FROM DELOITTE AND FASTCO WORKS: From Byline to Bottom Line - A conversation with Deloitte’s Deb Golden and Mansueto Ventures’ Stephanie Mehta
41:05 Share

- Hi Fast Company listeners, it's Josh here. I have something very special to share with you today. No, it's not our regular Most Innovative Company episodes, which come out every Wednesday, stay tuned for those. It's a special mini series from our friends at Fastco Works in Deloitte called Lead Through Disruption.

It's hosted by Deb Golden, who's Deloitte's chief innovation officer. And in this series, Deb chats with some of the most innovative leaders across the world of business, culture, and society, including Andy Dunn, Tony Breidinger, and our very own CEO of Ink and Fast Company, Stephanie Mehta. It's a really fantastic series, and we're very excited to share it with you. So enjoy the first episode of Lead Through Disruption.

Brought to you by Deloitte Cyber and Strategic Risk, helping your organization drive peak performance through crisis and transformation. So no matter where you're at in your journey, you can move forward fast. I'm Deb Golden, Deloitte's U.S. Chief Innovation Officer, and this is Lead Through Disruption. ♪

As businesses look for new ways to maximize opportunities and innovate in a post-pandemic landscape, some of the strongest leaders emerging are those who've had to navigate and endure professional and personal disruptions in their lives. Through these challenging moments, these individuals have embraced curiosity, creativity, and the courage to think outside the box and have reimagined the possibilities of what could be.

They've forged new paths and have broken barriers that changed the way we experience the world today and see the potential of tomorrow. In finding their resilience, they've been able to turn these bold moves into lasting change and have inspired others at every level. For today's episode, I'm joined by Stephanie Mehta.

Stephanie has held editorial roles at the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg, and Vanity Fair, and is now the CEO and Chief Content Officer at Mansueto Ventures, parent company of Inc. and Fast Company, where she was its first female editor-in-chief. She also sits on several boards, including the American Society of Magazine Editors, and is the author of Fast Company Innovation by Design, Creative Ideas That Transform the Way We Live and Work.

Throughout her almost three-decade career as an editor and journalist, Stephanie has spoken with leaders across industries and geographies, uncovering bold leadership strategies in times of uncertainty, disruption, and change. And while she herself is no stranger to change, her proactive and resilient response to the events surrounding her have enabled her to be a natural catalyst for growth, uncovering leadership lessons of her own along the way. ♪

So many of our listeners have read so many stories that you've written, and I'm so proud and candidly humbled to be talking with you today about not only your journey, but the journey that you've been able to be a part of, of so many business leaders and really defining culture over the decades of the last several years as we think about the story that you've written, you've listened to.

you've been a part of. One story that people may not be as familiar with is perhaps your own story. So maybe could you share a little bit about what sparked your own personal interest and passion in journalism?

Thank you for the question, Deb. I grew up in a household where we had magazines and newspapers on the dining room table, on the coffee table all the time. So I grew up in a house of books and newspapers and magazines, nothing super highbrow, Time Magazine, the local newspaper, but it was just something that was part of my upbringing. And I was also a kid that was really curious. I loved to read. I was really interested in

the world around me, but I was interested in learning about it through the written word. I was more of a learner than an explorer.

And then I got to college and I was an English major and I sort of intended to go get my English degree, maybe work in book publishing, maybe get a law degree. And I was at a university that had a really strong journalism program. Long story short, I befriended a couple of the freshmen that were working for the college paper and thought,

thought that it was something that would be really great for me to try. It was a chance to explore my curiosity, but also get that instant gratification of walking into the newsroom at three o'clock in the afternoon and then the next morning seeing your byline in print and the fruits of your labor for all of the university campus. So for me, it was a really great way to merge my curiosity with my love of reading and writing.

So speaking of your own byline, which is pretty, pretty cool, having done that early on, so early on, I can't even imagine in college as you're thinking about not just your classes, but you're getting bylines published. One of the things, obviously, as you write kind of matured

that view over time, how do you figure out a way to best hone and sharpen your voice and your point of view, particularly, I think, as a female, whether it be in this industry or others, but just being able to help with that narrative? You know, what was something that maybe helped you early in your career, or perhaps as you look back on your career, really helped you shape your own voice?

