| 00:00:03 - 00:02:00 |
You're listening to sea sweet blueprint, the show for sea sweet leaders. Here we discussed no bys approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show a Christ thanks for joining me. That, George's great to be here. I really was excited to talk to you because you've been through just endless transformation. I think it's a perfect example of quote unquote, digital transformation not having an end state, because I think that you've been, I've been, you've been in through about five or six just major, different transformation for different reasons and I wanted to explore those a little bit with you, even to start by maybe just given the high level like what those big transformation milestones were. Yeah, and and you know, we were just talking about this how we prepared for the show, and you know, I didn't hadn't thought about it that way, but over the the nine, virtually nine years have been at log me in, it has been change after change. Partially it's tech, it's software and change is constant, but we also went through a number of a series of milestones, like you say. So the first one when I joined was was really a probably more classical sales marketing digital transformation around our you know, top of funnel and our our sales processes. And then, as we were growing at the time, you know, we had a very us centric culture and process and I moved overseas for a couple of years to work in the UK and got a different perspective on how do we change our the season our systems to account for the different, you know, global cultures that we have in the company and are in our global markets and customers? And then we went through a period of significant and rapid acquisition. So we grew from probably around eight hundred to three thousand employees in the space of eighteen months and most of that was sort of overnight. So then the transformation, you know, imperatives really became consolidation and simplification and and, you know, reducing overlap and in tech and or debt. And then, most recently, like everybody else, we went through a transformation driven by the pandemic. Right, and how do we switch to remote working and how does that change our... |
| 00:02:00 - 00:03:59 |
...ways of working and becoming a little bit more of a digital culture to facilitate remote working? And then, sort of in parallel and as a backdrop of that, we also went from a public company to a private company and that is also a pretty significant driver of transformation activities and in a very different backdrop than being a public company. So yeah, it's been it's been a it's been a long journey. Doesn't feel like a long time because I'm always in the thick of something urgent and pressure filled, but in in totality it's been so been a hell of a ride. So I'm happy to be here and kind of chat with you through some of those details. Yeah, I'm excited. I mean there's so many battle scars in there and so many lessons learned. I think maybe one place to start, which I enjoy poking into, is when you had to go to merger acquisition, you had the original log be in, which was a culture of move fast and break things, and then you had the citrics culture was which was you now go go slow to go fast, and I think I personally, you've personally gone through that that journey yourself right a little bit, you know, moving from go fast to break things to now go slow to go back, and I'm just curious that kind of hear both the journey at the organization but also you personally. How did that go? Yeah, I've certainly come full circle on some of these and and you were there, George, some of this, which I appreciate your help at the time. But for those of you listening who may not be familiar, we log me in had a reverse Morris trust and all. Someone Google and look that up in terms of what that means from an acquisition of transaction with the Gecko division of Citrix, and that is go to go to meeting, go to Webinar, go to training, back in twos sixteen, going to two thousand and seventeen, and I mentioned kind of leaping up to threezero employees ritually overnight. That was due to this acquisition. So you know, this division of Citrix was larger than logged me in at the time, but it was going to be our leadership team, our headquarters, and they had a lot of as you can imagine, coming from a larger company,... |
| 00:04:00 - 00:06:01 |
...different culture, different way of doing things, different different infrastructure and resources. And we had an acquisition sort of strategy, integration strategy, I should say, best of both, which meant for the six months going into the the close, we were kind of doing some evaluation of systems, process, you know, personnel, all these types of things terms of what is the this this resulting company? What is the best way to drive this forward? And, as you can imagine, nobody really wants to say that there's is worse than the other, except for the really obvious stuff. So I would say, like the result may have been, you know, compromised, as you'd expect, but to your point, the citrics sort of DNA bigger company mentality. They had a lot more a plan, pause, plan, execute, go forward, a lot more process, a lot more diligence and the log me inside of the House, which is where I was coming from, we just got stuff done like that was our that was our kind of like that's the flag we waved. was like, let's just GSD, let's get it done on carow long it takes, was just do it and a lot of tension when those two two forces collide. Plus it was an east