Forging connection through The Unconnected with Mea Thompson

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This is a podcast episode titled, Forging connection through The Unconnected with Mea Thompson. The summary for this episode is: <p>Mea Thompson, Chief Commercial Officer of The Unconnected, sits down with host Dane Groeneveld to discuss her career in the telecom industry, as well as insights Mea has about building positive team experiences. The two also talk about how The Unconnected is focusing on projects to increase internet access for vulnerable communities, students, refugees, and others without equal access.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Topics of conversation:</strong></p><ul><li>[0:00] Meet Mea Thompson</li><li>[1:12] Mea's career background and experiences with teams</li><li>[4:17] How Mea forged her charity The Unconnected, and its mission</li><li>[6:38] On leaving a legacy and contextualizing the spread internet access</li><li>[8:40] The main hotspots of focus for The Unconnected</li><li>[10:39] Mea's definition of good teamwork, and exploring her learnings</li><li>[19:12] Giving people space to check-in and take responsibility</li><li>[23:40] Dane's experience running teams and being part of teams</li><li>[28:15] Navigating different cultures and avoiding the phenomenon of team pity</li><li>[36:25] Leadership and focus on revenue</li><li>[39:45] Learning from experience and thinking about the future of work and robots</li><li>[41:54] The Unconnected challenge to disconnect from the internet for 24 hours</li></ul>
Meet Mea Thompson
01:09 MIN
How Mea found her way into the telecoms industry
01:00 MIN
Mea's experiences being on teams and managing teams
00:58 MIN
Working with teams all across the world
00:54 MIN
How Mea forged her charity The Unconnected, and its mission
02:16 MIN
On leaving a legacy and contextualizing the spread internet access
01:54 MIN
The main hotspots of focus for The Unconnected
01:57 MIN
Mea's definition of good teamwork, and exploring her learnings
08:30 MIN
Giving people space to check-in and take responsibility
04:26 MIN
Dane's experience running teams and being part of teams
02:50 MIN
Mea talks about her experience leading a team in Malaysia
01:33 MIN
Navigating different cultures and avoiding the phenomenon of team pity
06:15 MIN
Leadership and revenue-focus
03:18 MIN
Learning from experience and thinking about the future of work and robots
02:08 MIN
The Unconnected challenge to disconnect from the internet for 24 hours
03:18 MIN

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and I'm glad to be welcoming Mea Thompson onto the show for today. Mea, welcome.

Mea Thompson: Hi, Dane. Thank you for having me.

Dane Groeneveld: It's been really cool getting to know you this last couple of weeks around The Unconnected, but before we jump into what you're doing with that organization, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your personal and business background.

Mea Thompson: Sure. Okay. So, The Unconnected aside, because we will talk about that more later. So, a bit of a tech geek, very much a tech geek. I worked in the telecom space for 10 plus-years, so I won't say the exact number to give away the age, but I worked in the telecoms for a long time, and I actually recently heard that if you don't want to talk to people at the party and they ask what you work with, you just say telecoms, because the conversation always dies with that. But that is my passion. I'm trying to find new strategic, digital ways of bringing telecoms into more people's hands. So that's my focus. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. How did you find your way into the telecoms industry?

Mea Thompson: Oh, it's a good story, but I will tell it very short. So I was actually backpacking around Australia. My original thought was that I wanted to go to med school. And then I took a gap here and I was backpacking around Australia, and I was working in this little cafe on one of these main roads, and this one guy kept down all the time getting in coffee. And in the end, he said, " Do you want to come up and run my call center? At that time. And I was like, " Sure." And that is how I got into telecom. So really, at the bottom of the bottom. And then I've just worked with so many amazing companies in so many amazing countries. So yeah, that's how it started, and that's why my study field changed from medical to telecom. Mm- hmm.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. That's really cool. It's amazing how many people's careers were forged in a bar or in a cafe where they met someone.

Mea Thompson: Yes, yes.

Dane Groeneveld: And where you can go from those early beginnings.

Mea Thompson: inaudible-

Dane Groeneveld: So you moved from the call center further into the telecoms industry. Tell me a little bit more about the types of businesses you've run, the types of roles that you've played, the teams you've been a part of.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. Well, it's interesting. So I've run teams, as mentioned, in Australia and then I moved on from being more operational into the more strategic teams. So, after that I've ran teams in Malaysia, in New Zealand, in Canada, in Singapore, in Sweden. So I've ran teams in a lot of various locations around the world. And when you asked me to join this podcast to talk about teamwork, I got really excited, because the experience from teamwork is so different depending on where you are working with teams, whether you working with teams in your professional life or in your personal life. And also the location of the teams, where they're located, so it's a bit of a nuance. So yeah, it's all been around telecom the whole time. But yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. And when you've been working with those teams, it's a lot of countries you just listed off. Have you had teams all in one location or have you had teams that are multi- locational?

