Latest / The Action Catalyst / Be Curious, with Jim Bartolomea (Human Resources, Management, Leadership, Company Culture)

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Be Curious, with Jim Bartolomea (Human Resources, Management, Leadership, Company Culture) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Adam Outland: Welcome, Action Catalyst listeners! Today we
• 0:01
  have Jim Bartolomea as our guest. Jim has worked at some
• 0:02
  of the biggest tech companies in California, including Qualcomm,
• 0:04
  ServiceNow, and currently, Jim is SVP and Global Head of People
• 0:08
  and Places at ClickUp, the “one productivity app to replace them
• 0:10
  all”, leading all aspects of Human Resources for the software
• 0:13
  company. Jim, welcome to the show. Where are you zooming in
• 0:19
  from?
• 0:20
  Jim Bartolomea: San Diego, California.
• 0:21
  Adam Outland: Did you grew up in San Diego or did you relocate
• 0:25
  there?
• 0:25
  Jim Bartolomea: I relocated, but funny enough, all my siblings,
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  I'm the youngest of four. All my siblings were born here. My
• 0:31
  father was a Marine Corps Colonel. So he was stationed out
• 0:34
  in San Diego at the time. So I have roots here. And in fact,
• 0:38
  when I graduated college, both my sister and my brother lived
• 0:41
  out here.
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  Adam Outland: But where did you grow up then? If not San Diego?
• 0:45
  Jim Bartolomea: Virginia and Pennsylvania, Virginia Beach,
• 0:48
  which again, actually we were in DC first because he was at the
• 0:52
  Pentagon and then Virginia Beach is a huge Norfolk's a big
• 0:55
  military town. So kind of, you know, wherever, wherever the the
• 0:58
  Marine Corps takes you is what you live by. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And
• 1:03
  then actually, his final stop was really interestingly, was to
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  run the ROTC at Penn State University. And so we ended up
• 1:10
  in the middle of Pennsylvania. That is where I graduated high
• 1:14
  school and went to college.
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  Adam Outland: Wow. Yeah. So you're, I mean, you're among the
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  pastures and the fields before you arrive at this massive
• 1:22
  school in the middle of nowhere, right?
• 1:24
  Jim Bartolomea: It really is an oasis in the middle of nothing.
• 1:26
  Adam Outland: One thing I was curious about with your
• 1:29
  upbringing is if sometimes they jump around a lot, and schools,
• 1:32
  you're forced to have to create new friendships over and over
• 1:36
  and over again, and you feel like part of your development as
• 1:39
  an individual and your ability to communicate and relate and
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  empathize when you feel like that was part of that for you.
• 1:44
  And your journey was creating these new relationships every
• 1:47
  time you guys moved.
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  Jim Bartolomea: 1,000% I actually have said, As hard as
• 1:51
  it is on kids to move like we did. And by the way, my siblings
• 1:55
  had it worse than me, the flexibility and adaptability
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  and, you know, kind of my what I say my ability to roll with the
• 2:02
  punches in my career. I think really, I can attribute a lot of
• 2:05
  that to like, yeah, new situations, new people, you've
• 2:08
  just got to roll with it. It became a little bit innate at
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  some point.
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  Adam Outland: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And so
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  growing up with a dad in the military, what was it like
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  growing up in a household is just very discipline strict? Was
• 2:22
  it like more creative?
• 2:24
  Jim Bartolomea: You're gonna hear a lot about my father on
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  this podcast. I'm not gonna lie to you. He's, he's my North
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  Star. He was a softy and my mom the CPA chemistry teacher, you
• 2:34
  know, chemistry teacher, then a CPA. She was the disciplinarian.
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  She is the one I couldn't get away with anything on. My father
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  was, yeah, just a, a study in contrasts. Listened to Phantom
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  of the Opera. If you got in his car, you hear quite a bit of
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  Broadway and things of that nature.
• 2:53
  Adam Outland: Awesome. Yeah. I love that. That's great. So you
• 2:56
  still got both sides, just counter to what you would have
• 2:58
  thought from the outside.
• 3:01
  Jim Bartolomea: I tell people all the time like my mom, don't
• 3:03
  cross her. But my dad was a softie.