You know, it's interesting because when I first started, Deb, and I think a lot of people who maybe took an introduction to journalism course or has some familiarity with the bones of journalism, you're really not taught to have a voice. You're taught to basically write to a conventional style, whether it's the newspapers style or the radio station style. There's a format to most basic journalism. And

And I was really good at the format. Like I was not trying to break out in any way, shape or form when I was getting started. And I remember when I was in graduate school, I turned in a story that I worked pretty hard on and that I thought just like checked all the boxes. I did everything that the teachers told me to do. And the instructor handed the paper back to me and I got a passing grade, but he said,

This was very workmanlike. And I realized that that was not a compliment. He was basically saying, yeah, you checked all the boxes, but there's no personality. There's no oomph to this article. And it was a little bit hard for me to process because again, the way you're taught to tell these stories, especially when you're a cub reporter, is to stick to the formula. Ask the

Ask the five questions, who, what, where, when, why. There's a format to the way the news articles should be written. And so...

I think it took me a couple of years, and it really wasn't until I became a magazine journalist that I started to understand that you could still provide factual information. It could be fact-checked. It could be credible, but that you could also have a voice. And again, it took me a while to figure this out, but what I realized my superpower was was actually...

what made me unconventional. It wasn't the fact that I could follow the rule book. It was the fact that I had a different perspective, that in a lot of environments, I was the only woman writing about tech and telecom at the time, or I was the only person of color in the room asking these questions, both internally inside my organization, but also externally as a journalist. And so I think

Rather than trying to fit myself into the box that everybody wants you to fit into, it was embracing my differences that enabled me to find my voice.

You know, as you think about challenging the status quo, you've obviously shattered so many glass ceilings as we think about going from cub reporter to magazine to CEO to boss of your own life. You know, one thing I know that I think at times is often difficult is not just finding your voice along that, but how do you become a catalyst for things that perhaps you envisioned before?

more for yourself than maybe what you ever thought you were capable of doing. And as you think about embracing your superpower, as you say, how did that really help you lean into things that maybe you hadn't even considered for yourself? A lot of my journey as a leader came from just my appetite to, as you suggest, kind of give people a little bit of the experience that I didn't have when I was this fledgling bird in newsrooms.

I always felt like the person who has more power than you has more power than you in so many ways. They're the one that has permission to say good morning first in the morning. They're the one who has permission to reach out and say, hey, would you like to have a cup of coffee? I think the world has changed a lot, by the way, Deb. I would love to hear your perspectives on this as well. I think young people in the workplace now have no compunction about

coming up to somebody who is a few more years seasoned than them or many years more seasoned than them and saying, hey, I really want to pick your brain. Can we go for a walk? That dynamic has changed a lot. I'm grateful for it. But when I was coming up, it would be very unusual for someone who was entry level to approach someone more senior and ask for lunch or for coffee.

And so for me, because I didn't always see that being practiced by my managers and elders, I thought, boy, if I ever get to a point where I can do that for somebody else.

downstream, I want to do that. And so I was often the person that said, let's get all the interns together and take them out to lunch, or let's try to do a workshop for the new employees so that they can kind of understand how we tell stories and benefit from the wisdom of people who are more seasoned in the industry.

And so for me, that kind of doing for others what I wish had been done for me, I think shaped me a lot as a leader. And I hope I still try to do that in my new role. It's just more people that I feel like I have to do it for now. Yeah. And I think one of the challenges is how do you get that access and permission to the masses? Because I think just more and more people are

want to be a part of your circle, which is amazing. And I know you'll want to do that for them. And so how do you get there? Because you obviously can't be one-on-one for every human. You'd probably run out of days in the week at that point. And so how can you get and build that culture in a way that is more broad reaching across the environment? And I think in particularly in today's day and age with the uncertainty that

facing us. I mean, the pandemic certainly proved to us how to navigate via change. And we as a society have become very resilient because of that. And we've embraced change and enabled us to work through disruption. But at the end of the day, I don't think that that's going anywhere. I think we continually talk about change being the quote unquote new normal.

