Teresa - "How do I move fast without breaking things?" (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
I am super excited about the topic of this conversation which is very close to our heart, and, and something we're thinking about a lot right now, which is this idea of speed and trust, or speed and taking care of people somehow being at tension with each other.

[00:00:17] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I, if, if we had magic dust, we would sprinkle it on the world and let them know that you can move even faster than you do now, and you can do it in a way that doesn't break anything.

[00:00:28] Anne Morriss:
Let's get into it. I'm Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:00:34] Frances Frei:
And I'm Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School

[00:00:37] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens quickly. Anything is fixable and solutions are often just a single conversation away.

Today we have Teresa. She's high up in strategy at a tech startup; she’s had a great run at startups, but are typically later stage than the company where she's working now and things are moving fast. So we’re gonna find out what’s going on and see if we can be helpful.

[00:01:09] Teresa:
I'm Teresa, my background is working in tech companies, relatively large. and I've joined a startup three years ago that moves really, really fast. I love it. It has a lot of benefits, but I also have some pieces that I struggle with that I would love some advice on.

[00:01:24] Frances Frei:
Oh, I love that. It's how do we increase our metabolic rate, like just to, to catch up with the environment, and how do we make sure that we don't get into the, um, danger zone.

[00:01:37] Anne Morriss:
Oh yeah, this is super common tension – not just in startups. How do we move fast and solve problems at an accelerated pace? But how do we avoid some of the pitfalls of speed? How do we make sure that employees are taken care of, customers are taken care of, we’re really setting everybody up, uh, to succeed in those environments? So I’m really, I’m excited to have this conversation.

[BREAK]

[00:02:03] Anne Morriss:
Oh, Teresa, welcome to Fixable.

[00:02:05] Teresa:
Thank you for having me. Excited to talk to you today.

[00:02:08] Anne Morriss:
So why don't we start with, um, us a little bit about the work that you do?

[00:02:13] Teresa:
Yeah. So I work at a startup, a business, business for, startup in the food space. And as you know, in startups, our roles are very diverse. And I actually started as the head of operations and then I became the head of sales. I'm currently the head of strategy.

[00:02:28] Anne Morriss:
I love startups for exactly that reason. And what emotions do you feel most frequently in this job right now?

[00:02:36] Teresa:
It's definitely a rollercoaster. The highs are high. The lows are low. I would say I feel a responsibility, if you can call that an emotion, constantly. Uh, because I feel it is my job to do the best that I can for the future of our teams and our customers. I feel immense joy whenever we have successes.

And successes can be so many things. It can be the numbers of growth looking good. It can be a customer that is really happy with something that we service them with. Or it can be just a teammate growing and learning. So responsibility, joy, surprise, if that's one that I can name too. Um, it's incredible when, whenever we look three months back, how far we go, every three months.

[00:03:25] Anne Morriss:
Well, I think that's what, one of the things that's so addictive about being part of young companies is you get to do my favorite thing, which is hard things with the group of people that you adore. Um, so what, what do you not love about the work right now?
[00:03:41] Teresa:
Well, I don't love, I don't know if it's about the work or it’s, if it's something about myself, but it’s I guess how I handle the work is being able to balance moving fast and planning, thinking things through. Having worked at bigger companies before – so through my career, I've been going smaller and smaller and smaller, and as small, as I go smaller and smaller and smaller, I work with faster and faster and faster decision makers and people and executors, and that's been a very, a great lesson for me.

And I have become faster as well, myself. However, when I look back at decisions or executions or choices that I made over the last week, even last day, I think, “Oof, maybe I should have thought that one a little bit more through.” And sometimes it happens the reverse, which is, “Oh my God, everybody's moving so fast around me. I need to speed it up. I can't be the blocker.”

And so we have these two forces pushing. My, my planning analytical self that wants to do that extra analysis or sit and do a more complex project plan or just think something through for an hour by myself, and the pressure of not slowing down the team and moving as fast as others do because we need to. If we don't make fast decisions, we will not survive.

[00:04:49] Anne Morriss:
Super common. Yeah.