• 3:05
  Adam Outland: It's so interesting, because now your
• 3:08
  title is Global Head of people in places, right? So growing up
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  in high school and State College? I mean, were you
• 3:15
  thinking man, I can't wait to be head of people for a company?
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  What was going through your head as what you wanted to do
• 3:21
  directionally?
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  Jim Bartolomea: Absolutely not, actually had a long time where I
• 3:26
  wanted to be a meteorologist. When you're on the East Coast,
• 3:29
  you watch the weather all the time. I don't even watch the
• 3:31
  weather here. So I had this dream of becoming a
• 3:34
  meteorologist. But actually, I tore my ACL playing football, my
• 3:37
  senior year of high school. And I fell in love with the physical
• 3:40
  therapy process to the point where I went to college and
• 3:44
  started as a biology major, but could not hack the chemistry.
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  And I was like, Oh, I'm not going to get into PT school, am
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  I and all of a sudden, just like probably everybody else, you
• 3:53
  stumble into your career, I went over to the College of Business,
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  took on a management major. And eventually through the job I was
• 4:00
  doing, I had all these interest in the HR parts of my job, and I
• 4:03
  took on a human resources minor, you kind of rechart the pivots
• 4:07
  in your life. And that was an interesting one. And it was
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  coupled with a cousin of my best friend who was a corporate
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  recruiter at a semiconductor company. He made the comment I
• 4:18
  remember I was a junior in college, I was out visiting, and
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  he's like, You should be a recruiter. You can make great
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  money and it's a fun career. And you do well talking to people.
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  Yeah, I've done a lot of the other like HR admin stuff like
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  scheduling and payroll and stuff like that through the recruiting
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  part. Yeah, you kind of do that. But I was like, Wait, there's a
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  whole career where you just recruit for companies. So I came
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  out of college packed up the car arrive the day after the Super
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  Bowl in San Diego, the last Super Bowl in San Diego, found a
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  recruiting agency recruiting traveling nurses Believe it or
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  not, yeah, ultimately ended at a tech recruiting firm. Remember
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  that same recruiter I referenced back when I met in college, he
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  made an intro to a hiring director, recruiting director at
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  quality comp, which at the time was the place to work in San
• 5:03
  Diego and it's still the largest public company in San Diego by
• 5:06
  some some measure. And probably before I was even ready, I
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  started my my kind of corporate life non agency recruitment life
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  as a corporate recruiter.
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  Adam Outland: And then ServiceNow and then Click Up.
• 5:17
  Jim Bartolomea: Yea, it was my tech after ServiceNow where I
• 5:20
  let I lead people and then ServiceNow was an unbelievable
• 5:23
  four year run, also a San Diego founded company. And now click
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  up and the big thread you can pull through all of that, as
• 5:29
  I've tried very hard to stay in San Diego.
• 5:33
  Adam Outland: Okay, I found that to be a common trait in San
• 5:36
  Diegans. They like to stay put if they can, right. So yeah, in
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  my exposure to your current role has actually been as an
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  executive coach, we work with HR, sometimes they'll bring us
• 5:48
  in to do leadership trainings. And also a lot of my clients
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  tend to be in the benefits industry on the benefit side. So
• 5:55
  right ADL absence life disability, and I'm sure that
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  you end up in that decision making process pretty often.
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  Jim Bartolomea: I do. Leave of absences might be the most
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  complicated thing in all of what I do.
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  Adam Outland: We have a lot of business owners that dial into
• 6:09
  this podcast of all sizes, benefits, that's a big part of
• 6:12
  hrs job. It's a big differentiating factor when
• 6:15
  someone's looking for employment. And so how do you
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  what's your take on benefits? What's tended to matter more in
• 6:21
  this generation right now, since you work with so many people?
