Kerry Ann King on Rethinking Productivity, Culture Lessons from Google, and Decolonizing Tech

In Brief: Kerry Ann King (eluminatelabs.com), Founder and CEO of Eluminate Labs, joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com). Kerry Ann explains the background behind her company's debut offering, Fin, an app designed to help users understand their productivity style and break the cycle of productivity-related anxiety. She also shares her insights from her time with Google on corporate culture change. Kerry Ann emphasizes decolonizing tech and the need for a shift in corporate culture and government policy to protect workers and promote wellbeing. Kerry Ann and Dan also discuss building a global remote team based on mutual respect and collaboration, leadership lessons from the arts, the value of incorporating diverse perspectives and methodologies in technology development, and more.

Recommended reading: The “Poldark” series by Winston Graham, “Decolonizing Philosophy of Technology: Learning from Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches to Decolonial Technical Design” by Cristiano Codeiro Cruz, “Kaandossiwin” by Kathleen E. Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe).

Transcript

Dan Freehling (00:00:02):

Welcome to Forward-Looking Leadership, a podcast for visionary leaders building future ready organizations. I'm your host, Dan Freehling. I'm the founder of the coaching and consulting practice Contempus Leadership, developing the leaders and teams you want in charge through cutting-edge approaches and common-sense solutions. I'm honored to be joined today by Kerry Ann King. Kerry Ann is the founder and CEO of Eluminate Labs, a software development company dedicated to building solutions that decolonize tech and put people and their wellbeing first. Kerry Ann brings a wealth of experience promoting inclusivity and wellbeing in the workplace as a vendor/partner at Google. She helped to found the Black Google Network Wellbeing Committee and spearheaded Google's community building efforts during the pandemic. Listeners, you're in for a thought-provoking conversation that may challenge you to reconsider your beliefs on productivity, work, and business. Thanks for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership, Kerry Ann!

Kerry Ann King (00:00:52):

I'm so glad to hear to be here. I'm excited to have this conversation.

Dan Freehling (00:00:56):

Absolutely, likewise, and thanks for taking the time. So first I'd love for you to share with listeners what you're up to with Eluminate Labs overall and then the Fin app in particular.

Kerry Ann King (00:01:06):

So yeah, it's an interesting story. I think after being in tech for 10 years, what I realized is that I loved the industry, really enjoyed the people, loved the problems that were being solved, but did not love essentially the exploitative foundation of the business practices. I think if you think about Facebook started because a bunch of guys wanted to be able to rate girls on their hotness, and somehow we're now flabbergasted that this is not turning out to be a great thing for all of us. So it really comes out my desire to instantiate the values that I think are important in the industry that I think has the potential to solve a lot of the problems that we face today. And then in terms of solving problems, Fin, our debut offering is an app that is designed to help people with their productivity goals, but rather than offering them a particular solution, the app is really designed through feedback and coaching to help people understand their productivity style so they can get past some of the negative feelings they might have and just be happy being themselves and being productive in the ways that they're productive and therefore be able to do even more.

Dan Freehling (00:02:43):

Sounds so important. I think with a lot of the productivity tools and frameworks and apps and everything out there, it's refreshing in a lot of ways to hear that you're making something that's designed to work for people's own styles and in a positive way. So it's just really great to hear.

Kerry Ann King (00:03:02):

Yeah, no, I'm very much not about internalized capitalism as the whole conversation might begin to make clear.

Dan Freehling (00:03:12):

Absolutely. What do you mean by that for people who are curious about that, internalized capitalism, decolonization in tech, all of that kind of stuff?

Kerry Ann King (00:03:22):

So let me start with internalized capitalism, and I think this is something that we all, particularly those of us who have been in the corporate world in the past 20 years have experienced is this sense that we are not doing enough. There was a WorkHuman study that was done recently, a thousand respondents. Of those 1000 respondents, 80% of them had experienced productivity related anxiety, 60% of them experienced it every day. So there's this way that we have begun to think of even our own existence as needing to have the value extracted from it rather than being able to be because it's pleasurable or fun or we want to have an impact on the world. The interesting thing about that process is it really increases our sense of burnout, our sense of disconnection, our inability to spend time doing things that connect us to other people, that connect us to our community, but we're blind to it because we're so indoctrinated into this idea that we have to continually be productive, produce get better. So really for me, helping people break that cycle is super important.

Dan Freehling (00:05:01):

I find it really interesting from our previous conversation and now you're not saying don't be productive in any way. You're really saying make sure that you're not just being productive for productivity's sake, right? It's like you still want to have, do things that are important and spend time with people, have an impact, all of that kind of stuff, and this is a way to better channel that.

Kerry Ann King (00:05:27):

Oh, absolutely. And there's too many problems for us to solve. We can't Netflix and chill right now. There's

Dan Freehling (00:05:37):

Not a dropout moment. Yeah.