I love to debate the hypothesis of what normal actually means. And so how do you think we can think about that, particularly in the world of work? How do we move that fast? Because the world is going to keep moving. To your point, what you and I experienced 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago is absolutely different than today. And I think tomorrow and two months from today is going to be very different than where we are today. So how can we help

either other leaders or professionals that work for us in this constant, fast evolution? It's probably a little different for every organization, but across the board,

Leaders and employees and managers and everybody inside an organization, I think we all need to start working our risk muscle a little bit more. And it's interesting because I do think, as you suggested, during the pandemic, everybody really learned a lot about resilience. And I feel like risk and resilience are sort of, they go hand in hand. And

People didn't even realize that they were practicing the art of resilience. They were just kind of doing it. And when we are able to step back, and I'm not sure that we're even at that point yet, but when people start to really think about the lessons they learned from the last three years, I think a lot of organizations and individuals will look back and say, boy, I

boy, we showed a lot of resilience. We showed an incredible amount of fortitude and they probably didn't even realize it was happening in the moment. I think the same is true for risk. People tend to think of risk as this big, bold, audacious kind of thing. Companies take lots of small risks every day. As individuals, we take lots of small risks every day. I know people who would probably argue that getting on the subway every day in New York is taking a small risk.

But, you know, it's an act of faith trying to figure out what the calculated, credible and smart risks are for your organization and beginning to take those risks, dissect those risks, celebrate those risks, bring those risks to the table.

to surface for the entire organization, I think can be very empowering. As I said, I think there are people in your organization and my organization who are taking lots of smart risks on our behalf every day, and we don't know about them. And we only know about them when they fail, quite honestly. It would be great to find out about them as they're happening and make positive examples of them. But I think for companies to begin to develop a culture that

can accommodate and absorb and react and benefit from change, everybody sort of needs to have already built up the muscle or the ability to take advantage of it. Yeah, and so much to unpack in there. I think one thing that definitely...

resonated was, I mean, a number of things. But as I think about resilience, it's interesting because I too believe that everybody has had some form of resilience during the pandemic. And it's interesting when you talk about the topic, people are like, well, I haven't had a quote unquote life experience. Well, the pandemic was a life experience. So no matter how it touched upon your life, it touched upon your life. And I think being able to recognize that to your point of

what did I gain through that? And how can I definitely celebrate that fact of resilience? Because if we can bring those pieces of what we've learned into what we do and how we do them, then perhaps we could push boundaries a little bit differently. And I like to say, take calculated risks, because if we're not taking those risks accurately,

then perhaps we're not actually pushing ourselves to be in a different space. And by the way, that could be a mental space, a physical space, a spiritual space, but there's always some sort of calculated risk. To your point, it could be what some deem small or it could be very big. And so as we think about growing and scaling our own resilience and taking risk in what we do in business, and we think about the speed of all these things happening, it's a lot going on. And so

Sometimes I think it gets often difficult whether or not taking that calculated risk is quote unquote worth it. And I think we need to change the question. I don't think that that's the right question to ask because, again, I also believe that if we're not failing, we're not taking calculated risks because...

everything isn't going to quote unquote work the first time we try it. And if it did, we would have solved many things by now. And so how can you help encourage other leaders or bring others along as we think about this kind of innovating at the speed of change, taking calculated risks and candidly not being afraid of failure? It's a really tough question because a

We're all sort of wired a little bit differently. Again, I feel like we are also in the midst of a real interesting generational shift. And again, Deb, I know you've got thoughts on this as well. You know, we have people coming into the workplace now who.

have frankly only ever known uncertainty. For them, in the same way that we talk about them being digital natives and just having a skill set that people who came of age in the 80s and early 90s don't have, I think they also just are coming to the workplace with a different set of resilience skills, a different threshold for risk, and they're

It's the little things like the boldness to just go up to somebody senior in the organization and say, hey, let's go get a cup of coffee or hey, I've got some questions. Can I pick your brain? That's a kind of risk taking that is just second nature. So I guess my advice would be turn to your young people. I think there's a lot.

Thank you.

over and over again examples of the way that the enterprise is following trends that we're seeing in the consumer world. I think your young people will be incredibly great guides. I don't know if he still does it, but Marco Bazzari, who's the CEO of Gucci, has a youth council and he

He has young people inside his organization at all levels, and he tries to meet with them regularly. And it's not for him to impose his wisdom to them. It's absorbing what they are seeing and hearing and all of those trends. I think it's something that could be really useful for any leader. As I think about changing the dynamic with the multi-generations that we have in the workforce at any one point in time right now, it's a unique experience.

situation. And we know it'll be changing over time as older generation moves into the younger generation and so forth. But it's one of the only times in history where we've, no matter what you're calling every generation, there's four to six different types of generations in the workforce right now. And even to your point, just small moves that we can make as well. I know we go on these virtual meetings, one meeting after the other, after the other, after the other. I think everybody's muting at some point to go either run and get a glass of water or go to the bathroom. And so

I started doing this thing where the first 10 minutes, I literally do some random icebreaker. And the first time I ever tried that, it was so awkward. Everyone's like, you want me to do what? And I'm like...

