| 00:00:00 - 00:02:00 |
You're listening to C suite blueprint, the show for C suite leaders. Here we discuss no bys approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show. Amory, thanks so much for joining me. You're welcome. I'm excited to be here. So I figured one great place to start is level set a little bit on. You know, what is diplomacy and cultural affairs? I think a lot of people have misconceptions. They probably I mean, maybe I'll ask you this way. Is it just fancy dinners and cocktails, Marie? Well, I wish it was, but actually it's really, I think, just people of people engagement, where it's the personal relationships that are so transformative, whether it's people from other countries coming to the United States and experience it and the immersion of it, and an individual is going to other countries, people like myself, who went to Poland and Hungary as a delegate for the American Council of Young Political Leaders. The way they put a delegation together for that group. For example, it was Republicans, Democrats and independents from different states, women and men. Where we went to Poland and Hungary, we went to a large city and we went to a small city in each of those two countries and it was very transformative and of course the group actually really bonds together. You might have different opinions as Americans, but at the end of the trip you become lifelong friends after the two weeks and we've also had reunions and I was so excited about being part of this delegation that I actually served on the board so I could actually help nominate more young leaders. But I just give that as an example because I personally know how impactful that was for me on my trip and I what happens when people come here, whether they are high school student or Fulbright scholar or students, are teachers or PhDs go outbound. It's it's just incredibly apple. And lastly, I'll... |
| 00:02:00 - 00:04:00 |
...share people like Margaret Thatcher, who came as a young parliamentarian. She had not really traveled much. She came as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program and that program's celebrated eighty years in and I was able to unveil her picture. This is right before covid hit and as part of the eight faces of exchange, and I quoted a letter and she said after her trip that she'll always be a friend of the United States and so consequently to go to cities across the US to meet people, to have lifelong relationships. It's actually creates these channels. So even when we have times in the world like we have today, there are always people that know each other personally that they can always reach out to and have a conversation, and so that really is what people of people diplomacy is and it's actually was listed in the natural security strategy for the United dates about the power of those networks. MM HMM. I love the relationship equity and what one thing I love is is Um I'm interested to hear your perspective going from the corporate world into government and diplomacy because there's so many parallels. But I think the first thing that I loved about it, based off for our last conversation, is you found ways to really measure the results. I think in a lot of ways people would say, well, is this just warm and fuzzy stuff in relationships? You know, can we really measure it? Why would we invest in it? And I'd love to hear you know how you took those those those concepts of measuring results into diplomacy. I always measured throughout my whole career in business. I always remember what Tom Peters said. You get what you measure. When I went to the U S Department of State, I use all my business skills and started with creating a collective set of goals, which we did as a whole bureau. We actually created goals around the national security strategy, the four pillars, and... |
| 00:04:00 - 00:05:59 |
...then the fifth goal we created was around measurement and impact. As far as I'm concerned, and I think we had a lot of support, measuring is one way you can really understand whether a program is effective or not, and I can tell you this. Here we are in this very important, critical time and one of the measurements that we had was how many young leaders that came as high school and the future leaders exchange as an example, have gone on to be bigger leaders in their countries. Of the Ukrainian parliament were part of the future leaders exchange, where they come for ten months, live with the host family, participate in school, part of Yearbook Clubs, let's save in football team and then they do approximately three hours of community service in the US. They live all around the US and I had an opportunity to speak to them as a collective group from all these countries, from eastern Europe and said, troll Asia. The program have been going on for close to twenty eight years now, and what I would just say is it makes me feel very good just knowing that these young people who went into leadership positions had an opportunity to learn about rule of law, democracy, freedom, and I believe a lot of those people are those that are they're protecting their country today. So again, that's an example of a measurement that we were able to evaluate as part of our program that's impressive. That's a large percentage of folks that made it over there. That's great. I was wondering because I also I agree. I kind of feel that you can measure almost measure anything. Do you think there's things that you can't measure or should you be able to measure just about anything? I think you can just measure about anything. Most of my career was in business, where was much more measurement oriented. For example, I worked in just about every business function, marketing and finance and research,... |
| 00:06:00 - 00:08:03 |