Mea Thompson: Both, both. So, normally, we're a stage that's where the biggest team is, but that is also interesting now with the connectivity, coming back into the connectivity, is that now the world is so open, so you can work with teams all over the world. And, for example, me and the other founder of The Unconnected, we worked daily with each other for a year and a half. And we used to joke and say, " I talked to him more than I talked to my husband." But I didn't see him in person until after almost two years when we met at the Ukraine border in Romania. So yeah, it's been both.

Dane Groeneveld: It is really cool the way we have been able to forge teams virtually, particularly through COVID. Maybe, you touched on it again there meeting your business partner there in Romania. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you forged The Unconnected as a charity and what the mission is?

Mea Thompson: Absolutely. Well, I mentioned I worked in telecom for 10 years and I realized as good as it is, my job was, really, to make rich people richer by finding better strategic ways of running their businesses, strategic add- ons or other ways that they can grow their business. So, that was my job. And then I realized, hold on a second, and this is no ding at any specific operators, but operators work in a way where they are focusing on the ROI in the most profitable areas. Which means that there is a lot of people that's being left out within their strategies and their visions, and that's normal. So I'm not pushing down on them in any way, but that is what I saw when I was working with them. So, it affected me. And then at the same time, my father passed away and my father passed away very young. He was 58. And if there's a person that was even more tech nerdy than I was, it was my dad. And he knew that I wasn't happy in the role that I had at the time. And he told me" Go and do what you want to do, Mea. Do something else." And I was like, " No, no, no. This is a good job." And then when he passed very, very suddenly, out of nowhere, I realized, okay, if I'm going to do something, I have to do it now. I want to do something and to make a proper difference to the world. And then I started thinking, where are my skills? How can I make a difference with the skill sets that I have and with the knowledge and with the teams that I worked with, and with the context that I have in the industry. So I realized if I need to focus somewhere, it needs to be where my expertise and my partners are and my network. And that is how we got into The Unconnected, because we know so many people in the industry already, we know how big this issue is that we're trying to solve, and we knew we can rally people around us. So yeah, that's how it started. But it shouldn't need to take the passing of a close relative for someone to take action. But for me, that's what's needed, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, that's a great story, a sad story, too, obviously, on the passing of your father. And I know when we face the loss of others or mortality, it often creates a little more focus around, well, what is the legacy that we're leaving? What would my future self want me to be doing right now? If I'm looking back in 10 years, have I really achieved that? We've talked about that a couple of times with different people in recent weeks. It's becoming a much more important thing, I think, to humanity at large what legacy we're leaving behind. Because we now live in a remarkable world where there is a lot of opportunity. It's not just about, for many of us who are fortunate to have the expertise, the networks you referenced. It's not just about putting a roof and over the heads about family or food on the table, it's about what we can do in our communities. You touched on this big problem, perhaps you could quantify it. I know you and I were talking some numbers earlier about the number of people on this planet that don't have access to the internet, for example.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. Well, the official number, when we talk about the unconnected, it's 3. 2 billion people. So it's almost half of the world's population, which is unconnected, which means that they haven't had connectivity at all for a certain amount of time, and that is a huge chunk. Obviously, they've got no access to digital tools, to online banking, to all these things that we take for granted. But then on top of that, there is a huge dark number of people who live in an area where they potentially could get connection. They get connection if they go past WiFi's hotspot somewhere, which means that they're not class as unconnected, but they don't own a device, potentially, and they don't have internet at home. So, 3. 2 billion is a small number, I would say, look at the big hole of what we're trying to focus on.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes. And that's a lot. You mentioned it, access to banking. We talked about the other day access to education and education tools. I mean, it's a lot of opportunity that people don't have access to if they don't have that digital connection. What do you see as your main hotspots focus areas? I guess the demographics of people and the geographies of people that you're most able to jump in and help through The Unconnected?