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  Jim Bartolomea: Yeah, I actually, you hit it on that on
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  the head there, Adam. I've actually said many times, like,
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  you know, people will start with focus on what do you pay, but
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  ultimately, for most people at a certain stage of their life or
• 6:37
  their career, it's going to come back to what kind of benefits do
• 6:39
  you offer. And that's a real signal of the type of care and
• 6:42
  investment you make in your people. And I will say that
• 6:45
  pendulum goes up tilts towards as you go up in age, because
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  generally people start having families and have more things to
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  care for, on the newer grads side, or the more junior side,
• 6:56
  that's aren't always as important just because they
• 6:58
  probably don't know the importance of having a great
• 7:00
  benefit program. So the evolution I have seen here,
• 7:03
  though, and the evolution I really want to be a part of
• 7:06
  building at this company is this idea of choice. So I talked
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  about, like, different people have different needs, when it
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  comes to benefits? And how do you create programs where people
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  can actually select the things that mean the most to them. So
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  if you're a family of four, having a program where you know,
• 7:25
  there's minimal content, employee contributions to cover
• 7:27
  your entire family, that's probably the most important
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  thing to you. But if you're a young single person, you might
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  index to things like professional development, money,
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  or things of that nature. So how do you and I haven't cracked the
• 7:39
  code on this? But how do you look at it holistically, and
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  say, We want to invest X in all of our employees kind of
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  equally, but they have a menu they can choose from in terms of
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  the benefits, it's really hard to operationalize. But I think
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  that is where we're going to head. And I think, especially
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  with this, this current generation is coming out of
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  school, professional development and personal development. And
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  even travel is like a very important thing to them, I don't
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  see why we can't include that and benefits, where we're at now
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  is actually offering up programs that everyone can have a little
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  more choice in terms of how they apply that benefit. So for
• 8:14
  instance, we just have a general wellness benefit for our
• 8:16
  employees, it's just $500 per year. But Adam, if you're a
• 8:20
  golfer, you could actually use that for a golf club. But if
• 8:23
  you're a yogi, you can use that for yoga classes. And we keep
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  the definition of what wellness is pretty broad. And so our
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  employees are able to choose what works for them. And so
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  we're doing programs like that, or professional development
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  budget and things of that nature. And what I really do
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  want to get to, though, is that this idea that there's a certain
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  amount, we're going to invest in our employees from a benefits
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  perspective, and they're going to have a way to actually almost
• 8:45
  spend that in a way that works best for them.
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  Adam Outland: Yeah, okay. I love that. So zoom out for me for
• 8:51
  just because we just went really deep on one side of your job,
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  but if we talk about global head of people, for people that don't
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  really know, what does that job even mean and look like?
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  Jim Bartolomea: Every day, it means something different. But
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  let me let me start at the highest level, which is this
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  thing I've said for a long time, in terms of the seat, I said it
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  is my job is to align the people strategy to the business
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  strategy, right? And so how are we doing things that accelerate
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  and support what we want to ultimately achieve from a
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  business perspective? So when I talk about benefits, really,
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  what are you trying to achieve? There? You're trying to achieve
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  care and feeding of your employees so you can retain
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  them, right? So that's the business strategy is you want to
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  retain good people. So that's why you spend time on benefits.
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  But my job is so varied. And probably the reason I gravitated
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  to this every day can look very different. So for instance,
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  let's say today, a senior leader gave notice, yeah, my whole day
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  is going to be figuring out how and when are we going to change
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  manage this with the organization? Who are we letting
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  know now when are we messaging it? What's the message itself?
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  Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Like that would be my day
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  and days probably. So there's an example of how it could go that
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  way. You know, and of course, there's days where I'm just
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  doing Like the core aspects of the job, like, what's our
• 10:02
  strategy? Are people technology people systems? Are we
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  attracting the right candidates? You know, there's core parts of
• 10:07
  the job, the toughest part of the job when you're letting
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  people go, how do you do that in a really humane and beautiful
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  way so that the reality of this situation is, every company's
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  gonna have people who aren't a great fit. But I always say how
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  you treat those people on the way out with the exception to
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  that like point 5%, I can count on one hand, it's just like they
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  deserve what is coming to them. 99.5% of people, those are
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  people with a family, people who have a mortgage, people who have
• 10:31
  relationships and connections with your other employees,
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  treating them well, and humanely or beautifully, whatever you
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  want to call it is actually a really important consideration
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  to my job. I spend time there too. So I'm saying a lot of
• 10:43
  words to say that I love my job because it's so varied. But the
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  last piece I would say spend most of my time on is making
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  sure our executive team is aligned. And we are all rowing
• 10:53
  in the same direction. Yeah, you're a bit of a consigliere
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  very certainly to the CEO, who's my boss, but just as much to
• 11:00
  your peers as well, because they have you thought about this, you
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  really do sit in a seat that change management is a big part
• 11:06
  of what you do. And sometimes you can offer a lot of advice
• 11:09
  there, take it or leave it right. I do view HR is like
• 11:12
  great legal counsel, like here's my counsel, do what you want to
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  do, you're still the business leader, unless, of course,
• 11:18
  they're going to do something to get us in trouble.