coast vers west coast thing, so you had you know, I think, if I'm going to stick with the stereotypes here, that the West coasters east coast doesn't know anything about software, east coasters, that all the West coasters like didn't show for work on time and like we're, you know, off surfing all the time. So we had a lot of those dynamics going on. Is that's of Green smoothies and surfing, is what I would assume. Yes, yes, a lot of a chain where and all the east coast were rude and in a hurry and and and all that. So a lot of dynamics to work through there. And at first. You know, what was on my plate at the time was we actually had competitive products, right, so log me in sold rescue, which is a direct competitive go to assist, and we sold join me, which is direct competitive go to meeting. And as a combined company, we had to eliminate internal competition as quickly as possible on the sales team. So there was a real urgency to integrate our sales systems and we closed on March first two thousand and seventeen, and our sales force instances were integrated, or consolidate I should say, by the end of March. So thirty days post close we had all the sales people in... |
| 00:06:01 - 00:08:01 |
...the same thing, which I tell people that story or I tell them that fact, and they look at me like we're really I'm like, yeah, it's either the greatest thing or the hardest thing I've ever done, or probably both. And it wasn't without its its scars and it was a journey in learning how to work with it, with a different culture, to come together in a combined goal. It was a lesson in how do you influence and make people believe that something's possible when it's against every five are in their body that it that it would be? And then it's it's learning about how you the mistakes you made along the way that you spent months afterwards trying to clean up and fix. And you know, you said, like you know my personal journey. I think now, what is it, five years later? You know, I have a different role in a larger companies, the same company, but it's a larger company. is a very different place than it was in two thousand and sixteen, and I'm much more of a yeah, yeah, that's probably like pump the brakes and likes think about what we want to do and plan for it. So, you know, if I could probably go back to my Gecko colleagues from two thousand and sixteen who we butt it heads with from time to time, I would say, like you know, you're probably probably pretty right. I understand how you got there, like I understand how that was your approach, because some of the things that we move too fast on and broke definitely causes pain. You know that we had to clean up for months afterwards. Yeah, it's interesting. I always like to draw the parallel to, you know, what happens at the company to what happens in your personal life, and that that best of both thing. The picture immediately get my head. It is you get married and you immediately say, okay, we're just going to pick the best of our art and the best of our furniture and whoever has the best is that's what we're going to use. But that doesn't account for what is best, even mean right, and it's immediately putting you on that that rear foot of defensiveness. And then it's like we're not two individuals anymore, we're now forming a couple and we need to compromise and determine what our our joint style is on art and furniture and all that good stuff. Well, you're awesome. You're making assumption, in George, that you have taste and nice things, as I didn't when I got married. I had no nice things. Apparently. Well, that actually helps, right, if you but but but then, when, when you have two companies that actually do have competitive and you're going to have... |
| 00:08:01 - 00:10:01 |
...so much more it would almost be better to have the black slate. So in that journey, said, one of the big things was, you know, convincing people to think that things are possible that aren't possible. How to do that? That's a great question. I think it's about trying to boil things down to the simplest component, right, and I know I remember the timeline was so aggressive and I had to convince the leadership that it wasn't going to be perfect. That was probably job one. Hey, we're going to do this, it's not going to be perfect, so lower your expectations. We're solving for speed or not solving for perfection. And then, once I got them on board, it was about convincing the people doing the work that that imperfection was okay and that we had air cover because, you know, we have as a public company. At the time your you know, you have a little bit of a buffer in terms of, Hey, it's the first quarter after this massive integration. We expect there's going to be some hit to productivity, is going to be some hit to you know, how the company's driving, but you don't get that past six months later, nine months later. So if we postpone this work, we were going to have to explain that six months later why. You know, sales, some sales productivity dipped because we will implemented a new crm right and that wasn't going to be a reasonable alternative. So that was about framing the the dynamics that we were working in and allowing people feel like, okay, we can cut some corners, we can, we can trim some scope to get the job done. And then it was like getting the right team put together. Team I was very, very fortunate to have some people who share it, some probably a rational confidence like I did about the ability to get it done. So I'm forever grateful to those folks. And then doing a really good job of the you know, working a dually as we went so finding issues, knocking them down quickly and then moving forward and spending a lot of nights and weekends. To be quite honest, I mean it was not it was. It was a pretty much heroic effort and near the end, the last thirty sixty days. But once, once we convinced them that that we could, we could do it, because it didn't have to be perfect. So you know that will you know, eating the elephant kind of thing you think about. You... |
