Relevant Links
https://www.alizaknox.com/writing
Episode Transcript
Sharad Lal: Hi everyone, welcome to How to Live a Podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 16. In today's episode, I'm honoured to speak with Aliza Knox. Aliza, has built and led APAC businesses for three of the top tech firms Google, Twitter, and Cloudflare. In 2020, she was named the APAC IT Woman of the Year. Prior to that, Aliza worked in financial services and consulting. This included the Boston Consulting Group, Visa and other notable companies. At BCG Aliza became the first woman partner in APAC. She has been featured in Business Insider, TechCrunch, Quartz and is a regular columnist for Forbes. Aliza now spends her time serving multiple boards and sharing her passion with the next generation of leaders. In our conversation, we discussed her latest book, “Don't quit your day job”. Off late it's been fashionable to resign from the corporate world or start a business. But many of us spend a large part of our working life in corporate jobs. Aliza and I talk about how do we thrive at work while having fun? How do we shift our mindset to combine personal and professional goals? And how do we build meaningful bonds at work for a fulfilling and complete life? Aliza shares her wisdom through engaging stories. Despite her extensive experience and tremendous success Aliza is approachable, passionate and funny. In reading her book and interviewing her, I felt I was talking to a smart, wise and highly intelligent friend in a coffee shop. Here's the interview.
Hi, Aliza, welcome to How to Live, great to have you on the show. I hope you're having a good morning.
Aliza Knox: I'm having a great morning. Thanks so much for having me Sharad.
Sharad Lal: No worries, congratulations on all your success. The most fascinating thing that I found in your career is at the age of 47 where you aced your career, you were the first woman partnered at BCG Asia Pacific, you did exceedingly well in the financial world. And then you made a big shift to the Tech world with the lower title and a salary reduction. What made you do that?
Aliza Knox: I would say the one word that answers that is curiosity. Maybe actually somebody very senior in a well renowned search firm told me at the time that I was brave. And I think she meant foolhardy or possibly even stupid. But I guess I was living in the Bay Area. I was working at Visa, and I really enjoyed it. But I felt like there was this major change going on around me with the Internet. And obviously, by the early knots, which is when this was taken place, the Internet was well and truly underway, we'd already had a dot com, boom and bust. And I guess I thought I had some sort of I don't know, FOMO was coined yet, but fear of missing out. And something happened that enabled me to kind of take a leap, which was conducting a series of meetings between Google and Visa at that time, we were working on a project together. And in one of them, I met Vint Cerf, who is one of the real founders of the internet, along with people like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he's still an evangelist at Google on he was at that time. And we had a good meeting, and it was my responsibility to follow up. So I sent the appropriate emails to follow up on the work outcomes and deliverables. And then I thought, here might be an opportunity, is it too audacious, am I doing the wrong thing. But after sitting on it for a bit and feeling like, maybe I shouldn't do this, but then there was no harm in it. I wrote Vint, an email from my personal emails saying, hey, maybe this is too audacious and if you feel it's inappropriate, no need to respond. But I really liked meeting you. And I'm wondering whether Google would consider hiring somebody like me, I'm further along in my career than many of the people you're hiring, I'm not from online media, and I'm not an Engineer, but I'm really interested in what's going on. And we'd love to consider being a part of it. And he wrote back and asked me for a number of details. And that led to a many months’ conversation between Google and me about what I might do. And I think there are two good lessons about your career in this or maybe more, but one is acting on serendipity. So serendipity is sometimes very sudden, and just one action. Like I guess Kate Moss was discovered for modelling at an airport and somebody just walked up to her and said, hey, you know, do you want a model? And that launched an amazing career. I'm still waiting for that kind of serendipity. But I will be at Cheney next Friday night, if anybody would like to find me. But the other kind of serendipity is, you see, there might be an opportunity and you take action. I mean, it's possible Vint Cerf wouldn't have written back or that he would have and things wouldn't have gone anywhere with Google. And then I might have let it go. But I seize the chance. So that was one thing. And it did end up in a role for me at Google, and then a career in Tech.
And then I think the second sort of lesson is that you can switch and there are things that you can leverage. So clearly, although I was not an Engineer, and I hadn't worked in anything to do with Tech, and I didn't know online media, I had been selling for good part of my career, when you're a partner in a consulting firm you sell, when you're running the corporate card service, at visa, you're running product and a sales organisation. So I was able to say, look what I know how to say to like a sell myself, but say to Google, this is what I know how to do I know how to sell, I know how to manage teams to sell and market and how to explain what product needs to be in market for the customers. And so I was able to leverage that into a really different industry. And then why go with a lower title and a lower salary? Again, just really curious, really wanted to learn. I don't care that much about titles. And I do think there was more title inflation in financial services, and there had been in Tech at that stage. The salary reduction, when you're raising a family is harder. Google came with some equity, which I thought would have value. And I'm sure that sounds obvious to everybody on the call now. But I must say I joined when the share price was at 750. And they were saying it was worth 1000. And subsequently, it went down to under 300. So for a while, it did not look good. It did recover, and then more. But at the time, it seemed like that part might have been somewhat foolhardy. But it wasn't the only reason that I changed, I really wanted to learn something new. And I think there's a lot of discussion now about being a lifelong learner. And, frankly, I feel for a lot of us, that's what keeps us motivated and interested is to actually be in a job where you're learning. And of course, sometimes that means it's really challenging and a bit scary when you move over, because you've sort of proven yourself in one kind of industry or one kind of role. And then you have to do it all over again. But on the other hand, I find it really energising to be in a situation where you get to learn more.
Sharad Lal: Well, thank you for that. That's so inspirational. And like you said, a lot of people now are looking at learning more and reinventing yourself. What are some of the things that they can consider when they're making a shift to reinvent themselves? How should they go into the new life?
Aliza Knox: Well, I think a lot of people do go out and get some additional education, whether or not they're reinventing themselves. There's a guy I used to work with at BCG in Sydney named Peter Tanner, who is an accomplished CEO, Board Chair now Investor. And he very publicly posted on LinkedIn, in the last couple of months, that he'd done a Data Analytics course online at Harvard. And I think he's quite proud of himself and even got an award on some sort of project. And he in theory, doesn't need to learn anything else. And he's not doing it to shift careers. He's just been doing it because he's interested and wants to learn. And I think that's a great thing to do. I think for other people, they might do some learning on the side to enable themselves to be a coder, or to move into a company where it would be better if they know more about AI or crypto. But I don't think you need to do that. As I said, in my case, I think a lot of times you can think about what sort of industry do I want to be in or what kind of job and can I leverage something that I've already done. So in my case, it was sales. There's another example in the book of a young man named Arfi, who was at Cloudflare with us, and we hired him as a marketing intern because he was getting a degree in Singapore and marketing, he did a terrific job. We offered him a full time job. And he said, I've thought about it being here for the summer, watching everybody I think I would prefer to be a Solutions Engineer. And although I don't have an engineering degree, I think I'm handy enough at Tech and understand enough at Tech to make that switch. Can you help me understand what I would need to do that? And we said, Yeah, well, you will have to do some work because we saw your work in marketing, we offered you a job because you're great. And you're a good cultural fit with the firm. We know you're driven; we'd love to have you but you need to know some different things to be a Solutions Engineer. And so the Solutions Engineering team had him shadow them for a bit. They gave him some homework. They showed him what he would have to study because eventually he had to pass an exam to get that role. But he did all that and came back to us instead of as a marketing person, as a Solutions Engineer. So people can make those swaps and in lots of different ways.
Sharad Lal: That's great to hear. So you start with what you can leverage and then use your curiosity and learning to go and expand on that.
Aliza Knox: I think there's one thing I would say that comes up in the book a bit which is that sometimes I find people are trying to make too many jumps at once. So again, there's another story about a guy here in Singapore whom I know because we went to the same university, I went much, much earlier than he did. His name is Ning Fei and he was finishing his government bond in Singapore. And he wanted to move from the public sector to private, he wanted to move from the kind of role he had now to product management. I think he wanted to move into clean energy, as I recall, and he wanted to move to the US. And there might have been one more step. And I know he is very smart and capable. But I did say I think that's too many jumps at once, despite the fact that the job market is now tight. And it's probably easier to make some shifts, making four or five leaps at once is a little bit difficult for a hiring manager. Even if they think you're talented, even if they think you're good. They want some certainty that the person that they're hiring is going to be able to do the role. And so I don't think everybody needs a round peg to round hole, but they need something close. And so what Ning Fei did in the end, he was a little discouraged. And it was during COVID, which made it harder. But we talked about it. I think just doing four or five things, or even three at once makes it a bit harder for a hiring manager. So why don't you pick one or two, prioritise which in his case was to go to the private sector and get closer to product management, and leave the international moves and the clean energy and some of the other stuff, tell a bit later. So that you can leverage the moves you've done now, and then do those next. And I'm sure he got the same advice from quite a few people. And that's what he did. And it's worked out and he's soon about to move overseas. So I think he did about one and a half, maybe we could consider two steps of the move. And now he's doing number three, which he had deprioritized and waited for a year. And then I think he'll do the others later. So that's another thing to think about.