Kerry Ann King (00:05:40):

The world needs us. It needs all of us to get down to business. So I guess for me, the question is can we return to a place where people feel connected to that? The example that I frequently use is 150 years ago if I had churned some butter every time I used it, I would have the satisfaction of seeing this thing that I had created, using it for my own benefit. And this cycle of a feeling of having accomplished something would feel very grounded and very real to me. Whereas so much of what we do now, it just goes off into the ether and we're left trying to scramble to fill this hole of feeling accomplished. So it's absolutely not that I actually think quiet, quitting, checking out of what's going on in the world, while it might be soothing, I feel like we can't afford to do that right now. Going on is too important.

Dan Freehling (00:06:51):

Thanks so much for sharing that. I kind of double barrelled the question at the beginning with the decolonizing tech as well. I'd love to hear what decolonizing tech means to you and how you're doing your part through Illuminate Labs and making that happen as well.

Kerry Ann King (00:07:06):

Yeah, it's really part of the same project. So as much as we have this weirdly exploitative relationship with ourselves and how much we do in technology, really the foundation from a business perspective is frequently about extracting value from both consumers and workers without sometimes everybody really understanding how that value is being extracted. So when we think about colonialism, colonialism is fundamentally about extracting value without permission, without consent, without providing value to the other and really getting away from that model. I think we need to get away from that model overall. And I understand that for a lot of people hearing the word decolonization can feel like a lot. It's a strong word, and for some people it might carry implications of them being blamed or tearing apart the world that exists today and taking it back to something that would feel uncomfortable to some people. And honestly, that's not how I see decolonization. I love penicillin. I have a latte every morning. I'm not a Luddite. It's really more about elevating the perspectives of people whose values and opinions and have not traditionally been elevated. I also frankly, think is our lane, this is the way we find more innovative ways to do technology by elevating these other ways of being, other ways of seeing the world, other ways of gathering knowledge I think really has the potential to lead to innovations moving forward that will be super important for all of our futures.

Dan Freehling (00:09:18):

So both just not being extractive in nature and intent and then in broadening the kind of tech bubble mindset into who else can be involved in this and what would that look like for many, many, many more people to be involved in tech in a big way.

Kerry Ann King (00:09:38):

Yeah, I mean imagine if Facebook had been started by not just a group of white boys,

Dan Freehling (00:09:47):

The non Harvard dating app alternative.

Kerry Ann King (00:09:49):

Yeah. What would it look like if some other community had decided to build an app to create connection and help people see each other and learn about each other?

Dan Freehling (00:10:03):

So on this note, so you have a really fascinating experience working with Google, doing their employee engagement and workplace culture work for the New York City campus. So I would just love to hear what your experience working at Google taught you about employee engagement, workplace culture, any lessons you have for people listening on this?

Kerry Ann King (00:10:26):

It's so interesting. I was there at the kind of transition period. So I started there in 2011. I left in 2022 and in that 11 years, that was a big shift, a lot of scaling, a lot of shift in the culture at Google, and I had a ringside seat. My role in New York was very varied. I actually started there as a once a week dance instructor, and then by the time I left, I was director of community on the account, but everything that I was involved in was really about employee wellbeing, community building, and that's all really their employee engagement program. They might not call it what you would call it outside of Google, but essentially it's employee engagement. And when I got there, what fascinated me and delighted me was that the culture was really this co-created thing between leadership, the organization and the employees.

(00:11:31):

I'll give the example of the 5K that I used to help with. We had a 5K that started with two employees who basically, I think Ken Fess and David Dobin, one of them was on the wallet team, one of them was on the finance team, and they were arguing about which team was faster. So they just had a race along the Hudson and this kind of ballooned into a thing that was more teams in the office were involved. Eventually during the pandemic it became a global event. There were thousands of participants, teams were being formed all over the world, teams were being formed across continents. It was this huge, delightful, incredibly impactful event that started with those two employees and was allowed to flourish because leadership said, wow, people like this. Let's do more. Let's support it. Let's give it budget. It became this beautiful outgrowth of employee enthusiasm combined with organizational support.

(00:12:42):

The problem with that of course is as you scale, it gets harder to manage. Things can go wrong. The values that the employees are trying to instantiate might not completely align with where the organization wants to go as the groups of people get bigger. And what happened was Google really started to try to professionalize this aspect of the culture. So rather than it being completely employee driven, there would be someone who was their job was to make these things happen. And it really began to shift the culture into this sort of engagement and employee enthusiasm for the company. And the culture became more of an entitlement than a mutually created thing that everybody was responsible for. And that of course led to more dissatisfaction on both sides. The company was less satisfied with how enthusiastic people were about it, and the users were less satisfied because it started to lose the feeling of it being about them. And it was this entitlement. So if anything went wrong with it at all, it was something to complain about rather than something to fix. So I felt like it really started to disintegrate that culture of mutual responsibility. And when I left, part of the reason I left is because it's stopped being exciting to create things for the users the way it had been when I started.

