natasia schumacher

Full Transcript





Douglas Ferguson:

And we're live.



Karen Holst:

Hi, good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you're calling in from.



Douglas Ferguson:

I know that's early.



Karen Holst:

I'm Karen Holst.



Douglas Ferguson:

Douglas Ferguson.



Natasia Schumacher:

Natasia.



Karen Holst:

We're the authors of Start Within. And today we're sitting down with Natasia Schumacher from Method Studios to talk about her work and what she's been doing most recently and just in her career in general. It's been so fascinating. She is a inspiration to those that get to work with her. And even to me who, I don't on the outside, looking in, getting to see her work, her energy, just what she brings to every project that she does is something I'm learning from over time and getting to know her. But Natasia, I would love to just let you introduce yourself in the role that you have, and maybe a little bit just brief intro on what does a day to day look like?



Natasia Schumacher:

Cool. So yeah, I'm the operations manager at Method Studios. So I basically manage the environment of the visual effects studio, the culture, how employees feel engaged, listened to. Basically my goal is to make sure everyone has a positive work environment, feels supported, and is empowered to do their best work. So in a day to day, it changes constantly, but I'm never fully at my desk at the office. I'm running around, checking in with people, checking the facility of itself. I manage a team of five studio assistants, which includes the receptionist as well. Yeah. So it's emails, culture pieces, engagement pieces. It's so random all the time. And it's so many hats it's really hard to describe, but I love what I do. And it's my passion.



Karen Holst:

When you were first hired, it was still startup phase and not a ton of... The job description was pretty vague and the opportunity was huge with lots of hats that you got to wear. And tell me about how you navigated that and understanding this is an area that I should lean in and oops, someone else should be doing that. How did you figure out and shape your role early on?



Natasia Schumacher:

That's a really interesting question. So yeah, when I did start, it was a total startup feel. I think we were 80 employees, now we're at 450, so a completely different environment. And I didn't have a job description funny enough, which in hindsight was a huge gift because that allowed me to start with it and really search within myself on what it is I'm passionate about doing, what I love to do. And it allowed me to look at the company and see where focus needed to be given. I just kind of dived into different sectors. I think collaborating was a big, big deal because I wear so many hats and because I like to do a bit of everything, it's really about touching base with all the departments and making sure I'm not stepping on toes and that we're working as a collective and not I own this, you own this.



So it ended up being this beautiful job description that was built from that where there's a united team now. It's been almost four years I'm with the company and it's gotten to a place where I get to work with each department and it's a true collaborative effort and that took work, but it happened and I'm really proud of it.



Karen Holst:

Yeah. You were one of our early readers of Start Within. And I remember when I reached out to you to read it, I was like, this is a person that I've learned from and doing this kind of work and talking about where you get stuck or where you might be able. You found creative ways around it and the feedback that you gave, it really helped shape the book. So I want to thank you for that. And also just talk about how you've used this time in the self isolation that we're all going through and working from home, how you've used that time to start within again.



Natasia Schumacher:

Yeah, it was a really interesting process for me because of what I do is so interactive and people based and in the live action of it all. When I started working from home, I had a moment of panic to be honest on how am I going to do my job? How am I going to continue my goal, my passion of creating this environment of a welcome feeling, supporting employees, making them engaged, empowering them to do the best work? I really had to question myself, how is this possible? How can I make it possible?



And that's again where I had to really start within and think, okay, what do I love doing? What are my passion projects? How can I bring that alive virtually? And I immediately started thinking, virtually is visual. Everything is visual. We don't have the physical contact anymore. We don't have the interactions anymore face-to-face so it needs to be visually stimulating. So I immediately started innovating on saying, what do the employees need? How can we make sure we're supporting them? And that's where all these working from home guides came up. I started using Canva, which is my new best friend and love of my life. I never thought I had it in me graphics, but it really worked out well. And I immediately launched a studio culture, a virtual studio culture document, which really gave guidelines and outlines to employees on what we expect, what they can expect from us, how to communicate, tips on working from home. And made sure it was visually impacting. So that's just one example of where I needed to innovate and do things different than normal.



Karen Holst:

Yeah. Did you have permission to just go out and do this? How did you?



Natasia Schumacher:

I rarely have permission Karen. Don't know if I should say that.



Karen Holst:

I love it. That should be a quote. I rarely have permission.