Sharad Lal: Right. So if it's you are moving from A to B, but B is five or six steps away, it's okay to break it up into a few steps to get towards that goal.
Aliza Knox: Yeah, so another way to say it is, in a way he was moving from A to E. So we kind of said, why don't you do A to B or A to C. And then you can do C to D and C to E not because you're not personally capable. But because it's a big bet for a hiring manager. And you're less likely to get that role.
Sharad Lal: You came up with this book, “Don't quit your day job”, which is so refreshing to see because there's so much literature out there right now telling people to resign the great resignation, start a business, but you're talking about thriving at work. What inspired this book?
Aliza Knox: The book was inspired by the fact that one of my lessons from Tech is you have to be scalable. And I spend a lot of time going out for coffee with people chatting about their careers. And generally people call to ask for my time when they're making a big shift. Or when they feel stuck. Not that many people call me to go, let's go have coffee, because I'm so happy, which is too bad. But that's kind of how they seek me out. Because I've worked for longer, or I’m a female or I've been in Tech or whatever. And there are only 24 hours in a day. I have been applying for 28 consistently, but I can't get it except for on the occasions when I fly to the US from here. And so in 24 hours a day, there's only so many people you can see I have some other things I want to do like play badminton, sleep, see my family. And I don't even like coffee. But I've learned to drink like weak decaf lattes, so that I can go out for coffee. But so that's just not a scalable solution for me. So what I've done is say, Well, maybe I should write it all down. And that way, even some people who I never get to meet could learn some of the things I've learned along the way. And if one nugget in there helps them now. And another nugget gets stored away in their brain for 10 weeks, 10 years later, and it pops up and they think wow, I can use this now, then they all feel like I have given back a little bit. And this is primarily about giving back. I'm giving the author's profits from this book to something called Vital Voices, which is a nonprofit organisation that seeks to promote women into leadership, particularly political leadership, to drive change for women in the workplace. So this is really primarily about giving back. The other reason I wrote it is that I do think there's a lot of literature on resigning, and side hustle and starting your own business. And that is perfect for a lot of people. But for a lot of people, they're going to spend most of their lives working in an organisation, whether that's a hospital, or social services, or academia or the government, or a Tech firm or a bank. And so the book is really about if you're going to be working for someone else and in these kinds of orgs how can you make it that it work for you? And I do think there are times when you leave. The book doesn't mean never quit. But if you're going to work if you quit, you might go somewhere else. So how do you make that job work for all the things you have in your life.
Sharad Lal: That's very powerful. It's got such a worthy cause. When I read this book, it sounds exactly like that. It sounds like I'm having coffee with you. Because it's a very conversational tone, it's very easy to read. I somehow think I know you better just reading this book.
Aliza Knox: Well, thank you. I think the best part about it for me was putting in all the examples, I think there I counted at one point, but there's some overlap. I think I've got a few dozen examples of people from a variety of nationalities, ages 22, to mid-60s, living in different countries, all the kinds of different industries that I just mentioned in the last sentence. And so I'm hoping there's not one for every power perspective or tactic. But there's a lot, so I'm hoping a lot of people can relate in some way to one or another. It's more stories than it is a prescription for what you need to do. There are takeaway tactics, and takeaway power perspectives. But it's really meant to be more stories where people can maybe think of themselves and see how that might relate to them.
Sharad Lal: Absolutely. And I know many women leaders will relate to the first mindset shift that you talked about that Instead of thinking about family, or work, or work or life, think about work and life.
Aliza Knox: Sure, and I think the book is definitely not just for women about something less than half, but not a lot less is about men. And in fact, one of the examples where somebody down shifts their career to support their partner is a guy doing that Simon Cantor in the UK. I guess it wouldn't say downshift, but he takes an alternative approach in order to be home more. And I think one of the interesting things about the pandemic is that a lot of men have been home more, and now suddenly see it as positive, really wanting to be around their kids more, maybe travelling less. So I think it speaks to everyone. And I guess there's a story in there about Suzy Nicoletti, who was running Twitter for Australia, New Zealand, and is now running Yotpo and Israeli start up for all of APAC. And in the beginning, she just said to me, I can't do both, right. So I don't want to take this job that you're offering me because I want to have kids. And I just kind of refused to let her tell me that. And I said I think you can do both. And she has is now three kids later when has moved from being a sales lead to running Twitter, Australia, New Zealand and now to running Yatpo APAC.
So I guess where I come out, there's a bunch of examples of people and how they've done it, I would never say you can have it all. You can't do everything you want. As I said, there's not enough hours in the day. But I also think your career in your life, the way we talk about work-life balance, it's like a seesaw as if one goes up and the other goes down. And often there are things that work for both sides of you. So there's an example for me in the very beginning, I moved to New York after college. And the only thing I knew how to do to exercise that I enjoyed was swimming. And there was no place to swim in Manhattan, there was one large pool that had a quota on people under 25, which was a limitation at the time, of course, it wouldn't be now sadly. And there was the New York Health and Racquet Club which had all these tiny pools that you could jump in and show off your body after you've done aerobics, but you couldn't even lie down in them, let alone swim laps. So the one place that had a big pool that I knew about was New York University, and it was right next to where I was living in the village. The catch was that I had just finished university, I was in a bank training program, which came with homework. And the only way you could get into that pool was to get a degree. But I decided that I would go ahead and apply. And if I got in, start some courses towards an MBA, never having a view that I would finish there, always thinking I would go back to California where I grew up and apply to Stanford, because I could swim.
So put me down this path, I did it with somebody else, because it was good to keep each other going. Because it was not so pleasant to be studying and working during the day and then studying at night and then swimming. But I went down this path for my personal stamina because I liked to exercise and it gives me energy. And four years later, I ended up with an MBA, debt free which was positive and an apartment that smells like chlorine, and some options that I hadn't anticipated. I spent a brief period at American Express but after that this really big part of my career, the longest single job I've had was at the Boston Consulting Group. And I had no idea what consulting was, I had no idea I would want to do that. But when I decided okay, this was another thing I just did for my life. I want to go live in Australia. I've had a few months in England during college, it was interesting but cold and rainy and I ate a lot of cruciferous vegetables and they were soggy that time to do something else. When I went to look for a job in Australia, people said oh, well you have some financial services experience you've gotten this MBA in marketing and you can be a consultant. And I was like, well, what's a consultant, but I ended up at BCG, because I had that MBA, which I had gotten, because I wanted to swim.
So it might sound ridiculous on the one hand, but my point is often you end up doing these things for your life, I didn't set out to do that for my career. And I ended up with a great job. And I wrote an article for Forbes, this past month about a journalist in New York, who got out of Columbia Journalism School with some schools in the US and went to work at a small town newspaper in Alabama, where she could cover really important investigative things like chemicals in the water are things that community really needed. There's a slightly longer story than this. But ultimately, she really wanted to be in New York City. And she couldn't get a job in New York City at the big papers like the New York Times, that were the kind of journalism that she wanted to do. So she decided that her priority in her life, even more than the kind of journalism she wanted to do was to be in New York. And she would take whatever kind of journalism role she could get. What she really felt like, was kind of selling herself short. But she decided that was the right decision for her life. So she did that. And she got a job in real estate writing. But if you read the article, if you want to look, it's short, she basically moved to a situation where she's now an editor at The Wall Street Journal. And so she made a decision for one reason, and that was about what was important in her life. And then it propelled her to something that actually advanced her career. And there's a bunch of other examples in there like that. That's where I come out on, you don't necessarily have to give up one for the other.
Sharad Lal: That's very interesting. And you also mentioned in your book, which is related to this, that there are no wrong decisions. Very often we are at the crossroads where we are thinking, Oh, my God, I'm going to lose out on this, should I do this, should I do that? And you mentioned, don't overthink it. They're no wrong decisions, because they'll serve you in some way that you may not know. I found that point very interesting.