When we were together, we all would chat on the way to the coffee room. We would chat while we were waiting for takeoff on a plane. We'd build those relationships. And I think the change in the way that we build relationships is going to be very critical because, you know, the whole dynamic around what does hybrid work look like? What is return to quote unquote the office look like? What is good for you is good for me or not good for me. And so I think also just trying to figure out how to make a virtual world human is

because I think that connectivity is lost in a lot of ways because we're just running at a pace that doesn't allow for us to take five minutes and stop. And so I'll tell you now, I've been doing that for a couple of months. People come to these meetings expecting like, okay, what crazy thing is Deb going to do at the start of a meeting? But we spend 15, 20 minutes finding out about what somebody did or what they're most proud of. Or last time I did, I gave everybody 30 seconds to go grab something and come back and share what they grabbed. I mean, so...

I just think also thinking about new ways that we can communicate is going to be really important as well as we think about candidly pushing some of us into an uncomfortable place and others, perhaps providing them the comfort that they need to be able to speak up and have their voices heard in ways that perhaps they wouldn't otherwise.

Yeah, I think the art of the inclusive meeting is going to become even more important as we find ourselves in this. One thing that I think is permanent, everything is going to change, but hybrid work is here to stay. We have certain colleagues at our organization, I'm sure you've got them at Deloitte, who are never going to come back into the office. And I think that for them, everybody trusts themselves, knows themselves.

That may actually be more inclusive for them. Being able to work from home, if you are somebody that has a disability, if you're somebody that has a long commute, if you're somebody that really just feels like they can be so much more productive from the comfort of a home office or a remote office, the world is going to have to figure out how to accommodate all of those different styles of work.

And finding out how to conduct inclusive meetings with that variety is an incredible art form. I don't think I've mastered it, but there are lots of people out there who are starting to give a lot of serious thought. This is not a soft skill kind of thing. I think this is going to be critical to the future of business.

I wrote down the Art of Inclusive Meeting. I love it. It sounds like the title of a book. So it sounds like something you should post it and think about because that's definitely, I think, going to be on the top of lots of people's minds as we continue to work through this. And I don't think it's been quote unquote figured out yet. We'll be right back after this short message from Deloitte Cyber and Strategic Risk.

As cybersecurity threats become more pervasive, to stay ahead of the curve and react to rapidly changing conditions, you need Deloitte Cyber and Strategic Risk with you on the front line to power the high-quality results most critical to your organization. A team committed to outcomes with a long track record of driving peak performance through crisis and transformation. So no matter where you're at in your journey, Deloitte can help you turn challenges into opportunities and confidently move forward fast.

So maybe we could pivot a little bit similarly around traits. You've spoken to so many business leaders, whether it be founders, whether it be disruption, whether it be fast-growing startups to CEOs of multinational enterprises. The laundry list is vast and quite impressive. And so as you think about the things you've learned from them, are there any uncommon or unique traits that you've learned from them?

that you found that the most successful leaders share? There's a couple of things that come to mind. I do think that one of them is curiosity. The leaders that I have seen succeed and admire are the ones that do a really good job of

of asking questions inside their organization. And again, there is a skill to asking that incisive, precise question. And I don't think it's an accident that many of the leaders I admire and like to talk to have podcasts because I think they...

I'm polishing the apple a little there, Deb. But it's really true. I feel like for a lot of leaders, this format is a way to have long form conversations about topics that they're really curious about. The research itself is a really interesting exploration for leaders. And then the conversation just unlocks a lot of interesting insights and

And again, the really great leaders can take a lesson from the world of media and apply it to the world of cyber risk, or they can take an interesting conversation with a retailer and apply it to their world as a manufacturer. And so curiosity is sort of at the top of my list. The other thing is, and this is a little bit contrary because I came of age as a business journalist in an era where leaders were

were very focused on operations, financial results. It was very sort of meat and potatoes business stuff. I think that has changed and leaders who have a clear sense of purpose and can communicate that purpose

to their organizations, that's another trait that's gonna be incredibly important to successful leaders going forward. - So I'm gonna throw a little bit of a curve ball in there because one thing that I think as we think about leaders and their traits is how do you think the most successful leaders, and again, success could be that they failed too along the way, understand when it's time to pivot?

