Welcome to Modern Digital Business!
June 8, 2023

Getting What You Intend from Your Organizational Design -- Business Breakthrough 3.0 with Ken Gavranovic

On this episode of Modern Digital Business, Lee invites Ken to discuss organizational design principles and the importance of aligning teams and leaders to drive desired outcomes. The conversation covers various topics such as the Kubler-Ross change curve, company culture, and the "Valley of Despair" during a migration or transformation projects. They also share practical guidance on implementing Agile methodologies and how to articulate the value of that to higher-ups.

This episode announces the new book, Business Breakthrough 3.0, written by Lee Atchison and Ken Gavranovic. Lee and Ken emphasize the importance of effective communication within organizations.

Quotes

Creating Dynamic Organizations: "If you can really think through those patterns, not only do you build a highly profitable, fast moving organization [...] but it's also a win for the employees, because when you create that kind of dynamic organization, customers love the business, and employees simply love their job."

— Ken Gavranovic 

"Measuring Organizational Improvements: Companies often make one of three mistakes when they determine what data they want to measure. They either measure not enough data, measure too much data, or just measure the wrong things."

— Lee Atchison

The Importance of Instilling Company Values: "If you think about employees that say they're engaged, the quality of work that they do, versus somebody who feels they're just a cog on the wheel, they're just going through the motions. And the efficiencies are night and day at all scales of organizations."

— Ken Gavranovic

The Power of Subconscious Mentality: "When I think of in our own subconscious minds, the thing that comes to mind the most is when you see commercials for restaurants showing you pictures of food that make you hungry, and you're more likely to spend more money, the more, the hungrier you are."

— Lee Atchison 

"The Importance of Organizational Design: if you have poor organizational design, you're going to have poor results."

— Ken Gavranovic

"Organizational Structures: If you want to have your organization respond in a certain way, you want to organize it in a way that allows that response to occur."

— Lee Atchison 

The Importance of Instilling Company Values: "If you think about employees that say they're engaged, the quality of work that they do, versus somebody who feels they're just a cog on the wheel, they're just going through the motions. And the efficiencies are night and day at all scales of organizations."

— Ken Gavranovic

"The Valley of Despair": "But so many companies will actually stop right in the middle of that valley when things are worse than they were before and won't finish their project or won't finish the migration because they've lost track of what they really valued in the migration and frankly, why they started doing it in the first place."

— Lee Atchison

Q&A

1. What is the importance of organizational design in driving desired outcomes?

Answer: Poor organizational design can lead to unhealthy friction and frustration. Therefore, it is important to be intentional about organizational design and set up people processes to drive desired outcomes.

2. What are the consequences of lack of alignment between teams and leaders?

Answer: Lack of alignment between teams and leaders can cause friction and misalignment in the organization.

3. What is the Federated direct line reports center of Practice?

Answer: Detailed principles like Federated direct line reports center of Practice can help with organizational design.

4. Why should leaders be careful about what they measure and display?

Answer: People always do what they're incentivized to do; leaders need to be careful about what they measure and display. Measuring activity doesn't necessarily drive behaviors, and companies can fail if they focus on activity over outcomes.

5. How can companies ensure that everyone is aligned with the outcome?

Answer: Teams should be focused on outcomes and measurements should be visible to employees, so everyone knows how they're being measured. If teams are aligned with the outcome, they can work together and pivot on the strategy as long as they achieve the outcome.

6. What is the Kubler-Ross change curve?

Answer: The Kubler-Ross change curve is a model of the different stages people go through during change. These stages include shock, denial, disappointment, pivot, and acceleration, and can be applied to any transformation.

7. What is the importance of culture in a company?

Answer: Culture includes values, mission, vision, and how it's practiced in a company. Leaders who overlook toxic behavior by top performers are not living the culture and can harm the company, causing good employees to leave. It is essential to define and live culture purposefully.

8. What is the "Valley of Despair" in relation to migration or transformation projects?

Answer: The "Valley of Despair" is a period in transformation projects where the disadvantages tend to show up before the advantages, resulting in a dip in the application's performance or other negative effects. Many companies tend to lose focus and forget their objectives during this low point, which causes them to measure and focus on the wrong things.