Mea Thompson: Well, the... When we first started The Unconnected and started running projects, we were running projects globally, all the projects that we can get hold of and solve. And then we realized, as this was growing and evolving, we need to be more focused in the way that we're working. So that is why we created the four themes, which we're working under now, which is connecting women. Because digital gender equality is a huge problem. Then we've got connecting students, we've got connecting refugees. That's why I mentioned we were at the Ukraine border, and then connecting vulnerable communities. And then we run projects under all of these. We're trying, potentially, not to focus on the completely remote unconnected areas because that's very costly for us to connect. It's easier for us to connect that gray mass that I was talking about before that's got access to connectivity, but they can't afford it. Or, for whatever reason, they don't understand it, they don't have to knowledge how to use it. Those, it's easier for us to get connected quicker, but in saying that we work on both levels. But yeah, my heart question is to connect women, we try to run projects to make sure that the digital gender gap is closing. Even though it's, it could be a cultural issue as well, which is harder for us to work with. But yeah, connecting students and refugees, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. When you think about projects you're doing, either now with The Unconnected or you've done in the past with your for- profit jobs, what is your definition of good teamwork?

Mea Thompson: Oh, nice. I should probably have thought of an answer to that, knowing what the timing on this podcast is. But I think... It sounds bad, but the older I get, the more I realize that the people that you want to work with, that you really click with, are potentially not the best people to have on your team.

Dane Groeneveld: That's interesting.

Mea Thompson: So, I think... Let me explain. Because the people that I work really well with are similar to me. But the projects that I've run and the work that I've done that's been most successful is when I'm working with people who are opposites to me. And then the issue there is that I know that this is going to be a great outcome of this project, even though I hate this person's guts, for example, because we're so different and we are just bickering all the time. But the more you learn how to adapt to the people that you might not be as similar to, the better teamwork and the better outcome. So I think that's one of the learnings that I've had, is hat just because you think that someone is a bit of, I won't say the word, that means that you most probably need to find a way to work with that person because that's going to be the best outcome, if that makes sense.

Dane Groeneveld: It makes a lot of sense, and we've been reading a lot and talking a lot about the importance of diversity on teams, diversity of thought, diversity of perspective, diversity of skill sets. And now, more than ever, I think that's one more available, because we can digitally connect with people who might not be in our local group or network. And, two, more important, because we're serving much bigger, whether it's customer groups or geographies or problems, it's not as simple and straightforward as maybe once upon a time it may have been to run a small business that had a very obvious customer and obvious product. So I think it makes a lot of sense.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. No. Absolutely. And just that ability to adapt, I think that's the key. Because you want people to adapt around you to get the team to work. But, for example, if you run a team in Malaysia, in the telecom industry, which is mostly male, middle- aged males, you need to adapt to that team differently than if you're working in a team in Sweden when there is 50/ 50 men and women. And it's not about getting the team to adapt to you. Well, they have to in a sense, but it's also, how do you adapt to the team? And you will be able to get your thoughts and your visions and your ideas on how to work forward. And that's something that I think, not to make this into female- male conversation, but it's also really interesting to see the roles that you take in a team. If it's an industry such as, for example, telecommunication, where it's mostly males. For the last few years, I worked in marketing organizations where there is majority females. So the teams and the structure and the dynamic is different, and you need just to make sure that you don't... You need to adapt, but you can't just give up everything that you are to take a different role than what you should have.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I saw a great poster on that the other day, talking about innovation and co- innovation and teamwork. And I think one of the first premises of the whole model was you've got to embrace, I think they used the word conflict, but I think what they were getting at was you've got to embrace people's opinions and you've got to encourage everyone to speak up, so that you don't create that echo chamber of everyone who's used to working together, doing it in the one way. There's so many different ways to solve problems. But starting from that point of giving people a voice and really giving honor to their perspective, as you talk about it, as a group can be a good foundation for teamwork and for scoping out how you're going to go about solving whatever the problem of the day is.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. No, I totally, totally agree there. And even though you don't agree with everyone, because you're never going to. That's just how it works. You just have to accept it and see there from their point of view. And it's almost sometimes like, I've got a four- year- old son at home, so it's almost like you have to pick your battles. What's really important here? What do we need to agree on to get this project to move forward? And that's what you're focusing on. But luckily, I've worked in so many amazing teams lately where everyone is just so aligned, full of motivation, no self pity, just really go- get- it people, so that is just incredible. And especially within The Unconnected, because everyone's got their eyes on the mission.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That helps a lot.

Mea Thompson: Ah, yeah. And people can see that you don't need to go and start a charity to make an impact or run a marathon or whatever. The impact that you can make can start at home and you don't need to wait for a big event until you go and do something. Every single action that you take will create an impact. I think that's the mindset that we all should have on top of what we're doing already.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you mentioned your four- year- old at home. I also have a four- year- old, Waverly.

Mea Thompson: Then you know about picking your battles.

