Welcome to Women Disrupting Tech.
My name is dear Kanupkas, and on this podcast, I give the women
who work in tech the platform they need to inspire and empower
each other. Join me on a journey into the
world of entrepreneurship, funding biases, and role models
to discover the strategies for success in the tech industry.
In other words, how women can disrupt tech.
Are you ready to listen? Hey, welcome back to Women
Disrupting Tech and thank you for tuning into episode 116.
We're living in an age of AI that feels like the land of
confusion. There are new tools everyday
that promise to change everything, but for founders,
the real challenge remains the same.
How do you grow your business without losing what makes it
work? How do you stay hyper agile
without burning out your team? And how do you put structure in
place without killing everything in the process?
My guest today is Marley Atov Polo.
She's the CEO of Trango. She helped scale We Transfer and
now guides Trango through this AI driven world.
Having LED companies through rapid growth, she knows the
tension between building structure and keeping A-Team
agile. In our conversation, she shares
why scaling is never just about adding people, how
self-awareness makes or breaks leadership, and why
complimentary teams always deliver stronger results.
Her biggest lesson is this Growth requires structure, but
not too much. If you get it right, you'll
navigate change with confidence even in the age of AI.
So when you're ready to listen and learn how to navigate growth
in the age of AI, please welcome to women disrupting tech.
Marie Lee at Holt Paula Marie Lee, welcome to women disrupting
tech. Good to have you.
Question I always ask at the start is how you got into your
current position and in your case as CEO of Tringo?
Yeah. Well, I've been at Trango for a
little over 2 years now. And I started speaking with the
founders actually quite a few months before that.
And they were initially looking for a CEO position.
But when I dug a little bit deeper, it felt as if they
needed a CEO and we actually started out on an interim
contract. And I think that is a very good
thing to start, right, Because it's kind of the founders
handing over their baby to an external person.
You can talk about that in a room and interviews in theory
for a long time and like each other, but I feel that you
really need to be on the floor to make sure that you're on the
same page and it actually works in practice.
And then secondly, it also allows for a bit of time to form
a plan and a strategy and make sure that founders, investors
and a new person, me coming in are all on the same page in
terms of strategic direction. And so that's, that's worked out
in a in a matter of a few months.
And so then we made it, we made it final.
And here I am, 2 years a little bit in, and I think this setup
really allows everyone between the founders and myself to play
to our strengths. Yeah, I'll get into paying into
each other's strengths in a bit. I just was wondering, I seem to
remember that there was a little hiccup in the hiring process
where you sort of went your own separate ways and then came
back. Yeah.
So I think that was probably at the start of the year, a little
before the end of the year before I started.
And indeed, right, it's a difficult decision as founders
to make to find a replacement for yourself in certain roles.
And so at that point, I also said it's, it's got to feel good
for you, right? If you're not fully on board and
you're not sure, then maybe you should think about it a bit
longer. And so indeed, there was a bit
of radio silence. I moved on.
I actually took on a on a different project and then a few
weeks in one of the founders came back to me said can we go
for lunch after all because I really think it would be a
really good fit and I think we should start speaking again.
And so I think I probably started with a quarter delay
because of that, but everything happens for a reason.
So I'm sure that part of the decision making process was was
required. You know why he came back,
besides thinking that it was a good fit.
Well, no, mostly that and making sure that I was still keen, of
course. So it was, I mean, there were
three founders, so I spoke to them on different occasions and
yeah. OK, So what does Trango do?
Trango is a customer engagement platform.
It's pretty much a place where you can handle all the
communication with your customers or potential
prospects. And in the old way you could say
that is a ticketing system and an inbox where all your channels
come in, so your WhatsApp, your Instagram, your e-mail,
etcetera. But actually, in today's world,
customer communication, kind of the support inbox and the
marketing automation are starting to blend through each
other. And so we made the platform in
such a way that it's very easy to build your AI agents on them.
And so that kind of has three components.
Is that what can the AI agents talk about?
So that is your knowledge, the information, but also which
systems can the agent actually go into?
The second part is how do you want your agent to behave?
So what can they talk about? What can they not talk about?
Do they use emojis? What form of speech, etcetera.
