Connecting to your Purpose

I never really know what we're going to talk about because it's unscripted and I like it that way. So we'll just see what happens. Just say a little bit about what you're doing and who you are. I'm Suzanne Steele. I'm managing director of Adobe here in Sydney. I look after Australia and New Zealand. I have a fabulous team of people. You may be able to tell that I'm not Aussie. I'm actually British and I've been in Australia for the last six years. three grown-up daughters and a grandson, all of whom are in the UK.
And I didn't know this until recently, you told me, but you grew up in Northern Ireland. Tell us about that. Well, first of all, I'd say I've never really grown up, Sam, as I think you know, but I did spend my formative years in Northern Ireland, in Belfast actually, during the Troubles, and have very distinct memories of the fighting and the bombs and we lived in a part of Belfast that was right on the what is now called the peace wall but right then it was not a peace wall it was a wall to keep roaring you know fractions apart that were fighting one another you know all allegedly christian all the same but uh they were murdering each other so i grew up during that period in in the troubles and Just after Bloody Sunday in 1972, and I would have been seven, we, at 24 hours notice, upped and left because they were burning people out of their homes.
And it was just this really profound memory of suddenly realizing that everything that you knew, even though you knew it was bad, and it wasn't all good things, but everything that you knew, you were leaving behind. a sense of excitement but massive fear because you don't know what you don't know especially when you're that age so my mum my dad my younger brother and sister there were only three of us at that point all left during the dark of night and arrived in sleepy england in the middle of the countryside it was just weird grass and safety it was beautiful i can still i've still got very sensory memories of the smell of grass and the sound of the ice cream van.
Which, it was like being parachuted into heaven. It was like flowers and people and children that you could play with and you didn't have to find out whether they were Catholic or Protestant, or you didn't have to be told. It had a profound impact on sort of my life. You know, you're taking me back now to the sound of the ice cream van. I remember that. Do you remember Witch's hats? Yes, I do.
Tempe and it was an ice cream and an ice lolly and they stuck it in, didn't they? Stuck it together, yeah. It was like an interesting recipe. Heaven. Heaven. Very much heaven, yeah. I could have one of those right now. Dreaming. Good luck with finding one. Yeah, good luck with finding one in America. I don't know if there's such a thing as an ice cream van here. I remember as well, like it was always a bit slightly creepy, wasn't it?
Like that music going around. And but, you know, at seven years old, you don't really you know, you don't really think about things like that. I don't know how I would feel about it as a parent now. So you grew up in England, did all the usual stuff, went to school, went to college, went to uni. Went to school, didn't go to uni. My mum was English and my mother's in the Royal Air Force and ended up living obviously over in Northern Ireland.
And she had come from this sleepy village that we went back to, to a war zone. And, you know, I think the pressure on them and everything else, needless to say, very shortly after that they split up. My father ended up going back to Northern Ireland and my mum ended up bringing the four of us up. So single mum bringing you up, strong role model? For a certain amount of time a strong role model and then she decided that you know, her work here was done when I got to about the age of 19 and my youngest sibling was 12 and she met somebody else and basically left everybody.
She started out well, you know, but I think she peaked too soon. And I think she just decided, having brought four of us up, even though the youngest was still only 12, that her job was done, she had enough. What was that like for you? That was horrible. I was 19 looking after a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old. So it was, yeah, it's pretty, again, pretty profound the impact that has on one's life, right?
Because I think what it's done for me is I've just got this overwhelming sense of responsibility. If I say I'm going to do something, I follow through on it.

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And it also impacts your relationship with your siblings because you're no longer just a sister. You're actually there as a parent, right? And so I've got a really, really strong relationship with mine now. I still call her my baby sister, even though she's 50 next year. But the middle two, I think, you know, that role of taking on parenting role just caused quite a bit of angst for them because they were closer to my age than she was, right?
So, and they were teenagers. imagine that's another thing you've got in common you know i didn't know we had that in common so i think you know my mom died when i was 21 and so then i started looking after my my younger sister so i i mean i was only one but it's still on it's still it's it's tough it's tough it is tough do you think that people become more resilient because of their life experiences some people some people do it really tough though right some people it breaks them, they find it very hard to pull themselves back up.