Dane Groeneveld: It is about picking your battles. She picks a lot of battles. I've got to remember every now and again what the mission is of the day or of the month and not get caught up in the moment. But that's true at work, too. We're all, I think, coming out of COVID, a lot of us are very Zoom- fatigued. We've managed to put a lot more work into the day. We're tackling a wider range of problems. The workday is not as contained as it once was when we're in offices. So, being aware of your emotions in that team environment, particularly early on, can be really important, and setting a tone of, I guess, some vulnerability, some honesty, so that people know where you're at on a given day. Because they might be waking up fresh in the morning, you may have had a terrible day and it's the end of your day. And so, I guess, checking in on that is a key part of getting that teamwork going right in the first place, too.

Mea Thompson: Absolutely... And what you're saying there about respecting each other, whether if you're different or not, that's the key thing into getting any teamwork done, whether it's a relationship with your spouse or teamwork at work. But I also think that the remote working has, in a sense, brought me further away from some of my colleagues that I would work with, but it also brought me closer to others, because we've been working from home. Right now, I'm sitting in a hotel room, but we've been working from home for so long with each other and I've seen their kids, I've seen their spouses walking in the back, their dog's barking. And so, it's almost like them in a better way because you've been visiting them in their home environment for a year. And now suddenly, we back into sterile offices or hotel rooms, where you don't really know who they are in a sense. So, for some teams, I think it might have been better as well. And it brought people closer because you see inaudible.

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely, it did. Yeah, we saw that we did a number of happy hours through COVID, where we bring all of our staff on and we do it on a Friday afternoon, which here in California might have been 2: 30 PM, but, but in Florida it might have been 5: 30 PM. So you saw people's, they might have had their husband or wife working beside them in a shared office, they may have had a kid that was home by then, a dog, and it was fun. It was a good way to just be human and connect on that level without the stresses and strains of the work. As you've been building the mission, the values around the teams that you are a part of, have you seen any particular, I don't want to say silver bullets, but really key routines or rituals that are starting to create part of your team's work program and way of being together?

Mea Thompson: Well, I think, like what you said earlier is so important there just to have the check- ins to see how people actually feel. I think that is so, so, so important. And that shows as well that I think management, in some cases, have stepped back a bit and let their teams take more responsibility to get things done. So there's no one checking over your shoulder, and you've gotten more freedom to do what you need to do, which is great. But that's why those check- ins are so, so important as well, to keep the team together, even though you're working apart. So I'm hoping that that's going to stay going forward. And again, circling back to another thing that we talked about before is to make sure that everyone's voice gets heard, because you've hired that person for a reason, that person is on your team for a reason. And if you don't invite that person to speak and take their space into the discussion, you are literally the one that's losing out because you're losing money. You hired the wrong person that potentially shouldn't have it and nothing to give to the team. And that's fine, because that person will have something to give in a different team. But if you have them on your team, you need to get them to take space, and that's also another important thing that I think COVID has really showed us.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Taking space is a really cool concept too, because there's a tangibility to it. People often, a lot of us are doing knowledge work. And so, it's easy to think of it as spaceless in some ways. But in a meeting, are there ways that you encourage someone to take space? Are there ways that manifests itself?

Mea Thompson: No. I think you need to be careful with that as well, because we're talking about equity here, in a sense, and not equality. So everyone shouldn't be speaking the same amount of time in a meeting because that doesn't work for everyone. Someone might not want to talk at all, but you can see that that person is listening and taking notes and getting ideas that they're going to bring back later. So, I think in a meeting is very much about knowing your team and managing the team that you have at hand instead of getting everyone to speak equally. But everyone needs to have the same ability to speak what they want to or would they want to share something? I think that's, yeah, that's key.

Dane Groeneveld: I know I'm a part of a Vistage group here in California and we meet about once a month. There's about 12 to 15 CEOs, presidents in the room. And naturally, you have a lot of bright people, a lot of charged egos all in the room, and what you say about not everyone having the same amount of time is critical. I think our process there, we've got a really good mentor who facilitates the conversations, who sets ground rules. And it's a real mix of art and science, making sure that you coordinate that team. And going back to your earlier point that you really capitalize upon the talent that's there at the table and don't let any one person or one agenda item drive the day.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. And for that, you need a really good moderator, especially if you're moderating CEOs or sales conversation, because then it's hard for people to speak up, even if they want to, sometimes.

Dane Groeneveld: You got to be pretty strict.

Mea Thompson: You have to be very strict and sometimes a bit rude with cutting people off. But that's also a part of running a team, making sure to lead those discussions. Because the end goal with teamwork is really to create a good project or product or you need to get somewhere. So it's not just about meeting and having fun and getting along, it's producing and having fun whilst producing. So, it is a bit of a gentle balance there sometimes.