• 11:19
  Adam Outland: And you've stopped them. But you know, you don't
• 11:22
  build a company, you build people, and people build the
• 11:24
  business. And so the education that you infuse, having a plan
• 11:29
  and a program in place, I think it ends up being a critical part
• 11:33
  of how businesses keep and retain people and grow and
• 11:36
  develop those people into being successful. Just regular
• 11:39
  conversations about career progression won't necessarily
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  send your talent elsewhere, that will help you retain it. This is
• 11:46
  something that you talk about.
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  Jim Bartolomea: It sounds so simple, because it is it's human
• 11:50
  nature, right, which is like people want to stay somewhere
• 11:53
  where they feel like they're being invested in and they're
• 11:56
  growing. And so helping our managers understand that that's
• 11:59
  an important part of their job is something that we are always
• 12:03
  preaching here. And we've we've operationalized it right. So we
• 12:06
  have what we call quarterly growth conversations. So that
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  we're, you know, there's a mechanism that both employees
• 12:11
  and managers know these conversations should be
• 12:13
  happening. But yeah, I mean, it really does come down to people
• 12:16
  generally leave managers, right? And so how do you make sure that
• 12:20
  those managers are showing those people, they're invested in
• 12:23
  their growth invested in their development, and you'll hang on
• 12:25
  to people for longer. And that's our goal.
• 12:27
  Adam Outland: Yeah, someone will come in, especially a young
• 12:29
  person will come and join your company. Maybe they're you're
• 12:33
  not as competitive on the dollar rate today, but they can see a
• 12:36
  pathway to leadership, a pathway to more responsibility, and that
• 12:40
  can override competitive pay, right.
• 12:42
  Jim Bartolomea: And actually, the other thing that we preach
• 12:44
  to managers is find out what motivates your employees, right.
• 12:49
  So you might have an employee who you know, is independently
• 12:51
  wealthy but chooses to work anyway. They might not care
• 12:54
  about the money, they might just care about the promotion, or
• 12:57
  that they're learning a new thing or so really personalizing
• 13:01
  it, and individualizing leadership, that's an important
• 13:04
  thing we preach as well.
• 13:05
  Adam Outland: Yeah. Understand your people and what what makes
• 13:07
  them tick. That's huge. Something you said earlier that
• 13:11
  I feel like you'd have some perspective on as well. And you
• 13:14
  could speak to this more as the age of quiet quitting. And what
• 13:17
  that means.
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  Jim Bartolomea: Can I tell you, my, this isn't a hot take. I
• 13:21
  think I've heard a bunch of people say this, but they used
• 13:23
  to call quiet, quitting resting investing, right, which to me is
• 13:26
  pretty much the same thing, which is, you've got an employee
• 13:29
  who's disengaged, why are they disengaged? Probably because
• 13:32
  you're not invested in their growth and development. Right?
• 13:35
  Or, perhaps it's that your work environment is not one that you
• 13:39
  know, is resonating with that particular individual. And so
• 13:42
  for me, it's like, Look, if you've got someone who's quite
• 13:44
  quitting, it should be pretty easy to figure out why that is,
• 13:47
  right. So if you're sensing an employee is withdrawn, and maybe
• 13:51
  not giving the effort that they used to, because at some point,
• 13:54
  almost every employee is joining an organization and is giving
• 13:56
  their all but if you sense that have those interviews, we call
• 13:59
  them stay interviews. I'm sure you've heard the book, love them
• 14:03
  or lose them. No, you know, one of the core things in that book
• 14:06
  is like this idea of a stay interview, which is what do we
• 14:10
  need to do to keep you here? How are you motivated? You know,
• 14:12
  where do you want to grow? Kind of go back to the conversation
• 14:14
  we were having before. And I think if you're having those
• 14:17
  types of conversations, you're gonna avoid a lot of quiet
• 14:19
  quitting.
