous ones in our teams. Right? And you all know who those penguins in your teams are. Right? So I think we should start recognizing and rewarding them even more. But there's another Still do it. Really? I'm not. Wait. Really? What is it like? Wait. It's not it depends. I see it through different organizations. It's not quite a bad See, but the the idea is still there. It's fine. I'm glad. How many years ago was this? Oh. I have to count. Many years. I wouldn't say decades yet. Perfect. So that's incredible that and the reason I think it lasted is also because there's that artifact like a physical thing of that penguin. Yes, $5 worth. Wow, it's an incredible ROI. Do you want to do the I think that one very briefly because I think that's a fascinating one. That's happening at Google X, the moonshot factory where they invented the self driving cars and Google Glass and other things. So what they recognize and that's probably happening in every organization is that people work on projects that are already failing, that are not delivering the success that they actually should deliver. Right? Instead of going to these teams and say like, what's your name? Amor, you need to stop working on your project. How do you feel now? Not so okay probably. It's like, oh, why should I Or stop working on a project like read, right? We need to cancel your project, sorry. Right? That's a horrible thing to do as a leader. So but you need to stop these projects because they're not leading to the success that you want to see in the organization. So how are you going to do that? Through a ritual. A ritual that actually is happening yearly at the day of the dead. Spanish holiday. Every year a big coffin and I saw this coffin, it's huge, was put in the middle of the atrium in the entrance And on that day, everybody was allowed to bring their projects forward that they want to stop working on. On business plans, with post it notes, with prototypes, whatever like was was basically an artifact from that project. Putting it into the coffin is going to be burned. Big celebration, lots of tears. But a community that supports you like the Day of the Dead, you let go of your ancestors, of the people that you're in love with. And create room for something you can imagine not a lot of people put their projects into that coffin, right? Because a lot of people in our organizations they identify with their projects. They think like this is the thing I'm working on and if I stop working on this thing Who am I? It's my baby. Who am I? Exactly. Or I'm gone, right? I'm gonna be fired. So there were some incentives that were also given. The first one was you get a bonus if you put your project into that coffin. Big bonus. Second, you get 30 of vacation. Third incentive, because that wasn't enough, was you get job guarantee. So you come back after thirty days and you get the chance to pick another project or another team that you want to join. Now imagine how many teams were putting their projects into that coffee. And what you saw is that people felt more comfortable in letting go. So like, yeah, this project so one project I remember they were trying to get energy out of avalanches. Sounds funny, right? But the professor she was like literally like you know it was her baby because she believed and she actually proved that she can get energy out of avalanches. But it was just not scalable, was just not making any money. She put it into the coffin and said like I'm not going to work on that. Yeah, I'll focus on something else. A beautiful ritual just happens once a year, day of the dead, you just need a coffin, little incentive and you see that your organization starts to speed up again. Speed up working on new stuff. Last ritual. Love this one. Don't know if it's still around, but I learned that from Dropbox. At Dropbox, one of the values is delight your user. So what they did is to bring that value to life is every person who starts at Dropbox gets a contract sent to. And a cupcake recipe and some cupcake holders like these little paper paper things. Because what they wanted to do is they wanted that the team member who started new and fresh, a new employee comes the first day and brings something to the team that delights everyone. A very simple thing that makes it it easier for the new employee because everybody's nervous on their first day to come into the team delighting everyone with some cupcakes. Very simple, very cheap, but really bringing that value of delight your user to life with every new employee. I think that's it. And that's it. That's at Google. You wear funny hats your first thirty days. Thirty days? Building that you're new, you're fun, but also you're allowed to ask questions. And every Friday you could ask questions to Sergei and Larry and today to Sundar Pichai, the CEO. They took the time for one hour every week. And I was there twelve and a half years. I saw Sergei not showing up once or twice in twelve and a half years. Because he was sick or something was happening. But they took the time to just answer questions for one hour. It's an incredible amount of transparency, openness, which is one of those values that they wanted to bring to life. Beautiful. But these are just some examples of rituals, and I was wondering if we can create a ritual for your organization that you literally can start tomorrow to try out and experiment with. So what I want you to do is I want you to turn to your neighbor. It doesn't have to be the person you looked into the eyes. It could just be your neighbor or the person sitting behind you. And I want you to put yeah, just find that person, and I want you to put your hands together with that person so that we are connecting. Yes. Put your hands together. Fantastic. Great. Just one person. Yes. Great. One hand is enough. You can do two. I love that. Should we do it? We do it. And I want you to decide who is gonna be person A and who is gonna be person