| 00:10:01 - 00:12:00 |
...like, how can we possibly do this? Are we boil it down to here's the time we do that, we could do, which means that we're going to do this box and we have to. We can trim off the scope and then within that box wee are the most important things we could do, and we could. We could break them down into tracks and then, okay, what is what has to be done on Day One? What can be done later? Start to descope those things and then people start to get our hands around their own lane or their own deliverables, and then becomes a little bit more manageable, a little bit more approachable. That makes sense. I love a rational competence. It's helped me many times and it's gotten me in trouble many times, but I still love it for whatever reason. Yes, there's definitely times was like what did I just promise? Ye, for your team, more likely saying what did quess this promise that you know. It's as part of that, with all of those teams coming together, you had no shortage of systems and duplicate systems or process and duplicate process. So how did you solve that problem? How do you choose what are the right systems in the right process across across those two cultures? Yeah, I you know, I remember back to those converts. This is where the that sort of the best of both really kind of came to roost. Right, is not not is it sales force or something else? But within sales force, are we going to follow your lead routing kind of model or mentality or methodology? Are we going to follow your customer success model? And I think those actually became easier decisions to make when you boil them down to those individual teams and we could dictated by the volume of employees who are who are following this process. Right, if it was something that came from one side of the House with a hundred people doing it already, but there's only twenty people doing on the other side, there was no reason to make a hundred people change, right. So we would we would sort of consolidate into that. There was, you know, what is the value of the the revenue that were supporting in that product? How strategically important is it to to the new company that we were forming? And those were just sort of guide posts in terms of how you want to go. And there's the technical element of it, which was, you know, this the solution that's in place. Is it scalable? Does it meet our needs? And in some cases you had you... |
| 00:12:00 - 00:14:01 |
...or fortuitous to has a like Hey, George, you guys are doing that. Do you like it? And you'd be like no, I've hated it since we put it in. I've been dying to get rid of it and please, we'd love to use yours. And they're definitely was examples of that in both directions, like no, yours is better, please. But then there was other places where we really had to educate each other. Right, so let's sit down and let's talk about here's how our system works and and and log means had a very unique method of sort of driving mqls to our sales people and a unique architecture to support that, which was sort of that first transformation activity that I mentioned when I first joined. So we had to introduce that to our citrus colleagues and say this is what we built, this is what's worked for us. It's driven our growth for the past two years. It's scalable, it can work for the combined company. But it was very new to them, so we really had to spend a lot of time walking them through it, sort of smoke testing like new, you know, new processes, against and make them understand how it would work for them. Now I can tell you, though, like that was the technical teams that we were working with and we made rapid progress with those folks like Mike, Mike Out, my counterparts in my new my new team members. But from we think about rolling that out to the entire sales process. We went from a place where I think logged me out at the time, probably had just like maybe like eight sales people, so not massive. We went from eighty to maybe like four hundred and fifty sales people overnight. And we had a like a fine tune machine leading up to that where sales and marketing we're on the same page with like, you know, SLA's around lead follow up and metrics and things like that, very very activity driven. But we had just beat it into everybody's head for like eighteen months leading up to this point, and then when we introduced four hundred people who are coming from a different place, it eroded our sort of ability to be very disciplined on that right and it's slowed us down. So, even though we pick the process, the adoption of the process, the training, that understanding for the broad organization, that set us back like six eight months and we had to kind of rebuild that all, you know, for the next couple of years after that. So finding the right thing is one thing. Making everyone agree to it and... |
| 00:14:01 - 00:16:00 |