Dan Freehling (00:14:28):

So you're seeing that cultural shift and do you feel like that was a cultural shift that happened with Google overall as well as far as you can tell?

Kerry Ann King (00:14:37):

I think so. I mean, I'm talking completely from my perspective. Obviously this is one woman's hot take on what think a lot of it has to do with scale. And again, this goes back to that extractive baseline, that extractive foundation that corporations have to have if they're publicly traded, if their success is measured by profitability and stock price and growth, there's a point at which you cannot make that sort of mutual responsibility happen at scale. And realistically from a business perspective, what Google has done, the way they've worked to change the way the perks are distributed, even the layoffs, all of this stuff makes enormous amounts of sense from a business perspective. If your business model is that you have to extract as much value out of your customers and your workers as possible in order to succeed. So that in a certain sense, I can't fault the decisions because it's the only thing that makes sense from a business perspective, I just think it would be better for us to start thinking about business models that don't require those things.

Dan Freehling (00:16:01):

What do you think it would take to lead to real change in those kinds of models and having much greater inclusivity wellbeing in the workplace?

Kerry Ann King (00:16:11):

Well, I think it's really a few things. It's really two prongs and the first prong is how companies are run. Obviously I have pretty strong opinions about extractive late stage capitalism and whether or not, and I think we can see that it's ultimately inefficient. It's very efficient at concentrating wealth in one small segment of the population. It's very efficient at extracting value out of people, the earth, the environment, all of that. So it's not that it's inefficient in some sort of a basic way, but it's terribly inefficient for making people happy, making sure that their wellbeing is cared for, making sure that the planet can continue. The thing is, for a lot of us, these organizations, they are our civic institutions now. We don't have big institutions that people belong to that are having an impact on their world in the same way we did 50, 80, a hundred years ago. People don't belong to the lions. They're not going to church. They're their town isn't a close-knit community in the same way. So I think we do need to change corporate culture to reflect the fact that your workplace is where you meet your friends. It's where you spend most of your waking hours. It's where you derive a lot of the meaning out of your life and work. And companies should be addressing that for people and providing opportunities for meaning, building and purpose and all of those good things that help people thrive.

Dan Freehling (00:17:55):

So taking some responsibility for now occupying that place in society and looking beyond just how do you increase the stock price, increase the bottom line, extract as much as possible, and how do you turn around and own that you're now serving this function in society as well?

Kerry Ann King (00:18:13):

Absolutely. And we know it's not sustainable. This extractive approach that we've had has even in the last a hundred years, we've gone back and forth to the labor movement in the 1930s. There's always this push and pull between the two, and I feel like we're swinging. We've swung really far in the extractive direction and it's probably time for us to swing back. And my hope is that with each cycle we maybe get a little less extractive and a little more human centered. I think the other piece of this that's really important is policy. If we don't have policies that protect workers, if we don't have policies that enforce regulations, there's not a lot of incentive for corporations to change their approach. And if you're a worker and you don't have the kind of security of knowing that your healthcare will be taken care of, regardless of whether you have a job that you won't be abandoned in your old age by the nation where you've worked and contributed to the economy for power maybe 40, 50, 60 years without those kinds of policies in place that protect workers and protect our sense of security, it enables that sort of extraction, right?

(00:19:50):

Because it means that people feel like they don't have a choice.

Dan Freehling (00:19:54):

So the corporate responsibility here and then also the societal and government responsibility in terms of policy and both of those prongs being important to making change in this way in a real way.

Kerry Ann King (00:20:08):

Yeah, exactly. I don't think it can happen on one side or the other, and that's part of why I wanted to start my own organization is because I also feel like it's very difficult to change large organizations. We just went through this, it's been in the news over the last year or so after a groundswell of people being excited about DEIB, after George Floyd was murdered, we're now seeing companies cut back their DEI staff, their engagement staff. It's the first thing to go when companies feel like they're under pressure. So the rest of us need to build the organizations that will value those things regardless of whether or not they feel like they're a threat to the bottom line.

Dan Freehling (00:20:57):

I think about this, A lot of people dislike what happened with Twitter immensely. There's all these complaints about how that is shifting and all of that, but I rarely hear people trying to start companies to do it in a different way and to have that be part of the strategy, it feels like everyone is still kind of using X or whatever we're calling it now, rather than trying to do things in a better way. And I'm sure there's efforts out there, but it feels like this is an important and often overlooked way to respond and change the world in the way that you want to see it.

Kerry Ann King (00:21:34):

I can't tell you how many people have said to me, so are you just going to sell this to Asana or Atlassian or something? When I talk about fin the productivity app and when I say that I'm actually not building something, so for half 1,000,000,003 years from now, people are shocked.