[00:04:50] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:04:51] Teresa:
Yeah, and I would say at two levels, one is being able to look back and have a framework to say, “Okay, that one should have been slow, that one should be fast.” But then also the pressure of making the right decision in the moment. Sometimes I look back, I'm like, “Ah, that should have obviously been better thought through.” But in the moment, time to do like a thousand things a day and I jump too fast sometimes.

[00:05:12] Anne Morriss:
Can you share an example of when this tension was most acute for you in the last six months?

[00:05:19] Teresa:
Uh, I would say all departments are stretched, all departments need headcount and sometimes we make, uh, re-org decisions without considering like, “Oh, have we gone through the 10 steps that would make everybody at the company feel comfortable about the decision?” Even if it's the right allocation of people, there are things that you could do to make sure that you're taking other people on the journey. I guess that's what, what I sacrifice a lot often, which is, are, am I taking different stakeholders on the journey that they need to be taken upon?

[00:05:48] Anne Morriss:
Mm-hm.

[00:05:48] Frances Frei: Yeah.

[00:05:49] Teresa:
And I would say, if I were to build a framework, any people-related decision is an obvious one that I should spend more time on. I think that's the only obvious one that I could pick. Like, people decisions should be slower.

[00:06:01] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Hire slow. Fire fast. Can I ask you a question about the stakeholder point? ‘Cause I, I, I think that's a powerful word in this example. When you think about the decisions that are being made fast in the company and the stakeholders that are paying the price for the collateral damage of those decisions, do you see any patterns? Who gets hurt when the company moves too fast?

[00:06:26] Teresa:
Um, customers, right? We sometimes optimize for the short run when we need to count with our customers for the long run too.

[00:06:36] Frances Frei:
Got it.

[00:06:37] Anne Morriss:
And how does it affect you?

[00:06:39] Teresa:
In a lot of ways, and I think the most important one is I think my decision-making is under-optimized because I don't balance perfectly the speed, the move fast, with plan. That would be the biggest impact on me. And then I would say the second thing is because I'm trying to move fast, sometimes I move slower because I move too fast in the beginning and then I have to stop and fix, and stop and communicate.

[00:07:46] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:07:06] Teresa:
Stop and bring other people through the journey.

[00:07:09] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:07:09] Frances Frei:
You have done your job. You have described it, uh, beautifully. It's an absolutely generalizable situation when we're in organizations that really feel the need for speed in this regard. Um, how do you know when fast is progress and how do you know when, when you're on the frontier of fast and it feels, you know, dangerous?

[00:07:32] Anne Morriss:
And Frances, how common, in your experience, this problem?

[00:07:35] Frances Frei: A more common version of this problem is how to speed up an organization. So, so it's that the organization has just, uh, gravity is slowing it down. And so we are helping organizations go faster. Um, so organizations are usually very far from the frontier, out of necessity in the startup, particularly the not overly-funded startup, which is a beautiful place. You have to go fast out of necessity.

[00:08:04] Anne Morriss:
I think this problem is incredibly common in early-stage environments because of exactly what you just said, Frances. You have to move fast. Literally, the organization doesn't survive if you're not operating at speed. The money runs out. This is why it's fun, by the way, because the stakes are really, are really real, and they're really high.

And the assumption is that we have to endure a relatively high amount of collateral damage in order to maintain that speed. And what we have found, and we've had the pleasure of helping organizations who are often cleaning up the wreckage of that choice, is that there's a false trade-off at the heart of that worldview, which is you can also move fast and fix things instead of breaking things. And the question is: how do you do it? To your question, Teresa, how do you do it in real-time? And then how do you influence your colleagues to slow down when it matters and to speed up when it matters? So that's what we're gonna start to play with. How does that sound? Does that sound good?

[00:09:05] Teresa:
Sounds great.

[00:09:05] Anne Morriss:
Okay.

[00:09:06] Teresa:
Yeah.

[00:09:06] Frances Frei:
Can I just dive in?

[00:09:07] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Why don’t you go start us?

[00:09:08] Frances Frei:
Okay. So we have found that when we think that it's either move slow or fast, what we're assuming—and I find this is the wrong assumption—is that the speed breaks things. That's not what breaks things. A lack of trust breaks things.