I don't know if that's a DNA thing, is that something that you're either going to go one way or the other? But I think for some people it does make more sense, it certainly made me more resistant, probably why I don't take any bullshit from people because as far as I'm concerned you need to do what you say you're going to do and everybody needs to be treated equally and with respect and be able to be the best. version of themselves that they can be and that's not about success and being powerful and a leader that's about leading your life right and being successful in life is not about money and power it's about feeling fulfilled and do you feel fulfilled now yeah i do actually i feel very lucky i feel very fortunate to have had the life experiences that i have i feel like i've been the luckiest person alive even though all of that other stuff happened because it made me who I am.
A lot of successful women over my years would say I'm lucky. Do you think it's luck or is it more than luck? I don't think luck is what gets you there. I feel lucky to have had the life experiences that I've had. I don't think it was luck. I mean you could say it was bad luck that put me in some of those situations. being equipped to deal with it is the lucky part, right?
I had previous scar tissue that has allowed me to deal with some of those obstacles and objections. Some may call me a tragic optimist, but I actually believe that you can do anything that you really want to. What does it mean, a tragic optimist? Well, I have a certain individual in my organization. I'm in sales even though I run the business. My job is to go out and generate revenue for Adobe.
And I always believe that people have positive intent. They don't tell you they're going to do something if they're not. And I've been referred to as a traffic optimist. When people have let me down and not done what they said they were going to do, a couple of people have said I'm a traffic optimist. But I don't think if I wasn't an optimist, I'd still be here today, to be perfectly honest, with all of the knocks that you take for the line.
I wouldn't be here if I wasn't an optimist. So I've just removed the word tragic. Yeah, that's someone else's work. You were tragically optimistic there. We're not going to tell you that when it didn't work out, right? But when it works out, they're not going to be saying that you're a tragic optimist. You're such an optimist. How do you do that? So you've got this really big job. Since I've known you, you've had big jobs, like big, big jobs.
No big multi-million dollar budget, big teams, big scope, big corporations, big, big, big jobs that you do. Right? So you're, you're one of those women. I'm going to say, you know, you're one of these women in a big job and you're, and you're happy. So you're a rarity and you got kids and you have your balance and you're always smiling. So there's going to be a lot of people saying, how does she do it?
How does she do it? Is it true? How does she do it? Well, I know it's true because I know you. Yeah. And I know what a strong value you have around truth. Yeah. How do you do it or how have you done it? What do you think are some of the things that maybe people would like to hear about that have helped you along the way? First thing I would say is I've always had, I've been selective about the people I've taken advice from.
And I've sort of gone from having mentors, and obviously yourself as a coach, a long time ago now, to having what I describe as my personal board of directors around me, which are a group of people who I absolutely trust with my life, who will tell me as it is. Because it is quite easy to get a little bit carried away with yourself. You go through the corporate world and you end up in the big corner office.
It's too easy I think to believe your own personal brand sometimes and I think at the end of the day you have to have a great sense of purpose about what you're doing it for and who are you doing it for and be honest with yourself about those things but have people around you who absolutely will help you succeed and as I say being successful is not about money and power it's about feeling fulfilled in that.

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but having that balance in life. But, you know, it's a lot easier now, Sam. I mean, you know, my kids are… Well, they're not kids, right? They're 27, 29 and 33. They're still my kids. But it is really hard. And if I think back, you know, when they were little and I was trying to have it all, I really get why women in particular are often the main carer, right? And I think it's hard.
I think it's really tough. to build a career and be a great parent and feel fulfilled because you are, to be frank, you spend your, certainly when I had my kids, you know, so in my late 20s, early 30s, and I had mine early, I was just exhausted constantly and feeling a failure no matter where I was. You know, if I was at home, I was exhausted, the kids needed detention, putting dinner on the table and…
When I was at work, I was exhausted and feeling guilty about being at work and also feeling that I couldn't be 100%. And I do think there's more of an opportunity now for us all to have more balance in our lives. I think one of the benefits, dare I say it, of COVID and working from home is, wow, I used to commute an hour and a half. each way when I was working in London when my kids were little.