Dan Freehling (00:22:02):

That makes total sense. There's this just assumption that you're, the reason you're building things is to sell them and that you're going to go sit on a beach somewhere or pour then into your next venture where you're going to do the same exact thing and you're doing the exact opposite with your approach here, right? You're building this for a purpose and you're building a wonderful team and company along the way and doing it for the people using this app and for the purpose that you're making, it is more important than you kind of cashing out as quickly as you can.

Kerry Ann King (00:22:36):

Exactly. And every once in a while I do find myself thinking, am I nuts? I lost my life. I should be trying to get rich. And it's not that I don't want, I want to have a nice life. That's not it at all. But I do think it's possible for us to create companies that give the people who work there and the people who own them nice lives without having to destroy someone else's life to make it happen.

Dan Freehling (00:23:13):

It's also just, it's a very trustworthy way to do business, and I just feel like as someone who's using various apps or platforms or whatever it is, if you're offering a productivity app in this case that's made for the right reasons and is not intended to be this quickly, turn it around and sell it kind of a thing, it just feels like a much more sustainable and trustworthy group to do business with as well as on the end, or even if you're partnering on a business end. And I always wonder if there's a huge missed opportunity there for people to, they feel like they have to do this in this terrible way, and it's like you really don't, one of the big benefits of running your own businesses, you can run it in basically whatever way you want, and it's really your choice of how you do that.

Kerry Ann King (00:24:04):

Exactly that. You kind of hit the nail on the head with the relationship with the user as well. It's really important to me. We've had neurodivergent adults in mind all through the development process. When I went out there and started looking at the competition, it's shocking how many apps say there are four people who are neurodivergent and then their paywall and their pricing model is incredibly complex. So if I am distractible and have trouble focusing and you offer me your app at 63% off and you send me 15 emails with 10 different offers and then I have to renew and it renews without warning me so that I keep paying for something that I don't really want, to me that is a morally questionable business practice. If you're trying to help someone who's distractible tell them one price, remind them before you ask them for money again, don't take them down a rabbit hole in order to get clicks or increase engagement when the engagement isn't useful to the user. To me, that's obvious, but it's the way a lot of those apps work.

Dan Freehling (00:25:25):

I think that's exactly right. I think about that a lot when I'm building my coaching and consulting business here and it's just like, are you building a funnel? Are you getting all the people into the top of the funnel and charting it? It's just like that's not the way you build a trust-based business. And that's kind of the whole point of having a business in my opinion, is you can do it in a better way. You can do it in a way that's different and you don't have to just follow whatever best practices are out there that you can do it in a different way. And that's a benefit to you as a business owner that you don't have to do this. You don't have to be wed to this terrible way of doing things and you can change things. And I think you get a much more sustainable relationship with your customers in that sense too. And it's, it's a better thing. It feels like a mutually beneficial way of doing things. And it sounds like you're more than in that camp as well.

Kerry Ann King (00:26:20):

Oh yeah, definitely.

Dan Freehling (00:26:24):

So you mentioned starting off as a dance instructor at Google, and I know you're also a choreographer and you've had your work reviewed in the New York Times and all this really cool stuff with the choreography and dance backgrounds. How does that influence who you are as a leader?

Kerry Ann King (00:26:41):

Yeah, it's so funny. I don't know, maybe it's just because of the way my feed works on LinkedIn. I feel like everything that's about being a good leader or learning to be a better leader refers to sports or the military. It's such a common trope and I feel like there's so many leadership lessons in the arts that we don't take advantage of that would be good for business. I feel like there's this way in which everything that we're talking about today, inclusiveness, not being extractive, elevating other voices. We have a tendency to think about it as you only do it because it's the right thing to do, but it's also good for business. I feel that way about my dance background. Dance is fundamentally pattern recognition. I've spent my whole entire life doing body mass. There's this many counts, there's this many parts of your body.

(00:27:41):

How do you fit all these things together? There's a certain degree to which it's mathematical, which always fascinates me. And then fundamentally, the task of the artist is to solve a problem. You've got an idea in your head of what you want to create and you have to solve the problem of how to get it out of your head and onto the page or onto the bodies of the dancers that you're working with or into the space where you're creating your work. So there's this way in which doing art teaches and enables problem solving practice. I think way better than a lot of other things that we think of as teaching problem solving. And then for me, the other thing that's super important about it is communication. I say this to sometimes when I'm mentoring people and mentor about learning how to be a leader, I say, go take a dance class.

(00:28:39):

Go to a salsa class and lead and follow in that class. Because if you have to follow, you have to listen. If you're going to do what you're being asked to do correctly, you have to listen to the person you're dancing with, otherwise it doesn't work. And then if you lead take the role of the leader, you suddenly realize you are responsible for communicating clearly and accurately what needs to happen next to the person you're dancing with. It's just such an incredible lesson in that give and take, and that's been incredibly influential to me as both a leader and frankly as a follower. Also, I think you learn being in a band, what's a better example of having to learn how to cooperate than being in a band? So I feel like arts need to get out there more in the business world and say, we've got something to tell you to teach. You teach in the business community.

