Latest / Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast / Chief in Tech S1E27 - Christal Bemont : Why You Should Give Your Cell Phone Number to 1,300 People

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Chief in Tech S1E27 - Christal Bemont : Why You Should Give Your Cell Phone Number to 1,300 People · Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast

0:00
Imagine stepping into the role of CEO, right?
0:02
Like right in the middle of a global pandemic.
0:05
Just the absolute most chaotic time you could
0:07
possibly pick. Right. And you're staring down
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this roster of, I think it was 1 ,400 employees
0:12
scattered all across the world. Yeah, across
0:15
23 different locations. 23 locations. And you
0:18
decide that your absolute best first move is
0:21
to hand out your personal private cell phone
0:24
number. to every single one of them. Which is
0:27
just, I mean, it's unheard of. Not a routed corporate
0:30
line, you know, not an assistant's desk, your
0:33
actual device. Your actual device ringing in
0:35
your pocket. Exactly. OK, let's unpack this because
0:38
welcome to the deep dive. Today, we have a really
0:41
fascinating mission. We really do. We are exploring
0:43
this radically accessible approach to leadership
0:46
and workplace empathy, drawing from excerpts
0:49
of a speech called The Open Door Policy and an
0:52
article titled The Open Line. Yeah, and the goal
0:55
here is to really dissect the mechanics of what
0:58
actually happens when a leader just completely
1:00
dismantles traditional corporate boundaries.
1:03
Right, like operationalizing, treating employees
1:05
as entire complex human beings. Because it is
1:09
a massive structural pivot. We are looking at
1:11
a first -time CEO taking the reins at a company
1:16
appropriately called Talent. in early 2020. Yeah
1:19
early 2020. So she steps into this role right
1:21
as the COVID -19 pandemic just shuts down the
1:24
globe. Exactly. Yeah. Accompanied by significant
1:27
political unrest obviously. Right. And suddenly
1:30
she is managing a global team. And because of
1:33
the immediate lockdowns, she has never even met
1:35
90 % of them face to face. I mean, the logistics
1:38
of that alone are staggering. You're trying to
1:40
build, like, organizational cohesion and a unified
1:44
culture entirely through a webcam. Yeah, it's
1:46
incredibly difficult. The physical isolation
1:48
just creates this massive psychological barrier.
1:51
So... To dissolve what she calls the remote fourth
1:54
wall, she takes this incredibly bold action.
1:58
The cell phone number. Right. She gives her personal
2:00
cell phone number to a roster that grew from,
2:02
I think, 1 ,300 to 1 ,400 people during this
2:04
period. And on top of that, when she actually
2:07
was permitted back into the physical building,
2:09
she outright refused the traditional executive
2:11
corner office. Oh, wow. So where did she go?
2:14
She basically packed up and moved her workspace
2:16
right down to the main floor to be exactly where
2:19
the action was. Huh. So she is systematically
2:22
rejecting all those symbols of corporate hierarchy,
2:25
right? The ones that dictate, like, distance
2:28
equals authority. Exactly. Because the traditional
2:31
model relies on insulation. You know, you have
2:34
gatekeepers, you have the rigid org chart. Right,
2:36
the layers of management. Yeah. And those mechanisms
2:38
are explicitly designed to protect the executive's
2:41
time and cognitive load. So by removing them,
2:44
she is signaling a completely different operational
2:47
framework. Uh, I have to push back on the reality
2:50
of that framework, honestly. How so? Because
2:52
my immediate reaction to reading this wasn't
2:55
like admiration, it was sheer logistical panic.
2:58
Oh, totally understandable. I mean, handing out
3:00
your direct line to 1 ,400 people, it feels like
3:03
leaving your front door wide open in the middle
3:04
of the bustling city. Yeah, it feels like a recipe
3:07
for disaster. It really does. It feels completely
3:11
counterintuitive to basic corporate survival.
3:14
I just kept thinking, isn't this asking for total
3:17
catastrophic burnout? Right. Like, how can anyone
3:20
actually run a global company dealing with supply
3:24
chains and board meetings and pandemic protocols
3:27
if their phone is ringing off the hook 24 -7?
3:30
With every minor grievance from 23 time zones.