...then adopted is like is a challenge that I think. You talk about learnings over the process, but we didn't have the time was very robust change management, like professionals and processes in place, and I now have a change operations team that works for me because of some of these learnings. Right, it's not just about making the changes, but making sure people understand it and they actually adopted, otherwise sort of undermine your own transformation activities. Yeah, that's a lot of foundational rebuilding and something I love it in those conversations where you're talking about, you know, what's your process, what's our process? One of my favorite and probably also annoying things to do in those meetings is just asking a question like what does everyone think that a customer is, you know, or what does everyone think a lead is? You know? Or like some of the and and I'll you realize that the conversation then devolves into like an hour long. Oh, we're not even speaking the same language. I'm curious if you add any of those common language stories along the way. Now, you just triggered. You just trigger something for me, which was it was what is an account right, like is it a company? And in our and in the log me in world, it was a company and there was just one purchase per company. Essentially we'd have all the purchases under one umbrella company. But on the guy who's side, the way that they were set up, they had these things called billion to ties, which were like buyers within a company. So you could have more than one because there's departmental buyers and you know, divisions and things like that, and it completely complicated our architecture to this day, right, because but we were operating off of different definitions, right, different different structures, and they actually didn't have a concept of a company the way we did, and we had to blend those two together. And I think that's scenario where best of both may have created a compromise solution that wasn't as good as either. Like both would have been better alone apart, were brought me together. It was not as good the some of the parts was not as good as the as the part. So yeah, absolutely, definitions. That's another great learning as like sit down, the first you need to do is go through the really mundane, trivial what's a customer? What's a lead? What's a company? You know, because you could get three months down the road and a project and realize that you're... |
| 00:16:00 - 00:18:00 |
...just not on the same page. You just been thrown around the same terminology. Yeah, and then their massive icebergs that you hit once you get to them. Right. So, yeah, I guess, rather than just because those those mismatchs is tend to just come up organically and conversation along the way. But if you just sit down right out of the gates and say here all the words that we use, what the hell do these words meet to you and what do they mean to us? Of might might accelerate that that common language. So what was the next big milestone in the big trains after after this one? Well, you know, we continued our acquisition sort of momentum and strategy. We acquired Jive, which was a cloud telephony provider out of Utah, pretty decent sized company. I think there about four hundred and fifty employees at the time and although it was in the same space, the UCC space, they had a hardware they had out you know, they had a hardware business. They were heavily involved with, you know, indirect channel and partner sales, things that we were not sort of it's not part of our DNA to that point, and so we had a lot to learn from them and that point, and I think, you know, versus the the the situation example, where we were saying best of both, I think we just sort of relented on this one said Hey, you know, you we don't do hardware. You guys do hardware, so tell show us how to do it right. You work better with partners. Show us how to do it, and that made things that, I would say, you know, a bit easier at the outset. And we had other we had other challenges that we didn't face in the past with like, you know, how they worked, how they collaborated. They use, you know, Google Docs and the rest company uses Microsoft. So so that took it actually, you know, what I think I learned from from that integration was every every company that gets acquired has its own unique culture and they have their own ways of working and they have their own you know, like history and they've done the battle scars and there's a sense of camaraderie that they have that they will never have with the broader company, and that's just kind of the way it is. The only way to get them to feel like they're part of the broader company is to actually start integrating how they work and the systems they use and start building those relationships outside of whatever it is right like we have, and it's not. I'm not sort of calling out drive because it was the same with... |
| 00:18:00 - 00:20:00 |
