Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

S&T_Monique McDonough
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[00:00:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Today's

guest is an executive with more than two decades of leadership across disciplines spanning consulting, technology, and employee engagement. She started her career in go-to-market roles and held leadership positions at numerous organizations, including Gartner, symmetrics Group, and opower.

Over

the years, she built a reputation for tackling the untack able in fast changing [00:01:00] environments. Something I know I wanna get back

to.

Most recently after joining Work Tango as COO, she was tapped to become the CEO, and she's now leading the organization through a pivotal moment in the industry with shifts in opportunities in manager enablement, AI adoption, and shifting expectations of today's workforce.

Monique McDonough, welcome to the show.

Monique McDonough: Oh, Natalie, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you. Thank you. I'm very much looking forward to the conversation, and I'd love to start, uh, focusing on a moment of leadership change in your move from COO to CEO. Because I know for a lot of our, you know, fellow CEOs and founders listening, there's always something to learn from how others navigate these pivots, whether it's kind of evolving our own roles and responsibilities or supporting our leaders.

Uh, in our organization to do so. So, would love to hear a little bit more about that, and maybe start by asking you what would you say are the most, uh, important or unexpected lessons that you learned through that transition?[00:02:00]

Monique McDonough: Yeah, I'll, I'll answer with the unexpected 'cause there's lots of like standard answers that I could give you about, you know, be comfortable. You'll surround yourself with people that you, you like, and you know, and all of those kinds of things. But I'll give you the like. The three that I was most surprised by, um, number one, um, even though people knew me, right?

I had been in the organization for three and a half years before being tapped for the CEO role. Um, I realized that the way that people reacted to what I said and did was very different. The way of my words was just different. And so in situations where maybe I had just kind of. Gone out on a limb to wing it a little bit, right?

I couldn't do that anymore because people were really paying attention to what I said. And that's both like a great honor, but also a different way of thinking about the way that I show up for the employees. And so that was a really interesting lesson. Um, the second one was

that.

And, and I've heard people say this to me before, but the, the heaviness of the role is [00:03:00] there, right?

So even if you're not working, you don't have hands on keyboards, you're not in meetings, um, you still carry the responsibility of the organization on your shoulders and it. Took me a while to figure out how to balance that and how to adjust to that. Um, because nobody thinks about the organization and the way that you do as a CEO.

And so it's important that you find ways to balance that and, and to kind of de-stress that pressure that you could feel on a daily basis. And then the last one was, um. You know, as you said earlier in, in my introduction, I'm a go to market person, right? I love customer success and sales and marketing and, um, and really thinking about the impact of that.

But when I moved into this role, I had to very quickly scrub into more of the mechanics around things like, how do our engineers actually build our product? You know, how do I think about leveraging the financials to make different business decisions? And so, um, I am so fortunate that I've got. Killer executives in those roles that just know how to do those things.

But I've learned that I need to lean into areas that aren't my [00:04:00] superpower to make sure that I truly understand how everything comes together.

Natalie Nathanson: Wow, there's so much there, Monique, that I'd love to, uh, to dig into. And so maybe go back to the, the first area first, um, was you talked about kind of the weight of your words, um, and curious to hear like what, uh, once you had that realization, like, what did you do differently? Like, what are you doing differently?

And I know for myself, I'm always very cognizant. Right. Sometimes I'm, uh, kind of sharing a vision with my team, and other times I'm a contributor. Like I might be sitting on a brainstorm or read a, an article and send it around. And just because I send something, it doesn't mean I want people to kind of jump up and take action and write. So, uh, curious how, how that's taken shape for you.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, so a couple things. One, I, I spend more time preparing for team and company meetings than I did when I was COO. I would just show up and I would wing it and you know, most of the time my words were fine, but I actually am very [00:05:00] thoughtful and deliberate about. The points that I wanna make in certain areas and the way that I wanna explain things that went really well, but also in some cases, things that maybe didn't go as well.

Um, and what we're doing to address that. It's always the action planning that's the most important for what people want. Um,

the,

the other thing that I've noticed is that. Uh, context is so important, right? When you're talk thinking about your leaders and your employees, they view the world from the job that they have, right?

So it's a marketing person isn't necessarily gonna think about the steps to build the product, right? Somebody in sales isn't necessarily thinking about the challenges that a customer might be

facing.

And so, um, I make it a point to give context every time we're. Approaching a decision. I'm explaining, you know, kind of what's going on.

Maybe a shift in strategy within the business is making sure that you're bringing everyone along on the journey. Because while I think about context all day, the majority of the team is thinking about executing at [00:06:00] their level for the things that are important. And just making sure that everyone is aligned, um, allows us to have a frictionless experience in moving forward.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so important. And I think it can be as simple as, right, having

that 360

view in our minds and Forward taking action is thinking of how are the others experiencing it or running it by another leader that you know is already thinking about it from another perspective, or for me more recently, like using chat GPT as that thought partner.

What am I not thinking of? How might the different departments react differently to this message? And it's amazing, like how quickly you can, kind of close those gaps.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, and you've leaned on something that. So important, like AI is now helping us to just rethink the way that we get work done, um, and giving us a place to start, right? Instead of, you know, always having to start with the blank piece of paper. You've got a little bit of a cheat sheet with AI because it allows you to give you ideas, help you look around corners, give you, um, opportunities to rethink approaches.