Aliza Knox: I believe what I wrote, I do think sometimes there are decisions that aren't great. I've twice gone to jobs where I left in less than a year because it was probably not the best role for me at that time. But I would say they weren't wrong in the sense that I was able to then leverage them into something else. And an example I wrote about in the book is a young woman named Emily Rubin who graduated while COVID took her job at a startup in San Francisco even though she was worried that she couldn't make a go on the salary. So that was the first part I wrote about it. But she made it. And for the first few months, she really liked it. There was an organisational change and she ended up in a group and with the manager that made her very uncomfortable. She tried to rectify it internally, but couldn't get to a place where she was happy there. And she left in less than a year, which I generally tell people as with my two examples, you should probably try to stick it out a year or two, because you haven't finished learning even though you might not like it. But you know, sometimes we're all in a situation where we say, I'm miserable, I've got to go. But she's now at Huron Consulting, she loves it. And it's pretty clear that she would not have gotten the job that she has now without the albeit limited experience of the startup, she also wouldn't have been in San Francisco, where this here on job is, so she might not ever have found out about it. So that's where I come to about, just don't be paralyzed. I think you could think about it. I think you should obviously give due consideration to your decision, but not be so stuck that you can't make a decision at all, because usually, a move will get you somewhere. And there's a whole chapter in the book about momentum and movement in general, not moving for movement's sake, but talking about all the different ways to move geographically, across jobs, across industries, within a company that can help energise your career and build up your knowledge base.
Sharad Lal: Talking about movement, the other concept that I found very interesting was job crafting. And I think it's very relevant for senior folks who feel stuck that there are very limited opportunities outside. And you talk about them looking at ways they can change their job description, do something different so that they get some movement, they get something exciting. And then of course, they can move up or sideways based on that.
Aliza Knox: Yeah. So I talked again, in the book about it Made up Name. Well, I thought I made it up, I made up this name, Tim Lou. But it turns out that there is such a person at Facebook. But it's not about him. But I've gotten several outreaches on LinkedIn, but you said it was made up and this sounds like this guy. And I stumbled. It wasn't that guy I didn't know. I guess it's not that uncommon of a name. Who was in a job where he is in Singapore doesn't want to leave, is likes the company. But there's no promotion at the moment, and no parallel tracks that he can go on. And he went outside and even the job data in which I talked about look around, understand what's out there, make sure you feel happy, staying where you are. And he didn't see anything that he liked, or he didn't see anything he liked as much as what he had. And so he went back to the firm and said, Look, I really like it here. But I am feeling a bit stuck. Is there a way for me to learn any more in my current job until there are other opportunities and they said, Well, what interests you? And he said, I guess that there are two things I'm interested in are government relations, we have a lot of regulations in my industry. And I'd like to understand how we manage that with authorities. And to the extent that I can, maybe something around business development, so he was coming from sales and marketing. And so his manager helped him create some opportunities to be involved in those aspects of running the business so that he could learn, and he felt much better about staying there.
Sharad Lal: You mentioned stamina. And you'd mentioned stamina was the second mindset you talked about. And when one thinks of stamina one thinks of drudgery, hard work endurance, but you had a positive spin to it. You said it can be fun. If you could talk a little bit more about that.
Aliza Knox: Well, the way I think about stamina, I wrote a little equation, I hope it's original, I didn't look to see if anybody else had written it, which is stamina is perseverance plus enthusiasm. But another title for the book could have been getting in and staying in and obviously, I didn't follow my own advice. I worked for 40 years. And then I did stop working full time, although I sit on boards and have written the book and I'm an active investor. So I haven't stopped doing things. But stamina is what does it takes to go to work for somebody else and stay in that position for quite some time and really enjoy it. How do you do that. And so that was my take on it. And I do think that you should find your work rewarding, fulfilling, and there I say it most times fun. Not all times. I think to do that you need to find ways to energise yourself both inside and outside of work, as I talked about, I think maybe you shouldn't expect work to be everything in your life. We have gone from a place where at one-point work was about filling financial needs. And then there's been a lot of talk about working for companies with a mission that you can support. And I think that's great if you can find that. And then there's been further literature about finding your passion at work. And I think that's great, if you can find it, but I think there are a lot of people for whom that may not be possible. Yesterday I had lunch with somebody who loves horses. Who rides all the time, and in fact, has learned to play polo. And it's hard to see how she can do that in middle age as her profession. So she doesn't. But she works in a job she really likes that has enough flexibility for her to be able to go out to the country and ride when she wants to, to keep horses in some places, the finance to support that. And in turn that gives her stamina and energy and respite, sometimes from work that helps her stay in the game, if you will.
Sharad Lal: The other interesting concept that you talked about was connections and having sponsors and personal board of directors. How have you done that through your career?
Aliza Knox: Well, one thing about me, I'm probably an extrovert by the Myers Briggs definition, which is I get energy from being with other people. I still don't like going to a cocktail party where I don't know anybody and just trying to meet them for business networking. That's uncomfortable. But because I like people, for me, it's just kind of comes naturally, which is just I talk to a lot of people, I've worked at all these firms, and in places where there are people from different nationalities, who I find really interesting. And so in some ways, that's been more just innate for me. But I have worked with a lot of people for whom that isn't true. And I still think it's highly possible. So first of all, even if you're an introvert, I think a lot of people like to have friends. And so one good way to make connections at work is to seek out the people with whom you get along and find a bond. And that's a little harder when we're all remote. I think that'll change as there's some coming back to the workplace. On the other hand, I quote about Shiva Hirsch in the book who works at Google now and coms, and she says, I don't take a meeting, I make a friend, even on Zoom, just to get to know them a little so that you have something in common, that can make it kind of fun when you meet up again, and certainly eases things when you're trying to get collaborative work done. And in her case, for example, she's had to I know a couple times wake people up in the middle of the night when there is a coms sort of issue or crisis that Asia or the US needs to be alerted about. And I know that doing that to someone is much easier if you've had some sort of friendly bond created, even though Zoom.
I think you do need a sponsor at work or an advocate probably more than a mentor. Often the natural person is somebody who has hired you, who really is invested in your success. But that person might change roles, they might leave the company. And so you probably need to find another one. And that often comes about through really delivering on your work and your output and having them see how great you are and then making an effort to get to know them, I think you also need people outside. And that's where I talk about the personal board of directors. Some people do have one mentor who's with them all through their career, and who's really signed up to be there for them. So for example, personally, I have two young Afghan women who had been mentoring for years from the University in Bangladesh, who's now in the US. I meet with her all the time, I'm very committed to her and her family. And then there's a young Australian athlete with whom I was set up a year ago, because female athletes often find themselves after the Olympics, for example, having focused so much on their athletic prowess that they forgot to plan for a career. And so this is meant to help those athletes who wanted to. So for those, I'm like a long term committed. But that's enough. That takes a lot of my time.
So I can't really mentor anybody else. I can have these coffees that we talked about. So some people end up without a lifetime mentor. And maybe a better way to go about this is to say, what's the kind of advice I want? Where can I get it? Do I want to learn about going on boards? And so for me, when I wanted to do that there was a woman I knew, we both were at competing consulting firms. And then she had called on me as a client in California and she was on board before I was. I called her to ask about it. There's a woman in Singapore, who is very senior, super accomplished on a lot of boards here who I meet with to just learn more about how things work in Singapore governance approaches how to handle things. I don't think either one of them knows that they are my Board of Directors they might know now because of the book. And it's not that I don't meet with them just for that. But it's a good way to get advice without sort of saying to somebody, can you mentor me, which might be daunting for them because that's a big ask in terms of time. Also at different points in your career, you need different kinds of advice. I didn't need advice about how to go on boards 20 years ago, maybe I needed ideas on well, how big of a risk is this to switch from financial services to tech, or maybe in the last couple years when I switched to what I'm calling Aliza 3.0 with 1.0 having been consulting in financial services and 2.0 having been Tech, what are the risks if I leave my career now and to get a could I ever go back to work? What if I want to? So I think that's a great way to get outside help to figure out who you might want to talk to, you don't have to tell them, they're on your board, I think you do need to keep up a connection. And maybe over time, as with real corporate boards, you swap people out when they're less relevant. And the other good thing as with real boards is that you get a diversity of opinion, and not that of just one mentor.
Sharad Lal: I really liked that, especially for the personal board of directors, keeping it casual, keeping it friendly. And then also looking at where you want to go and who can help you get there. So those are the kind of people you seek and work towards that. I've noticed that about your career where even though you've been in leadership positions for over half your career, but you've not been guarded, like one often thinks of leadership is being guarded. You've created your deepest connections at work, you've had fun, you've done exciting stuff. How have you been able to do that as a leader?