...and then I worked in research and development and then I worked in a government affairs role and of course, most of my experience with what we call line versus staff, and line is where you're bringing in the revenue and then all of a sudden now you're in staff. And that was when I was working in public affairs, government affairs. So you have to show your value and what we did was we actually were able to take a board of Vision Board and measure just about everything, how many impressions we had. One of the things I remember clearly was a goal we had, which was to get connected to our member of Congress where our major locations were in the US, and we always we had basically a goal one per quarter to come out to our location and we were able to have five different members. So we overachieved in that goal and that was really important because now those members of Congress really got it understanding in our world of what telecommunications was. We had an opportunity talk about software, the cloud and see these individuals in their own district and so then you can actually talk to them before hearing and then they can act ask very important questions to witnesses and of course that's all measurable as an example. But I would just say instead of just saying, oh, we can't measure, we actually worked hard to say how how can we do that? And we we also talked about how we're performing against our goals every week, and that's one of the things I did at the U S Department of State. It's not enough to set up goals and measurements. You have to actually make sure that everybody continues to measure against it and report out. And it was exciting for me because we set up a meeting every month where people could talk about their projects and how they were measuring and what the outcomes were against the goals. And now that was to me very exciting. That's great. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm a firm believer that if you don't measure it, it doesn't get done. But I know that it can be dangerous because even myself, what I've been guilty of is if you measure the wrong things... |
| 00:08:03 - 00:10:00 |
...and you you let people know that you're measuring those things, then you get behavior that you don't want, you know. So a lot of the challenge seems to be making sure that you're measuring the right things. Otherwise you just have a hundred numbers in front of you right. That reminds me of when I first started my career. Was All about total quality management. And quadrant two, which was right things right and if you were taught that, but it was, you know, going back to what were the important things to measure and you want to be right about those instead of just some measuring things that were weren't very important. And I think you know you're you're going back to like what types of things that I bring over. I always in my entire career followed the Parado principle with the rule and it takes a little bit of work to decide which items are the priority, but it works every time and every distribution of a hundred there are always twenty out of the hundred that will yield the of the reason vults. So you have to say to yourself or what are you trying to achieve, which, in essence, accounts countries programs are going to yield the most results. And it doesn't mean that you don't do anything for the others, but it's just really important. And even when I taught at the university, I would tell the students the same thing. I mean you could spend all your time on something that's worth ten percent or or really size up what the teachers looking for and say, well, if I do these two things and it's going to be the grade. I really should put my time and effort on those. And that's really how we did things at the US Department of State in the bureau. Nothing more frustrating than spending your time on the wrong ten or you know. And then there's the other aspect, which is you can measure it, but but you know, how do you know if you're doing a good job? Is that measurement good? Is it bad? Are we saying bagging ourselves? And last time we spoke we talked a bit about baselining and I'd love to hear you know your experience. You Know How you've leveraged baselining and how that's worked for you. |
| 00:10:01 - 00:12:01 |
Well, I really like that question because my whole career I learned how to benchmark and it's been very important throughout my entire career. What that means is that you have to look at the best of class, of of who does what best and anything you're trying to measure. For example, my early career at the time for retail mail order sales, it was l l being had the best field rate. So if you're going to create a direct mail program basically for package goods, retail or, let's say credit cards that was American expressed for collections. You have to look at how to benchmark. So one of the things I did when I went into the government affairs job I was trying to get advocacy from the United States government. So I went around to all these government officials and I said what company does the best job of advocating? And I won't share with you with company, but it was unanimous. And then what I learned from that was that there was an advocacy center at the U S Department of Commerce and that the United States could advocate for you if you fit all an application and then you could have the US government officials advocate on a on a deal to another country. So I use the avcacy process. When I was part of a bid, loosen was the prime at the time, with M C I S A sept for a. It was called the fiber optic ring in Afghanistan, and the reason I say that was I learned a lot because I ended up meeting with that company, learned how they do things and then I emulated and drew a model. And then the other thing I did from another example was another company was winning all these grants. So I asked them again, you're not sharing anything proprietary, how they did it, and I actually drew a model and we decided to hire a grant writer and emulate what they had done. So it really helped us. And so so now you go into the U S Department of State. I went in before I went into the position and I before my hearing,... |
| 00:12:03 - 00:14:01 |
