Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Diane Hamilton. Welcome to Leaders Playbook, a show about how to drive transformational impact in your organization. We talk with innovative leaders across multiple industries to hear about the best tools, resources, practices, and strategies to help you reach the top of your game. I can't wait to share our leaders' insights with you.
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Hello everyone. I am your host, Dr. Diane Hamilton, and I am the C e O of tenara. I also serve on the board of advisors for the Global Mentor Network. Thank you for joining us. Our guest today is Bobby Grayfield. Bobby is the Chief People officer at two K. Two K develops and publishes interactive entertainment for video game consoles, computers and mobile devices. The company is home to many talented development studios and two K's portfolio includes the global powerhouse, N B A two K, renowned bioshock, borderlands, a mafia, Sid Myers Civilization and EXCOM Brands, popular W E two K and ww e Super Card franchises as well as the critically and commercially acclaimed P G A tour two K. Bobby leads two K's people's team including hr, bps, talent acquisition, total rewards, talent and organization development, employee relations, people operations, and D e I. Join me as we hear from Bobby regarding how they handle a high tech world at two K. So it's so nice to have you here. Bobby. Welcome. Thank
Speaker 2 00:01:40 You so much. Thank you for having me. I'm
Speaker 1 00:01:42 Very excited. Well, I'm excited. And that was a lot you guys do there. I almost couldn't get it all out. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2 00:01:47 <laugh>. Yeah, I mean you were saying it. I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 1 00:01:50 A lot <laugh>. It's a lot. And you do a lot. And I saw your background and I know you've done some amazing things. So I, I always ask our guests to kind of share their backstory. I hope you don't mind. How did you reach this level of success?
Speaker 2 00:02:00 Yeah, no, of course. It's interesting. I didn't have a linear kind of, you know, one milestone after another to get to where I'm at. So, you know, I originally started in banking. That was my very first kind of real career job. Did that for a few years and I got the opportunity to jump into human resources, specifically recruiting. And that was for federated department stores, so for Macy's. So I took that opportunity, worked my way up to like an HR manager and I really enjoyed the space. Specifically what jumped out at me was that partnership with the business leader, right? So even at Macy's it was, I was a partner with the store manager and kind of their confidant in their person that they came to to kind of talk through the challenges they were facing at, you know, from a business level, a personnel level, et cetera.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 I really enjoyed that. That was one of the things that I've always and to this day enjoy. So did that that for a few years. And then I got married and I got pregnant and I took a career break. So I took a six year career break and stayed at home and had two daughters. As my daughters got older, my oldest was starting kindergarten, I decided to go back to work and it was not a great time to go back to work. It was 2009, there was a recession. I think unemployment was at about 10%. And I knew that I was in for a challenge outside of that, just at the very fact that I had been at home for six years. So I had this massive career gap, right? I was very grateful I had an opportunity. I knew somebody who worked at PayPal, a friend, and she was the admin to the president.
Speaker 2 00:03:44 And so I was just mentioning to her in passing, Hey, I'm thinking of going back to work. So there was this opportunity where she said, Hey, we just hired a C H R O ahead of HR for PayPal and she needs an administrative assistant and you have the background, you're kind of overqualified, but it would be a great way to get your foot in the door. So it was a whirlwind. Two weeks later I had a job offer and I really kind of paused in the sense of do I want to take this job? On one hand, I was super grateful for the opportunity knowing that I had this massive career break that we were in a recession, double digit unemployment rate and the ability to get my foot into the door of PayPal. So a Silicon Valley tech company, right? But then on the other hand it was, I still had two small children at home.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 It met a massive commute. It meant shifting my life 180 right from a stay-at-home mom to a very busy work life. I decided to take the opportunity. I remember talking to my husband and saying that it was a gut feeling like I'm gonna regret it if I don't take this. And it was also, it was an administrative assistant. I have nothing but respect for them. But I felt like with my background, right, I was taking a step back in my career, but knowing that I had to do it and I wanted to do it because I had that career break. So thankfully for me, sh the head of HR for PayPal became my mentor and one of the many mentors that I've been fortunate to have in my career. And she had a history of kind of elevating and developing her administrative assistance. So I stayed in that role for about 18 months and then I moved on to different HR roles throughout the organization.