Aliza Knox: Well, I wouldn't say I have created my completely deepest connections. I do have a spouse who didn't come from work. But I have created a lot of deep connections. I think, again, for me, it worked because I'm very open. I'm not so guarded. And that's possibly because I don't know how to be guarded, maybe there's some skill I need at being a bit more reticent, I'm closer to wearing my heart on my sleeve. So it works for a lot of parts of leadership style. And it works with a lot of people, but not with everybody. I also think as I mentioned, I just really like people. And I feel like I've worked in a lot of places where there are a lot of interesting people, that Tech firms, PCG attract a lot of high calibre, thoughtful, curious individuals. So in many ways, it was easy to become friends with some of them, although not all of them. But different people have different styles that work for them. So my style works for me, I think, in high school in the US that like the pinnacle of high school popularity would be to be a cheerleader, if people know what that is, you know, on the sideline its sports jumping up and down. And I guess I was neither popular nor athletic enough to be a cheerleader. And so it seems that that's what I've become in my adult life. I'm really like cheering people on at work and getting to know them. And so that's leadership style works for me.
Sharad Lal: That's a huge service to people, especially many of the people you've written about younger people at difficult points in their career, having a cheerleader who can give them strong advice, but also cheering them on. That's so good for people to have. The other thing you mentioned in your book, which was fighting back when you were wronged, nurturing your career. And many of us when you are in the corporate world think that hey, I don't want to upset my boss, something else would go wrong. I don't want to negotiate here. How should we think about this?
Aliza Knox: Fighting back is very specific about when you feel you've been wronged at your workplace. And obviously, there's some very, very serious issues. And I note in the book, and I will note again, hear that those require psychological, HR, legal, professional expertise, not mine. But the one point that I did try to make and give a couple examples is where doing enough so that you feel you have agency over your career, I think if you are in the wrong, if you have done something seriously wrong, it will be harder to fight back. But if you believe you haven't, you may still, for example, not want to stay at that firm anymore. Because it's often uncomfortable to be in a place where you think that somebody has said something about you or analysed you in a certain way or deemed that something's been done that you didn't do. And I talked about a woman who was let go during COVID, even though she was a star salesperson. And when I asked her, there's a variety of issues around it, which you can read is too long to tell, but when I asked her, Okay, well, do you want to stay with the firm? Her answer was no; I don't want to stay anymore.
So the question was, Well, what do you want out of it? What do you need to feel better? And she said, I need some of the benefits that they've taken away from me. And in order to feel like I'm not completely injured, and to go out with some self-esteem. And I think that's what's important. Making the decision that's right for you, which might often be leaving but not always. There's another case I talked about Kathy again in disguise, but a young female engineer at a very large firm in the Bay Area. And she went back to a firm where she had been twice for the summer as an intern. They loved her. She got there. She started working all was great again, a management change ended up with a manager who was very demoralising. I've known her for quite some time. She called me and said okay, I have to leave this firm, and my reputation is ruined. I've been asking for help from HR, but it's not working. I have to go and I said, it's like this is a very large firm that you're in. I do not believe you have to leave. I do not believe your reputation is ruined. What else can you do? And so I said to her what happened to those people who hired you back for the summers twice, they are advocates. So she reached out to two of them. And she had also met, in this particular case, the Chief Product Officer at some event a while back and had found some small interests they had in common. And so she thought she'd be audacious and reach out to him too. So she crafted some emails and wrote to these three people and say, I would really like to stay at this company, I'm in a situation that I find untenable now, if you think my reputation is too badly damaged, then of course, I'll have to go. But I'd really like to stay, do you think you could help me find anything? And out of those three emails, she got two other offers within the firm, and she's at one of them, and really happy. So that's the other thing you have to consider is there an opportunity to shift or change within and not to assume that it's all done for.
Sharad Lal: Right. Absolutely. We have this question from the audience. We love your thoughts on this. There are many working couples where both partners are ambitious, but they struggle with how to ensure that both of them have strong careers. Now, sometimes due to shifting countries, one person's career could grow, the others could go down. So how should these couples think about this and work through something like this?
Aliza Knox: Again, not a couple’s counsellor, I guess in my case, I am married to somebody who was more willing to move for my career. And I met several other people like that where one person will shift for the other more often than the other way round. I think there are others who take turns. There's a great example, in the book that Crystal Hailing, who came to Singapore with her husband, who was at Apple, and gave up this amazing job she had at Blue Shield, and didn't work for a while, but got very involved in family philanthropy here because she was running the Blue Shield Foundation. And when she went back to the US, even though she hadn't worked full time, for a while, she ended up with a job that she thinks she wouldn't have gotten without this sort of career break, if you want to call it that, because when she was on that break, she did do a lot on a sort of pro bono and out of interest basis with these family funds. And she ended up in the US running a Family Fund for one of the Pritzker families. And so in that sense, they made a trade off, and it worked for her. There's another example, which has been written up in the press of Stacy Brown, Philpot, who stepped down a while ago as the CEO of Task Rabbit. But who had done extremely well at Google went to Task Rabbit now is on a number of boards. And there were articles in the crew in the New York Times, etc., about how Google offered her this amazing role in India, and her husband wasn't willing and able to move at that time. And so they agreed they would live apart for a little over a year, they set a timeframe on it. And she went and took the Google role out of which she learned a lot and which led to a lot of growth and a promotion. And they separate it for a year. And again, that's not for everybody, they did not have children at that time, which may have been part of what made it easier. But that's another decision. So I think some of these things do work out.
Sharad Lal: And what I get specially from Crystal story that you talked about earlier, if you're smart, wherever you find yourself, even if you're not working, you will find something to do and the dots could connect eventually, in ways you never thought before where you could turn out to get an even better career than you ever anticipated.
Aliza Knox: I think so it's often hard to see at the time. And that's what's hard for people. You can be smart, ambitious, persistent, to find things. And it isn't always easy, but I think it often can work out. There's another example Rahul Desai is a guy that I've worked with for a long time at Google and Facebook, who's now at TripActions. And his wife is an artist. And when they were in Singapore, she learned about Batik. And she's really changed her artistic style to incorporate batik after being here. And that wouldn't have happened if they'd stayed in the US. So you never know. But of course, the angst that surfaces for people is that they don't know if we all had hindsight, of course, people would be comfortable making these choices. And that's why I'm hoping the examples help because people can see how often it does work out even if it seems to be a difficult choice at the time.
Sharad Lal: Aliza, you've done so well in your career. And you talked about succeeding in Aliza 1.0, succeeding in Aliza 2.0. What are your plans for Aliza 3.0?
Aliza Knox: Well, I realised that the theme in my life is growth, hopefully not in my waistline, but in helping other people develop. If you ask me, the most satisfying part of my career, it's been helping other people develop, maybe faster or more broadly. I have worked with a lot of great people, many of whom were in the book, many of whom are not. And I think they could have all done well without me. But I do look back and think that sometimes I've helped them get to a place faster or a different place than they might have without exposure to me. And so that's the most fulfilling part for me. And I'm hoping to continue on that was a book and with some of the people I mentoring and other things I might do in 3.0. And then the second part of growth is fast growth companies. Again, I really like being at companies when they're smaller, and I haven't been in anything really tiny, for the most part. But I like being in companies when they're in fast growth mode. And I'm sitting on four boards, three of them Well, two for sure, I guess it could be described as in hyper growth mode. And the other two have very strong potential. So I really like being in a situation where I'm part of working with a CEO and a management team to see if I can assist with their growth. As a board member, you're not really operating. So I missed that a little bit. But if I can be of some help and contribute some value to the growth of these companies, then that's fulfilling as well. So those are the two things that I'm hoping to do in 3.0 besides play a bit more badminton.
Sharad Lal: Thank you, Aliza, for so generously and openly sharing practical advice that can help us thrive in the workplace. You are an inspiration to so many of us. For more on Aliza, I would recommend reading her book, “Don't quit your day job”. I really enjoyed reading it. I will put up a link in the show notes on where you can get this book. Here are some action steps from the interview we could consider. For people struggling with work life balance are we looking at it all wrong? Should we look at ways to integrate work and life? How can we do that? For folks who feel stuck at work can we proactively look at job crafting, making adjustments to a job description so it's more enjoyable and fulfilling. There are many other things you could consider thinking about sponsors at work, building your personal board of directors, fighting back when wronged and many more. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Till next time, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.