And the third one is actually the whole orchestration,
orchestration logic around it as to what agent actually steps in
where. And if they can't solve it,
where do they escalate to? And so all conditions around
which agent operates, how and when and that we do for a not
super tech savvy segment, we we sell into the consumer services
kind of mid market companies. So you should think about a
chain of beauty clinics or a chain of hotels or an amusement
park. And they make it really easy for
them to automate, let's say between 40 to 80% of all their
customer and prospect conversations so they can focus
on driving revenue and delivering value.
OK. So what's in it for them in
terms? Is it also cost reduction or
time reduction? I think anytime where you use
AI, it's like the question is, is it just an efficiency point?
But I would say it actually the knife cuts both ways in this
one. So on the one hand, you can
handle your incoming and let's say customer support function
more efficiently. But that actually means that
you're freeing up people who know your product and your
services in your market really well to do more revenue driving
or more guest satisfaction type of activity.
So whilst you're reducing your costs, you are also actually
freeing up the resources to drive value.
So I see it as a two way impact. OK, so can you give an example
of how this could work both proactively and reactively?
Yes, reactively is very much let's say you are going to a
festival and you've booked a campsite and and you have
questions on whether you can bring your dog in or maybe you
have questions around whether you can bring your own drinks
and foods to the place. Well, usually there are quite
standard regulations per campsite or per let's say a
festival. Maybe that is a reactive way
where the customer comes in and says, OK, I need to know these
things and then your help straight away.
Or it can even be your on site concierge the the AI agent
whilst you're at the festival to say, OK, what's the latest again
on the program? Do I have AVIP package?
Where do I go? And then they can answer those
questions and the proactive can be the company knowing that
you've just arrived and say, hey, listen, because you've
booked your VIP package, did you know you're also getting a 30%
discount on the merchandising? And hey, guess what, here's a
link where you can go and buy it.
Or hey, here's a coupon that you can redeem at the stand at the
festival, for example. So those are two different ways
of where the initiation of the communication stream starts.
OK, so in that sense it could also does it then also replace
apps? Where is this in app?
No, it can be in app and it can is, it doesn't necessarily have
to replace the app, right? The thing is, if you put a
website or an app and you have really elaborate information,
usually consumers are quite lazy.
So they'll see a number and they press on it and they call,
right? They don't actually go and
browse everything. And if the search functionality
isn't great, then it becomes harder.
So now this, this AI agents can be your, let's say, little
helper there. If you can't find the
information intuitively in app, it can still be part of the app
where that actually happens. OK, so then it would be sort of
like you have with ChatGPT where in the old days with Google just
search or a chat screen. Yeah, it would be a chat screen.
That wouldn't be a search functionality then, because the
search functionality is what you then prompt and try and find and
then you get a few links and it may not be accurate.
Whereas with the agent, obviously you get the exact
answer to what you're looking for.
OK. I see.
So mid market being like really big hotel chains, no.
No, I wouldn't. Say that type of thing.
No, we do have a few of the bigger names, but then maybe
it's very specific part. For example, we have Ritz
Carlton as our customer. We do their boating, their
yachting business. But I would say maybe more the
hotel chains that would have between 40 and a few hundreds
locations or the Tier 2 ones I would say.
OK. Is that is that on purpose or?
Well, that is a segment that we know that we can really provide
value for. If you're going into the other
one, you get into an enterprise market and that has other
product requirements, which is also a deliberate choice, right?
You can't serve all the segments at the same time.
And so we feel that we have a very strong proposition for that
part of the market. OK, I want to move back to you
as a person. So I read, I think on LinkedIn
that you want to work for fast growing companies where
innovation is the name of the game.
What makes innovation attractive to you?
A. Good question.
I think by nature I'm not very much a person of routine.
So anytime I get into routine and predictability, I I start
finding a little bit of boredom, I would say.
And the tech industry just has a certain pace to it.
So it keeps changing etcetera. And I feel that I like
challenges both from a very intellectual point of view and
on a people side. So the more of an IQ and EQ
balance that those things marry up really well in in a fast
moving environment. And I just think it's the
excitement and complication of, for example, something like AI
coming into the mix now that can turn whole industries upside
down, which is super exciting. And then trying to figure out
how to play with those new rules.
So I think I prefer difficult and changing environments also
in my as a personality over something that is predictable,
steady and, and, and let's say more routine.
And now maybe your next question is why is that so I find a
difficult one to to to analyze, but I do know that that that
that suits me really well. It's.