Speaker 2 00:05:28 I moved over to eBay, PayPal was owned at eBay at the time. So I moved over to eBay, did HR business partner roles, learning and development roles. I stayed at the company for six years and then I made the transition to Walmart, specifically their e-commerce business here in the Bay area. Followed my said mentor who was the head of HR at PayPal. She ended up going over there. So a few of us followed her over there. I did different roles there. Ultimately ending up leading HR for the technology organization. So 6,000 thousand global technologists across the world for the Fortune One company. It was a great job. I adored the C T O that I worked for. He was a great business partner. Somebody that really wanted that strategic HR partner and kind of confidant that I really enjoyed working with. And my time there, I spent about five years at Walmart and then this opportunity came up here as the chief people officer for two K.
Speaker 2 00:06:19 What really kind of attracted me to this role, first and foremost was it was the ability to own the end-to-end people function, right? It was also a transformation, which I'd always been parts of. Uh, we went through an HR transformation at eBay. We went through one at Walmart, but it was my first time to be able to actually lead it and build it and I got to build a team really. So it was, and at the end of the day, our president was, is fantastic and somebody that really wants also that kind of voice at the table and wanted that transformation. So lots of different reasons. And so I've been here for two years as of
Speaker 1 00:06:59 September. Wow. So you basically work for our companies we've never heard of, right. PayPal, eBay, <laugh>, Walmart,
Speaker 2 00:07:06 Little obscure little,
Speaker 1 00:07:07 Little companies. That's so interesting. As you were saying that, cause you said you wanted to do the end-to-end, you wanna see be in control of all that and that would be so interesting to see what your perception was of, you know, you probably only get a little piece of something when you're in this role and you get a little piece of it over here when you're in this role. But when you see the whole picture, what surprised you the most? Was it harder than you thought? Was it there more going on than you thought? I mean what was the difference of what your perception was versus reality when you got into it?
Speaker 2 00:07:39 Yeah, I would say so some of, fortunately for like my last role at Walmart, right? I was leading HR while I didn't own it, we had dedicated partners around each c o E model, right? So I had a dedicated learning and development person who basically worked with me and was part of my team. Same with talent acquisition, et cetera. So I drove it in partnership. But to your point, I didn't own it and it was different. And the surprising piece for me too was I think those things that when you are an HR business partner and you have dedicated partners, you don't have to think about the holistic strategy and about what you're going to go do from that discipline, right? Like talent acquisition, I did have to think about, okay, how am I gonna hire 2000 technologists this year and how are we gonna build out that hiring plan for Walmart Labs, right?
Speaker 2 00:08:31 What I didn't have to think about to an extent is really, okay, how are we gonna fund it? How are we, you know, how are we staffing it? Like all of that was done in the background for me and I was kind of given this ready-made team. So there's those different pieces that I had to kind of go figure out. And I learned a big piece of that though was the ability though, and I've been fortunate enough over the last two years to hire really key smart talent, right? My goal is to hire people that are subject matter experts. And I know enough about everything to be dangerous. <laugh>, you are the subject matter expert, right? You're the one who is going to, we're gonna talk through about what the overall strategy is, but you're gonna come to me and this is what I think we should do.
Speaker 2 00:09:20 Like I want my team to have opinions and they should have opinions. And if they don't have an opinion, that's a different conversation, right? I don't want order takers. I'm not a fan of micromanaging. I don't like to be micromanaged. I don't expect to be micro. If I have to micromanage, then there's something wrong. So it's really that piece of really I have to learn more in detail about everything and you have to think about different things that you don't, right? And there's a broader impact in what you do, right? So for me it was, okay, it's in technology. I can focus on just this little slice of the organization and here it's okay, I'm impacting all of two K and what we're doing is impacting just across the organization. So it's that shift of mindset that you have to change. But I loved and it's great learning opportunity for
Speaker 1 00:10:14 Sure. I imagine it would be. I mean, and you brought up, you know, the challenges of just having technology and HR and technology has a unique issue to deal with. I mean it's hard to find women in tech. The diversity thing you know is is problem. I know my son-in-law works at Apple and when I go up to Apple you see a a lot of people who look the same and they're not many women in that group. So how did you deal with that? I mean, what are some of the challenges that arise from working in tech related fields For HR people?