My sense from some successful leaders is that it tends not to be based on spreadsheets or what the investment bankers say or what the economists are saying in their organization. We talked to a lot of founders at Fast Company and at Inc. And I think that from the perspective of founder CEOs, of which I am not one, but I talked to a lot of them, they just know their business so well. And

And they know from history when they've had to pivot. They know when the inflection point is coming and they've figured out

This is what the environment felt like the last time we had to do this. This is what we were seeing from customers or hearing from employees the last time we had to do it. And so a lot of it is based more on their experiences as founders who really know their companies really well and they make that shift.

As we think about people to turn to, whether it's a crisis or not, how do you think either it be these leaders or you in your own personal life find that group to be your trust group? Because obviously people don't get here by themselves. Obviously we've got talent that has to be brought to the table. But when you think about

how leaders succeed. It really is with a support network. And so what are your thoughts on either your own support network or what you've seen as you've talked to so many people again throughout industry in a variety of different ways?

It's a great question, Deb. I think that, you know, again, there was a time in business where being the CEO was a very lonely role. People would say, oh, it's, you know, lonely at the top. If you want a friend, get a dog, whatever the cliches are. You have dogs, but that's not your only support network. I think that's changed a lot because

again, leaders have a little bit more permission to be vulnerable now. So, you know, this idea that you have to put on a steely front all the time and you can't reveal to other people what your challenges or problems are,

I think that that's a thing of the past. Inside my organization, I'm very lucky. I have a really strong leadership team and there are a couple of people that I count on to give me the unvarnished truth. We try to create a culture where people feel empowered to speak the truth.

And so I think by creating those cultures, the executive leadership team and sort of the concentric circles that go from there really do provide a strong basis for feeling like I'm getting the information I need.

You've talked a little bit already about how leadership has changed. I mean, it used to be a very two-dimensional, top-down, hierarchical practice. If you think about it that way today, obviously, I wouldn't even say it's three-dimensional. It's multi-dimensional. And it really is powered by influence as you think about everything you need to be able to do as a leader, whether that's visionary, architect, storyteller, roll your sleeves up in the trenches, supporting of multiple constituencies. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so

As you think about influence, which I think it's a thing that you always work on, how can you help to provide a couple of tips to folks listening to leverage influence and maybe hone that skill? Because that's a skill I don't think we often spend enough time looking at in terms of not only people that influence you, but how you influence others. It's a really interesting time because there are so many opportunities to use influence, to gain influence, and to...

understand what it means to be influential. My feeling on influence is that like a lot of things in this world, you kind of have to earn it rather than having it bestowed to you. And how you earn it in this environment is a little bit different because of all of the platforms that are available. We did something for the first time in our organization not long ago, which is surprising given that we are a media company, but we've typically done

town halls or memos to communicate information to individuals. I shot a short video just on my iPhone the other day when we were announcing our final 2022 results and describing what our bonus position was going to be for last year. And I did it as a short video. It was like a minute and 30 seconds. And people really connected with it. And

I think we're going to do more of that. The other thing, just the other day, we did a lunch with our new employees and asked them, there were a number of people who were on teleconference because they are fully remote. And I said, what can we do to make you feel more like you are a

part of our family. And one of the individuals said, I'd love a newsletter, which is so old school in many ways. You know, the company newsletter, when I started at Dow Jones, we used to get this like mimeographed newsletter in our inboxes or mailboxes.

Again, very physical time of my life, but it just made me think, why not do an employee newsletter? Why not have something where we can celebrate wins and we're a small company, so we're able to do that. But I think there's a lot of different tools available to people and they can either be very modern, like video, or they can be very old school, like the company newsletter. And I wanted to go back to something that you had started the conversation with, which was finding a voice. I do feel like

if you want to have influence, you do need to develop a voice and a point of view. And it's an overused term, but I do think authenticity is really important in these new formats. If you come across as scripted, if you come across as the lawyers have looked at this, or these are bullet points, it doesn't really ring true with your audiences, whether they're internal or external.