3:34
Exactly. Well, what's fascinating here is the
3:36
psychological mechanism of the safety net. Okay,
3:39
what do you mean by that? You intuitively expect
3:42
a non -stop barrage of calls, right? But the
3:45
CEO actually notes in the sources that she doesn't
3:47
get as many calls as she would like. Wait, really?
3:50
She wants more? Yeah. Because the frequency of
3:52
the phone ringing isn't actually the point. The
3:55
profound lesson is that the act of giving out
3:57
the number is the intervention itself. Oh, I
4:00
see. It establishes an immediate baseline of
4:02
psychological safety. So it's not like a hotline
4:05
for complaints. It's a statement of trust. Exactly
4:08
that. When a leader says, I am literally in your
4:11
pocket if you need me, it shifts the entire power
4:14
dynamic. It tells the employee they're valued
4:17
enough to bypass the bureaucracy. Yes. While
4:20
simultaneously placing the responsibility on
4:22
them not to abuse that access, it creates autonomy.
4:26
Right, right. People don't call. because the
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anxiety of being disconnected or ignored is already
4:32
resolved just by holding the number in their
4:34
hands. It's like having a fire extinguisher in
4:38
your kitchen. Oh, that's a good analogy. Like,
4:40
knowing it's under the sink completely lowers
4:42
your anxiety about cooking, but having it doesn't
4:44
make you want to go around starting fires just
4:46
so you can use it. Right? The mere presence of
4:48
the tool just changes your psychological state
4:51
in the room. That is a perfect way to frame it.
4:53
The open phone line acts as an anxiety reducer.
4:56
which actually lowers the overall volatility
4:58
of the organization. That makes a lot of sense.
5:00
But, you know, we have to look at where a concept
5:02
like this originates because that kind of radical
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structural empathy doesn't just spontaneously
5:08
generate because an executive attended a weekend
5:11
seminar. No, definitely not. It is forged. And
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the source material traces this directly back
5:16
to her roots, forcing us to look at her childhood
5:19
to really understand the resilience she brings
5:23
to her leadership model. Yeah. And here's where
5:25
it gets really interesting. Because she grew
5:27
up on a farm, right? She did. But the sources
5:30
are quick to clarify that this was not some trendy,
5:34
modern farm -to -table pastoral lifestyle. Far
5:37
from it. She lived on a plot of land in a trailer
5:39
with absolutely no electricity, no running water,
5:42
and no indoor plumbing. Just pure, unvarnished
5:45
survival. Right. Just 10 years old, navigating
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those incredibly intense conditions, she has
5:52
this massive epiphany. Yeah, she realizes that
5:55
while she can't control her difficult physical
5:57
circumstances, she has a definitive, unshakable
6:00
choice in her mindset. She could succumb to what
6:02
other people assumed a kid from a trailer was
6:04
capable of, or she could use it as a stepping
6:07
stone to rise to the occasion. And that realization,
6:10
at just 10 years old, is the discovery of an
6:12
internal locus of control. She recognized her
6:15
own agency in an environment that was essentially
6:18
designed to strip it away. But you know in business
6:21
we hear that hard knocks origin story all the
6:23
time. We do. Very often. Usually the narrative
6:26
goes that extreme hardship creates these tough
6:29
hardened like no excuses leaders. Right the whole
6:32
I suffered so you have to suffer mentality. Exactly.
6:35
They suffered so they demand perfection and thick
6:38
skin from everyone below them. So looking at
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her trajectory I have to ask. Does experiencing
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that kind of trauma actually make someone a more
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empathetic leader? Or does it actively require
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conscious choice. Right. Does it require conscious
6:53
choice to translate your own personal pain into
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an understanding of other people's struggles?
6:58
Because it seems like the default setting for
7:01
corporate survival is just to build thicker walls.
7:04
It absolutely requires a highly conscious active
7:07
choice. The default setting is definitely self
7:09
-preservation, which like you said usually manifests
7:12
as that hardened archetype. Right. But the sources
7:15
highlight that she utilized her history to construct
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this fundamental core belief, which is that everyone
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has a lot going on outside their job. Just baseline.
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Everyone is dealing with something. Exactly.