Speaker 2 00:10:46 Yeah, for tech related fields. I mean if we're talking about, I would say for me specifically in Silicon Valley, a lot of it is around that set talent, right? Competing for talent. Just recently, probably in the last month, that has shifted obviously as we're hearing about these massive layoffs that are coming from big companies, right? Like meta Facebook doing the first layoff they've ever had to do, right? But for my entire career, competition for talent has been fierce. And it's your ability, how are you gonna differentiate yourself? And one of the challenges we had at say Walmart Labs, our tech hub was in Silicon Valley, was in Sunnyvale specifically. So from a tech perspective, we also couldn't compete financially in the sense of, right? I mean Apple and Facebook and Google had equity offers that would just blow us out of the water. I mean, we would get approached with offers from people and say, I got this offer. And it was literally us going, well good luck, enjoy. Like there's nothing we can even do about
Speaker 1 00:11:52 This too. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:11:53 Yeah. Take the money and run Uhhuh, right? And so, but we did have to really kind of differentiate our brand, the labs brand. And what we did was kind of built out this E V P, this employee value proposition outside of compensation. And it was really for us, you could come and work for the Fortune One company. You could also come and work as we were shifting our strategy to an omnichannel strategy, the seamless connection between online and in store and this giant brand of access to massive data and really building something that you could go see in a store in three months. So the ability to be build something and actually put your hands on it and see it in action was a differentiator. Cuz in a lot of companies you, you can't do that, right? And then you're at two K. For us it really is about attracting that talent also around our V E V P and our culture, right?
Speaker 2 00:12:50 We really are about kind of pivot, nimble. We want to roll up our sleeves. Like you have to be strategic, but yet we still are that scrappy mindset of rolling up your sleeves and getting work done. And that attracts a lot of people. I would say too that I've worked for companies that say they're scrappy cuz they like to still think they have that startup mentality. And we're not scrappy guys. We're like 42,000 people <laugh>. We're not scrappy and here at two K, right? Like there still is this mentality of scrappiness and people really care. And I will say the differentiator that I see here too is there's a kindness here is different in the gaming industry that I would experience in tech. So it's, there's just this sense of authenticity, being able to work on some really cool brands like you went through, right? Like we have people that are really, that love our games and fans. Like we host this quarterly welcome for new hires and questions we ask them is, why'd you choose two k? And more than half of them are like fans of our games and grew up playing our games, right? So that's, that's a really cool thing to hear.
Speaker 1 00:13:59 How great is that to have people who come to work for you who, because they just believe in your product so much, you know?
Speaker 2 00:14:05 Yeah. And anyone will tell you you can't, you can't teach that you can't have a training class to have a passion for our brand, right? You either have a passion for our brand and our mission or you don't. And so there is this built in passion that a lot of our employees have. That is fantastic.
Speaker 1 00:14:26 So when you're hiring these people, is it any different when you're going from one big company to a smaller company to you know, another bigger, bigger company? I mean, but when you're hiring tech people and a lot of tech people are introverts and a lot of 'em have similar personality, things like that. But is there something that you're looking for specifically in the tech industry? Are you looking for the curious minded ones that asks the questions that you, cause it seems like you don't wanna micromanage, so you want the curious people who will give you suggestions and things. What kinda things are you looking for in the tech field?
Speaker 2 00:14:59 Yeah, so I would say this. So ultimately the competition has been so fierce and the market has been so tight. Like you are looking for specific things. I think for me, from a skillset, the skillset, obviously you're gonna have very experienced technologists and you know, we were AI like that was kind of data scientists. Those were like kind of the gold, very small roles that we would have to go after and that were critical, right? And cuz even the talent pool is even smaller overall technology, the skillset is there. But what we're looking for, I think from a differentiator me personally, is really what we're looking for and what I like to look for is not so much from a skillset, but it's kind of more the soft skills, right? Like are you somebody that is, and we get that you're introverted, but are you somebody that is actually going to kind of have a passion around what you do?