You told me that you when you go to question what you wanted to
be, you wanted to be a scientist and also a bit of a social
worker, which is sort of a split that for well, if I when I first
heard it, I was like, oh, OK. Yeah, that was back in school.
So indeed it's quite schizophrenic.
So it's on on a very social side and a very analytical, let's say
what they didn't touch maybe called the beta studies.
And so I like, I indeed like both.
And so I'm trying to find spaces where both of those things have
a challenge. So if, let's say, if it was only
an analytical job, then I would miss the people aspect.
It was only about people. I would miss the hardcore kind
of analytical cracking your brain side.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that makes it managing a start up slash Caleb pretty much
the ideal working environment. That was I've found so far, yes.
Yeah. So before Triangle you worked
also for a company called We transfer that most of the
listeners will have used in at least in the past.
I'm still using it. If I remember correctly you
skilled helps the company skill from about 50 full time people
to 200 plus. What?
What is the secret behind doing that?
How do your strong points play into that?
I think first of all, I like when, when people say, oh, I've
scaled from this to this, then they often mention indeed the
people, but I'm always like, oh, maybe you could have reached the
same result with less people, right?
So adding more people is not necessarily a successful
exercise, but indeed it's about scaling an organization, scaling
a business. And I think on every kind of
size, it's, it's, it's about adding enough structure, but not
too much. So you can completely over
engineer and try and run a 200% company like like an enterprise,
but there's no real need for that, right?
And the, the nice thing about to having only 200 people is that
you still know the names and the faces and there's still a lot of
mandate that you can give and you can move fast.
So you don't want to kill that with, with process.
Whereas in the very small companies, let's say up to 50,
you don't need a lot of process whatsoever because people will
be sitting at the same lunch table almost every day and then
you overhear stuff. But once you reach the next
stage, you need to define certain, let's say communication
flows or decision structures in order to actually keep that base
and and and get to get to results.
Even with the that size of a company with however small that
still is, you can still have silos occurring.
And I think that is where stuff sometimes crumbles down when the
left hand doesn't really know what the right hand is doing
anymore. Yeah.
So how do you prevent that from happening?
Well, that is, again, it's that enough process to make sure that
it doesn't happen. So figure out whether it's very
T shaped in terms of the comms, right, so that the top layer and
it goes down is creating transparency on, for example,
senior leadership decisions and a place where people can go and
actually see what's on the agenda for the week.
It's creating weekly, monthly, quarterly, let's say all hands
where people can ask their questions and hear about the
state of the business. I'm always very much for a
pretty transparent way of showing what the direction of
the company is and why certain decisions have been made, so I
think that's a good way to do it.
OK, so really make it transparent to what is
happening. Yeah.
OK, how do you determine what is enough process?
Yeah, that's a good one. I mean that's obviously not a
something that's cast in stone. And for the one company that's
maybe fully remote, you have to apply a lot more process to make
sure that the information flows in the right way.
Whereas if everybody Co locates and sits in the same room every
day, there's more spontaneous knowledge sharing.
So I, I think it's a, it's not a clear cut, let's say recipe, but
I guess if you see that you're not moving as fast or there's
lots of things that go counter intuitive or gets lost in
translation between departments, you probably need to apply a
little more. Yeah.
So how did you do that for Trango Is Trango is not remote?
No, we're not remote. We have a few remote employees,
but the majority is Co located in our offices in Utrecht and
people do come in several days a week.
So that is is very nice. For example, we have a first
Friday every first Friday of the month where we look at the
previous let's say a month and what's coming for the for the
next one. We do a more elaborate one on
the break of the quarter. We have weekly all hand sessions
that anyone can claim. So let's say we are going to do
a new receipt expense claim process for example.
Then finance can claim that session and stand there and
explain to everyone what's going on.
But it can also be what have we learned from let's say the the
new AI suggestions coming into Google and how does it impact
our marketing approach And then marketing claims a slot.
So that's pretty much a slot that anyone can claim that has
something that is insightful and interesting for the entire
company to hear and learn about. OK, let's shift to music.
I read a post from you about a song from Genesis, the Land of
Confusion. Are we in a land of confusion
with AI still and? More.