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She remembered her own experience of actively
7:29
hiding the reality that she had no running water
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at home. Wow. And she took that memory and applied
7:36
it to her workforce, realizing that every single
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employee she interacts with is carrying an immense
7:43
load. of hidden challenges. Which fundamentally
7:46
changes how you view a team. Completely. Because
7:49
instead of looking at an employee's output like
7:51
a machine's baseline capacity, You have to account
7:54
for what's running in the background. It's kind
7:56
of like having background apps draining a smartphone's
7:59
battery, you know? You look at the screen and
8:01
it seems fine, but you can't see the five intensive
8:04
programs running invisibly just consuming all
8:07
the system's energy. Oh, that's exactly it. And
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if a leader doesn't know those apps are running,
8:11
they just get frustrated that the phone is lagging.
8:13
And her open door policy acts like a power saver
8:16
mode in that analogy. Oh, I like that. By acknowledging
8:18
those hidden struggles exist, She actually reduces
8:21
the cognitive load her employees spend trying
8:24
to hide them. Right. They don't have to pretend
8:26
as much. Exactly. She doesn't view her team as
8:29
cogs in a corporate machine. She views them as
8:32
complex humans navigating their own fluctuating
8:35
energy reserves. She could have chosen to be
8:37
hardened by her past and built fortresses. Instead,
8:41
she chose to use her past to dismantle them.
8:43
So she builds this incredible, like, lived -in
8:46
foundation of empathy as a child. Yeah. But then
8:49
she has to actually enter the corporate world.
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And let's be honest, the corporate environment
8:54
is inherently driven by fiduciary duty and profit
8:57
margins. It's not exactly known for warm hugs.
9:00
No, it is structurally designed to prioritize
9:02
shareholder value, not to warmly embrace human
9:05
complexity. So how does a farm kids hard won
9:08
empathy actually survive the friction of modern
9:12
business mechanics? Well, it survives because
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it was explicitly validated at a critical high
9:17
stakes juncture in her career. OK. The sources
9:19
detail a major inflection point during her time
9:21
working as an individual contributor at Concur
9:24
Technologies. Right, I remember this part. This
9:26
is really the moment where the abstract idea
9:27
of empathy collides with harsh reality. Yeah,
9:30
because she faces an unimaginable personal crisis
9:33
while working there. Her daughter becomes ill
9:36
with a brain tumor. Yeah. I mean, in a moment
9:39
like that, your job, your targets, your quarterly
9:42
metrics, they immediately evaporate. Of course
9:45
they do. You are simply a parent terrified for
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your child's survival. And the psychological
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toll of that is absolute. The background apps
9:53
we just talked about. They're suddenly consuming
9:56
100 % of the system's battery. Absolutely. And
10:00
the founder of Comper, Steve Singh, finds out
10:03
about her situation. Right. And he doesn't just
10:05
send a generic corporate sympathy card. He doesn't
10:09
just refer her to human resources. No. He steps
10:12
in and offers to personally help pay her daughter's
10:15
medical bills if her insurance falls short. Which
10:17
is just incredible. It really is. Think about
10:20
the structural difference between a company offering
10:22
a standard employee assistance program pamphlet
10:24
and an executive stepping directly into the terrifying
10:27
financial trenches with you during your family's
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darkest hour. And we have to look at the business
10:32
mechanics of that decision, too. What do you
10:34
mean? Well, from a strict traditional corporate
10:37
governance standpoint, there is zero immediate
10:41
financial benefit to the company for doing this.
10:44
Right, right. There is no measurable return on
10:46
investment on paper for paying an employee's
10:50
personal medical debt. It defies the standard
10:54
logic of maximizing shareholder value in the
10:57
short term. Completely defies it. It is a decision
10:59
made entirely on the premise of taking care of
11:01
a human being. And the CEO herself summarizes
11:04
the lasting impact of that intervention with
11:06
a brilliant quote. She says, once you see it,
11:09
you cannot unsee it. That phrase is really the
11:12
crux of her entire leadership philosophy. Once
11:15
you see it, you cannot unsee it. Yeah. Because
11:17
if we connect this to the broader structural
11:19
picture, we see the multigenerational ripple
11:22
effect of leadership actions. What Steve Singh
11:25
did to concur wasn't merely a compassionate gesture
11:27
for one individual. Right. It was more than that.