So if we have not first earned trust and we go fast, we will break things, guaranteed. But if we do earn trust first, we can go fast and we will not break things. So that people are interpreting the, “Oh, I have collateral damage. Let me slow down…” Actually, what we want is “I have collateral damage, let me build trust”. And so in the presence of trust, we can accelerate away. So that's where my head goes—

[00:09:54] Anne Morriss:
So let me try that framework on in using the example of, hiring quickly internally without opening a—

[00:10:01] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Like you're shifting internally, yeah.

[00:10:03] Anne Morriss:
You’re shifting internally. Nobody knows what's happening. Suddenly someone's in a new job and the other people in the organization haven't been given a chance to even apply for the job, know it existed.

So in that scenario, if I channel the other people in the organization, the problem with that decision, that's how I moved fast and broke something here, is that my trust in the organization was shaken because I now question whether this is a place where it's a meritocracy –

[00:10:31] Frances Frei:
Where I get fair opportunity.

[00:10:32] Anne Morriss:
Where I get a fair opportunity. And so, um, my confidence in the organization, whether this is the right place for me is shaken because it seemed to be an inside job. And whoever was closest to management got the gig, not necessarily the best human for the job.

[00:10:46] Frances Frei:
And by the way, this happens even when it is the best human for the job.
[00:10:50] Teresa:
It was the best.

[00:10:50] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:10:51] Teresa:
In my example, it was the best human for the job.

[00:10:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:10:53] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Right. So we lose trust when we don't give equal access to the opportunity.

[00:11:00] Anne Morriss:
Right. The reason to slow down in this is to make sure that I'm not undermining trust with everyone else in the organization.

[00:11:08] Frances Frei:
And we might have to slow down at this point because we don't have the reservoir of trust of doing it every time. So if we are thinking that our job is to make sure that the people that aren't getting the role, their seat is in the room, right? So what does this mean for them? How are they gonna react? And honestly, if we just have a seat in the room for the people who are gonna feel the collateral damage, just that gets us like half the way there because we're now thinking about that, about that person.

And I'm not sure it has to go entirely slow to do that. Be like, “Oh my gosh. Alright. You know what? We have 24 hours to find out who else wants to be considered. We're gonna put out a thing, it's gonna have an expiration of 24 hours. We'll find out who wants to be considered, and then 24 hours later we'll make our decision.” You know, you can do it in 48 hours; you can do it in, in 12, in 12 hours. Like it's, it's not that it would need a big bureaucratic delay, but we're not gonna have to do any of that rework, uh, that you spoke about Teresa.

[00:12:11] Teresa:
And that works as well with your customers, right?

[00:12:14] Frances Frei:
Indeed. In fact, that's exactly right. So, you might have a seat for “How is this gonna affect our most loyal customers?” And then if you're wondering how, give me an hour and I'll call 'em. Like, it's not, “let's take a week or two”. It's 60 minutes. Give me 15 minutes, and I'll call them. Like, you can still do it at a really rigorous pace. But now we're gonna say, “What would we do if we radically cared about that, uh, about that person?”

[00:12:41] Anne Morriss:
And is there something we can do relatively quickly to minimize the damage or avoid the potential harm here?

[00:12:48] Frances Frei:
Yeah, maybe it's the simple question of who's gonna be really sad?

[00:12:52] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:12:52] Frances Frei:
And if we have this very short period of time, is there anything we can do in advance? And I think you can do a ton in an hour and a startling amount in a day.

[BREAK]

[00:13:04] Anne Morriss:
So curious, um, if this is useful at all to you, and then maybe we can play with, um, applying it to customers.

[00:13:11] Teresa:
So it's, I do something similar with email. Whenever I write an email, I imagine, “What if somebody from other side of company read our/my email?” And that helps me and helps me make sure that I'm expressing what I wanna say in the right way.

Um, I like your idea. Now I'm trying to understand if it would always force me to, if there would be false positives. So situations where it would force me to slow down the way it was not necessary. But I think that wouldn't be the case because if the impact on the stakeholder is not too big, we can all—or if I have another solution to apply after, I can, for example, talk to them after. You can always move.

[00:13:47] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And to, to your point, taking less than a day to do this analysis also avoids all the rework, all the customer calls, all the cleanup that you would have to do when you accidentally knocked off one of these customer segments that you, you had no intention of harming.