Dan Freehling (00:29:42):

It's all really, really important points. I tend to agree on the sports and military kind of metaphors too, and I think for sure there's a lot there in terms of leadership, and it's not to downplay those, but they do get so much play that it's, I think one of the problems is they're kind of these artificial zero sum scenarios. And I think sports is basically exclusively an artificial zero sum environment. It's like we're going to make up this thing where there's going to be a winner and a loser and your goal is to beat the other side or team or people. And there's not that mutual creation and the whole being more than the sum of its parts to the band and dance and all those kind of metaphors. I think similarly in the military, the goal of the military is to win. When you're in an actual war or combat situation, the goal is to win and it's not this mutually creative and more comes out of it than started kind of a environment. And I think about that a lot, so much to learn from them. And there's also so much to learn from other aspects that are definitely out of the zero sum mindset.

Kerry Ann King (00:30:58):

And I think that, again, going back to this idea of the foundation of the way we do business, being competitive and extractive, that's to me, part of the value of elevating other voices and other ways of knowing is there are also other ways of ensuring the economic success of the group that don't necessarily have to rely on competition only. So I think the more we can make sure that we all start learning other ways of thinking about these things other than the football game or the military metaphor, the more we can bring in other perspectives, the more likely we will be to be able to start building things that don't require that somebody loses just so that someone else can win.

Dan Freehling (00:31:59):

So what advice would you give other founders or leaders in general who are working with a remote team and particularly a global remote team like you are?

Kerry Ann King (00:32:08):

So this is so fun. It's so fun. I love working with a global team. I've been doing it even when I was at Google. I managed the group fitness globally at one point. That was fascinating. So I've done this a lot and worked across a lot of different crazy time zones. There was a point when I knew what time it was in Australia, listening and being clear. And I think the way to do it is a bunch of different techniques. I mean, the reality is at this point, offshoring for a lot of small companies is a necessity. Getting development work done in the United States, if you're a small startup, if you are an individual is a great idea. You kind of need to work with someone who is outside the US in order to be able to afford to get the development work done. And my approach has been to build a team rather than to hire manpower.

(00:33:18):

And I think that's been incredibly powerful for me and for the team. I happened to have connections in Ghana and Rwanda. I interviewed, I got, I want to say 30 applications. I interviewed about 20 people. It was an extensive interview process because I wanted to build a team, not just find someone on Fiverr who I was never going to see again, have them do something for me and then walk away, which means that we've really been able to build eliminate labs as a lab. Everybody brings their ideas and I think that's a really important thing to focus on as well, treating your team wherever they are as collaborators rather than hired guns. And that's been so fruitful for me. It's been incredible. And I think also just learning about people and showing them that you've learned about them. The example I'll give is one of the guys I'm working with, Phil gma, he likes anime.

(00:34:22):

It's even in his bio on our website that he likes anime. So when I am doing these screen recordings at the app, if I find a bug in it and every once in a while because your phone records whatever is playing in the background when it's recording the app, I'll just put, I think the last time I did it was the Pokemon theme song was in the background of this video I sent him of a bug that we had in the app. So just not just saying, so how are you today at the beginning of the meeting, but really showing people that you heard what they said, that you see who they are and showing them that you recognize it on a daily basis.

Dan Freehling (00:35:12):

I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on the cross-cultural or intercultural aspects of this. I know you're working with folks that you said Rwanda and Ghana, I think on this. I'd love to hear anything you've picked up on intercultural, cross-cultural communications.

Kerry Ann King (00:35:27):

So what's been interesting for me is I haven't felt like there have been real places where we're at cross purposes at all where we're not understanding each other. And I think that is partly because the interview process was so extensive. I think that meant that I had so many conversations with them before we started that I knew the communication was going to work. And I think for me, what's been interesting is I feel actually less pressure I think and less kind of fundamental misogyny from my team. They're both men as a leader than I think I have working with men in the states. I don't know whether that's because we're remote from each other or whether it's partly a function of my age. I'm old enough to be both of their moms. Maybe I've got a little bit of mom energy, so people are a little bit careful about how they talk to me, but haven't, that's been really interesting for me actually to kind of feel like, oh, these guys are just fine with me being in charge. There isn't some sense of, because I have worked with technical people who kind of want to act like they're the wizard and I'm Dorothy and I couldn't possibly understand anything they're talking about. I do feel like there's a fundamental sense of respect that I really appreciate from the guys.

Dan Freehling (00:37:27):

Wow, that's great to hear. What leadership books or other resources of any kind do you find yourself coming back to the most often?