I had relationships with the previous assistant secretaries, who all publicly endorsed me. I also met with them to learn how they approached the bureau and how they looked at problems and any advice that they could provide. I found that to be incredibly valuable. Met With my predecessor and uh for about four hours and then I met with another one of the former assistant secretaries for about five hours. So even when I went to go teach at the university, I never had top before, but I had been on five university boards. So one faculty member went on a Sabbatical for two years. I took that person's classes and what happened was I ended up trying to decide how to teach them. So I went to three different classes of different faculty members that taught that class once I saw how they did it, I decided what my way of doing things would be and I created kind of a hybrid of that. And then from that I really learned how kind of what my own teaching style was and of course I actually started, uh getting to you, having lessons as a faculty member. I was teaching full time and I would sit in on other classes. So I and and I had a mentor that really helped me. He actually had been on Broadway as a child actor. He was an outstanding professor, but he talked to me about how to kind of walk the room and get the students engaged, and so I would just say that this was audio, visual and sensory, but we were really trying to get the students involved. I did a lot of field trips. But going back to how did I do it, and even, you know, going back to State Department or teaching at a university or working in major crump companies, I would always try to meet with people. I also asked for mentors. That's one of the things I would let you know that I actively sought mentors, asked for them and I was fortunate enough to have some, but oftentimes I had to seek them out and people that would go and meet with to get advice. |
| 00:14:03 - 00:16:03 |
So I think I would just say that you cannot sit there waiting. You have to be proactive. Yeah, and learning from the best, learning from your predecessors. It's you know, there's a wealth of knowledge to be absorbed and my experience has been if you look to the if you talk to the people who are the best at something, they're usually very happy to tell you because, guess what, there's really no secrets in there. It's usually a lot of hard work and they know that it's going to take you a lot of hard work to get there. You know, always remember back when apple was was was first getting huge success with design, and I talked to clients and they'd say we want our experience to be just like apple and like go look at how much they've invested in making their experience how wonderful it is, and you'll realize that you're not. You don't have the you probably don't have the willingness to invest as much as they have in there. So I find that that benchmarking and not just tells you you know where the right target is, but it helps you justify how much you should invest in something. Um and get your arms around that. Well, I will also add that what I was in the telecommunications world, I was responsible for the Political Action Committee and we didn't have a very big one and there were two major telecommunications operators. They had the largest pack groups, and so what I did was I actually decided to have the interns, who are very smart, give them the assignment to go out and meet with the PAC managers. So we created questions of how they did it, and so constantly. The two companies were a t and T and verizon, who are our major operators that bought from our us as an infrastructure provider, and it was really terrific because we learned actually how to create a whole program for our own company and we ended up having the president of the United States, excuse me, not of the United States, but for our company in the US, being in charge of our PAC program and we also create a lot of visibility for those people that decided to support it. That's fantastic and looking at some of the programs that that... |
| 00:16:03 - 00:18:03 |
...you accomplished at the Department of State, you know, I'd love to hear a little bit about how do you bring together all these multiple cultures, because even if you look at any global corporation, they all have their micro cultures. You know, based off the location, what functional group they are in the business and you want to get people together, but you also want them to maintain their own voice and their own agency while collaborating and building relationships. I'm curious what your approach has been there. Well, one of the things I did was I try to think of ways to bring people together and I'm a big fan of learning and knowledge. So I had to try and decided to create a policy series and people could choose to be part of it where they could come in person and then they also could listen in and what it also brought me back to my business days and I really replicated it where we brought in top officials inside the State Department to be speakers each month. And so why was that important? Well, if you have very senior officials inside of the State Department now speaking one at a time each month about their bureaus or their subjects, they have a much more ownership and what you're doing because they want they had to prepare to we we go over with them about how we're already engaging and oftentimes there were meetings afterwards were individuals and their teams actually met with our people and how we could do more collaboration. And then the other benefit was that we actually had kind of resources that were created that we could reference. And then we also created an orientation program to help new employees in our bureau actually learn all about the rest of the U S Department of State and also be much more knowledgeable on a lot of policy topics. And these were, of course, you know, the topics were presented by these experts like ambassadors, under secretaries, et Cetera, and one topic I remember was very important to me was religious freedom and also the weakers, and so... |
| 00:18:03 - 00:20:00 |