B. You can be A. Perfect. Thank you. Got it? Perfect. Who here chose I want to be A? You said literally I wanna be a? Anybody? Two? Three? Very courageous. Yes. It's very rare because usually people say like, yeah, you can be a. I'm gonna be b. I'm fine. Right? Because I don't wanna go first. But we have two courageous penguins right here. Right? Perfect. Yes. I wanna be a. And what we're gonna do is person b is gonna start, and person b is gonna push. Yeah. As hard as you can. Yes. Push. Fascinating. What was person A doing? Resisting. What else? Pushing back. Yes. Did I say person A pushed back or resist? These courageous penguins. So that's the metaphor for when you come with a ritual into your organization. You as a leader say like, tomorrow we're gonna do the penguin award. What do you think is gonna happen? Push back. Yes. Everything. Oh, no. Why can't we do the same things that we did yesterday? What's $5? Expect pushback like you just did. It's just a human reaction. We have a really hard time to let go. So imagine you're gonna bring that ritual, you're gonna have pushback. That's why we want to do this exercise in the following way: I'm going to give you a minute to write down your values of your organization in that first little box that you find in the book on that beautiful page that is there. So write your values and if you forgot them, look them up. I think they're on our website. Totally fine. Everyone have a pen? Oh, let me grab. Yes. Share some pens. So just your three, four, five values of your organization go in the first box. It's a good reminder to bring them back into our awareness of what are our values of our organization. One of the values that Rippling and correct me if I'm wrong is to be open to change your mind. Yes. I saw that yesterday on a big screen. Free to change minds. Free to change your mind. Yes. That would be one of the rippling principles, which I love, yeah. One of the ones that I love at rippling is go and see. Go and see. So basically, for example, I was working with a close group of people in my team and, you know, I had no idea how the growth team was operating. I was only focused on content. And I was like, you know what? Just gonna go and see. So I just like started reaching out to people in the growth team, even though I've never met with them, never talked to them, had no idea how their things worked. And then from that, I was able to understand, oh, like, that's why this is not working. Like, we need to work together. And so, go and see pushes you to go outside of your circle or your environment and like, get some information and then bring it back. So, like that one a lot. Perfect. If you have your values written down, I want you to just circle one that you really feel like is the most important this year, that you want to maybe focus on as a HR organization, as a culture, maybe the leadership team already mentioned like, we need to be more whatever that value is, right? There's usually like a tendency that you put one in the focus. Which one is that? And then just circle that. Right? And now we're just gonna pass that page to our friend that just pushed back. And so they're gonna develop a ritual for you. So they're gonna take that circled value and they're gonna create a ritual that can be totally copied from these I just shared. It can be similar to the Penguin Award, it can be similar to the cupcakes, it can be similar to the Day of the Dead, whatever it is. It doesn't have to be. What I want you to do is I want you to frame this ritual around an artifact. Remember the coffin? Remember the penguin? Right? Remember the cupcakes? These are all artifacts and it's really easy for people to really cling to those artifacts because it makes that ritual just more understandable, more simple to grasp and so forth. Really frame that ritual around an artifact. I also want you to give that name give that ritual a name. Could be just a headline, it could be like one word, could be like a longer sentence whatever it is. And then I want you to include like when is the ritual happening? Is there like a trigger for it? Right? When somebody took a risk then the ritual will actually be activated. Day of the dead it's just happening once a year. So is it happening every Friday? Is it happening when something specific happens and so forth? So we want to have an artifact, we want to have a headline or a title and we want to have the trigger event. Like when is it actually happening? And then the last piece is who is involved? Is it like a thing for like just a specific team? Is it for the whole organization? Is it just for the leadership team? So be specific on who the audience actually is. Alright. One more high five to the person that just developed a ritual for you, saying thank you. And so I highly recommend doing that exercise again and again. Also using AI, right? An easy prompt, you know, create a ritual for value x y and z, right? Value to be free to change your mind, create me a ritual including or an artifact, the people that should be involved in that ritual, the trigger or the timing for that. Right? So you can create a whole list of rituals. And then taking thirty days to really try it out. And just finding people that might get the penguin, right? That might be the first ones that are awarded with that penguin award for example. Because what you're going to see in those thirty days and I recommend thirty days as a period because after these thirty days you really want to check-in and see like what is working and what's not working. Because most rituals will fail. They will not work which tells you something about your organization. Because you chose those values maybe a long time ago. And you don't want to bring them to life. Right? What's the disconnect? Why is the organization the culture not ready for it? What do we need to change to really be able to bring those values to life? So it's a really great way to do