So I've got three hours on me before I even did an eight hour job and those jobs were not eight hours. So I think we've been given the gift of balance and finding that and finding it again for me now. I mean obviously I've left all my family behind. The youngest went to uni and we were like yeah fine, see if everybody's good. We'll see on the other side. and I've been a lot more liberated since, obviously since kids have gone to uni and I've, you know, Carl, my husband, as you know, has retired and it's almost been my turn since 2012 when I left the UK for Singapore and then down to Australia.
I have been able to sort of be quite selfish, to be perfectly honest, which lets me frank, you know, back in the day that was how men ran their careers, which is why they were more successful. and that's why I feel very fortunate that at this time in life where I've landed I can actually decide what I do and don't want to. So you said a couple of things that really struck me that you have this personal board of directors that you consult and you have a strong sense of purpose and these two things feel like they're your guiding principles.
Tell me first about the personal directors. So these are people in your company, they're people, who are they? And how do you use them? They're wide ranging, really. So when I was 19, and suddenly, a parent of three siblings, which was a bit of a shock to the system, to be honest, I went to work for what we now would call a startup. And they weren't called startups back in, back in the day.
And I met this gentleman who I'm still in contact with today, his name's Mike Linus and he was an entrepreneur really, an amazing guy. He was in his 50s, he was completely disorganised as many entrepreneurs are, right, so he had great ideas but was crap at his execution. And I went there, I was employee number two in this business, it's all country-wide, it's pretty famous now in the UK, I was employee number two and I was just incredibly well organised. probably because I had to be.
I was actually meant to be his secretary and I ended up being his operations director as he grew the company but he saw something in me that I didn't really see in myself and he mentored me and coached me for many many years until I got to the point where he actually was, I don't actually know what you do, I don't understand what you do and I don't understand this technology you know.
So he's been a bit of a constant, some gaps in between, where I guess he probably took on a bit of a father figure, right? So he was someone who's a business person. I didn't have a business person role model in my life, came from very humble beginnings. He's been a constant. And then over time, there's been a whole, I guess, group of individuals who are either people who've been customers, right?
Who… I've sort of connected with and developed really strong connections to. I now have a little phone and say, hey, we're thinking of doing this. I'm not sure it's right. What do you think? Like confidants and people who don't have an agenda, a personal agenda, other than to be helpful and who are happy to be really open with their opinions. And so there's probably a group of about eight people who've been constant.
And then there's probably another group, another 10.

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including yourself, who sort of come in and out of it. Sounds like me coming in and out. So these are relationships that you've developed over time, mentoring coaching relationships, and you've kept the relationship going so much so that you can call on them now and ask them for help. And your run ideas past them, and they're willing to give you that kind of help. brilliant, absolutely brilliant. This is your personal board of directors.
Okay, now tell me about purpose. What is purpose for you? You said you have to, you said a few times you have to have a strong sense of purpose. It's not all about the money, it's about the sense of fulfillment. So how do you, what is your purpose and how do you connect to your purpose, especially in tough times? So there's a, there's a number of elements to it. The first one is you know being able to provide for my family and be there as both a mother, a parent, a wife, a leader and being able to guide really and be that guiding star for my three girls and now my crazy grandson.
So there's this feeling of I have this huge sense of responsibility and it's responsibility for myself and and my husband, but my family. My real sense of purpose is how do I help people find that inner voice and find their own purpose and be as successful as they want to be? And so I've got this overwhelming, and I know it does drive some people mad, but this overwhelming sense of fairness and equality that is, don't just listen to the people who want to tell you what you want. what you want to hear, go deep in an organisation and find that hidden talent, find those people who don't believe that they're the person that could run, I don't know, don't be Australia and New Zealand because it wouldn't have told me 25, even 20 years ago that I'd be doing this, I would never have believed it, you know.