I thought it was important for us to understand it. So we that was just an example, but every month we had a different topic and and that brought people together. That's great, yeah, and really empowering them to to have an ownership in the process. That makes a lot of sense to me. So you oversaw a tremendous amount of programs. I'm curious, out of them, which one is are you the most proud of? Well, I had a a staff for team of proximately seven individuals and a budget proximately seven sixty million dollars, and I had a global responsibility. One of the programs I was very happy and proud of was I was asked to try to help create a program and very quick timing, to empower women around the world and bring them into the global workforce. That was around a White House initiative, and so we went right out to Thunderberg Global School of Management at Arizona State and there was a program called dream builder, which was created by Freeport mcmarn and this was to help entrepreneurs learned business. It was developed in Spanish and it was developed in English. It was about thirteen weeks and what we found was a lot of people have businesses but they don't have any business training. So that's really important. You know, how do you create a business plan? How do you do marketing? How do you get investors, for example? And so consequently I signed an M O U With Arizona States, Michael Crow and the CEO free part macgrin, and we created a program now here's where we created program because this is an online course. We had embassies launched these and have cohorts of women and it was very diverse. So it could be young women or old women, older women that wanted to develop business skills and then they were trained and they were given mentors. And who were these mentors? Many of people were part of its alumni netw work. We had... |
| 00:20:00 - 00:22:00 |
...three or fifty thousand people a year in exchange programs and millions of alumni that could help mentor these women. So, for example, I went out to Columbia and launched this program there, and I'll just tell you that we started with twenty six countries, when I left was eighty countries and I brought in a major corporation, as as partners like ups and Amazon and Master Card to try to help even leverage the money even further. But when I went to Columbia launched this program, we had a woman that came up on stage with tears in her eyes. She had she was a woman that created uniforms, and so from this program she was able to now create from two jobs six jobs, which is very important because a lot of these women never had the skills or the knowledge and the tools and then mentors. So that, to me was incredibly powerful program and there's a number of different alumni today that have been, you know, developing their businesses and and actually hiring more employees, and I'm very happy. And what did we call that program? We created it and it was we called it Academy with Academy of Women Entrepreneurs, which is awe, and in Africa, when I launched it in Ghana, they called it a way. So, but I would just you know, I was so proud of it and there are women every week that are still talking about this program and I still get people in my network that contact me about the successes that they're having with their businesses. That's so great. Yeah, I mean, speaking from experience, I feel that entrepreneurs typical business training is just a series of very expensive mistakes along the way. That's my experience has been a bit you know. I'm curious, then, what were the big things that you found that were the same versus where the different between your corporate life and your government life? Well, one of the college students asked me a question. I still remember. She was part of the program called a... |
| 00:22:00 - 00:24:03 |
...critical language scholar. The critical language call was fifteen different critical languages and they would go outbound as college students and I think some are seniors in high school, and she said, Assistant Secretary Royce, you were a businesswoman and now you're a government official. Tell us how you work with the Bureau and what's the same. And I said, you know, and I did it spontaneously, but I said every single day in business I woke up and I thought about the stockholder. I said every single day in the in the U S Department of State, I wake up and I think about the taxpayer, because what I do every day is I think, how can I do things that are going to impact the taxpayer, because they're giving us money, just like the stockholder in a company. Because I always thought to myself, let's think about that woman or a man their whole life has invested in your in your company, and here they are at the stockholder meeting with gray hair. They're giving you their money as an investment, and that's really the way I see it as as a taxpayer. So one of the things I did with the Foreign Policy Journal, I actually did something and I was asked to do it and I was happy to write it, which was how exchanges payoff for Americans. So sometimes people say, well, how does this benefit me? And so my goal was to make the case of why, and one of the examples I used was the why Wylife program was young leaders from Latin America and they were actually partnered with businesses in the United States. So I had incredible numbers. Going back to measuring D for Preneurs who are doing supply chain trade. Two businesses here in the US, for example, a company in Charlotte, was now selling to a company in Latin America and they never would have done that if they hadn't been a part of this exchange program. So the great benefit us there was more money coming into the community in the United States,... |
| 00:24:03 - 00:26:00 |