Speaker 2 00:15:53 Do you care deeply about the work that you're doing? A lot of engineers do obviously, but it's also that collaboration that we wanna see. There's a lot of technologists that, I get it, you're gonna put on your headphones and you need to code. But there's also that aspect of are you gonna be part of the broader team? What else are you gonna bring besides your skillset? And that's not just an engineering that's an anything, right? What are you gonna bring to the broader company and contribute from the broader culture? And that's really kind of what I personally like to see. And the differentiator, especially in our leadership, right? You need to have those skillsets from a tech perspective, but you also need to understand how to lead people and what being a leader is. So it's more the soft skills for me in that aspect that I think make the difference when you're hiring tech talent.
Speaker 1 00:16:40 I totally agree that soft skills are gonna be the reason a lot of people are fired. So you wanna make sure people have <laugh> definitely are, are in in that respect, trained well or come in with them. Well I'm curious, do you do a lot of soft skills training or do you rely on them coming in with that background? I'm just curious what you do in that respect.
Speaker 2 00:17:02 Yeah, so we've built, like I said, two K, it's been a transformation from a people perspective. And so one of the main things we've done over the last 18 months is building out a learning management system. Like really investing in training and development that didn't really exist here before. So it's not only giving access to different training and development opportunities for you from soft skills to actually skillset capabilities, right? But we've built out something that we call a manager academy. And so it's kind of a three-pronged approach to training our managers. We understand that they are going to be the critical population for anything we want to drive in the sense of our culture, retaining our people, driving our strategy, right? Our business objectives, et cetera. So it's how do we develop that core group of managers? And we know that there's different levels of managers, right?
Speaker 2 00:17:59 So we have this manager academy that's broken up into three different sections. One is going to first time managers, right? It's your first time managing a team. What are kind of the basic fundamentals that you need to know? Everything from performance management to having tough conversations, right? Understanding how to structure OKRs, these fundamentals that you need to go help your team be successful. The next one is managers of managers, right? So you have your a mid-level manager and you actually are managing managers. What's the differentiation there? And then we have managers of senior managers. So really kind of our VP levels, et cetera. So our more senior level executives there. And then it's just really kind of building out these different training development areas. Not only for what we think that you want to, what we think you need, but what do you need, right? And, and we open it up like if there's a training you want for your team, if there's something that interests you, we also invest on a personal level. If there's conferences, if there's a cert certification you want to go get that ties back into your role, right? We have set aside for individuals to go do that. So yeah, we've done a huge amount of investing and building infrastructure over the last two years to kind of invest in our skillset for our people.
Speaker 1 00:19:22 I love hearing that. I, I taught thousands of online courses and different LMS and, and everything out there. I've tried and I think it would be so much fun <laugh> to take these, I'm listening to this going, I wanna take that everyone you said you, you offer, I, I'd love to sign up for 'em. Cause I think that those kinds of things are so helpful. And I've worked in companies, they just don't offer the very much training. I mean I've the big companies often do, you know, I've worked for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies and things like that. But banking, I got some training, you know, and I've done some of the things that you've done in different areas, but I've worked in, especially in education, I've seen such poor training for leaders and I mean they have LMSs because that's what they deliver classes, but they don't really train their leaders. And I think that a lot of people listening to this maybe work in organizations that don't do enough training or they think, well we don't have the money for that. I is there an opportunity cost of not doing that? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:20:21 For sure. I mean we've all heard that saying, right? People don't leave companies, they leave managers. And it's very true. So I mean I can say that I've left jobs because of the person I reported to. So that does make a huge difference. And you know, e even in my career, I was shocked at just some very senior people and just terrible managers and yet, yet have gotten so far in their career, right? So I think that there is this aspect of, for sure there is a cost if you aren't developing your managers and not so much also in their skillsets, but how are they interacting and managing their teams, right? They have to be able to lead in a way that people want to follow, right? And so that is what you need and you know, when we talk about driving culture and when we drive strategy et cetera, they are that conduit to that, right?