...every other company that we acquired and you could leave them alone. We leave them alone. They never identify with the parent company, they identify with their original company. So, you know, getting them to adopt Microsoft three hundred and sixty five, starting to integrate our products together, starting to, you know, get them into our sales and marketing systems and, you know, having them influence how we might run a campaign or how we how we you know, broth throw events for the channel. Those things start integrating the people and the process into the broader company and make us feel like we're one versus. You know, we have these pockets of subcultures. If you want to call them that right. That take awhile to sort of wash out, and it's not like I say that I'm not IBM right. We're not. Are Not blue washing people. We want to maintain a level of diversity of thinking and of you know, like they should whatever make them unique. They should keep that and maintain that, but sometimes those things get in the way of the broader goals as as an organization. So, you know, I think the learning from there is it's not just about saying, okay, you're now part of this company. It's like, well, we got to actually technically make you part of that company by integrating your workflows, your system, thems, your tools and your people kind of all the same time. That makes a lot of sense. It's it's kind of the digital equivalent of what used to happen when we were all in offices. Is You know when you have a one team on the third floor and part of the team moves to the fourth floor, all of a sudden the fourth floor folks are dead to you, right like you don't you don't have the same release. It's if they used to have and and it's kind of like the same thing, but that you have the Google Docs folks and this air point folks and the sharepoint folks are dead to the Google drive people until you get them all on the same platform. Ide like exactive a lot of times. Yeah, exactly. When you're looking at those consolidations, I think a lot of the focus can sometimes be on efficiency and license fees, but it sounds it's really more about that being on the same team, getting the cultures aligned and and using the systems in the process as a little bit as the motivator behind that. Yeah, I think the synergies in the saving should always be like, yes, they're they're a huge benefit, but they can't be the driving factor. Like if... |
| 00:20:00 - 00:22:00 |
...you go into those if you go into those activities saying we're doing this because it's going to save US money, you're probably going to fail. If you go to them saying we're doing this because it makes us work better, work smarter, we're more aligned, we drive better and employee engagement, we get more done, Oh oh yeah, it's also going to save US money. That's a cherry on top then that. Like that's a much better approach because there should be a real reason for employees because if employees will see right through that anyway, you're just trying to save a book, right that? How is this helping me? You're just trying to save a book. So you really have to start with the what is the benefit to them to get their work done and do more meaningful work or do more innovative work? And then if the if a company saves money, then they'll they're happy to hear it, but they don't at the end of the day, they don't care that much about it. Right. See, you go through all these these acquisitions and transformations and you're probably getting your legs under you. Things are feeling good. And pandemic. Yeah, yeah, and actually I should I should mention that at the time the pandemic kid I was in the role the chief of staff to the CEO. So it is in a unique in a different position than I was for the for the rest of these stories. So I had a my role very much, very quickly pivoted to how do we make sure that, you know, employee health and safeties number one. At the time, early, early pandemic, it's like hey, kids, everyone home? Is everyone safe? What do we need to do to make sure that our employees? How would they need to stay safe? And being a remote you know, collaboration, Connectivity Company by Nature It, we had a leg up, I'd say, in a lot of people. Right. So I wasn't worried about can our employees work from home? They all could. It was are they comfortable working from home? And once their home, can they continue to collaborate and be informed and communicate and get the resources they need? And so, you know, over the and then as that, as obviously the pandemic continued, we went past like sort of the emergency response phase to continue of sort of a continuous here's how we're going to be. We made some big decisions pretty early, which is we're going to keep the ought. Like... |
| 00:22:00 - 00:24:00 |
...many companies were, keep the offices closed for, you know, a year and then we kept pushing it out, pushing it out up. But to give our employees sort of clarity about when, when do I need to come back to need to worry about coming back, was really what we were hearing. And then we also declared very early, over a year ago, that we were going to be a remote centric company. So we were going to shut down some offices, we were going to, you know, declare that nobody, no, no one who works for log me and is going to have a desk with their name on it anymore and no one's going to work in the office five days a week. And you know, though, we knew that that wasn't going to work for everybody, although I think we've been pleasantly surprised that most of our employees are are very happy with that flexibility and it shows through in our engagement surveys and and we've seen some other folks in the space say that and then sort of backtrack or walk it back a little bit in the last six months. We'll actually know we want you to come back in the office and and and I think that there's been some blowback on that and and I'm proud of I'm proud of the position we took. But in order to make that work, you know, some of the activities we need to undergo. WAS, first of all, like, what is our policy? Where can I work? Right, you said work, work from anywhere. Is it really anywhere? Can I move to Switzerland? Is that okay? Can I you know, and