Dane Groeneveld: I agree.

Mea Thompson: But just to throw a question back to you, though, because you've ran teams smaller and larger, so where would you say, because the hierarchy, various parts of the world is different depending where you run a team. If you run a team in Sweden, it's very flat organization and you can go out with the boss after, Friday, and have a beer and it's fine. If you run teams in other parts of the world, the hierarchy's so huge that as soon as you become a leader or running teams, you get very lonely. So, what's your experience in that from being a part of a team to running teams?

Dane Groeneveld: That's a good question. I would say, I've generally tended towards bringing a lot of fun into the room. You talked about the need to perhaps be structured or strict or rude at times to get teams moving in the right way. I think you buy yourself a lot of currency trust if you can be vulnerable, if you can bring some fun to the room first, and make sure that everyone knows that we're people before we're team members and after we're team members. So we've done a lot of cool stuff, particularly when we're working across multicultural teams, going in and spending time to experience someone else's culture. It might be going into certain restaurants, going to participate in certain holiday events. I think games, I love games, so we've always tried to start our team building off with something as simple as a word game, as an icebreaker or as complex as, " Hey, let's have a table tennis competition," or something else just to level the stakes. And another one of my personal favorites is dressing up. I like to put costumes on. So, whether I'm dressed up as a Viking or Buzz Lightyear or a leprechaun St. Patrick's Day.

Mea Thompson: Does everyone dress up or is it just you?

Dane Groeneveld: We try, we try. Yeah. Sometimes it's just me. But we try and do a lot of company events where we actually say, " Hey, we're going to have an award today for whichever team does the best Halloween theme and post all your photos," and we'll do some real- time happy hour or real- time voting or whatever we do. But a lot of it is just about those human elements. Because the structure is the structure and certain things aren't going to change quickly. Like you mentioned, some countries are very flat, some countries are very hierarchical. You can't just go and bust that up. Because if you go into a hierarchical team and you try and make everyone the same level, you've just disrupted them-

Mea Thompson: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: ...to no end. So yeah. I think the one leveler is that we're all humans and the more we realize that, the better.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. No, I agree. And there is some interesting... I ran a team in Malaysia. So, I lived in Malaysia for three months, to start this team up, before I moved to another place. And that team was so, so interesting. And I learned so much from that team, because I came in, this was eight years ago. So I came in green into this, which was great, because a lot of these things that potentially didn't go so well, and when you look back and say, " Oh, I should change the way that I act next time." That was one of those episodes. I came in thinking that the team will have to adapt for me. I'm a strong female, da, da, da, da, da. And then I was like, I could've still been a strong female, ran the team slightly different for the outcome to be better. So, I think you learn all the time, though, how to. And that respect for your team members are so important. So I love when you said that you go and visit, do their holy days, their religions, you learn more. It brought me back about a big team meeting that we had and they start talking about arranged marriages. And this was in Malaysia as well. And they were all really for it. They thought it was great. And they were talking about, " It's great. My parents know me the best and they pick a groom for me that will look after me and blah, blah, blah." And I was just sitting there as like, " What?" But that was because I was green in that position. Now, it's different. You just have to see it from people's visions and you have to respect who they are and what they believe in. And when you do that, the teamwork is going to be a lot smoother. So you live and learn.

Dane Groeneveld: You definitely do. And actually, that's a really good story. The arranged marriage is, I mean, clearly different cultures have very different approaches to rights of passage in life and other things. And it's not always black and white on what's good, what's bad, what's ugly. And I think the problem is that in a world of so much information, we're also suffering from a lot of misinformation, and people go into an environment and they're confronted with something that is very different to what they know and they take a position on it straight away. So I think some of the best teams that I've worked in have always been the types of teams that will ask a lot of what questions, wisdom questions. What does that mean? What role does it have in your society, your family, these types of things? And just go and do a lot of listening first and foremost, because actually listening, whether it's something that is more spiritual or if it's something that's very structural in the workplace, it gives you a lot more context before you determine what position to take on it and how maybe to influence or not to influence, depending on what the right decision is.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. No, that's very, very true. And because that will create the dysfunctional teams and I don't want to, because we all worked in dysfunctional teams, where you realize it's like, okay, we're getting nowhere. Either we're just having so much fun and we're not focusing on what we should be doing, because then they're all like me on the team. Which I've learned is fun, but it's not very productive, or you work in teams, which for other reasons, are not working so well. So, I want to ask you the question as well. But for me, one of the big problems that I find in teams sometime is, I call it self pity. It's when peoples been working too long in a place and they're tired, and there's one thing being tired and overworked and stressed, but then is that thing when you share that with too many people of your team and it's spreading, and you need to stop that spreading somehow. Has that happened in teams that you worked in? And how do you deal with that when you feel like there is a dark thing spreading amongst a team now and everyone's suddenly getting really tired and overworked?