Speaker 2 00:21:20 We can get up on stage and talk about it in an all hands, every quarter all we want or send an email or what have you, right? But it's our managers that are driving those messages and bringing them to life every day. And you don't do that by just having a staff meeting, right? It means how you actually build those relationships with your employees. And the reality is, is a lot of times managers don't just don't know. It's not that they don't wanna do it, they just don't know, right? So it's, you don't know what you don't know. So it's kind of building out those skillsets and it's not just learning, it's not just training sessions and classes, right? Or certifications. It's actually just on the job as well, right? So just kind of building out an infrastructure so as they work through their day-to-day, they're learning, right? Some, all of us, the best learnings I've ever had was I actually got thrown into the pit and you figure it out, right? You want access to the tools but you have to actually do it.
Speaker 1 00:22:17 I think the survivor swim sometimes is what makes you really learn. I mean the best things you ever learn is when your computer crashes, that's how you <laugh>, you fix it, you put it back, right? It
Speaker 2 00:22:27 Is, it's survivors swim. But you know what we have to give you, we're gonna give you some rowboats and we're gonna give you flotation devices and we're gonna help you Uhhuh
Speaker 1 00:22:35 Swim.
Speaker 2 00:22:36 But you do, you gotta swim to learn.
Speaker 1 00:22:37 I gotta swim to learn. I agree with that. You touched on AI earlier and I, I think AI's impacting a lot of organizations and I, I'm just curious how it's impacted you in the HR realm and or what you expected to do in the future. Is there any impact that you've seen?
Speaker 2 00:22:53 Yeah, you know, I would say it's impacting, where I've seen it mostly is probably the bigger companies I've been at, right? As we're building the strategic model here, we haven't leveraged it as much but at Walmart, I mean for sure it's 2.2 million people. So a lot of that work, you know, I would say where it's impacted the most that I saw there is probably from a recruiting standpoint and actually a basic like chat bots, right? The ability for our employees to go in and actually leverage chat box to get answers to basic questions they might have from a benefits or a policy perspective, et cetera. So that's been helpful cuz that takes a lot of, you know, a lot of times questions that they might have 80% of the time they could get answered quickly there. It's not just official for the company because you don't have to put man hours behind it.
Speaker 2 00:23:45 But it's also beneficial for the employee cuz they can get an answer much quicker and self-service. So there's this aspect of self-service that some companies think that employees don't want and that they have to cater to them. But a lot of times employees, if you just show them how they can go get the answer, they can get it much quicker and they would prefer that. So there's that aspect of it. And then I think from a recruiting piece, there's definitely that aspect when it comes to kind of the massive amount of resumes you would get are applications, right? There's some AI processes around really kind of putting those in different buckets and understanding so it's not somebody sourcing from scratch and kind of going through all that. So there's definite benefits of it because the outcome of that also means that you can put man hours and resources behind more strategic things or, and at the end the day a lot of the stuff that AI is doing is, is tedious. It's not things people, yeah it's completely repetitive. So it's not things people tend to enjoy.
Speaker 1 00:24:44 You know, it's interesting as you were saying of the resumes and screening and things cuz I can remember in the eighties I used to get resumes on napkins and crazy things, you know, <laugh> or they wanted to stand out by sending balloons on things or Yeah. It, it's gotta be an interesting time to see how things have changed what people do to stand out. I mean, do they use technology to stand out? No. I mean how do they do it? So
Speaker 2 00:25:08 Yes, I've seen actual, like they will do a presentation and send you kind of a PowerPoint. I've seen videos, video.
Speaker 1 00:25:15 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:16 While you do stand out, I don't necessarily know if it helps <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:25:22 Yeah, the networking didn't help. It didn't. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:25 No it doesn't. Right. And so just, I mean I remember my big thing was back in the day when I went to an interview I would actually bring a paper resume, right? And so I actually interviewed somebody not too long ago and they brought a copy of their resume and I was like, oh wow. I I don't even, were
Speaker 1 00:25:41 They older?