Importantly, how do we get out? I would probably argue yes, so,
but I'm not sure that is different from any let's say
shift in, in technology. But I do feel that we're we've
entered an era of unprecedented compute mostly that we haven't
seen before, which can fully shake industries and put whole
systems upside down again. And I think whoever was the
dominant player in the last 10 to 20 years in the SAS world as
we knew it is not necessarily well and best equipped for for
the next decade. And so yes, we are trying to
figure it out together. And actually that quote that you
saw was from a speech that I did that said you don't always, you
can't always, let's say, find the answering data, right?
Some people just derive a lot of confidence out of hundreds of
data models. But they say that the longer you
torture data, it will confess to anything.
You can always make the model work based on which assumptions
and go in a direction, right? But there's also this other
thing that. Based on experience, knowledge,
customer discussions, etcetera, maybe even intuition that plays
into decision making. And so in a land of confusion,
spreadsheet won't always help you get out of it.
And sometimes it's also I'm particularly now with AI, right?
I don't even have to torture cha TPT, I have to say.
That's true. But and I think it's also about
placing bets, right. So now the VCs are putting money
in and lots of AI initiatives and they also don't know whether
those are the ones that are going to be, you know, holding
the winning formula in the end. And so yes, I would say we are
all still trying to figure out this new space and but we're all
in the same boat and trying to figure it out together.
Yeah, So what? What's talking about bets?
What's the bet that Trango has taken that the other companies
in the space have missed? Well, I'm not sure they would
have missed it. First of all, it's kind of
reimagining your entire product now on the basis of what AI can
do, right? So don't build the next version
of what you knew or what you had, but it's really like
reimagine the value for your customer.
But now in the Gen. AI space.
I think secondly, internally on our processes, we have
completely revamped our company values to also fit this new
space. And one of them is we're dynamic
and the other one is we're future proof.
And that also means that we embrace working in a new way
quicker than let's say that some of the other companies will do
in the market, which means whatever we knew about how we
did things, we can do them better.
For example, we have all our customer calls, whether they're
with a prospect, existing customer, whatever comes into
support desk, etcetera, all going into one big system.
And then we can query that for synthesis of, you know, out of
this particular segment of all the deals we've lost, what was
the main driver for them not choosing Trango over a
competitor, for example. And that intelligence is so
insightful and valuable. Yes, we had tools that had some
of that before, but with AI it becomes you can, you can tie all
of that together or for example, we've built a an assistant that
helps us if we go to a new prospect.
There's always certain things that you want to try and find
out about that company before you speak to them, right?
You want to understand their business model, you understand
where their pain sits, etcetera. And now as assistant, you just
give the name of the company and they'll do the research as we
normally do across the several sources for you.
And then you just get a whole brief as to, OK, who am I going
to speak to? What is this about?
Where is the angle that why would they speak to triangle
etcetera. So I think becoming hyper agile
is the one thing that we want to do in this new space that is
going to hopefully set us apart from some of the other other
companies is reimagine not built from what you have and going
hyper agile because the cycles are only getting shorter and
shorter in terms of learning. Yeah.
How do, how do you do that in terms of balance with workload?
Because you can keep sort of continue to, to, to work on
things 24 hours if you want, but there's also something like
sleep that people need and work life.
Yeah, I'm a I'm a very big advocate for a good work life
balance. I think switching off actually
makes you more creative and more energetic as well.
And I, I'm not so sure that hyper agile means doing more and
spending your time less efficiently, right?
It's actually about iterating faster.
So it's a more about the pace than the volume necessarily.
And I think actually with AI now as our our kind of external
super brains, we can actually be even more efficient maybe with
our time and still have 20 more learnings.
OK. So one of the bigger, bigger
fears of people with AI is about privacy and about biases.
How do you look, how do you prevent that from happening at
Triangle? Because you use external models,
data models, right? Yeah.
We can. We're LLM agnostic, so our
product can point to various LLMS and I would say there will
always be because these LLMS consume heaps and heaps and
heaps of amounts of data and whatever biases in that data
will also shine through in the model, right?
So I don't think you can be completely, let's say, get rid
of full bias. What you can still do is in your
prompts as to before anything then goes out, you can still put
boundaries as to what you want things to be spoken about or
whether you want to use specific pronouns or if you generate
images, you can also prompt as to what type of people are shown
there, etcetera. So you can take exactly what
comes out of the LLM or you can shape and and give boundaries to
what how you then let's say, pass that information on.