[00:14:06] Teresa:
I think “accident” is the key word there.

[00:14:08] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:14:08] Teresa:
Yeah. Because sometimes you'll rough some feathers and that could be okay as long as it's planned.

[00:14:11] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:12] Anne Morriss:
As long as it's intentional.

[00:14:14] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:14:14] Anne Morriss:
As long as that's a trade-off that you are walking into very clearly because as head of strategy, it makes strategic sense to piss these customers off so you can excel in serving these customers over here.

[00:14:23] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:14:24] Anne Morriss:
And what I love about your example, which is “I'm gonna take less than a day, then, to run some additional analysis here,” is it, it's a beautiful challenge to where you started with the idea that there is this fundamental tension between speed and analytics.

[00:14:40] Frances Frei:
And there's not. Our experience is that of the wreckage, well north of 80% of the wreckage could have been avoided without sacrificing speed. Well north of 80%. So let's fix that up and then that 20%, that's gonna be your strategic trade-offs or, or just things you just were unknowable. Okay. Like everybody will be able to live with that.

[00:15:03] Anne Morriss:
And what I'm excited about, because you are in a leadership position in this organization that I’m now desperate for, to succeed—

[00:15:11] Teresa:
[laughs]

[00:15:11] Anne Morriss:
I’m very invested in, um, is that you also get to change the culture around decision-making at the company. Frances, what are some of your other favorite ways to buy time in processes that are moving too fast?

[00:15:24] Frances Frei:
Um, that's a great question. I don't know. What are some of my favorite ways to buy time?

[00:15:30] Anne Morriss:
Well, I can, I can tell you where–

[00:15:31] Frances Frei:
You usually have something in mind for me.

[00:15:32] Anne Morriss:
No, I, oh, I can tell you where my head is going a little bit too, because I can… There, there's one piece of that, that how do you influence your own behavior? Like, how do you, Teresa, slow down and create some space for really looking at the full impact equation? Who wins? Who loses? Is that really the strategic choice we wanna make? You have total control over that. You don't have total control over what your colleagues are doing necessarily. So there's this whole other category, which is how do you influence the decision-making speed and process of the people around you. On a scale of one to ten, how much tension or pain are you feeling around that second category?

[00:16:13] Frances Frei:
Ten being a lot.

[00:16:15] Teresa:
I would say a lot, but I think part of that pain should continue there because I do think I move less fast than the people around me. So part of that tension is good. So I should.

[00:16:26] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:16:27] Teresa:
I think it's normal that I feel uncomfortable. But yes, I would like to be able to win some more of those fights for sure.

[00:16:33] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:16:33] Teresa:
But thinking about what Frances was saying before, maybe also trust is what I need there, right? Because if I slow down some decision-making and it works, then I'll get more trust to slow down decision-making in the future.

[00:16:46] Frances Frei:
Yes, exactly right. And we're saying, like, when you wanna slow down, but I, it's not that slow. It's doing an additional thing that is trust building.

[00:16:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. And where my head was going too is, um, uh, I don't know how familiar you are with the world of improvisational theater…

[00:17:04] Teresa:
Not so much.

[00:17:05] Anne Morriss:
You've spent enough time in start-ups and no one has forced you to take an improv class? I’m very happy for you. I happen to love it, in maybe not a shocking turn of events.

[00:17:15] Frances Frei:
I don't love it in a, a similarly not shocking turn of events.

[00:17:19] Anne Morriss:
Um, but one of the core ideas of improv that I think has trickled out into the larger universe is this idea of “yes, and…” thinking. For example, this is from Tina Fey's book, Bossypants. One of the great moments in American literature. But your scene partner might say something like, “Gosh, I can't believe how hot it is in here.” And you could say, “No, it's not hot. I'm actually cold,” and the scene dies and goes nowhere, and the audience is sad. Or you could say, “Gosh, what did you expect? We're in hell.” Or “Gosh, I'm worried about what's gonna happen to the wax figures.” You know, like, and now you're off and running and there's a scene and there's something fun that you might deliver for the audience. So the yes, part of that is, yes, it's hot. We both agree that it's hot.

[00:18:09] Frances Frei:
Accept the offer.