So this overwhelming sense of responsibility which is around everybody's got a gift, everybody's got something to offer the world, how do we help people find that gift? and deliver it. So you're doing what your first boss did for you. Yeah. So he saw something in you that you didn't see in yourself and helped develop your voice. And now you're doing that. That's quite the legacy. And what does that look or what has it looked like in your career?
What does it look like now? How do you help people to develop their inner voice and bring out their purpose? The bigger the organization, the harder it is, right? Because I think somebody once told me, you can only know the names of 500 people at any one point. The brain can only know 500 people. So I did Josh with the team when Adobe and 500 and first person joined. And so it was no problem getting to know them.
So I'm never going to remember their name, right? So how I do it is by really encouraging diverse teams of people to work on problems so that we can see people in action. And we do a lot of it through actually not the business problems but more, you know, team problems or doing work in the community, some of our CSR events as well. So I'm also, as you know, I work with groups of women who I know really want to sort of carry on that work.
And so we formed these little what we're calling gorilla pods, which go out and also help find this talent and develop these. And it's not just women, it's actually diverse groups of talent that maybe wouldn't get a voice at the table. Do you think that technology in particular needs that type of diverse talent? I think everybody needs that type of diverse talent. I think as leaders, I think about the past. In the past what we were trying to do was develop clones, corporate clones, and that's why, you know, as you know, I rebelled against that in quite some ways.
And whereas I think now actually the hunt for talent and the war for talent means that we need to bring people from all walks of life, people who you know reskill to maybe been out of the workforce for many years and need to learn these skills because with diversity comes innovation and creativity and technology can actually deliver the skills and the tools that technology can offer around automated workflows for example do not really need a human creative innovative mind but how you apply those skills and how you problem solve needs diversity and it's been proven that where you know you have diverse teams who you know maybe haven't worked together previously they actually problem solve quicker because they haven't got the scar tissue of well this is how we operate as a team and we haven't got the hierarchy they come together as one problem solved.

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Most senior teams still do all look pretty much the same, don't they? Yeah. The corporate cloning still exists. Yeah, yeah. I must admit that's one of the things I love about Adobe because we are this, yes, we're a technology, we're an enterprise technology company, but we are actually born out of creativity and therefore we already have quite a diverse team. just by the nature of the business in which we operate because we provide everything from photoshop to the consumer to our technology delivers um the websites the forms of sort of commonwealth bank for example and with that diverse polio having those diverse teams those two things fit almost harmoniously together it does really strike me that it's such a neat thing that your personal purpose and your business case come together.
They match together, don't they? Yeah, yeah. That's got to be really fulfilling for you. It is. I think I said to somebody, and don't get me wrong, obviously, in any job, it is a job, right? So you do have to remind yourself it is a job at the end of the day. But I did say to a couple of the teams a few weeks back, once I got into Adobe, it's probably around six months once I've worked out what all the acting was like and how everybody was.
I had this moment, this light bulb moment of feeling like I'm home. It's almost like a family, right? And I know a lot of leaders talk about our family and then they don't walk the walk. But within our business, our CEO, from our CEO, right the way down, we talk about the Adobe family. And I think it's all about that diversity. There's a place for everybody. What about people, because I know you've been in the situation before, where you're in a job where it doesn't fill our family and, you know, it doesn't play to your values and your personal purpose is not aligned to the business case.
But, you know, you've got to pay your mortgage or your rent or whatever and you start to lose your edge a bit, don't you start to lose your confidence and sort of the thought of updating your LinkedIn profile and doing your CV. It's like almost as bad as the thought of going on a diet or something. So what do you, what, you've been in that situation, you've been there, you've done it a couple of times.
So you can, you can empathise. I absolutely can. Yeah, it's horrible. I mean, I think it's almost like, you know, having to arrive somewhere. and you suddenly feel that horrible moment where you feel you do not belong you do not belong and I have to be honest if you feel that you probably don't right and I think the difficulty with that is if you've given up a great job and you've moved and taken your family with you on the journey that this is going to be the best thing um since sliced bread and you know you're going to create this great experience for the whole family and suddenly you realise, okay, this is not what it looked like.
