Episode 185 / Sally Bos / Hexagon Asset Lifecycle Intelligence / Executive Marketing & SDR Director EMIA
Podcast: Be Adaptive to Change
For the past 25 years, Sally Bos has held various roles at Hexagon and enjoyed every minute of it. The secret has been in getting herself surrounded by a team of people who are adaptive to change, open to trying new things, failing and learning. That is also her Shiny New Object: making people adaptive to change, through creating the right team environment for it.
In a constantly and rapidly changing world, we must continually change and adapt. According to Sally, this is the key to progressing in marketing and beyond, and is why she swears by it in her hiring and management practices alike.
Being adaptive to change is about keeping yourself open to new ideas, changing the status quo where required, and not being afraid to make mistakes. Of course, this is more easily done in a team that fosters this sort of behaviour, where everyone is encouraged to challenge and come up with new ways of working. This is why Sally aims to recruit people who prove themselves to be adaptive to change, and then to support this team culture.
For Sally, being surrounded by the right people helps her do great work, but also have a good work/life balance and life satisfaction. Speaking about work/life balance, it’s interesting to see that, even after 25 years in a place she loves, she took it for granted that she had the right balance until Covid hit. Being in a situation where she re-assessed how she spent her time and how much of her rest and recovery she respected, she changed her approach to a very simple one consisting of four pillars: sleep, eat, move, rest.
With the right amount of sleep for you, ensuring you have enough breaks and rest from work, that you eat well and exercise, you will find the right balance. Of course, Sally agrees that no one is perfect and you’ll have off days – but that’s only normal!
Listen to more marketing tips from Sally, how she balances it all and how she is always striving to foster a culture of being adaptive, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:12
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative and this is a weekly show, where I get to interview a very exciting and interesting person from the industry about what their vision for the future of the marketing and advertising industries are. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Sally Bos, who is executive marketing director, EMIA at Hexagon asset lifestyle intelligence division. So, Sally, thanks so much for joining us. Can you give the audience a bit of a background and overview on who you are and what you do?
Sally Bos 0:47
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Yeah, I'm Sally. Indeed. Thanks for having me today. I am currently working at Hexagon. Actually, I worked there quite a long time already almost 25 years, started there after I graduated and did a lot of different areas from sales, sales development and marketing and indeed currently I'm heading up the EMIA marketing team for Hexagon's asset lifecycle Intelligence Division, true.
Tom Ollerton 1:17
So 25 years, so you're supposed to be like really, really, really good that they can't possibly get rid of you, or really bad, and they can't find a way!
Sally Bos 1:27
Yeah, you know, when I got hired, I really said, Okay, well, two to three years max, and every you know, all the year, I got a new job and a new opportunity. So, yeah, still here, enjoying it.
Tom Ollerton 1:41
Well, congratulations, man, that must be great to have such a fulfilling career in one place over such a long time. So in that 25 years, what new belief or behavior has helped your work life balance?
Sally Bos 1:57
So I think the thing that helped me a lot in, you know, my quality of my work life has really been my work life balance itself. If I look back, for a person, I'm really a hard worker, and I also enjoy working hard. So when people say, Well, you shouldn't work too much. I was always like, well, if I enjoy what I do, why shouldn't I, and also being very, you know, let's say focused on healthy food, being active, doing my sports, I always thought like, I had a good balance. But I learned actually, that it killed me a few times, in the fact saying, I didn't have a good balance. And especially with traveling about 80% of my time, I realized my work life balance is not really that good. Because I didn't rest and sleep enough. And I didn't understand fully what Balanced meant. So this I've been working on a lot, myself, and also with my team and people around me, because again, during COVID, if you saw, you know, we all suddenly I didn't have a travel, I thought, oh, you know, my life is now easy, you know, I just have to work and I can be home, I don't have all this time for other things. But then again, you know, that resting and sleeping was still something that I was not doing. And I realized that that's really what helps me improve my quality of work if I do this well. So I continue to look at myself on the four pillars like sleep, eat, move, and rest. And look how I'm balancing all of these. And that's really helping me in what I do every day at work and at home. And with my friends.
Tom Ollerton 3:32
So it's all of those. All of those things make a lot of sense, right? No one's gonna go no, you shouldn't sleep, you shouldn't eat, shouldn't move, you shouldn't rest like that, you're gonna get like a thumbs up from almost everyone. But how much work is like, well, I'm going to work from I don't know, somebody works from six in the morning till six at night, or 10 hours or seven hours. Ideally, what but so. And that's sort of a tangible ish thing. You know, you've got meetings going in the calendar, everyone could see you working. But eating, sleeping, resting moving. How do you get the numbers right?