Kerry Ann King (00:37:37):

So it's interesting. I'm not a reread. I think when I started this business, I read a couple classics. I read Measure What Matters. I read The Lean Startup, but I also spent a lot of time reading the academic literature about procrastination and really examining how the shame cycle interacts with people's inability to complete a task. Because my fundamental desire with the app was to help people break that shame cycle so they could just do their stuff rather than be ashamed about not doing it. So I've done a lot of academic reading and I've also been reading a lot in the philosophy of technology space about decolonizing technology, mostly academic articles. And then I'm also reading this book called I'm going to mispronounce it and I apologize, Kaandossiwin, in which is about indigenous epistemology. So really how the fundamental differences between how people gather knowledge in indigenous populations as opposed to the way we tend to gather knowledge in western society. So really how looking for ways that that can help innovate. I feel like I also read a lot of fiction and I feel like that's another place where business people could do better. And if there's a lot of research that's suggests that reading fiction increases your ability to feel empathy and to take another's perspective, which is one of the fundamental tasks of leadership. So I think people should read more fiction. I wonder sometimes if people feel like, oh, if I'm not reading Dostoevsky, I shouldn't bother at all.

Dan Freehling (00:39:54):

It's okay to read fun fiction.

Kerry Ann King (00:39:56):

So right now I'm reading this series called Poldark, and it takes place in late 18th century, early 19th century Cornwall. The great thing about it for someone in my position is it is fundamentally about business. It's taking place during the birth of venture capitalism. And so much of what goes on in the book is the moral questions between the people who are only interested in extracting value from the mine or the villagers or whatever, that people who feel like they have a moral obligation to take care of their people, the ins and outs of the emotions of business, the highs and the lows. So I think there's a lot of value to be gained from reading some fiction because nobody in a business book makes you feel the emotions the way you feel them when you read fiction.

Dan Freehling (00:41:02):

What a great take. So you really, you've piqued my curiosity on all of these rags on the academic literature, on productivity, procrastination, the shame cycle, all of that. What have you learned from doing that research?

Kerry Ann King (00:41:16):

So it's interesting, some of this grew out of me confirming a suspicion that I had about myself. And I think what happens, there's a lot of the literature about procrastination is focused on academic procrastination. A lot of the studies have been done on students and why students don't get their work done. And what's interesting is there's a little bit of controversy about why people avoid tasks. There's one theory that's more about pleasure. I avoid doing this thing that's unpleasant and replace it with this pleasurable thing that never really rang true to me. And there's other literature that talks about the avoidance having an emotional tenor. So people who avoid a task because they find it overwhelming, they might have a sense of shame associated with whether or not they can complete the task. And then that sense of shame leads to them avoiding the task even more.

(00:42:39):

So I need to do this thing. I'm ashamed of how hard it is for me to do it, so I don't want to think about it, so I'm not going to not do it even harder than I was doing before. I was like, I'm really going to avoid doing this thing. And that breaking that cycle is an important way to get people past because almost always right, when you do the thing that you've been avoiding, you feel a sense of relief, you feel a sense of pride, you feel happy. So how do you get people to get past that sense of anxiety or shame to just do the thing

Dan Freehling (00:43:28):

That makes so much sense. I can see the parallels and uses in the way you were describing the app too. So it's less of this you're being lazy or you're trying to just maximize your pleasure all the time and that's why you're procrastinating. And it's much more compassionate toward people and all of us procrastinate in something to some degree, and it's just how do you get at this without triggering that shame cycle and just having people be able to go and do the thing that they actually want to do. That's just fascinating. I love this.

Kerry Ann King (00:44:01):

And that's really for me, the thing is building awareness. I am using the app now and I have this task on my list. I have some plants in my backyard here. We're moving soon and I want to cut some so that I can force it and grow it in our new place. And I've been avoiding doing this task for weeks and weeks and weeks and it's stupid. All I have to do is walk out the door with scissors. So it came up in the app. The app shows you the things that you've been avoiding doing. So it came up in the app and I looked at it and I sat, gave me a moment of contemplation around it, and I realized that the reason I'm avoiding it is our backyard has a lot of mosquitoes right now. I am a mosquito magnet. I know if I go out there, I'm going to get bitten to all get out as soon as I walk out the door. I don't have any bug spray. And so I'm just not doing it because I don't want to have mosquito bites for a week because I'm very allergic to them. So that's what I'm hoping people will get out of this is that sense of having a moment to contemplate why they're not doing something. And it could be just something as easy to solve as there are mosquitoes where I have to do this thing and I don't want to do that.

Dan Freehling (00:45:31):

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you mentioned some other really interesting academic literature. You were reading on a couple of different fronts. There was one on philosophy of technology. Could you share a bit more about that?

