Skills Gaps

DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR:from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR:comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward. Today we’re talking about skill gaps with Obed Louissaint. He’s the head of talent at IBM. Obed, thanks for coming on the show.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Thanks for having me.

DAN MCGINN: So at a company like IBM, is there a time in your career where you needed to jump between roles and radically change your skillset?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Just about every year. [LAUGHTER] It’s an ever-going and ever-changing thing.

ALISON BEARD: How often do employees come to you wanting to jump into new roles, but not having the skills they need to do it?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Well, we have a workforce of over 360,000 people, so I limit how many come to me personally. [LAUGHTER] But we do have one in four of our people changing jobs every year. So, it’s a place of constant career velocity as well as internal movement. And we built systems to enable that.

ALISON BEARD: So the answer is rarely. No, you don’t have the skills. It’s, so let’s help you build them?

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right. It’s where do you want to go and then how do you get there.

ALISON BEARD: What’s the most common mistake that people make when they’re facing a skills gap?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Is that they can’t overcome it, or that they have to start from the beginning. A number of the underlying capabilities of the job that we do, do give us transferrable skills. And it’s about building that narrative. When you’re sitting across from an interviewer or from a manager that then helps progress them.

ALISON BEARD: OK. Here we go. Dear HBR: I feel like my career is stagnating. For the past 10 years, I’ve worked as an engineer, but I’ve always wanted to boost my profile, broaden my network and get into product management. So, I enrolled in a part-time MBA at a top university. I’ll be graduating in a few months. The problem is it doesn’t seem to be getting me anywhere. Sometimes it feels like I’m going backwards. My company recently went through an acquisition. I was hoping this would be a great chance for me to advance. We were rapidly hiring new employees until a few months ago. That’s when they told us that they’re closing our division and laying us off. This was a great shock to everyone, including my manager. So much for my plan to get a product management position internally. I’ve been applying for these roles externally, but my resume keeps getting rejected. I’ve started going to professional development groups and networking with some mentors in the field. They tell me that companies typically don’t hire project managers who haven’t done the job before. Having an MBA from a great school doesn’t seem to matter. So if I want to get my foot in the door, I have to swallow my pride and apply to an entry-level position. That also means a pay cut. I’m trying to broaden my job search to other MBA type roles where I don’t have to start at the bottom again. I’ve also been leaning on the career management office at my business school. I just want to get out of an engineering position. I spent all this time and money to try to move my career forward, but now I feel stuck and depressed. What should I do? Obed, what’s your initial reaction?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Well, the writer here, if you always wanted to do an MBA, I mean you’ve done an MBA. Then celebrate the education and the credentials that you’ve built because that in itself is a journey and accomplishment. Education you’ll continue to use throughout the course of your lifespan, throughout the course of your career, as you would with training. But training is generally a bit more vocational to get you to an intended purpose. That isn’t necessarily the MBA.

DAN MCGINN: Am I hearing that she put a little too much faith in how the MBA would sort of catapult her into this other job category, when in fact she didn’t need just the education, she also needed the training which she doesn’t have?

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right. What I would suggest to this letter writer is thinking about joining in an engineering role, in a larger enterprise, but being clear in the interview process that she has aspirations for more. Is that she has aspirations to go into product management and that she want to continue to learn and then to grow in that. And then once and landing in one of those engineering jobs, is to pick up projects.

ALISON BEARD: So you’re saying that she should embrace the idea of a lateral move.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Absolutely. And a number of lateral moves are going to get the different exposure that then can propel the career later.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I agree with that. Getting somebody to give you a product management job when you don’t have any experience, it’s a little bit of a leap of faith and it seems to me like organizations are more willing to make that leap with somebody who’s spent some time, who’s a known quantity, who’s an existing employee, versus somebody on the outside that they only know from a resume at some interviews.

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s absolutely right. Building through training programs and through projects and exposure at the existing company, building a domain in the industry-specific experience, then is going to make her that much more credible when she wants to take that leap into product management.