Speaker 2 00:25:42 I don't, yeah. But I was like, I don't know what to do with this. That
Speaker 1 00:25:45 Was my generation. We did that, we had to have two in case they, you always had to have two, right? I
Speaker 2 00:25:50 Always had two and I always would go to Kinko's and have it printed on really nice paper cause I didn't want it on the cheat paper so. Exactly. I totally
Speaker 1 00:25:58 Remember.
Speaker 2 00:25:59 Yeah, but you forget about it. So when somebody brought it, I, I actually thought it was sweet.
Speaker 1 00:26:04 It's sweet now you got a QR code and everything else that they'll give you and interviews totally different time.
Speaker 2 00:26:11 It's, and business cards have went away. That was the other thing. Something said, can I order business cards? I'm like, who?
Speaker 1 00:26:16 Yeah, it, it's so different. I actually do still keep a business card just for my books that I sell because it uses as a, a bookmark but it's plastic. So everything's different now and, and I teach a lot of the courses where we get into this and, and some of the courses I talk to students about are we deal with like what HR has to deal with in terms of data analysis and different things. You know, cause companies are in like, they have to make all these decisions and they're in data overload. And I'm sure you probably feel like you get a lot of things to look at. I mean we think of HR as people, people that it's all gonna be, you know, fun interviewing and things, you know, but you've gotta look at data too, right? Do you, how do you avoid data overload?
Speaker 2 00:26:57 You have to do it. Yeah. I mean a lot of what decisions, if you're gonna make any kind of broad decision, it should be based on data, right? But shouldn't be based on a feeling you have or an observation that could be part of it. But the data should be kind of the foundational piece of it. For me, I'm a big believer in this is where I'm gonna give everybody kind of unsolicited career advice is one of the differentiators when we talk about talent is the ability to synthesize a lot of information and distill it down to its core meaning. And tying that back to what you want the outcome to be. Right? Not a lot of people can do that.
Speaker 1 00:27:38 How do you teach that? It,
Speaker 2 00:27:40 It's interesting. It's, my experience has been through experience, right? And just really kind of working through that. But you have to understand first and foremost it's self-awareness and understanding that maybe you're not good at it. Right? And how you get better. And so that's my approach to data as well. So anytime somebody is bringing a lot of data to me in the sense of, and they want me to make a decision, if I think it's too much data, I'm gonna ask them, what exactly are you asking me to decide? What's the outcome? What's your recommendation? So right. And then why and kind of what's the data to support what we wanna go do? And then, I mean I'm dealing with senior enough people where I can push this back on them and go, you need to actually put the story together from a data perspective to help me make the decision.
Speaker 2 00:28:27 That's how I approach data, right? You, I would never show somebody an Excel spreadsheet, right? It's gonna, these are kind of the three critical data points. This is why this is the outcome it drives and then this is where it ties back the decision or the recommendation I'm making. This is what's working, this is what's not, et cetera. So it's always curating, right? And it's all back to what's the story you're trying to tell and what are the data points that are going to kind of enforce your story. It's also right if there are decisions that need to be made, what are the different decision points and then what's the data to support those different decisions or not support those decisions.
Speaker 1 00:29:08 As you say that I'm thinking I wanna take this clip and put it in all my courses I teach cause I make all my students paraphrase citations because they all love to copy paste, put quotation marks and you have no idea if they know anything that that meant of what they copied and paste. It would put quotation marks around. Exactly. It helps you see that they've digested the content. Yes. And they actually know what it means, right?
Speaker 2 00:29:30 Yeah, yeah. You have to be able to synthesize it and then summarize it. Like I need you to summarize this to me first to your point, it means then you understand actually what you are saying you're not kind of regurgitating, right, right, right. You're summarizing it and you're tying it back to the decision, the outcome, whatever story you're trying to tell, you have to be able to support that from a data perspective. In my mind,
Speaker 1 00:29:56 Even what's interesting about that is, is when I worked as a doctoral chair, I'd read different dissertations and things that most my students would go through the program and sometimes the what two people read out of the data is completely different. And when I get to hear somebody's interpretation, I see something that I wouldn't have even seen. Do you, do you find that?