OK. And is does Trango do that or
does the customer do that by defining tonal voice and use of
emojis whatever? Yeah.
So the customer can do that for their customer, right.
So somebody who's a financial services company probably wants
to speak very differently to their customers than someone
who's an amusement park, for example.
And we do have a prompt layer, but that's also more to make
sure that things get escalated if something is off, right, if
some, some answer isn't given or something gets stuck or there's
a 22nd delay or whatever, that immediately an escalation can
come in. So we do more of the security
safety performance prompts. But the actual tone of voice and
how they want to speak or whether they want to use a
certain way of portraying, let's say their their customer base,
that's obviously up to the client to to decide on.
OK. So how do you then to the the
protection base? We, we, we put logic in and also
we learn by our own mistakes as well, because at some point we
did an investigation was actually in a very different
topic. It was just about what WhatsApp
traffic. And then we learned there was
one of our bots deployed at one of our clients that had received
an incoming call from actually not a person, but a bot.
And so R1 responded very nicely about, hello, I'm so and so,
what's your name? Can I help you?
And the other one then exchanged another pleasantry and said, hi,
how can I help you? I didn't understand your
question. Could you please repeat it?
And that went back and forth and back and forth.
And they were in this loop of, let's say, perfectly polite
pleasantries. And then R1 was instructed if 25
seconds into it you don't, there's something funky going
on, and then they should ask the other one to please escalate.
And then that didn't happen on the other side.
So they just kept going. And that went on for weeks
actually. So that was a big learning so
that we had to put another boundary around what we thought
was enough, a 25 second escalation rule, but we needed
to be more specific as to what we and how and when we wanted
that to trigger. Yeah, because I was.
When we just told me this, I was thinking like the next step in
AI will be both stocking to bolts and then it sort of
becomes important to have, at least in your own bolts, good
boundaries around it. Is it something that also has to
be done on a more systemic level?
Yeah, I think generally it's good to have checks and
balances, right? And I think it also matters what
the subject is. For example, particularly as now
we're in the age of agentic AI, right?
They don't just supply information, but they actually
go do things in system. So we now have customers who
let's say cancel an order and then the bolts actually cancels.
So the AI agent cancels the order.
And now the question is, does that then somatically trigger a
refund or not? Because that's when money starts
flowing. And so do you need an extra
balance or if that's the automated next one, when would
you, let's say police? So there needs to be a
monitoring system. Suddenly the same amount goes
to, you know, 25 bank accounts in this in the same 3 minutes.
Should a red flag go up and say something is funky here?
So where it used to be about managing people and how many
tickets they resolved in the support desk, it now now becomes
more of an overview of all these different ages and boats running
and a monitoring, let's say dashboard as to, hey, this is a
normal business, this is out of the ordinary.
And what gets flagged where? And so where do I have to dig in
to see if everything is running smoothly?
Yeah. And as soon as it's money, bank
accounts, etcetera, obviously those controls need to be a lot
stricter than whether it's can I bring my dog to the festival.
For these reasons, yeah, so we talked about the technical part
and AI and about Triangle. I wanted to move a bit back to
you as a person. What?
Because we've had a number of conversations so far and what
struck me really is that you, you have a passion for
innovation and on the other hand, also people.
But what I also found is that you really want to compliment
A-Team. What?
Why is that important to you? Well, I think I, I think nobody
has all skill sets, right? And in order to achieve
something, you need a lot of different skill sets to make
that work. And particularly in the
situation that I'm in. So as an external person coming
into a founding team, that's even more important.
Like if they were to hire Aceo with the exact same qualities
that they have, then what are they solving for?
And why did they even take an external person if they already
have it? So I think that
complementarities is, is super important.
And that's also one of the reasons, you know why we said,
let's do a trial period and work together to make sure that that
is actually not just there in theory, but also there also
there in practice. And the founders now are very
much focused on products and on engineering.
And so they're very much also people of detail.
I'm much more of the strategic, longer broad strokes and, you
know, the managing the people and so that works really well
together. OK.
And why is it important to you to fit in?
To belong? You know, in the end, we're
trying to build something that's super exciting for our
customers. And let's say for me that's a
true North Star is that you build something super valuable
that your customers see the benefit of and are happy to work
with and recommend etcetera. And I think the way to get there
is, is to find that complementarity, make sure that
everybody can play at their strengths, because then you move
the fastest and you can probably develop that in the in the best
way. And there's no point in working
somewhere where you're not a fit, right?