ALISON BEARD: Let me throw out another idea that I can’t credit as my own. In doing research, I ran across a post that we published from Larry Stybel, who says that if you want to get a job that you don’t have experience for, one of the ways to do it is to volunteer your services. So is there anything she can do on the side while she’s doing this job search to either get herself the product management experience she needs, either with a potential future employer or outside it, just so that she has that title and project on her resume?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I would concur with that point of view. I mean there’s a couple of different ways in which she can do and do that. If she’s within a large product management and engineering organization, she can offer her services to a different department within the company. That’s one way to do it within. Or, in volunteer work with an organization or a not for profit, where you may be able to offer those types of services and getting those experiences.

DAN MCGINN: She throws out two other completely different options here. One is to take a big step backwards and apply entry-level to a product development group, kind of job. Or, to go to some other completely different MBA type job where she doesn’t need to start at the bottom again. Is there a case to be made for either of those being good options for her?

OBED LOUISSAINT: On the first option, I think she sacrifices everything that she’s built. And then in the case of making a completely different job, I go back to what I thought she said at the very beginning of it’s always been her goal for product management. So from that standpoint, I say look, we live once. We have a right to declare what it is that we want to do. Lean in and if that’s what you want to do, go for it.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: That’s true.

ALISON BEARD: So Obed, what do you think she should do when she’s interviewing with these new potential employers to make sure that there is a path for her to move into this product management role that she wants? What sorts of questions should she ask? What clues should she be looking for?

OBED LOUISSAINT: She should be interviewing them as they’re interviewing her. And be very clear and upfront of what her career goals are and what her objectives are. I think one or two of the questions that she’d want to ask is say, what is the path to product management? How many other people have done it? Can I talk to somebody who’s done it through the interview process? So, an organization who’s smart about acquiring a great talent, they’re going to in the interview process, make sure that you get exposure to what type of company they are and introduce you to individuals who have crossed the path that you want to cross.

ALISON BEARD: Is there really no way that she can go to a company, maybe a smaller one, and get a product manager role?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I think in the large enterprise she’d have a better shot where she’s surrounded by other product managers and she can learn. But in a small environment where they’re desperately in need of the specific skill, it’s harder for an organization to put her in that type of job.

DAN MCGINN: That’s interesting. Off the cuff, I would have said, oh well she joins a startup. They’re a little bit more resource constrained. She’ll have a better shot at a small organization because of her lack of formal credentials. And I think what you’re arguing is, in fact, correct which is that a larger organization will have a deeper bench and a better support system for somebody who’s kind of a newbie and that she’d be better off and more likely to fit into that scenario.

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right. And then we have, for example, at IBM we have programs like technical reentry or apprenticeships where you can come in and start to build those skills as you’re coming in. I’d say a larger enterprise you’d have a better shot.

DAN MCGINN: So are you saying she should email her resume to you?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Absolutely. We have lots of product managers.

DAN MCGINN: She says she’s feeling stuck and depressed by her current state of affairs. How would you advise somebody in that situation to cope with the emotional piece of it as opposed to the strategic piece of the job search?

OBED LOUISSAINT: One of the things that I heard in her comments was that she was afraid to stay as an engineer because she thinks it’d be harder to move out, and then as a result, I think that compounds the feeling of feeling stuck and depressed. I would say in the culture that we’re in, of ones that celebrating continuous learning and continuous reinvention, this is one of the things that is going to help you to stand out and be special. You went and did something amazing for yourself. Go and get that education and reinvent yourself. Use that same energy as an asset in the search and then also in rebuilding a career. These days an individual will change jobs and change careers about five to seven times in a lifetime. So, the idea of being stuck is a thing of the past. You can find encouragement from other people trailblazing.

ALISON BEARD: Right.

DAN MCGINN: If you can take a step back, she’s just in a really great position long term. Engineering is by all accounts one of the best things that people can study as an undergraduate. It’s hard, it’s quantitative. That’s number one. Number two, anybody who does a part-time MBA, people recognize how much dedication and toil that takes and I would not count her out, and I would urge her not to let this, the negative emotions overtake her because there’s a lot to be positive about here.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Absolutely.