Speaker 2 00:30:15 Yes, for sure. So the, it is interesting, I think a lot of people will sit there and go, well data's data, right? It's you, you can't manipulate it. Or, and I remember early in my career the, I worked at a company and he was the head of data and analytics and I remember him telling me, you know, one-on-one, he's like, I can manipulate data to tell any story I wanted to tell. Right? So there is that aspect of it. And so yes you can absolutely, we all know you can skew data, you can manipulate it in a way to make your point. I think that the big piece and what I find my job is, is at times two is to be that counterbalance of that right? Understanding enough to ask the backup question, the follow up and that different piece of it. So yes, to your point, people can totally read it in different ways. And I'm not saying that they're doing it maliciously No, no. Trying to tell a different story.
Speaker 1 00:31:09 It's their perception. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:31:10 It's their perception, huh. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:31:12 Right. It's really interesting. I, to me, uh, do you see a different perception of technology and data and anything in general in the different generations? Cuz you're working with so many generations now, how is their, are their perceptions different of how everything works? Or does everybody pretty much come in and know how things work at the same way? I mean, does the, does the generation have any impact?
Speaker 2 00:31:35 No. Yeah, I think it definitely does. Where it stands out for me the most I think is around communication and the way that people work and communicate with each other. I mean, I see it in me, right? Like and it's gonna be preference of just the platforms that you use, right? I mean you, you have from a generational aspect, people that lean on email for communication, well I have people that will still kind of call me on my cell phone, which I find right? And it's not scheduled <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:32:02 Yeah, that's, that's
Speaker 2 00:32:04 Different. Or like call me on Zoom and they hadn't scheduled a meeting and I'm like, wait, what's happening? And so it's still from a generational standpoint, I think people who feel like they're just gonna reach out, they'd rather talk it out, et cetera. And then you have, I think our younger generation for sure who's just, everything is kind of more quick. Like they're gonna be much more on Slack, they're gonna be like text me, et cetera. From a communication standpoint, I think Zoom meetings there is still, I would say that kind of cuts across everyone from a sense of communication. A big piece of that is obviously the output of the pandemic and that that was kind of really the only way we could actually see and interact with each other face to face. So there's that different aspect of it, but it's mostly around kind of the way you communicate and even just the way you work. Right? It was interesting, I saw, I still write her take a little notebook in meetings and write little notes to myself, but I'm in the minority. Most people are taking notes.
Speaker 1 00:33:01 No paper, paper out there. Everybody's good. No,
Speaker 2 00:33:03 No. Right. So I, I think there's different pieces and it's even down to like, do you prefer Google? Do you prefer Microsoft? Like more around platform preferences and the way people communicate. For sure.
Speaker 1 00:33:13 Well you know, as you were talking about Zoom, I was thinking about the Covid situation and how they actually increased business through everything and gaming increased business during, were you guys prepared and how did, how'd that handle? How did you handle that? How'd that go?
Speaker 2 00:33:28 Yeah, so n I think that no company was prepared really, right? Because it, it had never happened before. And we just talked about this last night, a few of us on the executive team how when it happened we just thought, you know, you left the office and you went home and you thought I'll be back in two weeks, right? And then 18 months later you walked back into your office so it, no one was prepared. I do think so it's interesting, I actually joined 2K during the pandemic, so it was September of 2020. So you know, the pandemic has start that March. And so I started and I was a bit nervous, right? In the sense of I'm like how am I going to build influence and relationships on Zoom, et cetera. And I would say it speaks a lot to our culture from two K that I was able to do that and people were very open to that and I felt like I was able to onboard pretty smoothly and kind of establish myself pretty smoothly in that sense of it.