So speaking of culture, let's talk a little bit about diversity and thought and background and influence and inclusion and access, all the important things. And so we can't talk about leadership and collaboration and purpose and vision without talking about diversity. And when we think about that, I mean, there's still so many barriers that exist, biases for women, especially Black women entrepreneurs.

and how to look at adversity and the impact that that adversity has in the organization. I know you're a visionary as it relates to driving the conversation forward around what it means to be a Black woman and an entrepreneur. Are there things that you can share in terms of perhaps a missed opportunity or challenges we could put forth to other business leaders to really help better connect and provide these access pathways, particularly for underrepresented individuals?

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, Deb. Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is the obsession that a lot of large organizations have developed around college degrees. And there are certainly a lot of jobs that require a certain level of educational attainment because of the specificity of the role. You know, you can't practice...

law in a lot of places without passing the bar. And it's very hard to pass the bar unless you've gone to law school. So I understand there are professions where you really do need to matriculate, but we see this in tech all the time. There are tons of roles that could be opened up to people who have the right kind of training, but don't necessarily have a four-year degree. And I think that as we move to skills-based hiring, that will really advantage the

black and brown communities in particular, but it will really open up economic opportunity to a whole swath of Americans in particular who, for a variety of reasons, have not been able to take advantage of a four-year college education. Other things that I think companies can do is really take a strong look at their supplier diversity programs. These programs were created in the 1970s, in many cases, as an opportunity to open up

suppliers to the organizations and to have more suppliers of color be part of the mix. And what has happened, like with everything else, is that it's become sort of ossified. And there's the same fairly big, fairly sophisticated minority-owned businesses that win a lot of these contracts. And because it has become, I think for some people, it's just easier to go with

the company you know. Easier to go with the vendor who has 25 recommendations from other big companies that look exactly like ours. Fine, let's give these guys the legal business. Let's give these guys the janitorial business. Let's give these women the construction business. In fact,

There are millions of new businesses being minted every year, and disproportionately, those businesses are founded by women and founded by people of color. And so rather than just going back to the till, why not really use the supplier diversity programs, which exist for this very reason, to bring in new people into the fold?

The supplier diversity angle is something anybody can do that's in leadership as you think about the way that we look at supply and demand across our own infrastructure. So, you know, I think sometimes people are often chased with no matter what report you're reading, finding equity and diversity is 138 years away or 400 years away. And

People find it to be daunting. And yet when you look at things as simple as you're suggesting, and I know it's not as simple as you flip a switch tomorrow, but asking the question and even understanding, I think sometimes people don't even understand the

what their supplier organization looks like. So look at the demographic, understand a little bit about what your supplier network looks like, or even better yet, look at what your team looks like. And is this the way that you want your team to be represented? Diversity of thought is what is going to get us to solve some of these very complicated problems. And so you've given us some really, I think, easy things to think about. And sometimes we think of this as it's such a complicated problem, we don't know where to start. And so

So I'd suggest just asking the questions, asking the questions about your suppliers, asking the questions about your teams, asking the questions about how you can build skilled space development. I mean, again, these are things that as leaders,

Or candidly, just as professionals, you could be begging the question a bit on. So thank you for sharing a little bit about how we all might be able to positively impact the diversity challenge moving forward. So I appreciate those tips. So let's go into a couple of different myths. My lightning round questions as we round out our conversation here this morning. All right.

Anything you could talk about as it relates to like, you know, we always want what's the tea, what's the gossip. But that being said, what is a myth you would love to tackle around leadership or media? I don't know if this is a persistent myth, but I don't necessarily think that the general public quite understands how an editorial website or a magazine is produced. We have...

lots of visibility into how processed food is made. We have lots of visibility more and more into the supply chains for the iPhone. Media doesn't really do a good job of telling people how we do what we do. And so I think there is this myth that I just have a writer sitting in his or her or their office and they write something up and they push a button and they publish it and it goes on the web. And