Sally Bos 4:07
Yeah, that's a good question indeed, because I've been playing a lot with that, because so I thought, for example, for me, I thought, well, I have to do my eight hours of work, because that's what we are told to do. And we have to have eight hours of sleep. But I also learned that we are all different as a person. So for me, I know very much that I have need for seven hours as a minimum. So I do actually track it. And if I do an average of seven hours in the week, I know I'm good with work. You know, if I enjoy what I'm doing, I can do more than eight but I need to make sure that I do have some breaks in between and don't go back to back to back to back which we have a tendency to do. So make sure that every few hours you have a break and the 15 minutes, you know, like I do meditate for 10 minutes, you know, in between and I go again and I'm such a better person again. So, you know, I wouldn't want to say it's 8 hours sleep, eight hours of, of, you know, let's say work and an hour of exercise. But make sure that you do move every day, make sure that you do take breaks during your work and make sure that you do get sleep, let's say between seven and eight, depending on who you are. And that you consider what you eat and think if you just have those as a base, it's already a good start.
But I guess my struggle is always like, Well, what happens when you want to just drink lots of wine and eat terrible food and have a good time with your friends too late at night? All of those things go out the window.
It's true. But you know what, it's nice, because we're all human here, right? Nobody's perfect. Then, you know, the next day you just go, you know, you recover? And the day after you pick it up again, you know, because that's the human side of it. You know, nobody is perfect, in my view. Me neither.
Tom Ollerton 5:51
So what is your top marketing tip? 25 years in lots of different jobs in the same place? What is that bit of marketing advice that you share most often?
Sally Bos 6:00
Thank you for asking that one. I was sort of doubting between two, because when you asked me that question, when in my early career, my boss actually had two ones that he mentioned, one was choose your battles, and one was making the difference. And if I look, you know, what really helped me in my life and robbed me a lot in my life is really making a difference, not only in business, but also in, in the private life. Because it's not only focusing just on results and adding value, but it's really about what you do to truly make a difference. And, you know, making a difference is that you cause actually change, you know, to be important in some way, you know, that you really create a significant effects, you know, so and that goes along with, don't be afraid to make mistakes, you know, so and be open for new ideas. And still, today, this is important, but also in the beginning of my career, it was nice for me that I didn't feel afraid of making mistakes. And I've always been suggesting new ideas been surrounded by people that I could work with on new ways. So breaking old thinking patterns, you know, thinking a bit reverse and getting fresh perspectives, because I think that's what we need, you know, some fresh eyes, and sometimes stepping back and coming up with something new. So, and to me, you know, new ideas, and surrounded by people that make the difference is, yeah, where are you where you do enjoy your life and make the difference for you as a person as well?
Tom Ollerton 7:32
Well, I think you had like six different bits of advice there: choose your battles, make the difference, make mistakes, bring fresh eyes, new ideas, and bring new people in. So you've got four or five there. So well done, all of those are great, so thanks for sharing and reminding us of those. So now you're, you're on your shiny new object. And we debated this for a while. But where you got to was making people adaptive to change. So that makes sense to me. But I'd love to have you introduce that as a concept.
Sally Bos 8:03
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, you've heard me already a little bit being passionate about making the difference, which also was about cause a change, right? So, to me, I do believe that the world today, you know, it's even more rapidly changing. And people are the key aspects, you know, in life, you know, I'm very passionate about that. But also people that do that have to change is really key within this whole environment. Because we need to constantly adapt, and we constantly need to create, if you see myself in, in what I am, from a background is actually is I'm actually having a business degree in, in marketing, and in business studies, but I'm also certified coach and professional nutritionist, and in all these areas, I do see that whenever I work with people, it's all about, you know, change, and being adaptive, and, you know, so facilitating people to motivate and inspire them to make changes, to make tweaks to the life and the change can be small, change can be big. But you know, that's really where you make the difference in moving forward. Right.
So that's why also I think, you know, people need to be adaptive to change and it's my drive to, to, let's say, motivate people to be more adaptive to change. If I look at it myself since I was young, you know, I worked in restaurants, bars and clubs, and I remember that I moved to Holland for my studies. And then I worked at the beach. And there was actually a pub owner that saw me working at the beach. And he said, Well, you know, I really would like you to work in my bar, you know? And I said to him, I said, Well, it's very nice of you to think about me, but your bar is actually pretty sorry to say it's quiet, it's a bit boring and said that You know, if you would like me to work there, I would really like to change a few things, you know, I would really love to see how we can do things differently. And I said, I can write your business plan. And if you approve it, we go for it. And, and so I made the plan, I changed quite a few things, and adding a kitchen to adding live music and all different kinds of things in there. And after that, you know, he was adaptive for the change. And, you know, I could do it with him. And I hired people that were also open for it, and adaptive to that change, and we run it successful for three years. So I think that's a nice way to show, you know how this whole change is, you know, and we doubled our revenue even more, it was a beautiful way. But also, we had a lot of fun in going through that change, because it was constantly seeing what needs to be new. And then after that, you know, when I was actually done with, when I worked there for three years, I actually had to go abroad for a year to the UK to do my studies, then had my final year. And I came back the summer after to work at the beach for my last year before I was looking for my job, actually, you know, my real job for after studies. And I got interviewed by a few companies. And you know, and two actually, I was offered the job. And one was a pharmaceutical agency and company and the other one was Hexagon, which was then called Intergraph. But again, here, I could see the difference. Actually, the pharmaceutical I got a fixed contract, actually, I did get actually more pay and Hexagon, I had a temporary contract, it was on pregnancy leave. But you know, it was the people and mindset and the openness for change and new ideas that made me go there. And that also today made me you know, have a wonderful career at Hexagon.