11:29
It served as the empirical proof she needed.
11:32
that empathy and aggressive business growth can
11:34
actually coexist. But it only works if you operationalize
11:37
your beliefs. You cannot just draft a mission
11:40
statement about caring. You have to build infrastructure
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around it. Which explains exactly how she structured
11:45
her own company, Talent, years later. She didn't
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just bring the sentiment with her, she brought
11:50
the architecture. She elevated emotional health
11:53
to be a core... corporate pillar, placing it
11:56
directly alongside financial and physical health.
11:58
Right. So it transitioned from being a fringe
12:01
soft benefit to becoming actual structural infrastructure.
12:05
And that infrastructure is what allows a company
12:07
to weather a storm like a global pandemic. Yes.
12:10
Which brings us to the ultimate stress test of
12:12
her whole human approach, right? Attempting to
12:15
apply this philosophy at scale when the entire
12:17
world went into lockdown. Because the reality
12:20
of remote work is that when an employee logs
12:22
onto their computer, Their outside responsibilities
12:25
do not magically vanish into the ether. No, they
12:28
are right there in the room with them. Exactly.
12:30
And as a lifelong working mom who works from
12:32
home, she fundamentally understands the friction
12:36
of this juggling act. Oh, for sure. She knows
12:39
the reality of trying to lead a strategy meeting.
12:42
while a toddler is screaming in the next room,
12:45
or while trying to coordinate care for an elderly
12:47
parent. And her strategic response to that friction
12:50
is to demand what she terms uninhibited authenticity.
12:53
Right. I am so fascinated by that phrasing. She
12:57
explicitly tells her employees that she does
12:59
not want them to try and be like anyone else
13:01
because, as she puts it, we already have one
13:03
of you. It is a highly effective way to frame
13:06
cognitive diversity. Yeah. It really is. But
13:09
it also introduces a massive operational challenge
13:12
because uninhibited authenticity requires creating
13:16
a culture where employees have the psychological
13:19
freedom to be exactly who they are transparently
13:21
on both their highly productive days and their
13:24
deeply flawed days. Which is hard to do in a
13:27
corporate setting. Very hard. And to model this,
13:30
the CEO is famously transparent about her own
13:32
mistakes. She actively discusses the days she
13:35
messes up. explicitly to prove to the organization
13:38
that flawless perfection is not the baseline
13:41
expectation. But let's look at the HR reality
13:43
of that for a second. If you demand uninhibited
13:47
authenticity and you tell people to bring their
13:50
messy whole selves to work, what happens when
13:53
that messy self clashes with a hard client deadline?
13:56
That is the big question. Right. So what does
14:00
this all mean for accountability? Does radical
14:03
empathy just become a free pass for missed targets
14:06
and lowered standards? Because I feel like that's
14:08
the fear every traditional manager has when they
14:11
hear the phrase whole human approach. It is,
14:13
yeah. That is a critical tension. But the framework
14:16
she utilizes doesn't abandon accountability.
14:20
It reframes it. How so? Well, psychological freedom
14:23
is not the same as a lack of responsibility.
14:26
What uninhibited authenticity actually does is
14:28
remove the performative tax of corporate life.
14:31
The performative tax? Yeah. When an employee
14:33
is struggling and they don't have to waste 20
14:35
% of their cognitive energy just pretending everything
14:37
is fine, they can communicate a delay earlier.
14:40
Oh, I see. They can delegate more effectively
14:42
and they can actually solve the work problem
14:45
faster. You aren't lowering the standard. You
14:47
are removing the friction. that prevents people
14:50
from reaching it. Which completely flips the
14:52
narrative that being accessible is a drain on
14:56
leadership. It really does. Because we have this
14:59
CEO who gives out her cell phone number, demands
15:03
you bring your messy reality to work, and openly
15:06
admits her own failures. On paper, that sounds
15:09
incredibly exhausting for her. It sounds like
15:12
a fast track to burnout. Exactly. But the sources
15:15
highlight a deeply surprising mutual benefit
15:18
to this accessibility. It is not just the CEO
15:20
constantly bleeding her own energy away to stabilize
15:23
her team. No. She explicitly notes that she gets
15:26
incredible energy from these interactions. Yeah,
15:28
she does. The relationships, the one -on -one
15:31
calls, the direct learning experiences, they
15:34
actively feed her capacity to lead. And this
15:36
raises a really fundamental question about the
15:38
metrics we use to evaluate business. Right. Like,
15:41
how do we actually measure a company's success.