ALISON BEARD: I do though think that this change and the situation of her company are also just a good learning experience. Sometimes you go off track even despite circumstances outside your control. So what she needs to do is just reset at this point, and figure out what the next best step is.

OBED LOUISSAINT: And I think she’s going, a couple years from now, she could find out that this was the best option. That this happened with this particular job because it, just that reset enabled her to take this decision in her own hands, versus maybe being limited and taking a much longer time at the existing company.

ALISON BEARD: Right.

DAN MCGINN: Good. Alison, what’s our wrap up?

ALISON BEARD: So, first we want her to just take a step back and understand the difference between education and training. The MBA has given her important knowledge and skills, but it has not given her product management experience. That still could have worked in her old company, but circumstances changed. So she’s just going to need to reset her expectations. But also, develop a more positive attitude because we think that she does have some really good options. Because product management is this longtime goal of hers, we think that she should stick with it. But that might mean going to a new company as an engineer, making a lateral move, but making it known that she has aspirations to go further into product development. And interviewing her future employers as they interview her, including looking for the fact that they have mentoring and apprenticeship programs that could help her learn. We think that this path, going to a larger enterprise, starting where she is, with a goal to move up quickly, is a better path forward.

DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: three years ago I took a management job. It’s going really well. I’ve even been promoted. But I’m noticing that my technical skills are really slipping and I’m not sure what to do from here. I’ll give you a bit more background. I’m a mathematician and engineer by training. I worked in design in the semiconductor industry for 12 years. I was eventually promoted to principal design engineer. I absolutely enjoy this work and I’m very good at it. But three years ago I was recruited by another company to be a design manager. It was a great opportunity for me both professionally and financially, so I took it. As expected, the transition from individual contributor to manager was very challenging. I threw myself into it pursuing mentors, reading management books, listening to podcasts, attending seminars and trainings, et cetera. And it worked. I’ve been promoted to senior design manager, but I can see that my technical expertise is slipping and will continue to decline if I stay in a managerial role. Looking toward my next promotion to the director level, it will only get worse. I like being a manager and I want to continue growing my career. But I’m worried that this will take me even further away from the technology my team works with. How do I maintain technical expertise while still focusing on organizational management and leadership?

ALISON BEARD: Wow, this is like our first letter writer, like five years into the future.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Yeah, right.

ALISON BEARD: Obed, what do you think?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I love this question and I think this is an ongoing struggle with deep technical leaders, and the modern-day leader is a player-coach. There’s no right balance because I think one of the things that the letter writer has asked is how much time do they balance between technical education and then management skills? It depends on the industry or the function. There are some jobs and some domains that are being disrupted more than others. And in that case, it would cause for a higher skew towards the technical area. If your field isn’t changing as radically, then it’s continuing to build your leadership.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I mean we do know that employees like bosses who are also technical experts because they want to work for someone who knows exactly what they’re doing in their jobs. We published a really interesting piece by Joseph Grenny that argues that tech leadership requires actually very different skills because of this issue. You need to be so much more up to date on exactly what’s happening in the industry, new developments and how the work is getting done in order to run your teams effectively.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Absolutely. I mean we went through a period where we could build general managers at our company, at IBM, through a number of different domains and then we’ve pivoted our leadership development to really build experts in an area or function. It is about being able to stay technical. You become a magnet for talent. People want to work with individuals who they can learn and grow from. And the balance is with the leader knowing when to exert their technical skills and when to harness that energy from their teams. So it’s not that they have to be the, know it all, and the guider, and the director, but they need to be able to be respected and help look around the corner for their team. And that takes technical skill.

DAN MCGINN: Now, the problem that our listener is anticipating here, the idea that he becomes so focused on the general management aspect of the job that he loses technical currency. I’m a little skeptical of that. I mean he is a mathematician and an engineer by training. He’s been doing this kind of work for a long time. Have you seen these fears play out at IBM? Have you seen people who started out as deep technical experts, who moved into management roles and essentially their technical skills became so obsolete that they were not an effective manager anymore? Does this happen?