Kerry Ann King (00:45:42):

So one of the articles I'm reading is Decolonizing Philosophy of Technology: Learning from Bottom Up and Top Down Approaches to Decolonial Technical Design. And really it's a very, very deep dive into the philosophy of technology understandings of decolonial and how to take approaches to develop technology that don't just perpetuate what I think we all know now. I believe it's a colonial approach to how we develop technology. It's fascinating to think about this in terms of how we think design usually should happen. We have talked about human-centered design, user-centered design. There was an article recently in New York, the New Yorker, I think it was about how Spotify has shifted from being user centered to corporation centered. So it's no longer feels like the pleasant, rewarding experience for the user, but it's probably letting the company extract more useful data about the user. And that's really fundamentally what the article is talking about and how we can elevate other voices and work collaboratively with potential users to solve problems.

(00:47:13):

There's a great example in this article of somebody's doing research in South America and they're working with these women who make lace and they go to the group, they're there to do an academic project and they say, we can completely automate the way you make this lace. You won't have to work so hard. It'll be much easier. A computer can do it. And what they ended up finding out is that aside from just taking the jobs away from the people who were making the lace, this was going to take away what for them was a really important social emotional, relational project and behavior and pastime. It was they're part of their identity was doing this thing and how wrongheaded in a certain sense it was to come to the group to solve this problem for them, what they needed solved was an economic problem, not a technical problem, which has so many implications for change management in organizations.

Dan Freehling (00:48:34):

What do you see on that front? Yeah,

Kerry Ann King (00:48:35):

So if you go to an organization and say, you guys need to start using X product to do your work because it's going to be more efficient and it's going to make it easier for you to do your job without understanding how people use the current technology to do their job, what's their relationship to it? How does it build or prevent relationships in the organization? Is there one person in the organization that everybody loves who's associated with the old technology and then they're not going to interact with that person anymore. There's all these clues that we ignore when we only look for the most efficient, effective, and dare I say, extractive solution when we're managing change in an organization.

Dan Freehling (00:49:31):

I think you're spot on with change management and I do a lot of organizational development, change management kind of consulting too. And yeah, one thing I see is a lot of times when you're working with an org that has a technical mindset, which sounds like a lot of the tech field obviously has yet it's trying to solve the problem in a logical way when it's so much deeper than that and there's so much more that goes into it than just applying the most linear logical framework you can imagine devoid of any context to it. And it's just so counterproductive in terms of actually leading to sustain change.

Kerry Ann King (00:50:09):

And I think you can't fault under the circumstances, we can't fault organizations for wanting to be efficient. So even if you do have to be efficient, how are you really the social and psychological web that's been built up around the thing that you're trying to change well enough to manage that change?

Dan Freehling (00:50:40):

Absolutely. And I think the last one was on different ways of knowing and different epistemologies and that kind of a thing. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on what you've been reading with that.

Kerry Ann King (00:50:50):

Yeah, so the book is called Kaandossiwin and the rest of the title is How We Come to Know Indigenous Research Methodologies. And this is something that I've been fascinated with for a long time. Our ancestors did research all the time, that's how they learned to do all the things that got us here. But we tend to not think of indigenous cultures as innovative or doing research or having scientific methodologies. So the book is really doing a very deep dive on the author Kathleen Absalon is a native Canadian, and really thinking about how storytelling and the kind of fundamental relational way that indigenous peoples understand the world is different colonial actors and how it can enrich our overall understanding.

(00:52:14):

I've literally, I burst into tears reading the forward to this book because she's talking about how her academic work, she sees it as an offering that she likens it to gathering blueberries and she's gone out and she's gotten the berries and she's sorted them and she's made them into a pie and she's offering us this heart work of hers to enrich us. And that's how she sees her academic contribution. It's just like, yeah, sister, that's, to me, that should be what we're striving for. What are we building in a loving way and offering into the world rather than how can I get more people to see this ad that's going to pay me a half a cent every time somebody sees it

Dan Freehling (00:53:17):

And just research not having to be this sterile devoid of humanity thing. And it's part of, yeah, there's just so much depth to that. That's great to hear.

Kerry Ann King (00:53:27):

Yeah, it's exciting stuff.

Dan Freehling (00:53:29):

Absolutely. What's next for Eluminate Labs?

Kerry Ann King (00:53:31):

So for Fin right now as we're kind of finalizing the beta test, we're adding some new features. We should be launching the app officially. It's already in the store, but we should be launching it officially in the next week or so. And then the next problem we're going to be looking at is trying to solve a problem that exists in Africa and North America. Right now we're kind of focused on agriculture, but thinking about are there ways that we can bring people together across the two continents to solve a problem, to develop a solution that's not, oh, I'm coming to Africa to fix your problem, but more like we all have this problem. How can we solve it for everybody at the same time and also build those connections?

Dan Freehling (00:54:32):

What is it about farming that's drawn you there?