Speaker 2 00:34:28 But no, were we were prepared. No, but were we able, you know, one of our values is be nimble, pivot quickly. So were we able to do that? Yes we were. And so part of that was actually, uh, which a lot of companies had to deal with though, is how do you set up your people for success and enable them to work from home remotely, right? So a lot of it was, we ordered a lot of furniture and let people, you know, set themselves up for home offices and how could they work productively at home, et cetera. And then I will say from developing and building our games and getting them done on time, like a lot of credit goes to our studios, you know, N B A two K specifically, like they still delivered, they delivered a top quality N B A two K game during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 00:35:15 And there was a core group of people that still worked in person during crunch because we had to get this game out, right. And to your point, right, gaming had one of the biggest years and we were no exception. Like take two, two K had one of its biggest years from that aspect of it. Were we prepared? Were we expecting it? No, but were we able to pivot and you know, be nimble and get things done? Yes, for sure. And so, you know, and that's even changed the way we came back and worked. Like a lot of companies, we came back with a hybrid like this two K was not a hybrid, it was very much five days a week in the office, that sort of mentality. And that's really shifted here where we are much more open and hybrid around working in the office and working remote.
Speaker 1 00:36:00 Yeah, we definitely hear a lot of that and everything you're saying about, okay, I wanna work there. It sounds really <laugh>. I've heard great things though that you are doing things like basketball courts and underdeveloped areas of the world. You do some pretty amazing things to give back. Did, do you see that that's like a big part of your culture and who, I mean, how do you get a company that makes that a big part of what they do? I mean that that, does that come from the top that these goals are set? Or does the employees kind of say, we wanna work for a company that gives back? I mean, where's this come from?
Speaker 2 00:36:37 I would say it's, it's both, right? I do, I personally believe that philanthropy and giving back is a corporate responsibility and it should be, right? I would say over the last 10 years it's become much more important, especially around company branding. And a lot of that is driven by employees, right? The, you know, millennials, generation Z, et cetera. A big piece of who they wanna work for. It's gotta be a company that they identify with, be it from a culture, you know, philanthropy standpoint, et cetera. So a lot of it is driven by employees for sure. And I think a big piece of it is companies understanding that there is a corporate responsibility to give back. I would say it's become table stakes for sure in the last 10 years, right? By 20 years. It was nice to have and you know, it was people were, you know, considered generous. But now I think that if you have a company that doesn't, a philanthropy arm there, that, that to me is kind of a red flag. Even startups now, right? Like they, they really from the get-go are looking at, okay, how can we give back and be a part of the community, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:37:48 That's huge. So I, I'm gonna end with this question because a wise man once told me there are many great ideas and not enough people to execute those ideas in the tech world. So what's the solution to that?
Speaker 2 00:38:00 That is, if I had that answer, Diane <laugh>, I would be sitting on a pile of cash. I think the answer to that, and it's multi-pronged and there's different things at the end of the day, it is the talent pool isn't big enough, right? And I think what we've seen over the last decade is there has been huge investment in stem, there has been investment at the college level, right? High school level, et cetera. But you know, the slow evolution of you gotta get this population sooner. So investments in elementary schools at a much younger age and keeping people interested in stem, right? Especially that's how you're gonna get a more diverse talent pool and people that are interested in that. And a lot of that is just starting from the very beginning at a much earlier age, continuing that investment. And then it's also how you reach out to your talent, right?
Speaker 2 00:38:53 Like here at two K we've built out over the last two years for sure, our relationships with HBCUs, HSIs, women in tech, right? Partnerships there cuz data has shown the earlier they are exposed to these opportunities, the more likely they are to continue to participate in them, et cetera. It's still a lot of early investment, but even earlier than, you know, people thought like high school junior high, it's really like, all right, you gotta get 'em at kindergarten. Like, what are we doing? You know, that interest and maintaining that interest, not only is that gonna broaden the workforce, but it's gonna broaden in a way that is much more diverse.
Speaker 1 00:39:32 Yeah. I I think that's critical. We see that kids peak their curiosity around age five and six and then it hangs after that. If we could keep that level high and absolutely, yes, I'm all for that. So this has been such a great conversation, Bobby. I, I really enjoyed everything. I really would like to work there. That sounds really fun. It sounds like you have a great company, <laugh> and I, I think that gaming is gotta be so fun to see the tech change and every day just get to see with new things everybody comes up with. And this has been really helpful for the HR people out there who you had such great suggestions, so thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2 00:40:07 Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time and I appreciate being here.
Speaker 1 00:40:11 Oh, it was fun.
Speaker 2 00:40:12 All right, thank you.
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