I think generally in careers, when you sometimes lose your job
involuntarily, it can actually be a bit of a blessing because
it's never about somebody not being good, but it's more of a
mismatch in what is required at that point in time for the
company and what does the the person personally thrive at.
And if there's a mismatch between the two, then there's
probably 2 unhappy sides, so. Can a mismatch develop over
time? Uh, yes, definitely.
Umm, So what makes total sense in a certain phase of the
company, uh, may require, let's say somebody is ahead of, uh,
marketing and then marketing between zero and then three in,
let's say, if 10 is enterprise would require a different skill
set, maybe then for someone who needs to bring it from three to
seven and, and let alone from 7:00 to 10:00 again.
So I do think that doesn't that mismatch can arise over time.
OK. Does it also apply to CEOs that
there's a sort of, let's say quote UN quote holding periods?
I was, I'm thinking, best before.
Yeah, I agree. I think first of all you see
that there's only very few people who like Zuckerberg can
bring it from a start up into a billion dollar company and still
hold the reins. I think that's that's that's not
very common. So you do see in and that's just
growth phase. But I think also at some point,
once you've been around the block for a number of years,
you've done it 7 times. Sometimes a fresh perspective or
a new look or is also so beneficial for the company.
Yeah. How do you prevent, Because you
told us at the beginning that you don't want to get bored and
that you at some point you do get bored.
How do you spot that when that happens?
It's mostly about energy, I think if the, let's say, the
energy that you get from your work and the energy that you put
in need to be in a certain balance, right?
And and there's always parts of your job that are not the most
exciting bits, but hopefully it's 8020 of the stuff that does
excite you. And if that balance shifts
between 2080 of the 20 does excite and the 80% doesn't
excite anymore, probably your outside of work energy will be a
lot different as well. And so that's the point where
you need to either pay attention and maybe redistribute the tasks
or think about, let's say next horizons from a personal point
of view, right? That's not necessarily the
company side. No, but and what do you do then
as a person? Well, first of all to see.
Because it's sort of scary to a signal that yeah.
And then B also take the take the leap to go for something
about it. Yeah, to do something about it.
Yeah. I mean, first one is
acknowledging it and then trying to identify in which of the
elements that sits. Then the second one is I think
to discuss it and decide what you could change in terms of
holding which part of let's say the ownership of the, let's say
the, the company tasks or focus or etcetera.
And it's also a discussion that I have with, you know, people on
my team reporting to me because we're a small company.
So it's not like there's 20 growth trajectories for everyone
post the step, the threat, right?
And there is a point where maybe you've outgrown your current
seat. The seat above you is filled and
you don't have a lateral move then yeah, the most logical move
is, is, is somewhere else. And then I'll happily obviously
help the person transition both in there and in the in the in
the company's interests. So I think it's important to
have those discussions quite openly and honestly.
Yeah. And where for me that is on
routine, boredom, etcetera, for somebody else's can be something
completely different, right. I've mastered this skill or
this, let's say job description. I now need to own more, but
there might not always be more in a small company.
No, in a small company the the number of things to do, number
of areas to be in are still limited.
It's not like your ING where the world is pretty much everywhere.
Exactly. So I was wondering, yeah, you've
done a lot of leadership. It's retransfer now at Trango,
but also at other companies. What's 1 lesson that you've
learned that you still apply today?
Well, I touched upon one more generic one, I think previously.
It's like for me, value should be the goal and value, I mean
actually value for your customers.
So not necessarily monetary value.
I sometimes see people chasing like I'm starting a company
because I want to be rich. I think you would have started
the company because you want something in the market or you
see an opportunity that isn't there yet and you you
desperately want to bring that into, let's say.
Yeah, you want to give a solution and yes, hopefully as a
result of it earn money. Exactly, instead of making that
the goal. So I would say that is 1 lesson.
And maybe on a more personal level, I tend to go in
solutionizing mode pretty quickly.
If somebody comes to me with a problem, whatever, but sometimes
that person just wants to fence and just get the emotional side
of that out of the way. And so I think on a personal
level, I learned to leave some space for that instead of going
immediately into, OK, what can we do about it?