Kerry Ann King (00:54:35):

So I have, my husband and I have a farm in upstate New York, and I have spent a lot of time and energy and money and blood sweat in two years trying to grow vegetables. So I have a fundamental interest in it because of that. But I've also, because spent a lot of time up there now and talk to people who own small farms, there's so many issues in our food system that push us towards this aggregation across the system, which actually makes our food less good and makes us more vulnerable, right? I'm sure everybody remembers during the pandemic when there was, if you eat meat, there were problems in the poultry factories and you would go to the store and there wouldn't be everything that you would want. And we're not solving those problems well, and that's also means that there are a lot of people who are getting left behind economically, at least in the States because they could be producing food for us efficiently, but it's very difficult to do and there's not a lot of tools to help them do it efficiently at a small scale.

(00:56:08):

There's a big operation called Norwich Farms near us that does a lot of, grows, a lot of the vegetables that end up in fancy restaurants in New York City, probably in Boston as well, where they're actually, and this is part of my inspiration for trying to move us away from the blinkered way that we seek to research and build knowledge. The method that they use at Norwich Farms was brought here from Egypt. It's high hoop technology. So you've probably seen these big white hoops if you ever drive out in the country that are on farms. And it's an Egyptian growing technique that allows for better control of the environment around what you're growing and growing. I don't understand everything about it, but this is a technology that has come from Africa and is helping us here grow food. And I think we don't believe that that kind of an exchange is also, excuse me, also possible. We think we have the solutions and we have to go out into the world and give everybody our good solutions where maybe there are other people who have good solutions for us that we should be considering and check out maybe.

Dan Freehling (00:57:32):

It's so true. No, I do a lot of work with leaders and teams in Africa. I just always love it. And just did actually an Ubuntu coaching certification with this really wonderful coach who I've co-facilitated with over there. And it's exactly that. It's like how can we learn from the generations of wisdom in South Africa and in Africa in general and bring that to something that's so western and so academic and all of this kind of stuff. And it's hugely impactful, and I just think it's just the tip of the iceberg on what's possible there.

Kerry Ann King (00:58:09):

Yeah, not to sound super businessy, but I'm very bullish on Africa. I've had such great experiences. The people I interviewed were, I wished I could have hired them all. Everybody was great. Technically skilled, creative, interesting. And it's just been delightful getting to know the guys that I'm working with. I can't wait. One of my main goals is to have enough revenue that I get to go and visit them.

Dan Freehling (00:58:50):

That lovely. I think that's a fantastic next goal for you all. That sounds like an amazing experience to see these people you work so closely with. Kerry Ann, how can listeners learn more about Fin in particular, Eluminate Labs, follow along, any of that kind of stuff?

Kerry Ann King (00:59:10):

So you can follow me, Kerry Ann King or Eluminate Labs on right now, just Instagram and LinkedIn. I haven't gotten into the Twitter pool, and no matter how many times somebody tells me I need to be on TikTok, I just can't bring myself to do it. And our website is Eluminate labs.com and there's a page on there for Finn. If you want a beta test, jump in. We'd love to have you. It's a super mutual process, as you might've imagined from this conversation. And really joyful for me. I've had so much fun talking to our beta testers and learning about them and what they want to get out of the process. It's just been amazing and keep an eye out for Finn.

Dan Freehling (01:00:00):

Fantastic. Well, all my best. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you, getting to know you through this, and I'm sure listeners have learned a lot through our conversation, so I want to encourage everyone to check out those resources. We'll link to them in the show notes. And Kerry Ann, thanks again. Really appreciate it.

Kerry Ann King (01:00:11):

No, thank you, Dan. This has been great.

Dan Freehling (01:00:14):

Thanks to everyone listening, so if you've got something out of this episode, if you could please share it with a friend or a colleague and take a second to leave a quick review. Even just the stars is great on whichever podcast app you're using. It goes a long way in helping others to find the show. If you liked this episode, check out some of our previous ones on all things leadership, organizational culture and career development with real deal executives and experts I respect and trust. Here's a clip from a recent episode with Spencer Campbell, who's the founder of the Spencer Campbell Talent Agency and a recruiting expert. If you're in the job market, anyone who is or you help others to navigate their careers as a manager, a mentor, or a coach, give it a listen and share with someone you think would find it useful.

Spencer Campbell (01:00:53):

We all want sort of, it's natural to want a quick fix. It's natural to want something easy and painless. These are tried and true techniques to sell anything. And I think for me, because of the way this business is structured, I have very little incentive to be anything but truthful. And I think it's because I only get paid when we win. I only get paid when they get the job. So if anything, my incentives are to go the other way. It's like to really get people into this very practical sort of, let's figure this out. Let's solve this thing. Let's confront the tough issues directly because that's the thing that's ultimately going to eventually get you hired. And I think for anyone who's listening to this who's on the job hunt, you're in the same boat. You only get paid when you win. And so I think for job seekers, even though it may be uncomfortable in the moment to grapple with some of this stuff, eventually you'll have to, unless you have an unlimited pool of money behind you, the quicker you can really sort of get a handle on where you are in the market, what's working, what's not, where do you fit in, who can help me?

(01:01:59):

The quicker you answer those questions, the quicker you can end your search.