[00:18:11] Anne Morriss:
Right. You accept what your partner's offering. The “and” part is now you're responding in a way that is building on it and getting you closer to where you both wanna get. So the speed offer that your colleagues are making is, “We have to go fast.” And the “yes” part there is “Yes, we have to go fast.” That's not changing. The, “and” part is, “And can we do it in a way where we are minimizing collateral damage and can we do it in a way where we're building trust with the stakeholders that are most important?”

[00:18:41] Frances Frei:
And can we do it in a way where we don't have to be doing rework tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day?
[00:18:46] Anne Morriss:
And this yes-and philosophy–

[00:18:48] Frances Frei:
Oh, it's everything.

[00:18:50] Anne Morriss:
It also translates to interpersonal communication. This is one of the reasons that you're there, that you're in the system that you were hired, is to help this culture of decision-making evolve to be more and more strategic. That's a fundamental part of your job. So I wanna make sure that as you are doing that, that you are playing a yes-and communication role in the room.

[00:19:14] Teresa:
I think it'll make me feel much more comfortable. I won't be the fighter. Right?

[00:19:19] Frances Frei:
Yes.

[00:19:20] Teresa:
I'll be…
[00:19:20] Frances Frei:
The accelerator.

[00:19:22] Teresa:
I like it.

[00:19:22] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:19:23] Teresa:
Also, I'm overdue at team events and then I will blame, I will tell them, like, when they complain about the improv class that I'm gonna take them in a month, I'll let them know who to complain to.

[00:19:33] Frances Frei:
You can complain to, and then, and if it goes well, never mention us, never mention us.

[00:19:38] Anne Morriss:
But you throw us right under that bus.

[00:19:40] Frances Frei:
Oh, right under.

[00:19:41] Anne Morriss:
If it goes badly.

[00:19:42] Teresa:
Yeah.

[00:19:43] Anne Morriss:
You get to achieve your same objective, actually achieve it better without being the yes-but person. And people in startups hate the yes-but; they hate the no. That’s why you all are all there because you get to dwell in possibility.

[00:19:57] Frances Frei:
We wanna be frictionless, and “no” is friction.

[00:19:58] Teresa:
Yep. I love it. I love the framework that, that you gave me, Frances. But I think my true challenge is gonna be making sure that I'm making that decision in the moment. And if I feel that I'm always gonna have to fight, it's gonna be really hard. I'm not necessarily, I'm a confrontational enough person, but not, I think if I change my mindset to, I'm not the person slowing down. I’m the person making sure that we're running fast without blocks will make it much easier to have these discussions.

[00:20:28] Frances Frei:
Yeah. And the team will get the muscles for doing this, again and again. And I think victory is when you no longer have to do it, when other people are also doing it.

[00:20:36] Anne Morriss:
And I'm so excited, Teresa, about that version of you that gets to be in the room now. You're not the one there to slow anybody down. Like, you're there to be your most powerful, most creative collaborator in that space. You're just pointing the plane in the direction that the organization wants to go.

[00:20:57] Frances Frei:
So let me ask you a question, a little quiz at the end of this, Teresa. So, um, you find yourself in a position and you're not sure if you should slow down or not. How would you articulate the wisdom to know the difference?

[00:21:11] Teresa:
First, I'm gonna think about who is this going to impact, which could be internal or external, and I'm gonna think, “How will they react to the situation?” That can be enough. If not enough, I’m gonna ask for time to actually go and find out how they would react by asking other people of that, or by asking them directly. And then I'm gonna have the courage to have this conversation by not thinking of myself as a blocker but as somebody that is removing future roadblocks.

[00:21:36] Anne Morriss:
Success!

[00:21:38] Frances Frei:
Ohhh.

[00:21:39] Teresa:
I love it.

[00:21:40] Anne Morriss:
How do you, how do you feel Teresa? Did we achieve our objective?

[00:21:43] Teresa:
Yeah. I feel empowered. I think I can do this.

[00:21:45] Frances Frei:
Oh, this was a genuine pleasure, Teresa, to get to, to get to know you, and then to also get to, um, work through a problem together. So thank you, thank you for trusting us.

[00:21:55] Anne Morriss:
We couldn't be more excited for your success.