Dane Groeneveld: I appreciate you explaining that, because I did hear you reference self pity earlier when you were talking about good teams, teams that don't have self pity. So, the idea you've explained that, it makes a lot of sense to me. We absolutely see that, periodically, in some teams. It comes and goes, and in other teams, I've seen it really set in, which is really sad. But I think it can be a reaction to work culture, it can be a reaction to the market. Back in 2015, working in Houston, the oil price sunk from, I think, $ 140 at the end of'14 to$ 25, early in'15, and we were having to deliver bad news all day, every day." Unfortunately, your job's no longer there." " Unfortunately, you have to take a 20% pay cut," and it was rough. And we were having to make layoffs within our own core team as well. And so, that, it creeps in, that element of self pity that people like, " Ah, we've worked so hard and this is how we're being treated. We never saw this coming." And, ultimately, I think if it's something as structural as that, a recession or a change in commodity price, you have to act quickly and then you have to tell the survivors, " We're doing this now so that we can keep making a difference, we can keep growing, we can keep a team together. Because we're in a battle state." That's very different perhaps from something that is a little less explicit, like a cultural issue that starts to develop between two teams, two departments. I've seen that, too. You might have a sales team and then a service team and they're studying a battle because the sales team are promising the moon all of the time. And then the service team are getting these customers coming in saying, " I was told, I'd get this." I think that one can be a little bit harder to pick up. But again, I think the key is acting on it, acknowledging that it exists, acknowledging that it's not healthy for any of us. And then starting to get the team together to perhaps say, " Well, what does good look like? What do we want this to look like and how can we work back from it?" And unfortunately, there's going to be times when some people are not going to make that transition, because they've made up their minds or they're not in good places. It might not even be to do with work, it might be something that's going on at family or at home, too. It's definitely one of the harder elements of teamwork, and managing teams is having to deal with some of those challenges.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. And it seems like we always go around in these conversation, coming back to the same outcomes or our thoughts are very aligned that the teams need a good team manager or a leader, not a manager, someone that can lead the team, that's got the eyes on the team, can see the changes in people. Because people need support in various grades at various times of their career. So they will be able to pick that up and maybe not know a hundred percent about the project, the product, but needs to be a good people person, because the people that you hire, they're the ones that's supposed to know everything about the project. So, we've said that, and then we also talked about how the people in the teams need to be able to adapt to each other, respect each other, understand each other, being able to work with each other, even though, potentially, you don't like each other as much, because you're clashing personalities, which is a good thing to have on a team. And then it's about who and how should you step in if you see that a team is dysfunctional and it's not working. So, yeah. It's such an-

Dane Groeneveld: It's all about the people.

Mea Thompson: ... conversations, becauseyeah-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is. Actually, the World Economic Forum did a 2020 future of jobs report, which talked about how many jobs are shifting towards machine versus human. And specifically, it talked about which skills will need to be developed in the future for humans to remain relevant and central to the workplace, and a lot of them are the people skills. So I agree with that summary you made there, Mea, which is, good leadership is important, considering where people are at is important, problem solving is a core ingredient of functional teamwork. And I think you'll see there in that top 10 skills, that I think six or seven of them are very human- centered skills that we need to keep bringing forward. And it's not that everyone's going to be the leader, but I think if we're going to create a human- centered design for the future of work, the future of teamwork, we need to make leadership more accessible to different members of the team as the teams work together. It's not, "I'm not responsible for managing this team or this product, but I'm responsible for living our mission, our values and ensuring that this team stays on track." If I hear something or see something that someone else hasn't, particularly in a virtual team environment, or when teams are working across multiple teams, it's not just one person working with the same three people every week, they're jumping in and out of five teams as part of their job.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. No, absolutely. And what you talked about there, about getting the right team leaders in, that could be so, so, so tricky. Because I know from working on the team leader space before, because you're stuck in the middle, right? You've got-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Mea Thompson: ...the management above you, who's like hammering you with numbers and hitting your targets and doing X, Y, Z. And then, you got the team underneath you, this kind of, that you want to nurture and look after and do all those things you should be doing as a good leader, look out for them and hear them. But at the same time, you get a bit squashed there. So it's about finding those right people that can do that. But it's not just about the teams here, it's about the management teams up here as well. And I think that is, sometimes in companies where I've seen, that's the biggest, not dysfunction, but that could be the biggest gap between management down. Instead of the teams working down here, the developers, the marketing, the sales, the support, those seem kind of work good, because they focusing on getting good team leaders in to run those teams.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep.