Like that manufacturing plant or like that iPhone manufacturer, we have checks and balances. So the writer writes the story, an editor looks at it, a copy editor looks at it. It goes up online. A lot of times I'll look at it. And if at some point anywhere in that sort of sausage making, there's a problem or something doesn't look fair or something looks like it needs more work,

we send it back. And so we're not just sort of sitting in our little cubicles publishing stories. There is a system of checks and balances. So I think that's one myth that I'd like to dispel. And I always tell people if they've ever gone through a magazine fact-checking process for like a long story, it's like invasive surgery. Like they're getting in there and asking you all kinds of questions. And if it's wrong, they've

fix it. More importantly, right? Like if you said that quote is not right, they'll go back to the tape and listen to the tape and make sure it's accurate. Well, thanks for giving us all a little bit of an insight. I have had the luxury of seeing things from afar in the publishing world. So it's great to hear because you're right. I don't think a lot of people understand what it takes to not only put things, whether it be quote unquote on paper, on the website,

in your brain, but how you actually get those out into verse is quite magical. So thanks for always bringing us the latest tea on all the information out there. All right, let's have you imagine your first day of vacation. By the way, that could be next week. I don't know. But if you're on your first day of vacation, what's the first thing you absolutely do on vacation? The

The first thing I absolutely do on vacation is take a walk around the facility. If it's a hotel, I want to get a lay of the land, sort of see what everything is. If it's a little Airbnb or remote situation, it's, you know, just sort of getting a sense of what the landscape is like around where we're staying. So I like to get my bearings.

Nice. So I'm going to ask a very, very difficult question. When you're on vacation, do you unpack your suitcase or do you leave your suitcase packed?

unpack. There seems to be a big contention in my household because half of us unpack and half of us stay packed. So I always love to understand that there must be some, I'll have to table that for some other therapy session, but I think there's a thing behind the packing and the unpacking. So I'm glad to see you unpack. In our household, it's generational. The adults unpack and

And the young people keep everything stuffed into the duffel bag. Interesting. I'm a stuffer in the duffel bag. I don't unpack. So I'm not sure what that says then about me, but that's my unpacking. So I might be thinking with my younger folks in the family. You're young at heart, Deb. I must be, must be. Okay. So always on my mind, particularly when I talk to anybody in the journalism field,

Again, you've talked to so many people. You've probably seen it all. Alive, living, non-living, who's on top of your list for next? Bill Gates on AI. Intriguing because so much to learn there and so much to grow. That's amazing. And I would love to be a fly on the wall when you have that conversation. Yeah.

All right. What's the one thing you would say to yourself to prepare for your life? It's not linear. I kind of grew up thinking everything would be really linear. And I mean, you know better than anyone, Deb, it's never a straight line. And by the way, that can be a good thing. And it can be a challenge because a lot of the world still does think linearly. So

Again, I'm literally taking so many notes. We have chapters for books. So I think there's separate pieces on all of these because definitely linear, there is no straight line for sure. And there's no straight same line. Even if it's crooked, your crooked line is going to be different than my crooked line, etc. So yeah.

Definitely agree with that. And then as we kind of wrap up the podcast today, as you think about the characteristics of leading and particularly as we've talked about disruption and change and we think about the path forward, what would be something else if you were to underline, highlight, dog ear that you would say absolutely go hone your skill on, especially as we think about the world in front of us?

instinct slash gut. I say that going back to what we had talked about earlier, which is that I think some of the most successful leaders have honed their gut based on experience and knowing what the environment feels like. It is a gut feeling, but it's not purely gut. It does come from learning lessons and ingesting those lessons and then applying them when they see patterns.

Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for time today. We could just keep chatting on and on. I love to listen to all of your experiences. So thank you again for joining me today. Thank you, Deb. That was Stephanie Mehta, one of the foremost minds in modern leadership and media on lessons in management and innovation and our next normal, the next that's happening right now all around us.

From staying agile to pushing boundaries to the art of the inclusive meeting, these lessons we learn from others at every level are critical to leading through disruption. Thanks, Stephanie, and thank you for listening.

Lead Through Disruption is produced by FASCO Works in collaboration with Deloitte Cyber and Strategic Risk. Our show was produced by Avery Miles and Matt Toder, as well as editor Nicholas Torres. We'll be back with more incredible stories from disruptors who are positively impacting change in business, culture, and society. We hope their journeys filled with curiosity, courage, and resilience inspire your own as they have countless others. I'm your host, Deb Golden. Thanks for listening.