Yeah, that's it's, it's common. It's a reflex I recognize for
myself. But I always thought it was more
because men tend to do this, tend to sort of run around the
emotion and then focus to go straight to the solution mode.
Well. Maybe.
Maybe it is more predominant to men, that I don't know.
I do know that I display that same behaviour.
So how do you work around that? And I mean, it's, it's again,
acknowledging it and being aware of it.
And that comes through feedback or reflecting back on a
situation where you think, you know, an hour later, a day
after, oh, we could have done that in a different way and we
would have been much more effective.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you, you think about these situations a lot?
Are you more of a defensive side?
Yeah, absolutely. Because that's, I mean, it's
this is you want, let's say the human interactions on the on the
team to be as smooth as they can be, right?
So if some of this is in the way, it'll take energy for
things that you would rather have that energy spent on
something else. So it's trying to understand.
And every team has their own dynamics and every bilateral
sort of relationship in that team has their own dynamics
because people are all different personalities.
So I do like actually going through some of those
personality tests with the team and not to pinpoint or put
people in a sort of quadrant somewhere, but for all of us to
understand each other well as to where do I normally come from?
Where does somebody else come from?
Where are the sensitive parts for the one or the other?
So you can read better how that person maybe responds to you and
how you can how you can improve. Let's say if you want something
done from someone, the one listens very much to rational.
Explanation. The other one doesn't care at
all about that, right? So and if you still want it
done, then it does make sense that you know a little bit each
other's manual or instructions. So yes, I do spend time on that.
Yeah. Do you also coach people in your
leadership team on that? Like like if you spot things
like hey I see this discussion going off the rails for that's a
non functional reasons. Yeah, that is definitely
something that obviously as any manager you would also take a
take a part in. But I also get external people
sometimes to help us, let's say on more observing and then
solutionizing for the team dynamics what where we might get
stuck. And then they kind of also plant
little seeds of, OK, how do you recognize a certain pattern of
behavior, how can you change that or when do you put a stop
to that, etcetera. So that's super helpful as well.
Yeah. Does that also had the
difference in manuals, let's say that is especially relevant if
you have a diverse team, if you want to have build an inclusive
business, let me put it that way, you focus particularly on
also building those inclusive teams or is that something that
sort of comes easy? No, I do.
I find it very important. And I think the utopia is that
it's happens naturally because if you just go for, let's say,
the skill sets and everything that you need, you would by
definition get it a diverse team.
I. Also think that the reality
isn't always exactly like that. So in every step of hiring,
whether you put the job description out for once you do
the screening interview, the actual interviews bias will will
creep into it, right. So maybe you also need to be
acting a little bit more conscious.
I do know that at Trend now we have a really good gender
balance across the board. So we, we're well above the
industry trends as the overall company, but also particularly
on the product engineering and data engineering type of roles.
But I'd love to beat even closer to 5050.
And we have on our 100% team probably 30 nationalities.
And so I think we're, we're we're pretty good on, on
diversity. And I see that it brings richer
outcomes. Sometimes it takes a little bit
more debate because sometimes people don't understand each
other that well. Even the difference between the
native English speakers and the non-native English speakers,
right? It's you can't express to the
exact same sentiment as the, as the native speaker.
And then yeah, stuff might be perceived less nuanced than you
meant it to be, but you just don't have the vocabulary to
make it maybe more nuanced, for example.
Yeah. How important is it when you're
developing AI to have an inclusive team or to have a
first? Story if, whether with or
without AI has a, has a difference, I would say I, I
think anything can benefit from it because we are selling to the
entire universe and that also consists of a lot of different
flavors and people from different walks of life.
So the more you have, let's say on your team, the more you can
also reflect to your, to your audiences.
I'm not so sure that AI is a distinguishing factor there.
Now while I was thinking along the lines of helping customers
present bias or sporting biases earlier.
Yeah, that could be, but that is not exactly the tool set that
we're in, right. So I think if they felt very
strongly about it, they could actually review all their data
and figure out where they may or may not be biased in it.
But that's not necessarily tooling that we provide.
So maybe on a more informal way we would come across that team,
but it's not, let's say the how our product is used or yeah.
OK, so you posted on LinkedIn a while ago that you hoped to to
live to tell that International Women's Day wasn't necessary
anymore, that it wasn't necessary to celebrate it
anymore. Why?
Well, in my view, if you have a special Women's Day or the top
50 women leaders or it means that that is the exception.