Um, and that's [00:07:00] helpful, but it's still like the human connection component and that higher order thinking is, is really important and is actually more important in today's day and age.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Completely agree. And I guess while we're on that topic, I'm curious to hear how you personally, uh, kind of use sort of AI or LLMs, uh, in your day to day.

Monique McDonough: Yeah. Um, so it's very much a thought partner for me, right? Um, so if I'm thinking about doing a presentation or, um, researching a company, you know, it could be a customer, it could be a prospect, potential business partner. Um. Preparing for meetings, right? Thinking about what are some of the anticipated questions that I might get?

What are some of the points that I might wanna, um, make sure that I dial up? I do a lot of that work. Um, now starting to use it to build slides, right, for presentations instead of going at the old fashioned way. Um, and I'm super proud of my leadership team because they're incorporating it into everything that they're doing.

Analyzing spreadsheets [00:08:00] faster, you know, finding access to information faster.

Um.

As a tech company, our engineers have been using it since, I don't know, 2023. Like they were very early adopters of the tech, but we're really embracing it as a collective team to try to help us, um, be more efficient, faster so that we can focus on higher order work that has a bigger impact for our customers.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's great. And the thought partner is, is certainly my, uh, favorite use case. For personal use because I do find it's right, allows me to move faster and also more thoughtfully and more robustly. So it's kind of like checking, you know, all of the boxes of what you wanna do as you're kind of working through kind of new ideas and brainstorms and communications and all of that.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, yeah. I've also, you know, hooked it up to my calendar in my Gmail. So once a week I can go in and it'll identify, here are the areas where you've got conflicts on your meetings, here are the external meetings that you have. Here's some prep points that you might wanna think about. Like, it's just a way to get me started on the week, um, without having [00:09:00] to call my assistant or, you know, spend 45 minutes prepping.

It's, it's a, it's a good hack.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Thanks for sharing it. Uh, I wanna go back to something else that you, uh, shared in your kind of transition into the CEO role. Um, you talked about, you know, closing, needing to close the gaps in as far as your own, uh, skill sets and things that you hadn't, uh, kind of focused on as much.

Um, I guess, how have you done that? And I know you talked about leaning on your team, so either you specific tactics there or other things that have been helpful to you. And I think one reason that's of, of such interest to me now is I think even folks that are not stepping into a new role, I think we're all, uh, like grappling with the need to work in new areas, work in new ways, build new skills.

And so I think it's something that's like relevant, uh, really to any leader today.

Monique McDonough: Um, yeah. Uh, so I don't know that it's perfect, but I, I feel [00:10:00] like I have a good, um, a good path forward with a lot of this. So, um, as you said, I'm go to market discovery and asking questions is, you know, part of what I have just grown up doing all the time, being intellectually curious to try to understand situations.

And I have found that the easiest way to dig into areas that are, Not my superpower is to just ask a lot of questions around how leaders make decisions. What are the inputs that they look to? How often do they revisit that? What are the implications for a particular decision A versus B versus C? And it's more about understanding.

How they make decisions and the actual work that gets done, especially at my level, right? when you are a frontline manager, it was very much about execution. The more senior you become, it's much more focused around understanding how people make decisions And leaning into what will be imperfect information for you.

So the more knowledge that you can [00:11:00] glean by asking questions of your leaders and you know, their direct reports, the more comfort you're gonna have in understanding what's going on within those functions. What are the implications of the decisions? How do those decisions tie back to the overall business goals and strategy?

and it, becomes a lot easier to piece that together so. Being curious is probably the best thing you can be as a CEO.

Natalie Nathanson: I, love that. And couldn't agree more. And I just recorded, uh,

something

for a future podcast episode that I was talking a lot about, curiosity.

Um, I think it is. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, fresh, fresh on my mind as well.

Um, and, you know, would love to maybe segue into hearing a little bit more about your leadership style, because I know just how important that is, uh, for ourselves and, you know, setting the tone for the organization.

So I guess

starting with like, how do you describe your, your leadership style?

Monique McDonough: Yeah, it, it, it's funny, but at Oranga we, um, spend [00:12:00] time on leadership archetypes. And so like, it's, it's a very near and dear to my heart question. Um, I would say that I'm an executor, right? I love to get things done, roll up my sleeves, do do the hard work that needs to get done, and I've always been that way, uh, which has served me well up until this point.

In this seat in particular, you're not really executing, right? It's more about setting the vision and alignment. And so I found my leadership style morphing a little bit more into being a collaborator, right? So aligning on my executive leadership team on decisions aligning with. Um, our senior leadership team, we call it an XLT, um, on the cross-functional decisions that need to be made to move the business forward.

So it's much more about getting people collectively aligned on what we wanna do and the decisions that are made, um, and moving forward, and especially for an organization like ours. So we focus on employee engagement. Building great cultures and, and helping people feel [00:13:00] heard and celebrated, um, and motivated to, to give their best every day.

It's such a cool, such a cool area. Um, but to do that you have to get people on board. And so this collaborative style for work Tango, I think is just a really nice, um, compliment to kind of what I've grown up in the world doing. Um, and so that's kind of how it's changed too, a little bit over time.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting.