so we had to put some guard rails in place for our employees to know like yes, you can move. I moved from Massachusetts Vermont. That was okay. Could I have moved to, you know, New Zealand, probably not. We don't have you know, much sense for me time zone wise. So, you know, we had to help people out through those conversations. Could be a lot of fun, but I'm here to work. George then and we had the like, you know, and then you build on that and you say like well it it's okay. Like when you think about tax and visa and all these other complexities that most employees don't think about when you just go to the office every day. We have employees in Europe and they, you know, they work in Ireland but they have their families are in France or in Sweden or whatever they are, and they want to go home for the holidays and they and they had the opportunity last year to say, instead of going home for two days, can I go home for like three weeks and just work there? So we work through that and said yes with all the visa stuff and said yes, go home, you know, work for a week in Sweden, take... |
| 00:24:00 - 00:26:02 |
...a week off and they get the holidays off anyway, and that's a huge benefits or employed or that's really starts to embrace that flexible, flexible workstyle. So then it was so first it was what can I do and how can I do and work and I do it, and then it really start to pivot into like all right, well, how do we work differently in a remote world? And we started leaning into training around like how to be a better remote manager? How do we how do we have people think about, you know, productivity, metrics and trust versus you know, butts and seats, you know, metrics. How do we break people of those sort of behaviors? How do you drive a asynchronous communication culture? You know, by embracing more writing, and we just we fortuitously had some people come over from Amazon in the last couple of years worth. You know, I think people probably read about the Amazon writing culture. No power point there, and we've embraced components of that and it's been super helpful in a remote world because you can come to a meeting and you have a you know, you have a document written out and it makes that decisionmaking much faster but also leaves behind this asset for anyone who wasn't in the meeting to read and understand and understand the context behind it. So asynchronous communications, how do we how do we be more sympathetic to the time zone and working hours of our colleague? So started putting things in our signatures like, hey, I maybe responding email at eleven o'clock at night because that's what works for me. Does not mean that you need to respond to this email now, like you respond to it when you're when you're ready. So it's about empathy. It's about understanding the flexibility of others, because it's all everyone's definition of flexibility is different, so we have to really understand that. But it's about making sure that we raise the bar on what common ground is, because it's not the hallway conversation in the office anymore. It's about that, like that paper trail or that digital paper trow that you're leaving behind, of work being done, progress being made or decisions being made. That's sort of like that's been the last eighteen months, that that evolution is still going. Our offices are reopen, but we're learning. How do people want to use them? Right, like the the usage patterns of change. Utilization is changed and we have a lot to learn, but we're just going into it as we don't know. We don't know. We... |
| 00:26:02 - 00:28:00 |
...don't have all the answers. So we're going to learn from our employees and continue to continue to move all of us we go. That's awesome, right. We haven't talked about this, but I'm curious, if we're going to be aligned on this is how many of those kind of in on on site, offsite norms are you pushing down to the team level, because my hypoth this is the more you can put down to the team level kind of it. Well, you do need to set the guard rails at a high level. If the team can decide when they're going to be in the office when they're not, rather than kind of global mandates across the Country Company, it tends to, I think, be a better approach. Are You doing that? I think we're aligned because we haven't pushed anything down, like, we haven't pushed anything done. We've given some, you know, I'd say high level guidance. It says, you know, the one day we've been get some with is going to the office should be intentional in some way. Right, like it is my belief that going to the office just to get your work done isn't compelling enough for someone to sit through the commute or get on an airplane or whatever they have to do to get there, just to set at a desk and get their work done. It's not reason to be there. That's how I feel personally. I think that's on most of my team feels. So you have to have some intentional reason to be there. Is it a workshop to solve a specific problem? Are you celebrating a big win? Is a company all hands, a bit, you know, an award ceremony, whatever it might be? Or sometimes it's just the fact that you hear that some other teams are doing those activities. So you feel like if I go there, I might be able to catch up and see like five or ten different people that I wouldn't normally say so that might be a compelling reason to get there. So there's this like I equated to like when you found out, you know, if you think about when you're younger and you're like, I don't know if I want to go to that party, but then you find out like all you, all these other friends are going to that party and now something that party seems like a really cool place to be. That's how I feel like people are proaching the going to the office. These days like well, who's going to be there? But we have not told teams when and why they should be in the office. We have let that, let them decide, because I think that's going to help us learn a lot more right, because teams are going to approach it from different angles. Some things are going to work, some things are not, and once we have these lessons learned, we will start sharing those around the org. |