those tests over and over again with those rituals and see like what's happening in our culture that prevents us or that supports to really bring those values to life. And so that's a great way of experimenting your way forward to really hopefully eventually create the culture that you want to see happening in your organization. And rituals is that lever, that approach that really helps you to move from a culture that's working okay to a culture that you really, really want to work in, that you want to be part of and that you feel a sense of belonging in as well. So thanks for doing that quick exercise and thanks overall for being ready to change your mind. Think, you know, bring that value to life today. Because I think it's always fascinating that we can continue to work to see the future as something that is not out there happening. It's not the fog that is the future. It's something that we are practicing every day and hopefully create in a way that we feel comfortable with, that we feel also challenged by and eventually move towards a future that we all want to live in. And maybe you found some things today that helped you to move towards that. So, thank you. Thank you so much. I guess before we close and open it up for Q and A, I want to ask you one final question. As we head into 2026, it's already February, and a lot of things have already been happening in the world. And, of course, this practice here really helps us ground ourselves in rituals. But I want to ask you: What is one thing that everyone in this room can hold on to and remind themselves as they leave this room? Like, what is one thing they can hold on to for the rest of 2026 that you believe will empower them in their organizations? Yes. And we didn't prepare that. Vanessa told me yesterday, I have one question for you which I won't share with you before. So this is that question, I guess. Can I ask can I say two things? Yeah. So the first thing is that's always helping me is to ask a different question. And what I mean by that is not asking yourself what's the worst thing that can happen because that's shown to you every day, right? By the media, by the news, by your friends maybe, and we're talking about those things. Ask yourself what's the best thing that can happen. That's a little shift, maybe a big shift, but just constantly remind yourself that our brain and our mind is not comfortable with that question: What's the best thing that can happen? It's very comfortable with the question: What's the worst thing that can happen? Because that's what the mind is actually supposed to do. Right? So that little shift maybe is a good reminder. And then the second one is which is similar but but different as well which is we always ask ourselves what's next? What will the future bring? Right? And we look into the news, we look into whatever predictions, trends. We always try to find like what is next. I don't think that's a good question to ask because it puts you into into the the passenger seat. Right? Because then you're waiting literally and you're observing like what's next. What I rather would ask is what future do I want to create? And what can I do today to do that? Right? If you want to create a future that's more beautiful, filled with more love, connection, freedom, whatever it is, right? What's one thing you can do today to start doing that? It doesn't have to be big things, it can be very small things like giving someone a compliment. I just received a compliment downstairs and you were with me. That made me happy, right? And I thanked the person and it's something very powerful we can do all more of. Maybe the question is not what's next, what's now? Probably that's the question. So, what's now? I guess when you guys when everyone leaves not even when you leave, now in this moment, like, you can start changing and creating. Then there's probably a third thing what I want to share with you. Because most people ask me, Hey, Frederic, what's next? What's the future going to be like? You're the fortune teller. Future teller. My Halloween costume was actually a fortune teller last time. And I made fun of the futurists trying to predict the future. So I was reading people's hands. I said like this is gonna be your future. Most people believed me, interestingly. But I have actually an app for you that literally tells you and shows you your future. And it's on all of your phones. So if you want to take out your phone, take it out. Yes. And I want you to, like we started with the book I want you to hold it in front of you. And I want you to go to the camera app. You knew it! And I want you to turn it around so that the camera is facing you. Yes. Find a good angle. Maybe a little smile goes a long way. Yes, you can have many attempts. And I like what Sydney and Florian are already doing. Maybe you can also have someone else join you in that picture. Wait. Because a better future is always created together. I think this means we gotta take a group photo. Yes. Let's do that. Perfect. Amazing. And you can turn the camera around again once more because I have something for you. So you can scan that code and there's a little test I think if you're working in HR you love like a little it's not an evaluation that's too big of a word but it shows you how optimistic, how open, how curious, how much you love experiments and how empathetic you are in a three minute quick test and it gives you some recommendations on how you can practice that even more for your future. I think it's a cool thing that you can try out, helps you to develop your future ready mind state and I want to say a big thanks to you Vanessa for your courage and for everything that you did to bring us all together today. Mary as well, thank you. And to all of you for showing up this morning. And I hope you take something with you in your day, in your week, weekend, and hopefully in your life. So thank you so much. Thank you so much.