Mea Thompson: But it's also the leadership from the top that I find really interesting when I come in and work in a new company, working as a consultant, to really gauge and see, how is this working? Because they obviously more revenue focused.

Dane Groeneveld: Very revenue focused. And there can be a big disconnect, because they can often be top line revenue focused, but not necessarily customer focused. And I think in today's world, being customer focused, isn't just the person who pays for and buys your product, because your employees are customers now more than ever. There's a talent shortage. So, I think leadership, management, top management, executive management teams, need to do a lot more listening, too. They need to really understand, what's happening in my team? What are my customers wanting? What are my competitors doing? Because things are changing so fast and people can up and leave, technologies can change overnight, customers, business models are changing. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think there is a disconnect there, particularly in larger organizations that struggle to be agile and innovate. And that's something that the best teams, I think, from the ground up inform executive leadership as to what the sentiment is amongst those customer groups.

Mea Thompson: Yeah. I agree. And with saying that, I'm very glad, at the moment, with the connected. Because even though it's a lot of people involved with all the ambassadors and all the volunteers and everyone that gathers around these projects, but it's still so small and we've been able to keep the organization fairly flat, which I'm so thankful for. And I know, I've seen it before when startups really scale quickly. I worked for a few of them and then they become unicorns, and they try to build this teamwork so quickly underneath them to scale as much as possible, as fast as possible, that's when it gets complicated.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it does. It really does.

Mea Thompson: And those journeys are really interesting to follow from a teamwork perspective, the startup journey for the first three years. That really teaches you a lot about what not to do and what to focus on if you would do it yourself.

Dane Groeneveld: It's amazing how much we learn as humans from putting our hands on the hot stove rather than reading it in a book, right? The what not to do leaves an imprint on your brain as to what you're going to do next. So I agree with that.

Mea Thompson: Which is sad as well. Because you wanted those really, like, " I did that freaking spot on." Like that thing we there. I will remember that and I will do it again. If that doesn't stick as much as, " Oh, Mea, you remember when you said that then and there or how you act as, don't do that. And that was stupid." But we should really program our brain slightly different shouldn't we?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Maybe in the future, the AI will be augmenting our thinking there. " Hey, remember that so- and- so's done exactly what you're about to do and it didn't work out well."

Mea Thompson: Well, you think we would've-

Dane Groeneveld: It's funny.

Mea Thompson: ... learntby now looking at Ukraine, for examples, as, " Guys, someone has already made that mistake," but maybe humans don't work... and robots don't either. We bought a new loan mower, one of those automatic ones with AI? It's shit. It goes into the same areas and get stuck all the time. So not even robots-

Dane Groeneveld: It's true.

Mea Thompson: ...get it right. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: No, it's very... I mean, robots and AI is still very early. I listened to a good podcast that explained them to me as an 18- month- old. They're going to grow into a productive 30 year old, but right now they're toddlers. And we all know what toddlers are like to manage. The difference is that toddlers are generally cute, where the robots and AI isn't all that cute. I think it's easy to take that lawn mower or that robotic vacuum cleaner and just throw it in the closet and say, " I'm done with that." Yeah.

Mea Thompson: I actually left my mine out this morning as I left Sweden, in the rain, stuck in the same location. I was like, " You learn. You stay there all day until my husband comes home." I would never do that with my toddler, though. But the robot is stuck out in the rain for the day.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It is fascinating seeing how technology's going to continue to play a role in our lives. And again with The Unconnected, you get an opportunity to bring the right technology to people who, who need it. And through the theme of this discussion, allowing those people to experience what are the products? What are the learning opportunities? But also to allow service providers and product providers, to their communities, to know who they are. I think that's a big part of connecting people is... Right now, we all too often go in and say, " This company has a great product which is going to solve the problems of this community," and they never even went in and asked the community what they needed or what was already there. So, I'm really excited about what the projects that you're all doing with The Unconnected for that reason is, that it becomes more bidirectional and, hopefully, we're going to see a lot more entrepreneurship and strengthening of family units and just positive community behaviors by extending a lot of that resource to those individual.