These people I would not choose for friends, let alone family. You would not choose your family, but I would not choose these people for friends. I'm not like them. They have questionable values and actually what I was led to believe I was joining is not right. My counsel is, I think you have to leave. and I think there needs to be an acceptance that it's a little bit like it's not actually you it's where you've landed is not right culturally not right and I think as and certainly as females I think we're we're pretty bad at then dealing with that situation because we're trying to make it right you know we're trying to make it right because we take ownership of the fact that we made that decision and we weren't there it has to be right.
Surely it's got to be right. You can't be this wrong. Well, if it is this wrong then go find somewhere where you can be, you can shine bright and you can be the most successful version, you know, the best version of you because you'll never be the best version of you. It's not you, it's me. Yeah, it's not you. But there's so many, I mean, I've been in the situation myself and you think it is really hard to because we take so much personal responsibility.
We think it's us. It's got to be my fault. It's got to be something wrong with me. And I think the longer, which is sort of the basis of imposter syndrome a bit, isn't it? Like the longer you stay somewhere like that, the more you believe in your own hype that there is something wrong with you and it's your fault. But if you just did this, if you just did that, if you just tried a bit harder, you know, and on it goes.

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Yeah. And also, you should never be in a situation, and this was, you know, and I've been in a couple of these situations, but if you're ever in a situation where you are questioning your own values, know your values, and you're questioning them to try and fit in, then you really do what they are. It is tissue rejection at the highest level, and you need to pull the parachute and get the hell out of there.
Go and find somewhere else. And there's loads of great places, isn't there? I think there are so many places. It really is a big wide world out there. And you know these statistics about when women apply for jobs, they'll only apply if they can do 100% of it. And when men apply for jobs, they'll apply if they can do 60% of it and whatever, all this stuff as well. So I think we have to sort of take the ball by the horns a bit, don't we?
And go for it and get some of these jobs. You said earlier it's not about the power, I think you said it's not about the power and the money, but having the power that you have gives you the influence to do some good things. It does yeah, particularly you know for up-and-coming women and for the you know if you think about the future of work as well, I mean as I said earlier with Covid, we now have a huge opportunity ahead of us right, where you don't even have to live in the same country as the business that you're operating from.
The talent market's become borderless. Flexible work is now the number one thing that people are asking for when they join organizations is, I don't want to work in nine to five. The corporate clone is dead and therefore the corporation needs to be more agile and entrepreneurial and more thoughtful about the future of work. And what that does for everybody is it really opens up the talent market. So, you know, whereas in working in London, having made a decision to join a particular firm, and then realizing it wasn't right for me, meant that I had to then look in this in London, and it had to be this far from home.
And you know, as you progress in leadership, you know, the market becomes smaller, right? Because there's only so many companies that that need CEOs or, you know, that's all changed. I think that's really exciting. If I think about, you know, my kids and their friends, they can work anywhere in the world. They don't even have to leave their, well, hopefully they do leave their bedrooms, but they don't have to leave the bedrooms, right?
They can work anywhere in the world. And it's not, not all jobs can be done from home and not everybody wants to be at home full time, but, you know, there's an opportunity for us to really have a great career but also have great balance. And you did leave your bedroom then didn't you because you had you know you had your big jobs in England but then you went to work in Singapore and now you're in Australia.
You've had this big global career and you know I think some people might wonder how you did that especially as a mom, as a single mom that you've been but yeah you know you've made these choices to work internationally would you recommend it? Yeah travel gives you so much peripheral vision. of cultures and others. I think I had a very London mindset when I was working in London. I spent most of my career working in London and suddenly you arrive in somewhere like Singapore and you find a more entrepreneurial, innovative mindset and you also find you don't need to commute an hour and a half each way to work. use public transport and be at your desk within 20 minutes and then have a beach lifestyle as well you know so I think yeah and then coming to Australia which has an extremely entrepreneurial they love new technology they will have a go I think I love that Australia will give it a go right they try anything you know they're just different mindsets and different ways of being and certainly since I arrived in in Australia Australians can teach us a thing or two about work life balance. you know, having spent 20 odd years in London and never seeing my kids when they were little, right?