Monique McDonough: there, there there's other, you know, archetypes that people are, you know, focused on strategy and communication and, and some other key areas. And those are super important too. And, and a leader has to be able to demonstrate all of those. But, you know, being an, um, an executor and a collaborator, I think has served me well over the last year and a half.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. And I was gonna ask like, is this a, a particular framework and what are the different archetypes? You just touched on that a bit,

Monique McDonough: And one of the things that, that we do, um, in our platform, which is super cool, is we help organizations look for those particular strengths in the recognitions that are received. And so as people are thinking about future leaders and what they wanna tap [00:14:00] for, um, potential and where people sit with those archetypes, um, our technology actually can help flag some of that for you, which is a new super cool and new innovation.

Natalie Nathanson: Oh, very cool. Can you talk a little bit more about kinda how that works and how it's kinda being used or intended to be used?

Monique McDonough: Yeah, so, um, so we've got two products. We have a survey and insights product, which allows you to, to understand employee sentiment. What are people thinking and feeling, you know. What's working, what are the areas where they want the organization or their departments or their teams to lean in more? Um, that feedback loop and the ability to jumpstart action planning is super interesting.

The archetypes is part of our recognition and rewards product, and so, uh, we believe in celebrating all moments and milestones of in an employee's journey. And so our platform allows. For, um, all employees, uh, to celebrate and recognize contributions that other people make, um, to improve their work lives.

And so that could be top down, it could be bottoms up, sideways, cross-functional. Um, and then it allows you to also offer, um, [00:15:00] points which are, can be, um, accumulated and redeemed for rewards that are meaningful for the employees. So it's really about. The recognitions, but there's a little bit of a carrot with, um, with the rewards as well.

Um, but as we have evolved our product, we focused on a couple things. Um, one manager enablement so that they understand how their teams are, uh, being celebrated, celebrating others, seeing the contributions. Right. It's a great way for them, especially in hybrid and remote worlds. To understand what's really going on on a day-to-day basis.

'cause you can't always see it, but you can see it in the platform. And then as part of that manager enablement, we've also added components, like I said, with leadership archetypes, which allow you to identify future potential within in. Um, employees, you can also mind for, you know, what recognitions are aligned to, um, company values the most, what skills are people recognized for the most?

And so all that information goes into allowing managers to be better at understanding what's going on with their teams. And then of course, [00:16:00] kind of being better leaders.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

And for an organization that's looking to To do more of this kind of where, where does it sit in the organization? Like how much of this is HR kind of saying, Hey managers, and here's this new tool, here's how we recommend you use it.

Or is it specific managers that are kind of hungry for this and then become the champions? I guess how do you see it working best in an organization?

Monique McDonough: It's a little bit of both. You're spot on, Natalie. It's um, see. CHROs are our buyers, right? Heads of, um, human resources at work, tango, we call it people and culture. Um, but they're really the advocates for it. But they find that when they have several managers who are champions that lead from the front and really embrace, um, the tool itself to recognize their employees, but also the insights behind the tool to understand what's working.

That's where you get, um, people really engaged and excited about using the tool.

Natalie Nathanson: I'm curious if you've had any surprises as far as kind of pockets within an organization that are, you know, gravitating to this or getting the benefit. [00:17:00] I don't know if it's right, like a, a sales manager who used to only care about the numbers and now is seeing things very differently or. You know, any any stories like that come to mind?

Monique McDonough: there's a

lot, um, you picked up actually on one of the biggest use cases is, um, selling teams, right? Sellers love to be recognized and celebrated for the wins that they bring in. Um, and part of our recognition rewards platform has a feature called incentives where you can.

Align what's important to your organization to, um, redemption opportunities When people demonstrate that value or they do that task, or they, um, contribute in a certain way.

So we've seen organizations create sales incentives in the platform that allow them to redeem when, um, first deal of the year. First to quota, you know, first BDR to hit their, um, hit their targets. And, and it's really fun to see people rally around some of these campaigns and then see it publicly recognized in the platform, either within the sales organization only, or kind of cross-departmentally, cross company, um, [00:18:00] that really allows you to amplify work that you're already doing, but to do it in a, in a very public and celebratory way.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that. And that example just made me think of, right, obviously for sales organizations, but you know, in professional services for example, we're, you know, I always say everyone, everyone's in sales to some capacity. You know, celebrating those, those firsts and using that to, and to create some, some fun competition, I think is someone a lot of folks can, can take away from that.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, absolutely.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, before we move off of the, the topic of leadership, I wanted to come back to, uh, your passion for tackling the untack level. Um, can you talk a little bit to me about where does that mindset come from and, and how does it show up for you?

Monique McDonough: Um, tackling the untack, I think it just kind of rolled off the tongue one day and stuck with me. But it's really about not being afraid to do something that you haven't done before. Right. And having this. Confidence to say, well, I don't know. I've never done this, but I'll figure it out. And I've, I've had that for as [00:19:00] long as I can remember.

Um, and, and I think it's, it's served me really well when, when the board came to me and asked me to take the CEO job, um, they actually could have used this a little bit in my.

Um, and, and the selling points for me was like, Hey Monique, you know, every time that we have something hard that we need to get done, cross-functionally at the organization, we hand it to you and you get it done.

You know, kind of reiterating to me that I have a track record of doing exactly that in tackling the Untack, um, which was a, a great, not of confidence, but also a reminder to me that like, yeah, I haven't done this before, but I can, I've got good strong background, I've got enough knowledge that I can figure it out.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah,

I, I'm curious like what goes on internally for you when you're kind of faced with one of these seemingly unt attackable areas? I would imagine there's, you know, some level of kinda courage or confidence or kind of thirst

for a challenge. Are there things you kind of tell yourself? Like, what, what happens for you internally?