Natasia Schumacher:

No, I didn't have permission. It's an idea I had. I think I bounced it even off you. For those of you that don't know, Karen is my mentor, and I'm very proud of it. But no, I just thought what is it that we need, we're going to do this. And I jumped into it. I checked with my upper management to see if it's something they'd like to see happen. And it was immediately approved, but they had no idea what it was going to look like, what the process of it was going to be. But we need it, we're doing it. This is what's happening. But that's kind of how I work in general, which can work my way and not work my way all of a sudden. There's the benefits and the downsides too.



Douglas Ferguson:

How did you decide how much leadership needed to know? Because it sounded like you informed them to some degree, but they weren't aware of all the nitty gritty details. So maybe help the listeners understand how you dialed in just the right amount.



Natasia Schumacher:

Yeah. I think during these times when you want to innovate within a company, it's important, the communication is number one, right? So it was just really important to check in with them, let them know, be detail oriented. This is my project. This is what I want to include. This is the briefing of it. Do I have the go. I'm grateful that it was that simple for me, but it was communicating, and not just hiding behind the screen and just letting things happen. So just staying in communication and I believe... When I was doing the project or starting these manuals, I would send screenshots to my upper management, Hey, by the way, this is what it's looking like. And there was a real trust, I think in the project and belief in what I was doing, that I got green light. But communication was the key point to it. Check-ins, communications, detail oriented, yeah.



Karen Holst:

Yeah. And just, I do know this, you over time and your career, and in this role specifically, built up the political capital where it was like you did projects over and over and over and showed the value of the projects and the follow through that you're given permissions because people trust you and look to you for this kind of work. So a lot of that also is just who you are.



Natasia Schumacher:

Thanks.



Karen Holst:

So that's great. I think the other thing that's interesting about this, the timing of everything, is that you get energy from people, we've talked about this. There could have been this moment of like, Oh no, this is going to be really, really hard for Natasia. How is she going to stay energized and continue to do new things and find new ways? Talk about how you've been managing that, that feeling.



Natasia Schumacher:

That feeling. Well, again, like you said, well, like we both said now, is the feeding off the energy of people. And we work with communication tools within the company already. And so being very visual, it's easy for me to gauge with these communications like Slack, emails. Because I believe communication is key, I continuously post things or I'm messaging. And funny enough, that energy I used to get face to face is coming from emojis now. My life has become emojis. How much are people engaged? How much do they like it? What is the response rate to this? And I think that just kept on pushing me forward and pushing me forward to continue doing it.



And then also a big part of it was reaching out to the studios globally, that kept me going. I would share, these times are about sharing information and sharing knowledge as well and not just keeping it for ourselves and kind of holding onto it. And so I began sharing it with the global studios, which in turn created this beautiful community of shared information. Now they're sending me their ideas and it just exploded where we're all on this same level of supporting everyone now.



Karen Holst:

I love that. It kind of reminds me of your comment on the emojis. When you're in the airport bathrooms that there's a little stand, they've got the, how was the cleanliness, happy face, sad face, absolutely not face.



Natasia Schumacher:

Yeah.



Karen Holst:

I love the idea of thinking about checking in with our teams and what's your emoji today?



Natasia Schumacher:

Right!



Karen Holst:

Is it a unicorn? Is it the, I don't know. Today I'd say I'm unicorn. Because this is fun.



Natasia Schumacher:

To talk about the emojis, how far it's even gone every morning, I've created a graphic to the studio alert chat on Slack where every morning, the day starts with me sending your graphic. It's either funny or not. Happy Tuesday, reminding you of what day it is. Emoji if you want to start the day strong. Just a community effort to get people kickstarted together. But that's what it's come down to. It's really that.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. It's interesting. You use the word together because in the work that we've been doing lately, we've been noticing that the facilitator community's definitely concerned about this lack of human connection. And it's interesting because in our world, we talk a lot about working alone together and now we're working together alone. And so it's kind of a weird little reversal there and I love the stuff that you're doing as far as creating energy, tapping to know emotions and feelings and making that kind of key to how you start your day. Are there any other little hacks and things that you're doing to kind of maybe be just a great leader of the team there?



Natasia Schumacher:

Well, something that we've done, Karen I've shared it with you as well, is we do virtual contests, which is a way also to keep people engaged and not just work focused. When we're working from home, it's easy for us to sit on the computer and just, I mean, I do it myself, and get so super focused that we forget to stand up, take breaks, get creative outside of our regular tasks. So we send out these virtual contests, one of the examples is where the Easter Bunny traveled to this year. So people submit their favorite travel photos, but they'd have to edit a bunny in it. So we got like 35, 40 beautiful photos from around the world where the Easter Bunny traveled.