...as an example, and more international sales. So that's an example of where it would pay off for an American or just even the fact that these individuals come to your community so every person can have an international experience. You could live to be part of your community and be engaged through global ties. Global ties is forty thousand people in the US plus are part of this and they decide. Well, I'm I'm in my city and I want to meet international exchange participants when they come to town. I did a video just see. I'd be happy to share it with Ambassador Daniel Mallhall. He's a little bit over forty. Five years ago he's the ambassador of Ireland. He came from Waterford, Ireland at age nineteen to St Louis Missouri, sorry, Kansas City, I'm sorry, Kansas City Missouri, as a summer work travel exchange participant and he said it was so transformative that it changed his life. He was mentored by businessmen. I think they're Irish American businessmen. They took him to restaurants and ball games, but he had never met anyone from an international perspective and he carried that through his life and now he's the sitting ambassador for Ireland here in the United States. So again he made he went back and captured all this. We actually had a film crew go out when he when he told me he was going out to kind of retrace his steps, I asked our team to go out and follow him. We also got on the nightly news. But it's a good example of why that was so powerful. And not only did he get impacted, but he also impacted the community that he was in as a as an Irish young man, and sometimes people never had the experience of meeting anyone internationally. So here, here they get to go all these communities and it's just really powerful. Yeah, some of US can forget that. You know that some of us that maybe travel more. |
| 00:26:00 - 00:28:02 |
Forget that we might, that we're very lucky to do so and that there's a tremendous amount of people who, you know, they it's kind of thirty, thirty minutes or, you know, thirty miles around their hometown. They don't go too much farther than that. I found it interesting, though, about the way you explain the differences are commonalities between government and commercial, because it does come back to that measurement. It was how you measure yourself. Who You who are you accountable to, right and so I think that that's really inspiring, always remembering who it is every day that you wake up. Who are you accountable today, wherever you happen to be? So, Marie, I, I always like to finish on a fun note. You know, given the great mentors that you've had throughout your whole life and career, what's the best advice that you've ever received? That's a tough question here. I've had a lot of advice. Well, I do have one I can give you because I actually had a chance to do this at the State Department when I was there. I never did anything personally where I kind of did a training and when covid hit, I thought, you know, I'd really like to do something for the Bureau and Actually, and I opened it up to all of public diplomacy, which was larger than my bureau, and it was basically the advice that I was given by my mentor. I was told by my mentor that I had to teach basically treat everything like I was the conductor of an orchestra and every person is like a person in the orchestra, that they all know their part, whether it's the violinists, the cello player, the flutist, the pianist, but they're waiting for you to bring them all together and to play the piece the way the composer has created it. Bringing everybody together and each individual is so important. So what I did was I took a top I asked the top conductor here in Washington to do a training with me and we actually showed very about six a misconductors and rehearsal and... |
| 00:28:02 - 00:30:02 |
...how they and how each person prepared for that, full well knowing that each individual can play these parts, but the way the conductor leads them is critically important. So what what that really demonstrates, and I think it's incredibly important, is that, as a leader. You have to make sure that every single person contributes and that every single and making sure you're bringing them in at the right time and that you also are including them, because the piece will never be complete if it's not done that way. That's fantastic. I feel like I need to have a conductor on the podcast now. Well, if you want a conductor, I've got one and he's fantastic and it's also interesting to tie it back to your your earlier points. You know what's something I know we do internally. We try to make sure that every single person on the team has at least one thing it's measurable for them so they can see how they're performing against it and maybe that that gets to that point of the conductor is every single person needs to be contributing and makes a lot of sense. I know it's funny because you think you know, let's say a person was doing a triangle or sand block or whatever it could be. Imagine taking that, that instrument out of the piece. It's it's not what was the composer had planned. That's not the piece. It's not complete, and so sometimes people think that somebody is not that important, but every person is important. It's interesting. You said it's not completely it's not even a matter is it better or worse. It's just not what it was meant to be at that point, even with the smallest thing not there. I agree. And what was so interesting about the presentation is the conductor said, look how excited everyone is, and it was so interesting to watch because you saw these musicians... |
| 00:30:03 - 00:31:33 |
...who are just exceptional, anxiously awaiting for the conductor to come into the room, and they were. In other words, they knew there, they knew their instrument, but they were looking to that conductor to lead them and and it's so great when you think about it, because they could actually do that, do it all by themselves. But the bomb mine is that the conductors bring them all together and it's it's exciting because the conductor has to help them come to the composer's vision. I love it the same way that diplomacy helps bring people together and build those relationships. Marie, this was truly enjoyable. Thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much for having me, and it was really fun. And again, people, diplomacy is just incredibly important. Sure is. Thanks for me. Take care. Technology should serve vision not said. At intevity, we design clear blueprints for organizational readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new pass then we drive the implementation of those plans with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at www dot intevity dot com. You've been listening to see sweet blueprint. If you like what you've heard, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts 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 deserve. Until next time. |