So that's also why today I do say if I do hire new people, I always check when they say what kind of profile are you looking for one, I say, it's not about you know, who you are, you know, it's about would you want to make the difference and are you adaptive to change. And I've been able to do great projects, and great, you know, activities with people at Hexagon to do this, so but also outside of the company. Because you know, the importance is for me to have the right people, you know, be surrounded by the right people and have the right people in your life, you know, business and private, because they influence you know, they make you happy, they make you do better choices. And also, they help you in going through that change. And I see that I am very, very much fascinated about people and change myself. And therefore I also do really like to inspire, you know, people to make a difference and be adaptive to change.
Tom Ollerton 13:00
So going back to what you said earlier about sleep, eat, move and rest. It's kind of obvious but hard to get right? And is anyone getting an interview going to say they're not adaptive to change, and I think I'm adaptive to change but then I'm also human. And in a world where we're got lots of different things vying for attention, be it Slack or WhatsApp or email or list all the things that what we, what we default to is delivering on tasks that don't have as much cognitive load, right? So I'm gonna send an email, Sally, cool. I'm not gonna start like reinventing a cool intro to an email. I'm just gonna Hi, Sally. Great doing the podcast with you today. I was thinking about x y z, right? And, and so I like to think that I'm adaptive to change, but in reality, I'm always just looking for shortcuts. And what I was just thinking, right? Well, how can I replicate what I did last time? Or that person did or better? Because I've got 9 million things to do. And they've all got to be good. So how do you know if someone is actually adaptive to change?
Sally Bos 14:04
Yeah, that's... So there's one thing by the way that I do believe, and therefore it's always good to have interviews in person, because I wouldn't ask the question, are you? Are you making a difference? Yes or no? Right? Or are you adaptive to change, you know, because everybody would say yes, like you said, right. But I do believe by having an interview by just asking questions, you can identify how the persons are behaving. Maybe it's also you know, some more experience, maybe it was more something on trust, but I do believe that you can see if you asking people saying "Where would you like to be in five years?" And what type of interest people have they just want to go traditional? Or what did you do in your past? What project did you do that made you proud? You know, you can ask tons of questions where you can really, in my view quite easily identify saying, is this something because people are asked to do this? Are they really passionate about it. And to me actually, when people have a passion about new ideas, etc, you can see that there is a drive from them and again, and then you can see that as more adaptive to change, I think those are ways that I would identify it better.
Tom Ollerton 15:15
And thenwe're running out of time, which is very frustrating. But how would, what's the first steps on getting an organization or a team adaptive to change?
Sally Bos 15:28
So yeah, that's a good point as well. So for me, the first steps would really also be to make an environment that people feel good in. So as I mentioned before, I think people need to be able to make mistakes and not be afraid of it. So you need to have a good, you know, culture around you and a good, let's say, vibe or environment to make sure that people trust and are not afraid to make mistakes, and also, that people are open to share ideas. And you know, I mean, we've all had an idea. So I have this open door policy, and not only literally, but also saying, I don't micromanage, but I do I also do like that people say, Okay, this is what I would like you to achieve. It's a bit like, where you just say, these are the questions and you come up with what you would like to talk about? So I will do the same in project, what way would you like to do it? So I give them the environment to do it in their own way and come with new ideas and whatever new idea it is, even if I think not sure that okay, let's work it out. Let's go and try it, you know, and then we can see how it works. And then we can learn from it. So that openness was the trust, being not afraid of making mistakes. And the new idea, I think, is key, you know, in an organization to make it work.
Tom Ollerton 16:44
Sally, I would love to carry on talking about this. But unfortunately, we're at the end of the podcast now. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, where would you like them to do that? And what makes a great outreach to you?
Sally Bos 16:58
I think LinkedIn is still a great way to to get in touch with me and I like it when people do a little bit more personal, personalized outreach. So that means that they understand that there is a mutual interest. So if I get a message like that, you'll be sure you get an answer.
Tom Ollerton 17:18
Fantastic. Sally, really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.
Sally Bos 17:22
Thank you
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