Because I'd leave before they got up and they'd be in bed when I got home. So I've been quite opportunist. So I'm quite good at spotting opportunities rather than necessarily coming to me. And certainly the move to Singapore was one of those where I was, you know, working for Experian, I was on a road show, I was leading products and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, First of all, what are you doing leading product?
You should be in sales. And I have been in sales previously. Will you come and set up our strategic line program here in Singapore? Well, talk to the family about it. And I talked to the family and they were like, you have to do this. It's your time. So, yeah, I think travel does give you a much broader perspective and experience in different cultures. And my experience in different cultures has been very Western.
I mean, at the end of the day, Singapore and Australia are

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very strong financial markets and strong corporate cultures. But the best thing about Singapore was being able to visit all the great Asian places that you could jump on a plane and be somewhere completely different and A-ing to you within an hour. Nice, and more to come. So how long do you think, what's your future plans then? Going to stay at Adobe, going to retire, going to do something else, thinking about it?
All of the above. So I'm staying at Adobe. We're about a $600 million business down here in Australia, New Zealand. We don't talk those figures, we don't publish them. We've doubled it in the last four years and we're going to double it again. My aspiration for the business down here is that we'll be a billion dollars and we can see when that will be if we continue the current growth trajectory. And so with that comes some great career opportunities for people and I really want to see some of our people. come out the other side of that going wow we built that business to a billion dollars those are the best however many years of my career so I'm not going anywhere until Adobe AMZ is a billion dollars and then I'll think about what I want to do so you know retirement is out there but I just feel like I've still got so much to give you know so maybe where I'm going with a lot of this is to really double down on my community work, I do a bit of work with some not-for-profits.
I'd like to go back and do a little bit more in Asia. I'm involved with a not-for-profit in Cambodia so I'd like to do that but truthfully I would also like to certainly navigate the whole of Australia and do that over the course of the year because whilst we've been here six years it's been it's been working right so and Australia is such a fabulous you know country. with so much of it that you never get to see if you only ever work here.
So I want to do all of that. I want to write a book. I would like my daughter's musical theatre business that she's running and doing incredibly well with to continue to be successful. I'm on her personal board of directors, but I am also on board of directors. And just see the girls find their way and be the best that they can be. still got quite a lot to give and yeah I just want to sort of expand on my outside my corporate life a bit more.
Very nice. Final words, pieces of advice, what haven't you said that you would like to say to women who want to be doing the kind of job that you're doing or who are already in the job that you are doing but maybe you want to take it to another stage? I think one of the best things that or the best piece of advice I ever got was you need to visualise what success looks like for you and to be able to articulate it because only then can you work backwards from that and put some sort of plan together and I think I spent most of my career without a plan.
I was very opportunist and therefore luck didn't need to play a little bit of part. I think if you can plan and really think about what success looks like and if you can actually visualise it. and think this is what it's going to be like when you get there, then you can make that your reality. I think that was one of the strongest pieces of advice I've ever had and certainly my trajectory changed from the minute that I got there.
That's the first thing. And then the second thing I would say is I'd just reiterate that if you feel that you don't belong somewhere and you can't get that balance and you don't feel fulfilled, you're probably right. Check in with your personal board of directors and if you haven't got a personal board of directors, go find them because you probably have you just don't see them in that life and ask them to help you find that place where you really belong because when you really belong the self-esteem that you get and the sense of balance and fulfillment is worth many more dollars than the salary that you would get to stay in a mental football.
Nice you know I'm happy you said that it was Couldn't have given you $10 to say it for me, actually, about visualising success, because that is… Yeah, well, you did that. That was you. I didn't want to say it on here, just in case. Oh, no, you can. OK. I remember you gave me to draw out. You were like, well, you want to retire and you want to do this. And so have you actually put that onto a time chart?