OBED LOUISSAINT: It can happen if some may allow it to. Not that they become an ineffective leader, but it can take you away, far away from the technical domain. That then, you don’t relate in the same way to the teams that you lead, so it will make you not qualified for very technical leadership roles. I do think that what this writer struggled with in the first part of the job around learning all of the managers because it was the first job. It’s not going to be the same hurdle that they have at every rung. Again, the point around player-coach, they’re going to build their coaching skills as they play.

ALISON BEARD: So, counterintuitively, the higher he gets up the ranks, actually the more time he’ll have to maybe keep up those technical skills because managing won’t seem so difficult.

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right. It’s going, not that it comes naturally, but it’s going to be a muscle that’s exercised every day.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I mean we published an article by the CEO of Upwork talking about how he was an introverted engineer, but he realized that sort of the best person to lead his company into the future was him because he knew what the business was inside and out. He knew all the technical pieces of it and he could sell that story to investors and customers, et cetera. So, even at the CEO level, you need someone who cares about that nitty-gritty just as much as they do about leading.

DAN MCGINN: It seems like this listener recognizes the risk here, but his specific question is how do I maintain technical expertise?  How does he actually carve time out and make sure that he’s doing the work, but adding value while he does it? It sounds like there’s a big challenge there.

ALISON BEARD: And as you said Obed, without seeming as if he’s micromanaging his employees, or standing over their shoulders, or doing work that he shouldn’t be doing.

OBED LOUISSAINT: I think there are two elements of it. One is just the education. So spending time learning and being a continuous learner. Figuring out how was the profession changing around design? What are the modern things in UX and customer experience? So there’s the trade. And in that even Mark Zuckerberg’s going to have to make time for, to stay contemporary. Not just contemporary as to stay ahead of where their particular market or where their domain is going.

ALISON BEARD: My thought too was that he could take on his own project, or probably not 20 percent time since he is a manager, but maybe 10 percent time and maybe it’s something of value to the company. Maybe it’s something that he’s interested in as a hobby, but basically practicing those technical skills in a way that’s separate from the work of his teams, so it doesn’t feel as if he’s interfering where he shouldn’t be.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Yeah and that would, just because you’re the leader and you’re the manager, you’re the director of a team, doesn’t mean you have to direct every project. There are times where I’m a member of a team that one of my team members is leading because they’re best experienced for it and it keeps me contemporary. It keeps me humble. And it keeps me part of, it keeps my skills fresh.

ALISON BEARD: That’s actually a really great idea. Sort of just insert himself as another pair of hands.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Yeah. It’s an awesome attribute of a leader of knowing when to lead and when to follow.

DAN MCGINN: I have boys who play basketball. One of them plays for a basketball coach who’s in his mid-30s, but he can still dunk a basketball. And that’s an important market to those little boys that like, hey our coach may be kind of an older guy at this point, but he can still dunk. I mean I think every boss should aspire to be a great manager, spend most of their time adding value as a supervisor, but occasionally you want to show the team that you can still dunk.

OBED LOUISSAINT: There you go.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. What percent of time, technical versus managerial, should he be aiming for? Does he need to lower his standards? He clearly can’t keep the same expertise he had before, right?

OBED LOUISSAINT: He can’t continue to do the things he did as an individual contributor. So it becomes impossible because he has new responsibilities and tasks. But I live by the 80/20 rule. So if he was 80 percent of his time on managerial expertise and ensuring that the team, he’s removing barriers and helping the team succeed, then he’d spend about 20 percent of his time looking at how to continue to keep his skills up to snuff and ahead of where the market is going.

ALISON BEARD: Great. Dan, what are we saying?