• 14:20
  Adam Outland: Simple, great advice and I think, you know,
• 14:21
  something I'm hearing that might be a principle of yours is
• 14:25
  having an investigative attitude. I mean, I feel like
• 14:28
  every time we've talked about something in this interview,
• 14:30
  you've come back to ask better questions of your employees know
• 14:34
  them better. Be curious. I mean, it seems to be a general theme.
• 14:38
  Jim Bartolomea: Did you just drop a Ted Lasso reference?
• 14:41
  Adam Outland: It's all in my head now. It's just baked in
• 14:43
  after watching the episode.
• 14:44
  Jim Bartolomea: So the be curious episode. And by the way,
• 14:47
  Ted lasso is a show about leadership and how to treat
• 14:50
  people it's not a show about football or soccer or whatever
• 14:52
  you want to call it. But yeah, I mean, yes, ultimately, and you
• 14:56
  know, I have a team I lead to right ultimately it comes down
• 14:59
  to like Asking the right questions, understanding
• 15:02
  people's motivations and trying to align their wants and needs
• 15:05
  with what you need in your business. That's not always
• 15:07
  possible, by the way. So some of the harder conversations I
• 15:10
  probably had in my career are, it's probably isn't the place
• 15:12
  you want to be then Right? Because I don't I don't know
• 15:14
  that I can give you what you're looking for. Yeah. But you know,
• 15:18
  being investigative, like you said, and asking the questions
• 15:22
  and really understanding your people. Let's quarter
• 15:26
  leadership. Now be curious. Again, I could watch, I'm gonna
• 15:29
  go watch that scene right after this, because it is just a
• 15:32
  brilliant, brilliant scene.
• 15:33
  Adam Outland: Yeah. It's amazing how those things get stuck in
• 15:36
  your head after watching TV. Right now you oversee roughly
• 15:41
  about 1000 or so employees? Right? There's got to be some of
• 15:44
  the challenges that you faced growing into this position.
• 15:47
  Personally, you know, what would have been some of those those
• 15:49
  pivot points for you?
• 15:51
  Jim Bartolomea: Yeah, I'll start with like the transition into
• 15:53
  management, which I think is going to resonate with almost
• 15:55
  everybody is this idea that you need to empower others to get
• 15:59
  things done, rather than doing them yourself is actually a
• 16:02
  really hard transition, especially for high achievers.
• 16:05
  Right. So you know, I think back to that inflection point, and
• 16:08
  the stumbles I had, they're staying out of people's way
• 16:11
  helping helping where they need help, but staying out of their
• 16:13
  way and granting autonomy. Like that was bumpy time. Like, you
• 16:17
  know, you I think leadership is innate to some people. And that
• 16:20
  transition happens quicker. But anybody who is a great performer
• 16:24
  heading into management, that's a tougher transition than
• 16:27
  probably we remember the biggest transition for me and going back
• 16:32
  to your question, you know, when I left ServiceNow, there was
• 16:35
  about 11,000 employees and organizations I had to remit on,
• 16:38
  it was an enormous job with so many stakeholders and things
• 16:42
  like that. And you get impostor syndrome, which I'm sure a lot
• 16:45
  of people talk about on this podcast, it's a it's a real
• 16:48
  thing. It's like, do I belong? At this level? These people are
• 16:50
  brilliant, you ask yourself those questions. And it takes
• 16:54
  time to grow past that, what I think my biggest learning there
• 16:57
  was, was this idea of, I don't have to know everything, Mike, I
• 17:02
  remember, you know, making a conscious decision to saying in
• 17:06
  front of the CEO president, like, you know, I don't know
• 17:08
  that answer. Let me get back to you. And let me talk to my team
• 17:11
  and get you a good answer. Right. Whereas probably earlier
• 17:13
  in my career, I would have been like stumbling over my words,
• 17:16
  but like having confidence and not knowing everything, as a
• 17:19
  leader who has such a broad remit now with our 1000
• 17:21
  employees where I am not like, there are plenty of times where
• 17:24
  I don't have the answer for my CEO. And it's like, Hey, let me
• 17:27
  get get back to you with a really good answer. But in in
• 17:31
  the same way, I do feel like I also learned how to know enough
• 17:35
  to be dangerous in all the areas I oversaw. So it was this idea
• 17:39
  of going a mile wide, and an inch deep became a really
• 17:42
  important part of my job as well. And how I spent my time
• 17:46
  and where I spent my time helped me, but I will tell you for for
• 17:49
  some amount of time going into that job every day is so much
• 17:53
  and again, coming back to the imposter things like no one else
• 17:56
  in this role probably feels that way. And they're no but then you
• 17:59
  talk to them. Like the nice part about our job, Adam is we talk
• 18:02
  to leaders, and like the people who you would think have zero
• 18:06
  doubts about themselves, just zero cats, right? They're the
• 18:09
  most self assured person in a meeting. They're always saying
• 18:11
  brilliant things, they have those same insecurities and
• 18:15
  doubts, and if they don't the probably narcissists, and stay
• 18:18
  away.