Monique McDonough: Um, well, I, [00:20:00] I think first it's, I have a career and a history of doing new things all the time. So, um, this kinda started with my first job. So the first job that I had out of college, um, I was working at an IT consulting company. Um. That was a startup and they basically fired a PR agency to have the money to pay for my salary for a marketing role.

There was no marketing department. There was no person in the company that did marketing. Um, we were a very small organization and I showed up 21 years old to a desk and they were like, Monique, go figure it out. And so I was like, okay, what does a marketer do? And I just kind of like started from there.

And then I went around and I asked. Asked people a lot of questions on, you know, I asked our sales team what they needed. I asked, um, our developers what they needed. I asked the leadership team kind of what they envisioned, and then I took that and created a plan. And so that same approach to that first job is actually sort of similar to what I do moving forward.

And it's very much aligned to, if anybody's been in consulting, it's the same [00:21:00] approach. It's you get a new project, you and ask a lot of questions, you start forming your thesis and then you kind of break it down into action plans. Every, every time you do a new thing, there's some version of that framework that you pull out.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, right. And to your point, like each time you have a little bit more trust in yourself, that even though you've never done it before, you have kind of the, the tools and the skills to, to close those gaps.

Monique McDonough: Oh yeah. And you know, and I always do a retro, like in my mind, whether it's official or not, of like, oh, if I was to go back and do that again, like what did I get right and what did I not get right? And that's okay. That's a learning opportunity. And that think that's what keeps things really exciting and fun.

Is trying new things.

Natalie Nathanson: Agree. Agree. You can never get bored if you're always trying new things. Yeah. Uh, so I wanna shift gears a bit, and I know you've seen change from, you know, many angles throughout your career.

And, uh, one that you had previously mentioned to me was, um, you know, when you were at CEB and kinda through the acquisition, uh, by Gartner. Um, would [00:22:00] love to hear kind of what that experience taught you about navigating change, uh, especially right during time of m and a when there's a lot of, uh, kind of uncertainty change across the board.

Um, so kind of maybe a little bit of context of kinda what your role was and then what did you learn from that experience?

Monique McDonough: Yeah, so, um, and so this role was the one that I had before I came to work Tango. Um, I had crossed paths with the chief revenue officer at CEB, where I had worked 10 years prior, and there was an opening on the role. Um, on his team and he'd been searching for several months to find someone to take it over.

And there were, there was nobody who was ready to raise their hand. It was a pretty meaty job and a lot of change. And so, uh, he said to me, my words, not his, you know, it's kind of broken. We could use somebody who knows the business but has a different perspective when you come on in. So I joined at a time that I was building a team and building a function, which was really exciting.

And then seven months later we were acquired by Gartner. And all of that work in building kind of went on hold because we had to [00:23:00] focus on integrating with another organization that had a different, um, operating model and um, a different approach to running the business. And so there was like this just shift almost overnight trying to figure out, okay, how do we become part of this other organization?

On paper, the acquisition made sense, right? It's similar industries, similar approaches, different business models, but delivering, um, best practices, insights, services to leading executives. That's essentially kind of what the business was. And I learned very quickly that change management isn't about logic and execution.

It's really about unlocking the understanding that it's an emotional. Opportunity, right? There's the rational, logical part of it. But what actually happens in effective change management is getting people on board emotionally for what needed to happen. And, and an example of that is, you know, we would get a directive to change the way that we were doing something operationally.

And sometimes things made sense and sometimes we were like. [00:24:00] Oh wow, that's so different than how we actually run the business today. How do we do that? And so my leaders and I would end up spending a fair amount of time saying, okay, this is what's being asked. Let's think about how our teams are going to react.

How do we make this digestible for them so that they can get on board and and logically make it happen, and then get them emotionally bought into actually wanting to change the way that they operate. And it was really hard at sometimes because. We were all grappling with change management, you know, and trying to get on board at multiple levels and, and just understanding that you have to have empathy in those situations to really make sure that you're putting the context behind why you're doing things right, the benefits of what's gonna happen, acknowledging what's gonna be hard.

But then painting the vision of like what success looks like, packaging that up all the time is what we found to be the success. And change is hard because people [00:25:00] like continuing to operate in the way that is comfortable.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Um, I think sometimes, especially when you're, and if not at the very top, but you're kind of leading an organization and taking directive.

Uh, having that, you know, the empathy, which sometimes you're feeling, uh, you know, viscerally, uh, alongside your team. And then also, right, there's kind of toeing the, the, the company line, right? That the change needs to happen. And, uh, I was talking to a friend, uh, recently that's, uh, in the leadership role, an organization going through some major changes.

And some of it can feel like whiplash. And I know that balance of showing up authentically, uh, for yourself as a leader. Um. And also sometimes needing to share things that aren't, aren't as pleasant or that you don't have all the answers. Um, you know, whether you're driving them or not can be, can be a challenge.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, and your, your comment around, uh, showing up with empathy [00:26:00] I think is really important. It came up in a skip level conversation earlier this week with, um, one of my emerging leaders and, um, just this notion of acknowledging for people what's hard and publicly saying, I see that this is very difficult, can go a long way.

One in, in being transparent, but also just. Meeting them where they are. Right. And, and you don't wanna leave people behind. That's one of the things that I continuously think about is our people on the same journey that I'm on, um, and trying to find a way to do that together.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Are there any things that have worked well for you, either in that time or, or since then?