DAN MCGINN: Especially in technical organizations, there’s a trend away from the general manager and towards leaders who are deep subject experts. And we think our letter writer is very perceptive. There are examples of people whose skills have deteriorated because they spend too much time in general management. We think this listener should embrace the player-coach role where he actively allocates some of his time to being in the design work, to being a team member on a project, to not just coordinating or overseeing, but doing some of the work. We think he should also make sure that he’s investing time in professional development. Go to conferences. Read the journals. Take a class. Make sure that just like every member of the team, he’s investing the time to keep his technical prowess as sharp as it needs to be. Make sure that there’s always some project that keeps his hands on the actual work. Be able to effectively manage technical contributors and to maintain credibility as the leader of a technical group. Aspire to be a player-coach who still knows how to dunk the ball.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: at 42 years old I’ve reached a crossroads in my career. My path started at a pharmaceutical company. Over eight years I was promoted up to a senior national role. When it became too challenging to manage that job and motherhood, I left the firm and started working for myself. I owned retail stores in the wellness industry, then retail furniture. After eight years I sold these businesses and decided to go back to the corporate world. I took a state sales manager role at a commercial furniture company. That was two years ago. Two months ago, I was made redundant. Yeah. Laid off. Now I’m trying to find a new role that builds on my previous experience. Here’s the hard part. My experience in the pharmaceutical industry was too long ago to be considered relevant now. My experience in the furniture industry is more recent, but that doesn’t qualify me for some jobs. To earn some income during this search I took a bridging role. A junior sales position in a small company with no potential for growth or management responsibilities. I’m already finding it dull and demotivating. And I’m concerned employers will look at what I’m doing now and think I’m incapable of managing at my previous level. I prefer to go back to the pharmaceutical or health industry, but I can’t even get an interview to explain how the skills I developed outside of it will benefit a future employer. Has my career come to a dead-end at 42? How can I get it back on track? Or, should I just accept my lesser, more family-friendly role and let go of my higher aspirations? Oh, I really feel for her. Obed, what do you think?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I start by saying, don’t get depressed. It’s not the end of the career and there’s a lot more runway that she has to continue to reinvent herself. She’s already done it twice already and I’m confident that she’s got some really good skills in order to do it once more.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I thought the same thing. I saw her background as really interesting and in particular, my first reaction was the health and wellness industry is growing and changing so much that I would see just a ton of opportunities for the right kind of entrepreneurial personality. And it would seem like she has it, so I understand she needs to work and so she took a job that was less than ideal, but I think she just needs to continue the job search, stay focused on the fact that she brings this sort of Jack of all trades, varied background with a strong entrepreneurial bent. And I would think opportunities would open up for her.

ALISON BEARD: It sounds though like she was getting a lot of pushback from the types of companies that she would want to work for. How does she get to the point Obed, where she’s actually in a room with someone, telling them about those skills, sales and business development that can transcend industries?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I would start with her digital profile. So if we were in the same room, I’d want to pull up her LinkedIn and see if we would search her on the web, what does it pull up? And then so, is to really work on how her story is articulated digitally. So then she can be surfaced for the types of jobs that she wants to. There’s tons of online and free, or low cost training programs and certification where she can get some digital badges in the health and the wellness industry. So then she starts to surface digitally. She might be just being auto rejected by a series of technologies. But once she gets in that conversation, and she should keep pushing and keep trying. She’s going to impress the socks off of somebody.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I was thinking about what skills she might be lacking or knowledge she might be lacking from the pharmaceutical industry and some of that is company specific. What drugs do we make? What treatments do we sell? Some of it might be technology related, right. What are the new systems that all these companies use? And it seems like both of those things she could research and easily learn quickly.

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I wonder if part of the issues she’s facing is the pharma sales function is really changing very dramatically and they just need fewer of those people than they use to because of regulatory shifts. And I would think a little less about the pharmaceutical industry and more about the health and wellness industry which could include selling all sorts and kinds of health-related products, but not necessarily prescription pills.

OBED LOUISSAINT: It’s a really good point, Dan, and I think the more she broadens her aperture on the type of, the industry in the sector, the more opportunity is going to open up.

DAN MCGINN: How much is this issue of the bridging job going to create challenges for her? For someone in her position, is it better for her to not have a job on her resume and be searching from a position of unemployment if that were possible, versus having taken this junior sales position which seems like a step back just to pay the bills?