Sharad Lal: Hi everyone, welcome to How to Live a Podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 16. In today's episode, I'm honoured to speak with Aliza Knox. Aliza, has built and led APAC businesses for three of the top tech firms Google, Twitter, and Cloudflare. In 2020, she was named the APAC IT Woman of the Year. Prior to that, Aliza worked in financial services and consulting. This included the Boston Consulting Group, Visa and other notable companies. At BCG Aliza became the first woman partner in APAC. She has been featured in Business Insider, TechCrunch, Quartz and is a regular columnist for Forbes. Aliza now spends her time serving multiple boards and sharing her passion with the next generation of leaders. In our conversation, we discussed her latest book, “Don't quit your day job”. Off late it's been fashionable to resign from the corporate world or start a business. But many of us spend a large part of our working life in corporate jobs. Aliza and I talk about how do we thrive at work while having fun? How do we shift our mindset to combine personal and professional goals? And how do we build meaningful bonds at work for a fulfilling and complete life? Aliza shares her wisdom through engaging stories. Despite her extensive experience and tremendous success Aliza is approachable, passionate and funny. In reading her book and interviewing her, I felt I was talking to a smart, wise and highly intelligent friend in a coffee shop. Here's the interview.
Hi, Aliza, welcome to How to Live, great to have you on the show. I hope you're having a good morning.
Aliza Knox: I'm having a great morning. Thanks so much for having me Sharad.
Sharad Lal: No worries, congratulations on all your success. The most fascinating thing that I found in your career is at the age of 47 where you aced your career, you were the first woman partnered at BCG Asia Pacific, you did exceedingly well in the financial world. And then you made a big shift to the Tech world with the lower title and a salary reduction. What made you do that?
Aliza Knox: I would say the one word that answers that is curiosity. Maybe actually somebody very senior in a well renowned search firm told me at the time that I was brave. And I think she meant foolhardy or possibly even stupid. But I guess I was living in the Bay Area. I was working at Visa, and I really enjoyed it. But I felt like there was this major change going on around me with the Internet. And obviously, by the early knots, which is when this was taken place, the Internet was well and truly underway, we'd already had a dot com, boom and bust. And I guess I thought I had some sort of I don't know, FOMO was coined yet, but fear of missing out. And something happened that enabled me to kind of take a leap, which was conducting a series of meetings between Google and Visa at that time, we were working on a project together. And in one of them, I met Vint Cerf, who is one of the real founders of the internet, along with people like Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he's still an evangelist at Google on he was at that time. And we had a good meeting, and it was my responsibility to follow up. So I sent the appropriate emails to follow up on the work outcomes and deliverables. And then I thought, here might be an opportunity, is it too audacious, am I doing the wrong thing. But after sitting on it for a bit and feeling like, maybe I shouldn't do this, but then there was no harm in it. I wrote Vint, an email from my personal emails saying, hey, maybe this is too audacious and if you feel it's inappropriate, no need to respond. But I really liked meeting you. And I'm wondering whether Google would consider hiring somebody like me, I'm further along in my career than many of the people you're hiring, I'm not from online media, and I'm not an Engineer, but I'm really interested in what's going on. And we'd love to consider being a part of it. And he wrote back and asked me for a number of details. And that led to a many months’ conversation between Google and me about what I might do. And I think there are two good lessons about your career in this or maybe more, but one is acting on serendipity. So serendipity is sometimes very sudden, and just one action. Like I guess Kate Moss was discovered for modelling at an airport and somebody just walked up to her and said, hey, you know, do you want a model? And that launched an amazing career. I'm still waiting for that kind of serendipity. But I will be at Cheney next Friday night, if anybody would like to find me. But the other kind of serendipity is, you see, there might be an opportunity and you take action. I mean, it's possible Vint Cerf wouldn't have written back or that he would have and things wouldn't have gone anywhere with Google. And then I might have let it go. But I seize the chance. So that was one thing. And it did end up in a role for me at Google, and then a career in Tech.
And then I think the second sort of lesson is that you can switch and there are things that you can leverage. So clearly, although I was not an Engineer, and I hadn't worked in anything to do with Tech, and I didn't know online media, I had been selling for good part of my career, when you're a partner in a consulting firm you sell, when you're running the corporate card service, at visa, you're running product and a sales organisation. So I was able to say, look what I know how to say to like a sell myself, but say to Google, this is what I know how to do I know how to sell, I know how to manage teams to sell and market and how to explain what product needs to be in market for the customers. And so I was able to leverage that into a really different industry. And then why go with a lower title and a lower salary? Again, just really curious, really wanted to learn. I don't care that much about titles. And I do think there was more title inflation in financial services, and there had been in Tech at that stage. The salary reduction, when you're raising a family is harder. Google came with some equity, which I thought would have value. And I'm sure that sounds obvious to everybody on the call now. But I must say I joined when the share price was at 750. And they were saying it was worth 1000. And subsequently, it went down to under 300. So for a while, it did not look good. It did recover, and then more. But at the time, it seemed like that part might have been somewhat foolhardy. But it wasn't the only reason that I changed, I really wanted to learn something new. And I think there's a lot of discussion now about being a lifelong learner. And, frankly, I feel for a lot of us, that's what keeps us motivated and interested is to actually be in a job where you're learning. And of course, sometimes that means it's really challenging and a bit scary when you move over, because you've sort of proven yourself in one kind of industry or one kind of role. And then you have to do it all over again. But on the other hand, I find it really energising to be in a situation where you get to learn more.
Sharad Lal: Well, thank you for that. That's so inspirational. And like you said, a lot of people now are looking at learning more and reinventing yourself. What are some of the things that they can consider when they're making a shift to reinvent themselves? How should they go into the new life?
Aliza Knox: Well, I think a lot of people do go out and get some additional education, whether or not they're reinventing themselves. There's a guy I used to work with at BCG in Sydney named Peter Tanner, who is an accomplished CEO, Board Chair now Investor. And he very publicly posted on LinkedIn, in the last couple of months, that he'd done a Data Analytics course online at Harvard. And I think he's quite proud of himself and even got an award on some sort of project. And he in theory, doesn't need to learn anything else. And he's not doing it to shift careers. He's just been doing it because he's interested and wants to learn. And I think that's a great thing to do. I think for other people, they might do some learning on the side to enable themselves to be a coder, or to move into a company where it would be better if they know more about AI or crypto. But I don't think you need to do that. As I said, in my case, I think a lot of times you can think about what sort of industry do I want to be in or what kind of job and can I leverage something that I've already done. So in my case, it was sales. There's another example in the book of a young man named Arfi, who was at Cloudflare with us, and we hired him as a marketing intern because he was getting a degree in Singapore and marketing, he did a terrific job. We offered him a full time job. And he said, I've thought about it being here for the summer, watching everybody I think I would prefer to be a Solutions Engineer. And although I don't have an engineering degree, I think I'm handy enough at Tech and understand enough at Tech to make that switch. Can you help me understand what I would need to do that? And we said, Yeah, well, you will have to do some work because we saw your work in marketing, we offered you a job because you're great. And you're a good cultural fit with the firm. We know you're driven; we'd love to have you but you need to know some different things to be a Solutions Engineer. And so the Solutions Engineering team had him shadow them for a bit. They gave him some homework. They showed him what he would have to study because eventually he had to pass an exam to get that role. But he did all that and came back to us instead of as a marketing person, as a Solutions Engineer. So people can make those swaps and in lots of different ways.
Sharad Lal: That's great to hear. So you start with what you can leverage and then use your curiosity and learning to go and expand on that.
Aliza Knox: I think there's one thing I would say that comes up in the book a bit which is that sometimes I find people are trying to make too many jumps at once. So again, there's another story about a guy here in Singapore whom I know because we went to the same university, I went much, much earlier than he did. His name is Ning Fei and he was finishing his government bond in Singapore. And he wanted to move from the public sector to private, he wanted to move from the kind of role he had now to product management. I think he wanted to move into clean energy, as I recall, and he wanted to move to the US. And there might have been one more step. And I know he is very smart and capable. But I did say I think that's too many jumps at once, despite the fact that the job market is now tight. And it's probably easier to make some shifts, making four or five leaps at once is a little bit difficult for a hiring manager. Even if they think you're talented, even if they think you're good. They want some certainty that the person that they're hiring is going to be able to do the role. And so I don't think everybody needs a round peg to round hole, but they need something close. And so what Ning Fei did in the end, he was a little discouraged. And it was during COVID, which made it harder. But we talked about it. I think just doing four or five things, or even three at once makes it a bit harder for a hiring manager. So why don't you pick one or two, prioritise which in his case was to go to the private sector and get closer to product management, and leave the international moves and the clean energy and some of the other stuff, tell a bit later. So that you can leverage the moves you've done now, and then do those next. And I'm sure he got the same advice from quite a few people. And that's what he did. And it's worked out and he's soon about to move overseas. So I think he did about one and a half, maybe we could consider two steps of the move. And now he's doing number three, which he had deprioritized and waited for a year. And then I think he'll do the others later. So that's another thing to think about.