Uh, to kind of make sure you're getting honest feedback and that it, someone isn't kind of telling you what you wanna hear or like, yes, yes, I. fine. Like, how do you know if people really are fine, if they're really bought in any, any things that have worked for you?

Monique McDonough: Yeah, I, you have to look for feedback in a whole host of ways, right? To your point, if you're in a one-on-one with someone, you may not always get the exact kind of. Truth because people [00:27:00] can be guarded, especially when there's a lot of uncertainty. Um, you know, we, we use our survey platform a lot, not just for an annual engagement survey, but we do a pulse of our employees every month to get a sense of, you know, what's working, um, where do they want us to lean in and focus if there's something different.

Um, and you're more likely to get, um. Honest feedback. If you do it through a survey mechanism or a tool where people are anonymous and they feel like they can actually share what's going on on. What's going on in their world. Um, what we've also found though is that feedback has to be multiple ways, meaning you, you have to take the feedback, acknowledge what the feedback is, show the action, plan, execute, and then connect the dots.

Because if you take a lot of feedback, but you don't share back what you're doing because of it, people will no longer take the time to tell you what they think.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah.

So that whole feedback is a gift is so [00:28:00] true,

Monique McDonough: It is, it is a gift and it's also an opportunity to understand where communication is missing, right? Oftentimes, um, what can happen is people truly believe they're working the problem. People on the front line may not see that work. And so it gives you a reminder to over communicate what you're doing. Um, so it's not necessarily that feedback is, is negative, right?

It's just a reminder of where you need to lean into the business.

Natalie Nathanson: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Well, and I think that comes back to your point about context is making sure, uh, you're always bringing kind of all of the, the background and context to something, uh, the frequency. So not mentioning something once and assuming that everybody heard it, but needing to continue to deliver that message repeatedly.

Monique McDonough: Yes, absolutely.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

[00:29:00]

Natalie Nathanson: Uh, I'd love to talk a bit more about, uh, the go to market side of the business, knowing that, uh, you have, uh, background there and through the topic of, you know, major organizational change, what would you say are the most important area or areas to get right? Uh, from the go to market side?

Monique McDonough: Uh, it, it's staying close to your customers. I mean, for, for two reasons really. One, um, it is more expensive to acquire a new customer than to save the one that you have, and, and they are a wealth of knowledge. Um, and, and being able to. To [00:30:00] truly understand, are you doing a good job in, in serving and supporting your customer in, in delivering what you have promised to deliver on their behalf?

And is it having an impact? So like, just staying close to your customers is really important because you wanna retain them and grow them. But the second part is, is actually a bigger piece, which is they are a great source of insight, information, and knowledge about what's hard about the job that they do.

And from a market research perspective, they have so much more to offer. Um, to help you think about as you're going through the change, what do you need to or wanna do differently to help them be more successful? And so it, it's thinking about leveraging that perspective to guide you moving forward. And, and I'll give you an example of kind of how this unfolded.

Um, earlier this year, we decided we were going to. Harness the technology AI, as we've talked about a couple times today. Um, but really use it to reinvent the products that we have and to think differently [00:31:00] about kind of what our three year horizon looks like in terms of what we bring into market. Um, and, you know, we have a recognition rewards product.

We have a survey and insights. Product, and we have lots of ideas around ways that we can bring AI into those products, but we actually didn't wanna start there. What we did instead with, um, our chief product and customer success officer who's amazing, he and I said, okay, we're gonna go out and we're gonna interview three dozen customers and non-customers, and we're gonna ask them for perspectives on not what do they think about work Tango, which yes, we wanna know, but like that's not the point of this exercise is.

Tell us about your role. Tell us about what's hard. Tell us how you report out to the executive leadership team and the board. Help us understand what sucks at time and energy out of your day. Where do you see inefficiencies and in through these conversations staying close to our customers and really understand what was hard about them.

We got to a whole host of product ideas and things that we could do, um, to deliver value, to make it easier for them to be [00:32:00] successful in their roles. And that was such an exciting and energizing time. And because, you know, there's so much change with AI and because there's so many pressures on HR leaders because they have smaller budgets and, um, managers now have more direct reports than ever.

And like there's just so much going on in that dynamic. Taking the time to understand what was important to them has allowed us to get a host of product ideas and, and one of them, like we just put into market, which is really exciting. We just finished beta testing, um, work Tango coach, which is sitting on top of, um.

Our survey and insights products and allows HR leaders and managers faster access to summarizing their day, their survey results, understanding what's working, what's not working quantitatively and qualitatively, and then action planning and doing that across organizations consistently. And so that's just the first of the product ideas that we're bringing to market.

And it's possible because we sat and we listened to customers to figure out what [00:33:00] was really hard. And for them it was empowering managers to have a better understanding of their team. Sentiment and where to focus.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, that's such a good example. And I think, you know, thinking of all the different things that you can get from those customer discussions, and you touched on a number of them, right?

The new offering, ideas, messaging that resonates and being truly in the voice of the customer, how they wanna be communicated with, where are areas of, of improvement. Um, and I know an area where we're often talking in my, in my, uh, marketing consultancy. Is when we're working on messaging, we always wanna talk to our client's customers.