OBED LOUISSAINT: I don’t think so. A good organization, recruiter or manager is looking at the totality of a story. It’s fine for her to have the conversation and she’s not going to be auto rejected on the existing job. She’s done the right thing, getting back into the market and if she feels like she has extra time, then jump into a couple of digital training and learning programs. So use that time to your particular benefit.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned networking also and it’s something that she doesn’t mention in this piece. Presumably, she still knows a lot of people in the pharmaceutical industry from her old days. She does need to begin working those connections, right? Because the best way to get a job somewhere is through a warm introduction.

OBED LOUISSAINT: That’s right.

ALISON BEARD: There are lots of companies now that have programs designed to help people relaunch their careers.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Yeah. Within our environment [at IBM], we have two different types of programs where we help people to redefine themselves. One is in our tech re-entry. They intern for about six months while they build their skills to go through a couple hundred hours of learning. And about 90 percent of them transition into full-time jobs. Another environment is our “New Collar” program. Entry jobs with individuals with nontraditional backgrounds. And depending on where you come from, get an opportunity with tons of training and apprenticeship in sponsorship models to then redefine themselves into a new career.

ALISON BEARD: One of the company’s in an article we published, referenced was Johnson & Johnson. So, that’s one she should look at off the bat.

MCGINN: She mentions her age twice in this letter, 42. And she seems to think that that’s a problem of some sort.

ALISON BEARD: As someone’s who’s 43, I was really excited when Obed said she was young. [LAUGHTER] Yes.

MCGINN: I was struck by that too. We do hear of companies being ageist for certain. At a certain point, one’s age can start to hinder a job search. Do you ever see people like this listener who are fearful about the number on the odometer and how it can negatively impact their job search, and what do you say to them?

OBED LOUISSAINT: Life experience is so valuable in an organization. So it’s not just about the technical skills. We’ve talked about people skills, so interpersonal skills. These are, she’s picked up tremendous life experiences, so it actually made me a little bit sad when she says, is it over? This is just the beginning. So she’s got a long time to work. And this is just one particular bump in one particular season in over a 30-to-40-year career. It’s a blip.

DAN MCGINN: Obed, the connective strand between these three letters is the anxiety that these people feel about their skills in the midst of a transition. What’s your general message to people who worry about whether their skills are going to translate into what’s required of them in the future?

OBED LOUISSAINT: One of the things that we’re seeing every year, 30 percent of the workforce are taking a new job. The half-life of skill is constantly shrinking. So, over many times all of us are going to have to redefine our skills. So, what I’m hearing in these letters is more becoming the norm, is that I’m getting comfortable with transition. And what do we have to do as workers and employers to prepare for these transitions? It’s ensuring that people build the growth mindset. Ensure that people continuously learn and understand what are the skills of the particular future, and lean into them? The last thing I say is we see technologies like AI and automation continuing to impact 100 percent of the jobs. So, preparing for those particular changes and those transitions is going to put all of us at ease knowing that we’re leaping in and continuously leaping into times of change, rather than expecting things to stay constant.

DAN MCGINN: Good. Alison, what’s our message for this listener?

ALISON BEARD: So first we want to assure this listener that we think she has a great story to tell. She has sales and business development skills that transcend industries, not to mention a ton of life experience. So, we don’t want her to be depressed. We want her to be positive. We do think there are a few ways she could make herself more attractive to potential employers. First by working on her digital profile to make sure companies can find her. Second, she could get training, or certifications to build her skill set and network. We also might advise her to broaden her search beyond pharma to the wider wellness industry because it’s such a huge growth area. Really, we just want her to look for organizations that are open to people like her with nontraditional backgrounds. We don’t think she should worry about the bridging job. Again, we think it’s just a matter of her finding an employer who appreciates everything that she’s going to bring to the table.

DAN MCGINN: Obed, thanks for coming on the show.

OBED LOUISSAINT: Thanks for having me.

DAN MCGINN: That’s Obed Louissaint. He’s the head of talent at IBM. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.

ALISON BEARD: We also want to thank Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey for composing our theme music.

DAN MCGINN: We hope you liked today’s episode and if you want to get the next one automatically, please go to your podcast app and hit subscribe.

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DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.