This Is Quick– the lightning round of This Is Working. The CEO of Ralph Lauren, Patrice Louvet, speaks to Editor in Chief Daniel Roth about the best advice he ever got and how he manages his time.

Among the reveals:

- Why he prioritizes EQ when he hires

- How his success is thanks in part to his drive but also his flexibility in the face of new opportunity

-  Why he thinks that “Sometimes people need to be hit, hit by a 2x4 across the forehead.”

When Justin McLeod decided he had to reboot Hinge, three years after he had founded the dating app service, he had his doubts. It took a member of his team to remind him: "You're the CEO. What's stopping you?"

At the same time — and for many the same reasons — McLeod decided he needed to reboot his company: to create a transparent environment where colleagues were invested in their work and each other's success. At scale. It's why Hinge has an impressively small voluntary turnover rate of 3%. And it's not about the perks.

"People actually work very hard at Hinge, but it's that they feel like they are part of a team," Justin told me for This Is Working. "They feel like they have a purpose. They're working with people who are like-minded and like-valued and just doing work that they love. And I think ultimately that's what allows people to feel fulfillment and feel a level of sustainability with their work."

Listen in for McLeod's insights on how to manage relationships, teams, and an enterprise.

This is Quick — the lightning round of This is Working. Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod speaks to LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth. Among the reveals:

"You would not replace a person with a robot, but a piece of the work a person does." 

Roland Busch has a remarkable perch as CEO of Siemens, a massive multinational whose hardware and software touch nearly everything. In this second part of LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth's wide-ranging conversation Busch laid out his vision of how AI would not replace but liberate highly-skilled professionals, and why being in the comfort zone is a strong signal in business to mix it up. 

And on a personal note, Busch shared how he confronted his introversion to become a better leader.

"We were never going to miss one again … We were never going to deny a transition was happening."

Cisco is one of the handful of companies from the dawn of the digital age that is still going strong. But as Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins told LinkedIn Editor in Chief Dan Roth, it isn't Cisco's many successes that propels him now, at the dawn of the AI age — it was missing the cloud wave.

That was then, this is now: Robbins says a small fraction of enterprises are prepared for the AI revolution and a vast majority know they don't have much time to get up to speed. Since Cisco has dealt with major enterprise customers for decades and still routes about 85% of the world's internet traffic, Robbins says Cisco is well positioned to seize this opportunity.

But navigating this tectonic shift in tech is only part of the problem. Robbins says the pace of re-skilling will be unlike the world has ever seen, and that getting people to adapt as quickly as necessary will require an emphasis on soft leadership skills.

In a wide-ranging interview we talked learning from mistakes, the need for "proactive education" to ensure the workforce can take advantage of a future of work that is already upon us, and why EQ is more essential than ever. 

To keep up with these conversations and get inspired by the world’s top leaders, subscribe to This is Working: linkedin.com/thisisworking. 

It could be that the best person for a tough job is the one who thinks she isn't. That's what people like Google CEO Eric Schmidt and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki thought when they prodded their founding EMEA marketing head, Lorraine Twohill, to be a big fish in a big pond: Cross the pond to become Chief Marketing Officer.

More than two decades later, the matter is settled. 

It wasn't the first time Twohill wasn't entirely sure about a Google gig. The first time she didn't even know what the job was until she got through 22 interviews. "A lot of people at the time thought I was nuts," she said, "What is this Google thing? It was a small company at the time, but, of course that was a really exciting time to join."

It got a lot more interesting, of course.

Listen in on this edition of This is Working to see how one of the longest-lasting senior women executives in Big Tech thinks about EQ, IQs what AI can and can't do.

On this week's rapid fire Q&A, Google CMO Lorraine Twohill shares about career paths and what she’s learned from Gen Z colleagues — and what they should learn from her, the importance of trying a few roles on for size — “Life and places like Google are more like a jungle gym than a career ladder" — and why it really is OK to nap at work. 

We’re offering a little something different for anyone seeking inspiration at the new year - a bonus episode featuring LinkedIn Editor in Chief Dan Roth on Suzy Welch’s new podcast, Becoming You. If you’ve ever been curious about how exactly Dan landed at LinkedIn, this is the episode for you. And if you’re pursuing your own career pivot, check out Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.

The whole This is Working team wishes you a bright 2025. We’ll be back soon with more great advice from top leaders.

As we wind down 2024, the This is Working team is starting to dream big for 2025. Of course that means we have AI on our minds. And we’re not alone. AI has more than one spot on LinkedIn’s recent Big Ideas list. Who better to learn from than Fei-Fei Li, AI pioneer? Dr. Li is an AI researcher and professor at Stanford University and serves as Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute.

In this conversation with LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth, Dr. Li shares her vision for a collaborative future with our advancing artificial intelligence.

To meet 2025 head on, subscribe to Dan’s This is Working newsletter. You’ll get top takeaways from today’s leaders, direct to your inbox.

On this week's rapid fire Q&A, Bridgewater Founder and Chief Investment Officer Ray Dalio advises starters in the finance industry to just dive in — "know what you don't know" — wants Gen Z to know that pain plus reflection equals progress (and why everyone should meditate), the gigantic early career error that made him stronger, and much more.