Uh, most of the time that goes over very well. Sometimes there's some pushback of, oh, you can just talk to our sales person or this, this, or that. Um, and so that hesitancy is always, uh, kind of ends up doing a 180 once they see what, what comes back,

Monique McDonough: Oftentimes when you're doing that right, where you're getting insights through a filter, like they, they [00:34:00] sound different, right? The words might be a little bit different. The way that they describe the problem might be a little bit different. Um, you really want voice of the customer in their own words and, um, when you're doing it through your customer, right?

They, they're skewed, right? They have a bias that's in there. So when you're going direct to customers and you're asking those questions authentically, um, without a filter, like you actually get the real answer that you need. Um, and then in combination with multiple interviews, you know, you've got so much more robust

data.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, right. Yeah. And I know whether you're doing that internally or, or with a partner, you companies always get more than they bargained for when they're making that investment. So Sometimes it's, uh, it's slowed down to speed up kind of, uh, mentality.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, and, and also, you know, when we're in the business, right, when we're thinking about what we do every day, oftentimes we just don't have the context to take the blinders off, and that's when those aha moments come

across.

Natalie Nathanson: Yes. Yeah, for sure. [00:35:00] Um, so I'm curious to talk a little bit more about your customer, and we've kind of touched around, um, kinda some of the things in your, in your offering, but would love to hear, um, the kinds of like what are the market, uh, trends or pressures facing kind of your target market and what kind of transformations are these organizations undergoing?

Monique McDonough: Uh, AI is the biggest, um, is the biggest kind of uncertainty. And T right now for HR leaders. So. The world of, uh, of AI and the technology offers so much potential to rethink the way, um, the speed at, with, at which organizations operate the work that's done, the skills of the workforce. Um. The cost of doing business.

Um, and, and all of those things are uncertain and there's no playbook for this. And yet, HR leaders are being tasked with developing talent strategies that incorporate ai. Um, and the [00:36:00] technology is moving so quickly that by the time they kind of anchor on something, there's new innovation that's coming.

And so it's just this moving target. Um, and it's a challenge. And, and you know, there's. A case to be made that this is one of the most important times for HR leaders because getting and solving this problem is a huge win for them. But there's also a lot of risk that there's, and you can see it in the headlines, um, organizations are rolling out technology, but people aren't adopting it.

And, you know, there's a lot of investment, but people aren't necessarily sure that there's the return. And so there's this really challenging dynamic of you have to jump on it and, and. And try it and experiment with it without knowing that you're gonna be successful in every

opportunity.

And, and that's a very, for risk averse organizations, that can be a really hard, um, challenge to, to tackle.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, Yeah. That's a really [00:37:00] interesting area. And I, I guess, what would you say to someone like that, that the, the organizational risk appetite, uh, isn't there?

but

Like, we know you need to move forward despite that.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, I, I think it, it has to be a top down. Um. Remit to say we want you to experiment, right? We give you permission to experiment to realize that not every time is going to be successful. You need to have that leadership alignment because, um, change is hard. Not everybody is intellectually curious at first blush, and so you have to give them permission to try.

Um, and.

Tools, it's time, it's ideas. Um, you know, for us, we, we do a hackathon, um, ours, we're actually, we're seeing eight different presentations tomorrow. I'm super excited to see what the team brought up, um, around internal innovations using ai, but again, kind of highlighting and celebrating use cases that people are experimenting with that we think could be [00:38:00] deployed to enhance the jobs that they're doing and allow 'em to shift their work to higher order opportunities.

so the,

the experimentation, I think honestly Natalie is the most important piece. Um, it's not baked yet, so you gotta just

try.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, which feels like it's an evolution to an organization's culture, right? Some organizations may have already had that, but that almost a, a raising of the bar of how much, uh, kind of experimentation and being okay with, you know, pilots that fail and things like that.

You know, I think back to Google in the early days when they were kind of novel in their kind of 20% of their, of an employee's time to be spent on r and d and that was so unique. Uh, at the time, and I feel like now it's something that, you know, I would be surprised if there's any organization that shouldn't be doing that.

Monique McDonough: Yeah. Well, and what we were talking about earlier with, um, with some of the, the ways that you can use AI to, to save you time in your, in your role, right? It's just about finding time through. AI to [00:39:00] unlock other opportunities to be more effective, right? So it's not necessarily that you're carving 20% of anybody's week to focus on it, but you're more efficient with the time that you're using AI to help you unlock that.

You then just redeploy that.

Natalie Nathanson: Right, right. For sure.

Um,

I'm curious to hear about your hackathon because we just did something similar. At my company's last quarterly offsite, we split, uh, the company into groups. We created an imaginary. Uh, kind of brand like company scenario. And then had everybody spend, uh, a few hours kind of building all of the, the marketing, uh, for that company.

Kind of the, the strategy, the, the brand pillars, the creative, um, really as a kind of forcing function of if you have very little time, how do you kind of use kind of AI and automation and all of that quickly. Um, and it was tremendous to see what came back. So I'm curious, what was your hackathon and, you know, what was

it designed

to do?

And I know you said you haven't seen the results yet, but. Um, would love to hear.

Monique McDonough: Yeah, well, I'll definitely, I. Some [00:40:00] time to come back and share it out. But just kind of structurally what we did is, um, we offered the idea, we said internal innovation, right? There's lots of problems that you can solve. Start with the problem, a job to be done, right? And then work with a team, um, to identify how can you leverage AI to solve that challenge.

Um, for the non-technical folks, which you don't have to be super technical with, um, with ai, but some of the ideas actually did require someone from our engineering team. We found engineers to pair up with them. Um, and they're competing for cash. So we actually are putting, of course, it's through points in our, in our platform, but, uh, we're giving people cold, hard cash, um, for the winners.