Sharad Lal: Right. So if it's you are moving from A to B, but B is five or six steps away, it's okay to break it up into a few steps to get towards that goal.
Aliza Knox: Yeah, so another way to say it is, in a way he was moving from A to E. So we kind of said, why don't you do A to B or A to C. And then you can do C to D and C to E not because you're not personally capable. But because it's a big bet for a hiring manager. And you're less likely to get that role.
Sharad Lal: You came up with this book, “Don't quit your day job”, which is so refreshing to see because there's so much literature out there right now telling people to resign the great resignation, start a business, but you're talking about thriving at work. What inspired this book?
Aliza Knox: The book was inspired by the fact that one of my lessons from Tech is you have to be scalable. And I spend a lot of time going out for coffee with people chatting about their careers. And generally people call to ask for my time when they're making a big shift. Or when they feel stuck. Not that many people call me to go, let's go have coffee, because I'm so happy, which is too bad. But that's kind of how they seek me out. Because I've worked for longer, or I’m a female or I've been in Tech or whatever. And there are only 24 hours in a day. I have been applying for 28 consistently, but I can't get it except for on the occasions when I fly to the US from here. And so in 24 hours a day, there's only so many people you can see I have some other things I want to do like play badminton, sleep, see my family. And I don't even like coffee. But I've learned to drink like weak decaf lattes, so that I can go out for coffee. But so that's just not a scalable solution for me. So what I've done is say, Well, maybe I should write it all down. And that way, even some people who I never get to meet could learn some of the things I've learned along the way. And if one nugget in there helps them now. And another nugget gets stored away in their brain for 10 weeks, 10 years later, and it pops up and they think wow, I can use this now, then they all feel like I have given back a little bit. And this is primarily about giving back. I'm giving the author's profits from this book to something called Vital Voices, which is a nonprofit organisation that seeks to promote women into leadership, particularly political leadership, to drive change for women in the workplace. So this is really primarily about giving back. The other reason I wrote it is that I do think there's a lot of literature on resigning, and side hustle and starting your own business. And that is perfect for a lot of people. But for a lot of people, they're going to spend most of their lives working in an organisation, whether that's a hospital, or social services, or academia or the government, or a Tech firm or a bank. And so the book is really about if you're going to be working for someone else and in these kinds of orgs how can you make it that it work for you? And I do think there are times when you leave. The book doesn't mean never quit. But if you're going to work if you quit, you might go somewhere else. So how do you make that job work for all the things you have in your life.
Sharad Lal: That's very powerful. It's got such a worthy cause. When I read this book, it sounds exactly like that. It sounds like I'm having coffee with you. Because it's a very conversational tone, it's very easy to read. I somehow think I know you better just reading this book.
Aliza Knox: Well, thank you. I think the best part about it for me was putting in all the examples, I think there I counted at one point, but there's some overlap. I think I've got a few dozen examples of people from a variety of nationalities, ages 22, to mid-60s, living in different countries, all the kinds of different industries that I just mentioned in the last sentence. And so I'm hoping there's not one for every power perspective or tactic. But there's a lot, so I'm hoping a lot of people can relate in some way to one or another. It's more stories than it is a prescription for what you need to do. There are takeaway tactics, and takeaway power perspectives. But it's really meant to be more stories where people can maybe think of themselves and see how that might relate to them.
Sharad Lal: Absolutely. And I know many women leaders will relate to the first mindset shift that you talked about that Instead of thinking about family, or work, or work or life, think about work and life.
Aliza Knox: Sure, and I think the book is definitely not just for women about something less than half, but not a lot less is about men. And in fact, one of the examples where somebody down shifts their career to support their partner is a guy doing that Simon Cantor in the UK. I guess it wouldn't say downshift, but he takes an alternative approach in order to be home more. And I think one of the interesting things about the pandemic is that a lot of men have been home more, and now suddenly see it as positive, really wanting to be around their kids more, maybe travelling less. So I think it speaks to everyone. And I guess there's a story in there about Suzy Nicoletti, who was running Twitter for Australia, New Zealand, and is now running Yotpo and Israeli start up for all of APAC. And in the beginning, she just said to me, I can't do both, right. So I don't want to take this job that you're offering me because I want to have kids. And I just kind of refused to let her tell me that. And I said I think you can do both. And she has is now three kids later when has moved from being a sales lead to running Twitter, Australia, New Zealand and now to running Yatpo APAC.
So I guess where I come out, there's a bunch of examples of people and how they've done it, I would never say you can have it all. You can't do everything you want. As I said, there's not enough hours in the day. But I also think your career in your life, the way we talk about work-life balance, it's like a seesaw as if one goes up and the other goes down. And often there are things that work for both sides of you. So there's an example for me in the very beginning, I moved to New York after college. And the only thing I knew how to do to exercise that I enjoyed was swimming. And there was no place to swim in Manhattan, there was one large pool that had a quota on people under 25, which was a limitation at the time, of course, it wouldn't be now sadly. And there was the New York Health and Racquet Club which had all these tiny pools that you could jump in and show off your body after you've done aerobics, but you couldn't even lie down in them, let alone swim laps. So the one place that had a big pool that I knew about was New York University, and it was right next to where I was living in the village. The catch was that I had just finished university, I was in a bank training program, which came with homework. And the only way you could get into that pool was to get a degree. But I decided that I would go ahead and apply. And if I got in, start some courses towards an MBA, never having a view that I would finish there, always thinking I would go back to California where I grew up and apply to Stanford, because I could swim.
So put me down this path, I did it with somebody else, because it was good to keep each other going. Because it was not so pleasant to be studying and working during the day and then studying at night and then swimming. But I went down this path for my personal stamina because I liked to exercise and it gives me energy. And four years later, I ended up with an MBA, debt free which was positive and an apartment that smells like chlorine, and some options that I hadn't anticipated. I spent a brief period at American Express but after that this really big part of my career, the longest single job I've had was at the Boston Consulting Group. And I had no idea what consulting was, I had no idea I would want to do that. But when I decided okay, this was another thing I just did for my life. I want to go live in Australia. I've had a few months in England during college, it was interesting but cold and rainy and I ate a lot of cruciferous vegetables and they were soggy that time to do something else. When I went to look for a job in Australia, people said oh, well you have some financial services experience you've gotten this MBA in marketing and you can be a consultant. And I was like, well, what's a consultant, but I ended up at BCG, because I had that MBA, which I had gotten, because I wanted to swim.
So it might sound ridiculous on the one hand, but my point is often you end up doing these things for your life, I didn't set out to do that for my career. And I ended up with a great job. And I wrote an article for Forbes, this past month about a journalist in New York, who got out of Columbia Journalism School with some schools in the US and went to work at a small town newspaper in Alabama, where she could cover really important investigative things like chemicals in the water are things that community really needed. There's a slightly longer story than this. But ultimately, she really wanted to be in New York City. And she couldn't get a job in New York City at the big papers like the New York Times, that were the kind of journalism that she wanted to do. So she decided that her priority in her life, even more than the kind of journalism she wanted to do was to be in New York. And she would take whatever kind of journalism role she could get. What she really felt like, was kind of selling herself short. But she decided that was the right decision for her life. So she did that. And she got a job in real estate writing. But if you read the article, if you want to look, it's short, she basically moved to a situation where she's now an editor at The Wall Street Journal. And so she made a decision for one reason, and that was about what was important in her life. And then it propelled her to something that actually advanced her career. And there's a bunch of other examples in there like that. That's where I come out on, you don't necessarily have to give up one for the other.
Sharad Lal: That's very interesting. And you also mentioned in your book, which is related to this, that there are no wrong decisions. Very often we are at the crossroads where we are thinking, Oh, my God, I'm going to lose out on this, should I do this, should I do that? And you mentioned, don't overthink it. They're no wrong decisions, because they'll serve you in some way that you may not know. I found that point very interesting.