So if it's only that one day, that's exception means and all
the other day, the implication is almost that they are not
women days. And if we were to be all equal,
and then I would say there's no need to call it out because the,
the, the, the, let's say the difference doesn't matter
anymore. So as long as you feel that you
need to call it out, it means there isn't a full balance yet.
That's how. Yeah.
So how do we get there? How do we get there?
So I think we've come, we've come a long way.
I do think very much improving. I also think having more role
models is a good one. I also feel that we, let's say
in terms of what we're seeing happening in medicine, in
history, in inventions, right? Some of the truth finding
exactly some of the inventions done by women were claimed by
men over the past is how we position them in movies or let's
say fiction, etcetera. All of these little things like
starting with the with the the, the books you start to read when
you first learn to read, right. So how much do we put a, a
gender kind of bias in there already?
And I think we, we are starting to become more, let's say,
susceptible to that and more understanding of how all of
these things kind of interact. I think from a personal point of
view, what I can do is participate in sessions like you
organize, but also in mentorship for, you know, women
entrepreneurs or other women managers.
But looking at, I have two daughters who are in college
now. And I do think from when I was
there, we've already made big, big strides from there.
And so I hope, I don't know if it's that early, but by the time
they have, let's say children who are in universities, maybe
the Women's Day is not as required anymore.
That'll be maybe another whatever 2530 years, but let's
see. Yeah, what role can men play in
that? Men can definitely play a role
as well, right? It is also, again, knowing
you're there's this thing called identification bias.
So if you speak to someone who is a little bit like you and you
recognize and you understand each other really well, that you
feel that that person is, is equipped to work with you or
maybe a very good person to add to your team.
But if you understand that complementarity is maybe the
better, let's say, elements to look for, it means that that
identification bias is actually a negative thing in terms of
finding that complementarity. So I think it's all about
consciousness and, and really knowing yourself and, and
understanding what that looks like and also realizing that we
will all have some bias, right? You are brought up in a
different way than I was brought up and you have had different
expectations, maybe because you were a man from your parents and
maybe mine were different because I was a daughter.
So acknowledging that and then defining your own path through
that, I would say. Yeah, yeah.
And I think to your point, I spoke to a guest recently who
called empathy a double edged sword in, in the sense that
empathy, how often is really seen as good from a manager,
that he or she has empathy, but that it's also callers, let's
say the people you work with, the people you promote, the
people you like, the people you hire in that sense.
So that, yeah, that sounds really familiar.
And I'm starting to see that as well.
I have to say it. And I would say in general in
business and particularly with performance review, etcetera,
it's very hard to make the distinction between liking
someone and thinking someone is very good for the role, right?
You can like someone very much and still fire them or you can
dislike them but really see how they're amazing in the role that
they're in. And trying to separate those two
is is is difficult, but I think that's what's required to do an
objective performance review. Marie Lee, thank you very much.
Thank you for. The for the interview, if people
want to learn more about you and about Tango, where would you
like to send them? Obviously to tango.com and to my
LinkedIn. I think you will maybe also add
some to. We'll include a link in the show
notes. Yeah.
And then I have an AI Voice Assistant where you can call me
and then you'll speak to my alter ego and you can ask
anything about Trango and what we might deliver for your
company. OK, well, we'll include.
That's a phone number I think. Yeah, it is a phone number.
OK, I'll send it over to you. Yeah, you now I remember that
you don't give out your number except for this one.
Exactly. OK, Maggie Etalph, thank you
very much for an amazing interview.
Really enjoyed this listeners. Thank you very much for
listening. And until the next episode, keep
being awesome. Well, that's it for episode 116
of Women Disrupting Tech with Marily at Toft Puller on how to
navigate growth in the age of AI.
Marili. And I hope that you found our
conversation as empowering and engaging as we intended it to
be. And if you have any questions
for Marili, please leave them in the comments on Spotify, Apple
or YouTube. I'll make sure you receive an
answer. We want to connect with Marie
Lee or learn more about Trango. Please check out the links in
the show notes. That's where you will also find
her phone number and a link to the music video of Land of
Confusion by Genesis. As usual, you can find the show
notes at Women Disrupting Tech dot Blog and the link is also in
the description. If you've enjoyed this episode,
please consider leaving a rating or review on Spotify or Apple.
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