Mea Thompson: I'm hoping so, and we've seen that already. The impact from the projects is so... I can talk about story after story about the meetings that we've had with the people who's been impacted of the projects that partners has helped us run. I won't. But what I will do, though, is that I want to give a challenge to everyone who might listening in or tuning in or to this podcast. And this is a hard... We talked about it before, when we talked about having access to internet banking and listening to Spotify or checking Netflix or the bus time table, and all these things that we keep taking our phone out to do, calling an Uber. So the challenge is called hashtag, because we're modern, unconnect24. And that means that you will be able to challenge someone or yourself or your team or your family or your spouse or your child to disconnect from mobile data for 24 hours. So you're not allowed to use the internet for 24 hours. And then-

Dane Groeneveld: That's a big challenge.

Mea Thompson: ...by doing so... When you talk about it, people's like, " That's all right. I haven't checked my phone much today," so you try it. And obviously, I've tried it and it's so much harder than you think. So challenge someone to unconnect24, it's all information on their website, so you can go and have a look, and see how hard that is. And by doing so, you raise awareness about how it is to actually be unconnected. Maybe we all deserve a digital detox. We all need that sometimes.

Dane Groeneveld: We do.

Mea Thompson: And you can raise money for some really, really cool projects. So that challenge goes out to you all to test.

Dane Groeneveld: And so you can get people to sponsor you doing your unconnect24?

Mea Thompson: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: Great.

Mea Thompson: Or, people will probably sponsor you without you wanting it. That's the good part. So, you've always have that Fred or that Linda in the office who's constantly on Instagram or doing something. And so, those are the people you need to challenge, because that's-

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Mea Thompson: ...where it becomes interesting, or you just do it as a team effort and-

Dane Groeneveld: You know what?

Mea Thompson: ... you alldo it for a day.

Dane Groeneveld: I'm going to do that in June. We're entering June tomorrow. We do a monthly challenge and I'm going to do that for all of my employees. I think that's a great idea.

Mea Thompson: That's it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Mea Thompson: Ah. But yeah, people need to opt in, though, to say, " Okay, I'm actually going to do this," and we'll see afterwards how many people that managed it. But I feel positive that's going to be-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I think it'll be great. I'll share the data with you. We do an opt- in. So we've got a employee engagement app that we use.

Mea Thompson: Fantastic.

Dane Groeneveld: And every month we give people points if they choose to complete a challenge. So, in one month it was Mindfulness March. So, go and do some guided meditation and experience meditation and what it does for your wellness. Another month, it was Active April. And it was go and be active with a colleague, a friend, or a family member outdoors, because the weather's getting better, and we want to encourage people. At work, we all too often focus on the work outputs and not on the human output. So I think our June challenge could be do the unconnected24 and if you complete it, you'll get the points. And then maybe share a story or an anecdote about what you realized on that day, and then I'll get that data and I'll share it with you.

Mea Thompson: Ah, that will be amazing. That will be great. Looking forward to getting that and good luck.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, for sure. No, thank you. Well, it's been great, great conversation, Mea. Lots of fun. And you've obviously had some fascinating experiences in your career, to date, working with different teams around the world. So I thought some of your insights there were first class. And really excited to see what you continue to do with The Unconnected. It's a great mission and we're certainly excited to be part of it, too.

Mea Thompson: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your support and best of luck in unconnect24.

Dane Groeneveld: Thank you.

Mea Thompson: No, thanks for a great conversation. I can't believe how fast it's gone, so that-

Dane Groeneveld: Flies by.

Mea Thompson: ...was great. Yeah. Flies back. Thanks, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Mea. See ya.

DESCRIPTION

Mea Thompson, Chief Commercial Officer of The Unconnected, sits down with host Dane Groeneveld to discuss her career in the telecom industry, as well as insights Mea has about building positive team experiences. The two also talk about how The Unconnected is focusing on projects to increase internet access for vulnerable communities, students, refugees, and others without equal access.


Topics of conversation:

  • [0:00] Meet Mea Thompson
  • [1:12] Mea's career background and experiences with teams
  • [4:17] How Mea forged her charity The Unconnected, and its mission
  • [6:38] On leaving a legacy and contextualizing the spread internet access
  • [8:40] The main hotspots of focus for The Unconnected
  • [10:39] Mea's definition of good teamwork, and exploring her learnings
  • [19:12] Giving people space to check-in and take responsibility
  • [23:40] Dane's experience running teams and being part of teams
  • [28:15] Navigating different cultures and avoiding the phenomenon of team pity
  • [36:25] Leadership and focus on revenue
  • [39:45] Learning from experience and thinking about the future of work and robots
  • [41:54] The Unconnected challenge to disconnect from the internet for 24 hours