Aliza Knox: I believe what I wrote, I do think sometimes there are decisions that aren't great. I've twice gone to jobs where I left in less than a year because it was probably not the best role for me at that time. But I would say they weren't wrong in the sense that I was able to then leverage them into something else. And an example I wrote about in the book is a young woman named Emily Rubin who graduated while COVID took her job at a startup in San Francisco even though she was worried that she couldn't make a go on the salary. So that was the first part I wrote about it. But she made it. And for the first few months, she really liked it. There was an organisational change and she ended up in a group and with the manager that made her very uncomfortable. She tried to rectify it internally, but couldn't get to a place where she was happy there. And she left in less than a year, which I generally tell people as with my two examples, you should probably try to stick it out a year or two, because you haven't finished learning even though you might not like it. But you know, sometimes we're all in a situation where we say, I'm miserable, I've got to go. But she's now at Huron Consulting, she loves it. And it's pretty clear that she would not have gotten the job that she has now without the albeit limited experience of the startup, she also wouldn't have been in San Francisco, where this here on job is, so she might not ever have found out about it. So that's where I come to about, just don't be paralyzed. I think you could think about it. I think you should obviously give due consideration to your decision, but not be so stuck that you can't make a decision at all, because usually, a move will get you somewhere. And there's a whole chapter in the book about momentum and movement in general, not moving for movement's sake, but talking about all the different ways to move geographically, across jobs, across industries, within a company that can help energise your career and build up your knowledge base.
Sharad Lal: Talking about movement, the other concept that I found very interesting was job crafting. And I think it's very relevant for senior folks who feel stuck that there are very limited opportunities outside. And you talk about them looking at ways they can change their job description, do something different so that they get some movement, they get something exciting. And then of course, they can move up or sideways based on that.
Aliza Knox: Yeah. So I talked again, in the book about it Made up Name. Well, I thought I made it up, I made up this name, Tim Lou. But it turns out that there is such a person at Facebook. But it's not about him. But I've gotten several outreaches on LinkedIn, but you said it was made up and this sounds like this guy. And I stumbled. It wasn't that guy I didn't know. I guess it's not that uncommon of a name. Who was in a job where he is in Singapore doesn't want to leave, is likes the company. But there's no promotion at the moment, and no parallel tracks that he can go on. And he went outside and even the job data in which I talked about look around, understand what's out there, make sure you feel happy, staying where you are. And he didn't see anything that he liked, or he didn't see anything he liked as much as what he had. And so he went back to the firm and said, Look, I really like it here. But I am feeling a bit stuck. Is there a way for me to learn any more in my current job until there are other opportunities and they said, Well, what interests you? And he said, I guess that there are two things I'm interested in are government relations, we have a lot of regulations in my industry. And I'd like to understand how we manage that with authorities. And to the extent that I can, maybe something around business development, so he was coming from sales and marketing. And so his manager helped him create some opportunities to be involved in those aspects of running the business so that he could learn, and he felt much better about staying there.
Sharad Lal: You mentioned stamina. And you'd mentioned stamina was the second mindset you talked about. And when one thinks of stamina one thinks of drudgery, hard work endurance, but you had a positive spin to it. You said it can be fun. If you could talk a little bit more about that.
Aliza Knox: Well, the way I think about stamina, I wrote a little equation, I hope it's original, I didn't look to see if anybody else had written it, which is stamina is perseverance plus enthusiasm. But another title for the book could have been getting in and staying in and obviously, I didn't follow my own advice. I worked for 40 years. And then I did stop working full time, although I sit on boards and have written the book and I'm an active investor. So I haven't stopped doing things. But stamina is what does it takes to go to work for somebody else and stay in that position for quite some time and really enjoy it. How do you do that. And so that was my take on it. And I do think that you should find your work rewarding, fulfilling, and there I say it most times fun. Not all times. I think to do that you need to find ways to energise yourself both inside and outside of work, as I talked about, I think maybe you shouldn't expect work to be everything in your life. We have gone from a place where at one-point work was about filling financial needs. And then there's been a lot of talk about working for companies with a mission that you can support. And I think that's great if you can find that. And then there's been further literature about finding your passion at work. And I think that's great, if you can find it, but I think there are a lot of people for whom that may not be possible. Yesterday I had lunch with somebody who loves horses. Who rides all the time, and in fact, has learned to play polo. And it's hard to see how she can do that in middle age as her profession. So she doesn't. But she works in a job she really likes that has enough flexibility for her to be able to go out to the country and ride when she wants to, to keep horses in some places, the finance to support that. And in turn that gives her stamina and energy and respite, sometimes from work that helps her stay in the game, if you will.
Sharad Lal: The other interesting concept that you talked about was connections and having sponsors and personal board of directors. How have you done that through your career?
Aliza Knox: Well, one thing about me, I'm probably an extrovert by the Myers Briggs definition, which is I get energy from being with other people. I still don't like going to a cocktail party where I don't know anybody and just trying to meet them for business networking. That's uncomfortable. But because I like people, for me, it's just kind of comes naturally, which is just I talk to a lot of people, I've worked at all these firms, and in places where there are people from different nationalities, who I find really interesting. And so in some ways, that's been more just innate for me. But I have worked with a lot of people for whom that isn't true. And I still think it's highly possible. So first of all, even if you're an introvert, I think a lot of people like to have friends. And so one good way to make connections at work is to seek out the people with whom you get along and find a bond. And that's a little harder when we're all remote. I think that'll change as there's some coming back to the workplace. On the other hand, I quote about Shiva Hirsch in the book who works at Google now and coms, and she says, I don't take a meeting, I make a friend, even on Zoom, just to get to know them a little so that you have something in common, that can make it kind of fun when you meet up again, and certainly eases things when you're trying to get collaborative work done. And in her case, for example, she's had to I know a couple times wake people up in the middle of the night when there is a coms sort of issue or crisis that Asia or the US needs to be alerted about. And I know that doing that to someone is much easier if you've had some sort of friendly bond created, even though Zoom.
I think you do need a sponsor at work or an advocate probably more than a mentor. Often the natural person is somebody who has hired you, who really is invested in your success. But that person might change roles, they might leave the company. And so you probably need to find another one. And that often comes about through really delivering on your work and your output and having them see how great you are and then making an effort to get to know them, I think you also need people outside. And that's where I talk about the personal board of directors. Some people do have one mentor who's with them all through their career, and who's really signed up to be there for them. So for example, personally, I have two young Afghan women who had been mentoring for years from the University in Bangladesh, who's now in the US. I meet with her all the time, I'm very committed to her and her family. And then there's a young Australian athlete with whom I was set up a year ago, because female athletes often find themselves after the Olympics, for example, having focused so much on their athletic prowess that they forgot to plan for a career. And so this is meant to help those athletes who wanted to. So for those, I'm like a long term committed. But that's enough. That takes a lot of my time.
So I can't really mentor anybody else. I can have these coffees that we talked about. So some people end up without a lifetime mentor. And maybe a better way to go about this is to say, what's the kind of advice I want? Where can I get it? Do I want to learn about going on boards? And so for me, when I wanted to do that there was a woman I knew, we both were at competing consulting firms. And then she had called on me as a client in California and she was on board before I was. I called her to ask about it. There's a woman in Singapore, who is very senior, super accomplished on a lot of boards here who I meet with to just learn more about how things work in Singapore governance approaches how to handle things. I don't think either one of them knows that they are my Board of Directors they might know now because of the book. And it's not that I don't meet with them just for that. But it's a good way to get advice without sort of saying to somebody, can you mentor me, which might be daunting for them because that's a big ask in terms of time. Also at different points in your career, you need different kinds of advice. I didn't need advice about how to go on boards 20 years ago, maybe I needed ideas on well, how big of a risk is this to switch from financial services to tech, or maybe in the last couple years when I switched to what I'm calling Aliza 3.0 with 1.0 having been consulting in financial services and 2.0 having been Tech, what are the risks if I leave my career now and to get a could I ever go back to work? What if I want to? So I think that's a great way to get outside help to figure out who you might want to talk to, you don't have to tell them, they're on your board, I think you do need to keep up a connection. And maybe over time, as with real corporate boards, you swap people out when they're less relevant. And the other good thing as with real boards is that you get a diversity of opinion, and not that of just one mentor.
Sharad Lal: I really liked that, especially for the personal board of directors, keeping it casual, keeping it friendly. And then also looking at where you want to go and who can help you get there. So those are the kind of people you seek and work towards that. I've noticed that about your career where even though you've been in leadership positions for over half your career, but you've not been guarded, like one often thinks of leadership is being guarded. You've created your deepest connections at work, you've had fun, you've done exciting stuff. How have you been able to do that as a leader?