• 18:18
  Adam Outland: Yeah. Understood. No, I think that's really what
• 18:21
  you said, as well about knowing just enough information to be
• 18:26
  able to communicate with that department within the
• 18:29
  department, right? Like you need to know enough to speak the
• 18:31
  language. You're not expected to go super deep and be the expert
• 18:35
  on everything is it's, it's impossible.
• 18:37
  Jim Bartolomea: Well, that's why you have an organization, right?
• 18:39
  Because there are subject matter experts that know everything.
• 18:43
  And yeah, you got to be knowledgeable enough to have an
• 18:46
  opinion or say, Hey, I don't know. So anyway, I that's a long
• 18:50
  winded learning, but it is truly been my biggest leadership
• 18:54
  learning.
• 18:54
  Adam Outland: That's great. You know, in this pathway, I guess
• 18:57
  what, what would you give 21 year old? What kind of advice
• 19:01
  Jim, would you provide yourself around that age? Now, having
• 19:06
  made this journey?
• 19:08
  Jim Bartolomea: You know, part of me wants to say you are who
• 19:10
  you are, because you acted the way you did. But if I had to go
• 19:13
  back there, honestly, it would it would truly be adopting some
• 19:17
  of my father's life lessons earlier. I think I referenced
• 19:22
  earlier, you know, he passed away about five years ago. And
• 19:25
  he always had this decision making framework he placed on
• 19:29
  everything, which is it ended with, is that the right thing to
• 19:32
  do? Right. And I felt like that it served me so well in my
• 19:38
  career. And now that I've just adopted it as like, we have a
• 19:41
  lot of legal and compliance and so many things in my job where
• 19:45
  it's like God, you can can paralyze yourself with Oh, are
• 19:48
  we going to get in trouble? But then I apply the simple lens of
• 19:51
  especially when it comes to the people we deal with, is it the
• 19:54
  right thing to do and that usually solves all problems and
• 19:57
  I think 21 year old Jim should You've heard that message
• 20:00
  earlier, because it allows you to operate with probably a
• 20:03
  better compass. It's great. I heard it from him all those
• 20:06
  years, but it probably didn't hurt analyze it until I got a
• 20:09
  little older.
• 20:10
  Adam Outland: That's right. Well, it was probably also on an
• 20:11
  episode of Ted Lasso. And I think we overcomplicate
• 20:21
  decisions sometimes. And something that's a simple
• 20:24
  filter, which is Yeah, is the right thing can take a lot of
• 20:27
  the complexity out and make it what it should be, which is a
• 20:30
  simple a simple decision, even if it's one that hurts a little
• 20:32
  bit in the short term. 100%. Yep. Yeah, this is really great
• 20:36
  conversation, I guess, kind of quick lightning round questions
• 20:40
  that we'd like to ask. Any like functional app that you've used
• 20:43
  on your phone lately, that's been helpful for you or others?
• 20:47
  Jim Bartolomea: I mean, doesn't have to be on my phone. I mean,
• 20:49
  I truly have dove into Bard and GPT. I use them quite
• 20:55
  frequently. They are incredible productivity tools. And I think
• 20:59
  as long as we continue to remind ourselves that the outputs of
• 21:02
  those things are imperfect, and it needs a human to make it
• 21:05
  good. They are great things for us. And for our teams. You hear
• 21:09
  GPT all the time, but I'm actually really impressed with
• 21:12
  Bard, it's really good from like an answering question
• 21:14
  perspective.