15:44
The standard market conditioning tells us to
15:46
measure it purely in quarterly earnings, profit
15:48
margins, and shareholder value. Which, obviously,
15:51
those are baseline requirements. Right. If the
15:53
business isn't solvent, the culture doesn't matter
15:55
because the jobs disappear. Exactly. But synthesizing
15:58
her approach reveals a different ultimate metric.
16:01
Her true north isn't merely delivering on financial
16:05
targets. It is about combining authentic, individual
16:09
human energy. Yeah. She wants to create an environment
16:12
that allows people to live a big life both inside
16:16
and outside of work, ultimately leaving a proud
16:19
legacy behind. A big life. Not just a prestigious
16:22
title. Right. Not just a successful career trajectory,
16:25
but a fundamentally big life. The paradigm shifts
16:28
entirely. The company ceases to be a machine
16:31
that extracts value from people and instead becomes
16:34
a vehicle that empowers people to generate value
16:37
for both the market and themselves. We have traveled
16:40
a truly incredible conceptual journey today.
16:42
We really have. I mean we started in a childhood
16:45
trailer without plumbing examining how the seeds
16:47
of an unshakable conscious resilience were planted.
16:50
Yeah. We navigated through the corporate friction
16:53
of fiduciary duty watching a founder support
16:55
a panicked mother through her child's medical
16:57
crisis. proving that profound compassion has
17:00
a structural place in business. It really does.
17:03
And we arrived at a first -time CEO staring down
17:06
the unprecedented isolation of a global pandemic,
17:10
deciding the most strategic move was to give
17:12
1 ,400 people direct, unfiltered access to her
17:16
pocket. It serves as a definitive masterclass
17:19
in translating abstract empathy into immediate,
17:23
tangible organizational infrastructure. It really
17:25
does. And so I want to turn this direct... to
17:28
you, the listener, navigating your own professional
17:30
landscape right now. Yeah, think about your own
17:33
context. You might not be a CEO. You probably
17:35
do not have 1 ,400 employees looking to you for
17:38
guidance. And frankly, you probably do not need
17:40
to hand out your personal cell phone number to
17:42
everyone in your division. Probably shouldn't,
17:44
actually. Right. But what is your specific version
17:47
of this? How can you actively dissolve the fourth
17:50
wall within your own team, in your workplace,
17:52
or even just in your local community? How do
17:54
you move past that performative tax? Exactly.
17:57
How do you foster genuine, unfiltered human connection?
18:01
Because when systemic crises occur, That underlying
18:04
human connection is really the only infrastructure
18:06
robust enough to actually sustain us. It is the
18:09
ultimate safety net. And I want to leave you
18:11
with a final lingering idea to mull over as we
18:14
wrap up today. It's something that deeply struck
18:17
me in the source material. In passing, almost
18:21
casually, the CEO mentions a stark reality. People
18:25
run companies, quote, until computers take over.
18:29
A remarkably prescient comment given the current
18:32
technological trajectory. It really is. As we
18:35
hurdle toward a future that is increasingly dominated
18:37
by artificial intelligence, by automation, and
18:40
by remote algorithms optimizing our every minute
18:43
for maximum efficiency, Will this specific brand
18:47
of messy, radically accessible human empathy
18:50
become the single most valuable corporate asset
18:52
in existence? Wow. Is the capacity to truly structurally
18:56
care for another human being's invisible struggles
18:59
the one thing a machine absolutely cannot replicate?
19:02
That is a powerful question. Let that marinate.
19:04
Because when the terrain gets murky and the rigid
19:07
structures fail, we don't look for better algorithms.
19:09
We look for an open door. We look for an open
19:11
line. Thanks for diving deep with us.