| 00:28:00 - 00:30:02 |
And the one thing to remember, though, even now office are open, we are still operating in a pandemic state. Right. We are still at like fifty percent capacity. We still have social distancing measures, we still have all the amenities open. People, some people, kids, aren't vaccinated yet. They don't feel comfortable coming to the office. So for everything that we've done so far, is all with a grain of salt, like this isn't really post pandemic world yet, right. I think maybe when, you know, I know we're on the precipice of vaccines for kids. I think once we once we get past that, that will be another big milestone. Or so only I think they'll be another batch of employees who feel comfortable coming into the office, you know, and then we'll see where that goes from there. Well, yeah, and I love pushing the decisions down to the team because it's really remote, or not remote, it just it's all team norms. You know, how do you how you guys going to work together? And it's going to be different for sales team, our product team or marketing team, and just giving them the control. And I love being intentional. It's funny. We've we've been remote since beginning, since day one. So I'm what the eighteen years at this point, and we were always we would always have clients. It's a okay, so you guys are going to be here Monday to Thursday, right every single week, and we're like, well, we'll be here when we need to be here and and it's going to be an intentional and that would be a difficult conversation to have in the past. Where it's now, it's it's a bit easier of a conversation. So I'm glad that everyone's kind of mentoring in that. In that realm, we're like we're all catch it up to we're all catching up. So maybe one note to then finish on is, you know, how do you feel about transitioning from go fast and break things to then being a go slow to go fast guy. Just personally, it can be maddening sometimes. I feel like my me, the individual, if I need to get work done, my general approach is still go fast, get stuff done. ME, as a leader trying to have successful outcome, has a very healthy appreciation for the need to pause, assess, discover, ask questions, document, get everyone aligned and then move forward. So it's a little bit of a constant struggle for... |
| 00:30:02 - 00:32:04 |
...me, but I do think there's a happy medium. Right. I think there's a way to figure out, with the benefit of experience and hindsight, to figure out exactly what those icebergs might be in the future that you recognize, pull those up to the front and at least sketch out the parameters of what you're trying to do. That allows the team to move fast while you fill on the gaps along the way. Right. I think the alternative is like, all right, we can't start until we know every single detail and every decision and we have a gap chart built out for the whole program that's not like I never want to do that. Right. I want to be able to say what are the key assumptions that we need? What are the tenants or what are the guiding principles that everyone who needs to do the work understands and then make sure everyone's aligned on that and then let each each team or group kind of run along those rails and when they start bumping into each other, then you bubble that up for some sort of, you know, disposition or understanding. So there's a a little bit of a happy medium, but you can't go pell Mell like into the wilderness like I may have probably six years ago. I think that all that. There's some there's some frontwork that has to get done that I have a full blown appreciation for now. Yeah, and I think it's not it ones better back to their earlier points. It's not the best or not. It's time and place and how do you put the right guard rails around when the right time of the right right place is yeah, and how complex of a problem is? And how many people do you have? Like all, there's so many different variables that go into the yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, Chris, thanks how much. Is a heck of a journey. A lot of great accomplishments along the way, lessons learned. Always love hearing stories from the trenches. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, my pleasure George happy to be here. Technology should serve vision, not set it. At intevity we design clear blueprints for organization readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new past. Then we drive the implementation of those plans with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at www that intevitycom you've been listening to see sweet blueprint. If... |
| 00:32:04 - 00:32:17 |
...you like what you've heard, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss a new episode. And why you're there. We'd love it if you could leave a rating. Just give us however many stars you think you deserved. Until next time,. |