It was beautiful to see actually, but it keeps people engaged. It keeps a little creative outside of their regular jobs. It gives again a sense of community. We were alone. And in the end I ended up creating the MMR. It's a magazine. That's another way that I've innovated during these times of collecting everything that's happened over the past three weeks within the studio, within our organization into one spot. And there's highlights from employees, recipes from our chef in our studio, we have contest submissions, the winners. It's a whole 24 page magazine by the people in the ends. I'm just editing it and it became a really powerful tool. It's something we're going to continue doing, but again it unites us as one in the end.



Karen Holst:

What's your advice for someone that's looking around at this time and saying, "This is not the time for me to pick up something new. It's too crazy. I don't know what the future looks like. This is a time for me to pause." And just, what would you say to someone who's feeling like it's a moment to be still?



Natasia Schumacher:

Well, I think it's okay. Of course. I think there's two sides to that. What's happening in the world right now, the pandemic, the isolation. With different types of people in a great way, this great pause is so powerful because it gives us the opportunity to just stop, take a moment for ourselves and breathe. How we use that time depends who you are and if just being still is being still and that's what you need, that's fine as well. It doesn't work for someone like me. It's not impossible, but I really think taking this time to reflect on what it is you're passionate about. You don't have to have a clear journey, a clear point A to Z for tomorrow.



This moment is really about living in the present moment because we can't control what's happening. Literally in 24 hours, we have no clue with our jobs, with the outside world, with our families. There's just no control anymore. So just really centering yourself to the present moment, thinking about what it is you're passionate about. We have this gift of taking this time to work on that and start outlining it. And using your book for example, to start within, I think is an incredible way to do that. It really outlines the path of how to do it. It's not just for someone in an organization trying to get to A to Z. It's about someone that has a passion and they need to release it and don't know how and they're facing barriers and roadblocks. So I just use the time wisely because we probably won't get a time like this again.



Karen Holst:

I love that. Yeah, you're a doer through and through. You just hit the ground running and start testing and taking experiments and leaps along the way. And in the last, maybe two years, you've become a more reflective and introspective person too. And I think that balance is really what makes you such a strong leader in the work that you do is that it takes both types of thinking. You really have to reflect and make sure you're running after the right idea and doing it in the right way and including the right people. But you also have to get started somewhere and you have to get going. You can't just sit in it. And I think you do a really nice job of toggling through both. And this moment really reflects that.



Natasia Schumacher:

Thank you. Thank you. That's something I definitely had to work on. And I began years ago, where I thought I could do anything, everything right away without approval, without... And I thought it should happen. I had the right. I was entitled. I lacked that reflective part that you're talking about. And you're absolutely correct that over the past, let's say two years, there is a sense of understanding. Again, you outline it in your book, but understanding the environment, understanding when a good time is the buy in that you need. So yeah, the totally different side to it on to what I do then there was years ago. Maybe that comes with maturity, I don't know, or experience, but it's working.



Karen Holst:

Wow. Yeah, definitely. And I think that you took the time to pause and think about it. You just intuitively found that in yourself. So it's been great to see and amazing to have you.



Natasia Schumacher:

Thanks, Karen. Thank you so much. Thanks Doug.



Karen Holst:

So for those that want to check out the book, if you go to your Amazon, if you're in the US that's amazon.com. If you're in Canada, amazon.ca. You can just search for Start Within, you can find the book there. And is there anything else that you want to share? Last bits of go get them? Natasia?



Natasia Schumacher:

Go get them.



Karen Holst:

I love it! That's amazing.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yes.



Karen Holst:

That's amazing. That's it. That's all you need.



Douglas Ferguson:

Yeah. And I guess one other thing I just wanted to make sure we left with was it's really fun chatting with readers and hearing their experience. And we're going to highlight a reader and doer at least two to four times a month on a rolling basis. And so if you're interested, reach out to either myself or Karen and we'll get you on one of these sessions. It's been a blast today and hearing about all the amazing work Natasia is doing. So thanks for being with us.



Natasia Schumacher:

Thank you guys so much.



Karen Holst:

Thank you. Bye!



Natasia Schumacher:

Stay safe.



Douglas Ferguson:

Bye.