[00:22:05] Frances Frei:
That was beautiful.

[00:22:06] Anne Morriss:
And when you think about the larger, linking this conversation back to some of the themes in the work that we do and the larger world of work, where does your mind go?

[00:22:16] Frances Frei:
So, I don't think you have to slow down. Like when we say you have to slow down, I actually think it's misleading. We have to, you know, use a little peripheral vision for a number of minutes, so I don't even wanna classify it as slow down ‘cause it doesn't feel like there.

[00:22:32] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:22:32] Frances Frei:
But when you're on the frontier of fast and you're risking collateral damage, we have, like, a very systematic way of how to pull off of that frontier, use a little peripheral vision, and then break through the frontier.
So to me, I feel even more convinced we can move faster if we move fast and fix things than if we move fast and break things.

[00:22:47] Anne Morriss:
Um, that’s, it’s so counterintuitive.

[00:22:59] Frances Frei:
It's so counterintuitive and that was beautiful.

[00:23:02] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean this, I was struck and you, this is where she was at the beginning. It's how pervasive this worldview is that you, uh, in order to move fast, you must break things.

[00:23:11] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:23:12] Anne Morriss:
Um, that, that is an inherent trade-off to innovating and creating the future. And in our experience, the, the, the leaders and organizations that are truly operating at, at a speed and honoring their ambition and the opportunity that they're chasing, are moving fast and fixing things as they go.

[00:23:30] Frances:
Yeah.

[00:23:31] Anne Morriss:
They’re refusing to live in, inside that limitation.

[00:23:35] Frances Frei:
So when we think about moving fast and fixing things, I think we just witnessed something on a global basis, and that’s our response to COVID. I mean, it typically, we will say 10 years to develop a vaccine. Or 20 years to develop a vaccine. And we did it in like five minutes. And we moved fast, and we fixed things along the way. We got better vaccines from multiple companies, and so this I think is a really good benchmark for what’s on the other side of moving fast and fixing things. And usually, when we see things that are broken, we think, “Let’s slow down.” No, no, no, no, no. Let’s go fast, and let’s fix things along the way. And there were so many pivots with COVID.

[00:24:19] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.

[00:24:20] Frances Frei:
So I think our response to COVID is just the role model for us.

[00:24:24] Anne Morriss:
And can we do it - which is the what, what we think a lot about in our work – can we do it without waiting for a crisis? Can we do it before our organization ends up on, you know, the front page of the paper having to deal with an employee rebellion? You know, we talk about walking into burning buildings a lot in our work, which is what we have the privilege of doing, but fire prevention is really where our hearts and minds are. I love the COVID example not just on the vaccine front, which I found super inspiring, but also on just the business model pivots.

[00:25:01] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:25:01] Anne Morriss:
How quickly organizations figured out how to, you know, deliver value remotely to their customers. I mean even just our local grocery store.

[00:25:10] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:25:10] Anne Morriss:
How quickly they figured out how to safely give people access to the store, and if they weren’t letting them in the building, you know, lining them up outside in a really thoughtful way to get them groceries. I just, the speed at which the business environment responded both to the challenges and opportunities of COVID were astonishing.

[00:25:31] Frances Frei:
Astonishing. We saw some companies in 48 hours, they had pivoted. 48 hours. And pivots usually take two years. And so meaningful change really does happen quickly. It’s easier when there is a global pandemic, but to your point, how do we do that even when there’s not? I don’t want to wait for the next pandemic.

[00:25:57] Anne Morriss:
All right, that's our show. Thank you all for being here.

[00:26:00] Frances Frei:
Thank you so much for listening. This was a pleasure. If you wanna join us, we would be delighted to have you. You can email us at fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-fixable, and for the numerically inclined, that's 234-349-2253. Thanks, everybody.

Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.

Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morris. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Grace Rubenstein, Sara Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, BanBan Cheng and Roxanne Hai-Lash. Ben Chesneau is our mix engineer.

[00:26:57] Frances Frei:
We’ll be bringing you new episodes of Fixable every week, so please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please leave us a review,

[00:27:05] Anne Morriss:
Particularly if you like the show.

[00:27:08] Frances Frei:
See you soon.