And so our, um, head of engineering, our head of product, and I get to be judges, um, to determine what the use cases are. The last time we did a hackathon, there was, um, some cool product innovation and ideation that surfaced that we actually ended up putting into our product. So, um, I'm, I'm really curious to see what we uncover.

But [00:41:00] you know, with the example that you were sharing, Natalie, and kind of our example of a hackathon, though, it's a slightly different approach. Allows us to do two things. One, publicly show that AI innovation experimentation is valued and important, and we want everyone in the organization to know that it's a priority.

The second part is it gives people a safe space to just try. Right? Sometimes it's that fear of like, what's the thing I need to be doing? And just giving them a little bit of a nudge and with a smaller team, a safer space to experiment. Um, and then three, it's like. Just so fun to do something a little bit different than what you do on your daily job, and that change, you know, allows people to unlock the creativity that's inside.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I would say from our perspective, it was kinda working with colleagues in new ways, so that cross pollination of people that maybe don't usually work together as closely or not in that way, that safe space to experiment.

And we purposefully made up a company instead of choosing a [00:42:00] client or ourselves,

um,

and then pushing the envelope in that kind of safe space so that you're not afraid to take those. Uh, those bigger leaps and those bigger risks, learning from others. So someone might have figured out how to do something really well that you wouldn't have necessarily come across otherwise.

So kind of that learning across the team. And then the other side for us was exposing kinda gaps and weaknesses. Like things that we wanted to do should have been able to do right with some of these tools and they weren't working. And then that became, um, kind of things that we take. Uh, you know, take offline to then let's solve for that now.

Right.

Monique McDonough: Absolutely. It's like some of the tech will only get you so far, so you know, if you're.

eight

tenths of the way there, how do you get the other two tenths? And oftentimes there is a different technology, so you might need to use multiple tools in order to get you to the output, and that's absolutely part of the experimentation journey.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I'm curious, uh, to hear from you knowing, uh, you do a lot right in the employee, uh, kind of motivation space, like [00:43:00] thinking a little bit about the workforce dynamics, so in a different populations in the workforce, like generational or whatnot. Um, can you talk a little bit about kind of your view on that and are there differences in kind of what people want or need to stay motivated?

Monique McDonough: Well motive. First of all, mo motivation's very personal, right? So even if you're trying. To look at, um, geography or, um, as you were talking about generations or backgrounds, it's like you can overlay that a little bit, but at the end of the day, it's still personal for every individual. So what motivates you, Natalie might be slightly different than what most motivates me, even though we're both very successful career women.

Um, and so I think understanding. That it's not gonna be a one size fits all is really important. But what I have found over time is that at the end of the day, it just comes back to how aligned are you and your employees on the goals, right? And can you connect the work that they do to the business goals, to their department goals, to their [00:44:00] team goals?

Um, and having that alignment and having people see a path to success, that's what gets people motivated and working towards the opportunities in front of 'em. Um. It's not always that easy to execute, but just at a higher level. It's that goal alignment. That's the critical part of it.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Yeah. And how much of that do you see, I guess, the balance of what comes from a direct manager, what comes from the organization and kind of succession planning, career planning, uh, how how does this, how does this happen in, in reality?

Monique McDonough: Yeah. It, it's, um. Continuous communication about priorities, um, trade-offs and um, wins, right? So making sure that the ELT is consistently aligned on what that looks like. Understanding that the senior leadership team needs to understand, okay, this is the mission for my team or department. This is [00:45:00] how it unfolds.

And making sure that there's clear communications around. What you're trying to focus on and what you're not gonna do. We spend a lot of time at work Tango talking about what aren't we gonna do if we make this decision? Because it's always a world of trade-offs and asking people to do. Too much leads to the, the wrong outcome.

And so it's that delicate balance. And then at the manager level, really thinking about how do I unlock that for each person, right? Because each person is wired in a slightly different way. And so, um, much like we talked about leadership archetypes, right? That's where that really comes into play when you're thinking about how do I unlock the potential with every individual,

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Thank you for that. Uh, I wanna make sure we have a bit of time to go outside of work and Uh, would love to hear from you, uh, maybe what are some of your, your passions, uh, or interests these days outside of the business?

Monique McDonough: Oh, oh, Natalie. I wish I could say that I was still racing Ironman distance triathlons. Um, which I am not. I have kind of hung up my bike, [00:46:00] um, for the second time across the last, uh, 20 ish years. Um, for, for two reasons. One, my, my focus really is on work tango, um, wanting to. Take this company through the next phase of its growth.

And it's just such a cool job with amazing people and I feel very fortunate. Um, which means that there's slightly less time in my personal life. Um, and so my focus there is my two teenage daughters. I have a 16-year-old who will be in college and two years, which is super scary. Um, and a 13-year-old who is in middle school, which we all know are like such awkward years.

And so I very much, um, want to be focused and present and, um. Involved in their lives. Um, when, when I took this job, uh, my coach actually had a really great idea for me that I thought was amazing, and he said, this is a, this is a family decision, you know, for mom to take the CEO role. And he said, have a family meeting and have your family debate.

You know, it was this the right choice for the family? Um. And it was such a cool idea [00:47:00] and such a great approach because, you know, we went around and we talked about it and the end of the day, you know, my girls both said, yeah, mom, you take the job. Realizing that Dad was gonna have to lean in more. I may not be at, at every sporting event.