Aliza Knox: Well, I wouldn't say I have created my completely deepest connections. I do have a spouse who didn't come from work. But I have created a lot of deep connections. I think, again, for me, it worked because I'm very open. I'm not so guarded. And that's possibly because I don't know how to be guarded, maybe there's some skill I need at being a bit more reticent, I'm closer to wearing my heart on my sleeve. So it works for a lot of parts of leadership style. And it works with a lot of people, but not with everybody. I also think as I mentioned, I just really like people. And I feel like I've worked in a lot of places where there are a lot of interesting people, that Tech firms, PCG attract a lot of high calibre, thoughtful, curious individuals. So in many ways, it was easy to become friends with some of them, although not all of them. But different people have different styles that work for them. So my style works for me, I think, in high school in the US that like the pinnacle of high school popularity would be to be a cheerleader, if people know what that is, you know, on the sideline its sports jumping up and down. And I guess I was neither popular nor athletic enough to be a cheerleader. And so it seems that that's what I've become in my adult life. I'm really like cheering people on at work and getting to know them. And so that's leadership style works for me.
Sharad Lal: That's a huge service to people, especially many of the people you've written about younger people at difficult points in their career, having a cheerleader who can give them strong advice, but also cheering them on. That's so good for people to have. The other thing you mentioned in your book, which was fighting back when you were wronged, nurturing your career. And many of us when you are in the corporate world think that hey, I don't want to upset my boss, something else would go wrong. I don't want to negotiate here. How should we think about this?
Aliza Knox: Fighting back is very specific about when you feel you've been wronged at your workplace. And obviously, there's some very, very serious issues. And I note in the book, and I will note again, hear that those require psychological, HR, legal, professional expertise, not mine. But the one point that I did try to make and give a couple examples is where doing enough so that you feel you have agency over your career, I think if you are in the wrong, if you have done something seriously wrong, it will be harder to fight back. But if you believe you haven't, you may still, for example, not want to stay at that firm anymore. Because it's often uncomfortable to be in a place where you think that somebody has said something about you or analysed you in a certain way or deemed that something's been done that you didn't do. And I talked about a woman who was let go during COVID, even though she was a star salesperson. And when I asked her, there's a variety of issues around it, which you can read is too long to tell, but when I asked her, Okay, well, do you want to stay with the firm? Her answer was no; I don't want to stay anymore.
So the question was, Well, what do you want out of it? What do you need to feel better? And she said, I need some of the benefits that they've taken away from me. And in order to feel like I'm not completely injured, and to go out with some self-esteem. And I think that's what's important. Making the decision that's right for you, which might often be leaving but not always. There's another case I talked about Kathy again in disguise, but a young female engineer at a very large firm in the Bay Area. And she went back to a firm where she had been twice for the summer as an intern. They loved her. She got there. She started working all was great again, a management change ended up with a manager who was very demoralising. I've known her for quite some time. She called me and said okay, I have to leave this firm, and my reputation is ruined. I've been asking for help from HR, but it's not working. I have to go and I said, it's like this is a very large firm that you're in. I do not believe you have to leave. I do not believe your reputation is ruined. What else can you do? And so I said to her what happened to those people who hired you back for the summers twice, they are advocates. So she reached out to two of them. And she had also met, in this particular case, the Chief Product Officer at some event a while back and had found some small interests they had in common. And so she thought she'd be audacious and reach out to him too. So she crafted some emails and wrote to these three people and say, I would really like to stay at this company, I'm in a situation that I find untenable now, if you think my reputation is too badly damaged, then of course, I'll have to go. But I'd really like to stay, do you think you could help me find anything? And out of those three emails, she got two other offers within the firm, and she's at one of them, and really happy. So that's the other thing you have to consider is there an opportunity to shift or change within and not to assume that it's all done for.
Sharad Lal: Right. Absolutely. We have this question from the audience. We love your thoughts on this. There are many working couples where both partners are ambitious, but they struggle with how to ensure that both of them have strong careers. Now, sometimes due to shifting countries, one person's career could grow, the others could go down. So how should these couples think about this and work through something like this?
Aliza Knox: Again, not a couple’s counsellor, I guess in my case, I am married to somebody who was more willing to move for my career. And I met several other people like that where one person will shift for the other more often than the other way round. I think there are others who take turns. There's a great example, in the book that Crystal Hailing, who came to Singapore with her husband, who was at Apple, and gave up this amazing job she had at Blue Shield, and didn't work for a while, but got very involved in family philanthropy here because she was running the Blue Shield Foundation. And when she went back to the US, even though she hadn't worked full time, for a while, she ended up with a job that she thinks she wouldn't have gotten without this sort of career break, if you want to call it that, because when she was on that break, she did do a lot on a sort of pro bono and out of interest basis with these family funds. And she ended up in the US running a Family Fund for one of the Pritzker families. And so in that sense, they made a trade off, and it worked for her. There's another example, which has been written up in the press of Stacy Brown, Philpot, who stepped down a while ago as the CEO of Task Rabbit. But who had done extremely well at Google went to Task Rabbit now is on a number of boards. And there were articles in the crew in the New York Times, etc., about how Google offered her this amazing role in India, and her husband wasn't willing and able to move at that time. And so they agreed they would live apart for a little over a year, they set a timeframe on it. And she went and took the Google role out of which she learned a lot and which led to a lot of growth and a promotion. And they separate it for a year. And again, that's not for everybody, they did not have children at that time, which may have been part of what made it easier. But that's another decision. So I think some of these things do work out.
Sharad Lal: And what I get specially from Crystal story that you talked about earlier, if you're smart, wherever you find yourself, even if you're not working, you will find something to do and the dots could connect eventually, in ways you never thought before where you could turn out to get an even better career than you ever anticipated.
Aliza Knox: I think so it's often hard to see at the time. And that's what's hard for people. You can be smart, ambitious, persistent, to find things. And it isn't always easy, but I think it often can work out. There's another example Rahul Desai is a guy that I've worked with for a long time at Google and Facebook, who's now at TripActions. And his wife is an artist. And when they were in Singapore, she learned about Batik. And she's really changed her artistic style to incorporate batik after being here. And that wouldn't have happened if they'd stayed in the US. So you never know. But of course, the angst that surfaces for people is that they don't know if we all had hindsight, of course, people would be comfortable making these choices. And that's why I'm hoping the examples help because people can see how often it does work out even if it seems to be a difficult choice at the time.
Sharad Lal: Aliza, you've done so well in your career. And you talked about succeeding in Aliza 1.0, succeeding in Aliza 2.0. What are your plans for Aliza 3.0?
Aliza Knox: Well, I realised that the theme in my life is growth, hopefully not in my waistline, but in helping other people develop. If you ask me, the most satisfying part of my career, it's been helping other people develop, maybe faster or more broadly. I have worked with a lot of great people, many of whom were in the book, many of whom are not. And I think they could have all done well without me. But I do look back and think that sometimes I've helped them get to a place faster or a different place than they might have without exposure to me. And so that's the most fulfilling part for me. And I'm hoping to continue on that was a book and with some of the people I mentoring and other things I might do in 3.0. And then the second part of growth is fast growth companies. Again, I really like being at companies when they're smaller, and I haven't been in anything really tiny, for the most part. But I like being in companies when they're in fast growth mode. And I'm sitting on four boards, three of them Well, two for sure, I guess it could be described as in hyper growth mode. And the other two have very strong potential. So I really like being in a situation where I'm part of working with a CEO and a management team to see if I can assist with their growth. As a board member, you're not really operating. So I missed that a little bit. But if I can be of some help and contribute some value to the growth of these companies, then that's fulfilling as well. So those are the two things that I'm hoping to do in 3.0 besides play a bit more badminton.
Sharad Lal: Thank you, Aliza, for so generously and openly sharing practical advice that can help us thrive in the workplace. You are an inspiration to so many of us. For more on Aliza, I would recommend reading her book, “Don't quit your day job”. I really enjoyed reading it. I will put up a link in the show notes on where you can get this book. Here are some action steps from the interview we could consider. For people struggling with work life balance are we looking at it all wrong? Should we look at ways to integrate work and life? How can we do that? For folks who feel stuck at work can we proactively look at job crafting, making adjustments to a job description so it's more enjoyable and fulfilling. There are many other things you could consider thinking about sponsors at work, building your personal board of directors, fighting back when wronged and many more. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Till next time, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye-bye.