• 21:15
  Adam Outland: And for listeners Bard is...
• 21:17
  Jim Bartolomea: Yeah, Google's large language model, better in
• 21:19
  some ways, different in some ways, you know, for answers, I
• 21:23
  go to Bard. And I think that's no surprise given that Google's
• 21:26
  been indexing the world's information for 20 plus years,
• 21:29
  right? For creativity, which is actually a big part of my job
• 21:34
  and a starting point on how to frame a message. I enjoy GPT.
• 21:39
  Adam Outland: Here's another quick one, and take a minute if
• 21:44
  you need to think about this, but define what success means to
• 21:47
  you, because everybody has a little bit of a different
• 21:50
  definition of what a successful life means or what success means
• 21:54
  in general. And how do you know when you've achieved it?
• 21:57
  Jim Bartolomea: Success for me is to be respected. My job is
• 22:01
  one where I am sometimes sometimes having to make
• 22:03
  decisions that are going to be unpopular, but am I doing them
• 22:06
  fairly and consistently? And, you know, again, kind of putting
• 22:11
  the human first and asking that, is it the right thing to do
• 22:13
  question? If people can at least respect my decisions, then I'm
• 22:17
  okay with them not agreeing.
• 22:20
  Adam Outland: Incredibly difficult for many of us to
• 22:23
  change the our intake of that and say, okay, I'm okay, if I'm
• 22:27
  not liked by everybody, because no one can be right. But you can
• 22:30
  earn people's respect, right? And being respected versus
• 22:34
  always being liked is probably a little bit more of an effective
• 22:37
  way of showing up.
• 22:38
  Jim Bartolomea: And especially if you're a StrengthsFinder
• 22:40
  person as I am, I have who in there. So it's hard for me not
• 22:44
  to be liked. But I have finally gotten to the point where it's
• 22:46
  like, to be respected is is better than like, although I
• 22:49
  want to be like to I'm not gonna lie.
• 22:51
  Adam Outland: Everybody does. Yeah, I think to a degree most
• 22:53
  people do. But yeah, but that's a great, that's a great
• 22:55
  definition for success. So one habit or practice that saves you
• 23:01
  the most time each day?
• 23:03
  Jim Bartolomea: I block my calendar to do actual work and
• 23:08
  eat, by the way, because I really do need to reach arch.
• 23:10
  But I actually blocked my calendar conscientiously, to
• 23:13
  make sure that I have space and time to give thoughtful replies
• 23:17
  to people, not three letter thanks, right? That's been a big
• 23:21
  thing for me, or I always feel like I'm behind.
• 23:24
  Adam Outland: And you literally block it? So the assistant or
• 23:27
  someone can't look at your outlook and go, Oh, I'm just
• 23:29
  gonna squeeze this in there.
• 23:30
  Jim Bartolomea: Well, they know that that's a really important
• 23:33
  time for me. So I have an hour that says focus every day. And
• 23:37
  unless there's a really big, you know, an executive leaving
• 23:40
  coming back to that, like, unless there's a fire drill, I'm
• 23:43
  going to get that time and I'm going to use it to hopefully,
• 23:46
  get back to people too. And I do think it's important as a leader
• 23:49
  to be available and responsive. And I pride myself on that.
• 23:52
  Adam Outland: Absolutely. But I think there's value also be able
• 23:55
  to close your door for a minute and then be able to focus so
• 23:58
  that's good. This has been great in any direction you want to
• 24:01
  send people?
• 24:02
  Jim Bartolomea: Actually they should come to the ClickUp
• 24:04
  website. I think people will be surprised that no matter what
• 24:07
  business you are in how big or small your company is, a cup is
• 24:11
  an incredibly powerful tool to unlock productivity. That's what
• 24:15
  we do.
• 24:15
  Adam Outland: Well, thanks for joining us, Jim. This has been
• 24:17
  great.
• 24:17
  Jim Bartolomea: This has been awesome. Thank you so much for
• 24:19
  having me.