You know, I might have to travel and would be less accessible. And, and they knew the trade-offs that I would make. Um, and that discussion and that dialogue was really important. So, again, I wanna be present for them even though I may not be as present as I had been, um, in my COO role.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that you had that, uh, conversation with like the whole family. I'm curious what you think was behind it for your daughters to say like, yes, mom. Like go do it.

Monique McDonough: Um, during the COVID years, my girls got to see me work and they understood kind of how mom makes decisions and like, wow, people actually listen to you, right? Like to them I'm just mom, like, but at work, people, you. Lean into conversations and, you know, we work really hard problems and I think they got to see what it's like to be [00:48:00] a female leader and a female executive.

And, um, as young women, it's inspiring to see success and to see success that looks like them. Um, so I think, you know, they're, they're my biggest champions. Um, and I'm really lucky to have that.

Natalie Nathanson: Oh, that's so heartwarming. Um, you know, I, I have, I experienced that too. My kids were younger during the pandemic. They're nine and 11 now. Um, but even just being able to bring some of the conversations that, uh, I'm having kind of decisions at work or now at the podcast, I think that's something that's a bit easier.

Uh, especially for my daughter to relate to. She's nine, but like, loves the whole kinda YouTube influencer space on the consumer side, which I cannot say that I love personally. Um, but she keeps saying, oh, let's, let's get you to 1 million subscribers. And uh,

it's

Monique McDonough: so fun.

Natalie Nathanson: It's cool to see the energy around it.

Monique McDonough: Does

she think you're famous?

Natalie Nathanson: I think it was the first time, uh, my son saw like a Forbes article that I had published. And he was going to Google and then he wanted to show all his friends. And I was like, I'm not, you know,

But [00:49:00] for a kid that's a, It's a cool, it's a cool thing for a

Monique McDonough: Oh, that's great.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Um,

and, uh, you know, love to hear just a little bit more about you, maybe, who were you as a child? You've shared a little bit about you as a mother. Um, but you know, did you always know you'd be in kind of leadership? how did you end up where you are?

Monique McDonough: Um, it's a great question. So, um, a little context is that my father was a career military officer, um, and we traveled for the first, um, oh gosh. 10 years of my life I would've spent, when I was three months old, we moved to Germany and I spent five years in Germany in various locations. Um, and what I learned is, one, you have to learn to.

Assimilate, make new friends, um, adjust. And, and I think those skills of, you know, adapting and learning new people, new cultures, making friends quickly, um, getting comfortable with things that are [00:50:00] uncomfortable, um, was a really solid foundation for me. Uh, I was then lucky that we moved to Northern Virginia when I was in the fourth grade.

And, and that's, you know, where I've been. Um, since

he retired shortly thereafter.

But I had a fourth grade teacher who, gosh, I had probably only been in the classroom maybe three weeks, and I was new to the school and the area and all of that. And during the parent teacher conference, she said to my parents, Monique's gonna be a leader.

I see that in her. And so I don't know if it's she manifested it for me or I had it in the back of my mind and always thought that was gonna be the case. But I've always just been wired that way to seek out opportunities for leadership to learn to try new things. Um. And I think it started really from just kind of how I grew up and having to figure it out along the way and, and start from scratch and not be afraid to take risks.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that. And I love that little kind of moment that you remember, uh, from a teacher. can be really small things that, you know, stay in our minds in a, in a very powerful and positive way. [00:51:00]

Monique McDonough: Absolutely.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

And

you know, if you were sitting in a, in a room with, uh, younger Monique in, let's say your first ever leadership role, what advice would you give yourself?

Monique McDonough: Um, never be afraid to try, right? Fear is the, is the fear, is the enemy, right? Never be afraid to try and just because you haven't done something doesn't mean you can't do it and be successful at it, and that's really fun. Um, so definitely take risks

For sure. Um, the other thing that I would say, and this is both personally and professionally, um, is surround yourself with people who make you better.

And if you find yourself in a situation where you feel like people aren't making you better reevaluate. And it's okay to to change friends to, you know, leave jobs to make different decisions. But when you surround yourself with people who really lift you up and make you better, you are your best self.

Natalie Nathanson: I love that, that really [00:52:00] resonates with me and I think it's a great place to wrap up the conversation on such a powerful note.

So if, uh, guests want to, if listeners want to, uh, get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do

that?

Monique McDonough: Um, they can, uh, come to our website,

www.work

tango.com. Um, send a note and the team will funnel it through to me.

Natalie Nathanson: Wonderful.

Well, thank you. Um, and thank you for the conversation. I, I really loved it and I loved your perspectives on the transition from COO to CEO and kind of leaning into some of that kind of instinct and just how intentional and thoughtful, uh, you were about that.

Uh, the conversation we had around, uh, the leadership enabling enablement and, and ai.

and,

Uh, using it both, uh, kind of personally as well as, as kind of an organizational, uh, more programmatic way. Uh, so thank you for everything that you shared.

Monique McDonough: Oh, absolutely. Natalie, it's been a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you.

Natalie Nathanson: Thank you. And to everybody listening, thank you for joining us and if today's [00:53:00] conversation sparked something for you, please pass this along to another leader because we know that insights and experiences like this really help us all fuel fresh thinking and help us drive real transformation both in our organizations and ourselves.

So this has been another tremendous conversation on shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time.

[00:54:00]