Why don't you put it onto a time chart? Yeah, and I've still got that. I've still got that. Admittedly, we're going to be three years, it's going to be three years longer than I originally said I wanted it to, but that's because I'm having fun and love doing what I'm doing. So you're going to have to do another one now, aren't you? Yeah, absolutely. And I can see that. I mean, that million dollars will be there by, if my financial, my CFO trial will be there by October 2024.
Well, you know, I'm going to be in London in a few weeks.

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I know I saw. I'm so devastated. They've finally opened up borders, by the way, in Australia, but you can imagine. There's no flights. I mean, seriously. So I'm going to be in London in February. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm doing exactly that. I'm going to be helping plan careers and visualise your career. It's a nice easy… So good. Yes, it's easy. It's not easy to do, is it? But it's fun to do.
So I'm going to be doing that. And do you know it's going to be 20 years, my 20 year anniversary? No. Yeah. Yeah, 2001, November 2001, I started this fire. It has 20 years. Oh my god. That's amazing. How good is that? I know. I mean, I remember when I started, I never thought, well, you don't, don't, you don't think, do you? You know, also I was like 29. You're not like, oh, I wonder what does it be like when I'm 51?
I mean, just don't think about stuff like that. So, yeah. So I didn't even really realize, to be honest, until I looked at the, somebody asked me for the articles in corporation for something. I can't remember what it was. And I was like, oh my, oh dear God. Oh, that's amazing though. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. So good. So good. I know. Where does all the time go? I know. I know.
Well, it goes in a lot of places, but there's a lot of good work to do right now because the whole Covid thing and equality, women's equality, equality in general, women's equality is. Yeah. Well, you know, it's tanking. So we need to there's lots of good things to do. So I'm looking forward to getting back out on the road. Awesome. Well, we need to get you down to Australia. We should talk about three years time because I'd be quite interested in you and I doing something together.
Oh, yeah, maybe I won't be so in and out. I'll be in. You're in. No, you're out. No, no, you're in. Well, thank you very much. Very inspiring. Very inspiring. I loved what you said. about purpose because you know much I'm a big purpose always talking about purpose and I think it's one thing when it sort of comes from someone who's a bit more in the self-help type field yeah yeah but when it's somebody who's like right in the business in a sales role you know, about making money as well as being fulfilled.
I think it makes, I'm hoping that a lot of people will really hear that and realise the importance of it. So that's a very inner thing. But this very practical outer thing about having the personal board of directors that you call on and you're not worried about calling them and you're not like, they want to help you. They're there for you. I think that is so great. I have something similar myself, and there's so many people, you included, that I would say, okay, you know, I need some help.
Would you do this? And they'll come straight back and want to do it. And people do it to me. And, you know, we're not going to do it for every single person. We've all got our own people. But to develop that, I think for any sort of person early in their career listening, really do do that. Right. And if you're late to one in your careers, you can, like you said, they're probably there already you probably just haven't really recognized it like write a list of who they who they are yeah yeah and if they're not then start to develop it yeah i'm doing a lot of that with the um a load of people in adobe around that whole first of all in adobe who's just who are the stakeholders so when a discussion is coming up about promotions you want them to be saying yeah absolutely i'm in camp sues and she's done this and who's going to say who's going to be there to champion you and it's surprising how many people just don't know who those people need to be in adobe i mean we're a big yeah we're 23 000 people but we have quite a flat structure until it gets some certain things and then it feels like a really long structure but we have a flat structure and people don't know who to go to who are the people so I'm building that this out.
I've got about 12 people I'm working with sort of globally and I'm helping them do that, but you know it's more broad than inside the business. You've got to have these people outside who actually, and some of them are your friends right, they are your friends, but people who really know you. And like you said they don't have an agenda except they want to help you. There's no sort of party politics playing, which I suppose is probably a bit harder with the people in the company, aren't they?
Because there could be party politics playing there, but they're definitely the ones outside that really does make the difference. Well, I'm looking forward to your billion dollar turnover because I know that you'll then be off and away to do other great things.

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And that's quite an exciting thought because all the things that you've done and all the things you could do and the capacity of what you could do is really quite interesting, quite exciting. So yeah, we will keep talking. We will keep talking.

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