9. What is the benefit of implementing a strong company culture?

Answer: Implementing a strong company culture can lead to a 30% to 40% increase in the efficiency of the organization and a 30% to 60% increase in employee engagement and job satisfaction.

10. Why is effective communication important in organizations?

Answer: Effective communication within organizations leads to success. Siloed mentality and walls occur when communication is not successful.

Timestamped Overview

[00:02:16] Organizations have a subconscious mentality influenced by stimuli such as food commercials leading to more spending, similar to how individuals react subconsciously.

[00:04:35] Culture needs to be purposeful, defined, and lived out, as it encompasses a company's values and how they are implemented. Failure to adhere to the culture, such as allowing toxic behavior to go unchecked, can be detrimental and cause the best people to leave.

[00:07:14] Two thirds of US employees are not engaged at work, causing both personal and company inefficiencies. Proper implementation of culture can lead to up to a 40% increase in organizational efficiency and employee engagement.

[00:09:45] Measure outcomes over activity, be careful what you measure and display, and make it visible to employees. Teams should focus on outcomes and pivot autonomously to achieve them, leading to better alignment and collaboration.

[00:14:14] Change is difficult for people and organizations, but with the right strategy and communication, it can lead to transformation, empowerment, and fulfillment. This applies to various situations, such as IT projects, personal transformations, and turnarounds in business or teams.

[00:19:44] Focusing on individual tasks without a bigger picture can lead to counterproductive results in an organization. A person's focus should be broad enough to encompass the organization's goals.

[00:21:50] The text discusses the importance of structuring teams to avoid inefficiencies and miscommunication. It includes examples of companies that struggled due to poor structural alignment and emphasizes the need for clear leadership and customer focus.

[00:25:45] Effective collaboration leads to success, discussed in book Business Breakthrough 3.0, available in a variety of formats. Expert guest Ken Garadovich thanked for his contribution to Modern Digital Business podcast.

Key Topics

Organizational Design:

- "You get what you design for"

- Lack of alignment can cause friction and misalignment

- Federated direct line reports center of Practice can help with organizational design

- Importance of being intentional about organizational design

- Outcomes over activity should be the focus

Transformation and Culture:

- Kubler Ross change curve can be applied to any transformation

- Culture includes values, mission, vision, and how it's practiced in a company

- Toxic behavior by top performers can harm the company

- Importance of defining and living the culture purposefully

- Valley of Despair in relation to migration or transformation projects

- Providing practical guidance on implementing Agile methodologies and how to articulate the value of that to higher-ups

- Two-thirds of employees in the United States are not actively engaged in work

- Implementing a strong company culture can lead to a 30%-40% increase in the efficiency of the organization

- The speaker believes that uncovering patterns of success can be crucial for a business to scale

Communication:

- Successful communication within organizations leads to success

- Siloed mentality and walls occur when communication is not successful

Book Recommendation

- "Business Breakthrough 3.0" by Lee Atchison and Ken Gavranovic talks about marketing strategies such as product-led growth and sales lead growth

- The book is available in various formats on Amazon and other platforms

Conclusion:

- The podcast host thanks Ken for being a guest and working on the project together

 

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Transcript

Speaker:

What does your subconscious mind have to do with how

 

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you run your business? Well, a lot more than you might

 

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expect. We have an extra special show today.

 

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Are you ready? Let's go.

 

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This is the Modern Digital Business podcast, the technical

 

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leaders guide to modernizing your applications and digital business.

 

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Whether you're a business technology leader or a small business innovator,

 

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keeping up with the digital business revolution is a must.

 

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Here to help make it easier with actionable insights and recommendations,

 

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as well as thoughtful interviews with industry experts. Lee Atchison.

 

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My guest today is a great friend of mine. He's been a CEO,

 

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a CPO, a CTO, and founder of his own

 

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company that he successfully brought to an IPO.

 

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I've worked with him for many years, and we've recently co authored

 

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a book that talks specifically about building a better business.

 

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He is one of my very best friends, Ken Gerardovich.

 

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Ken. Welcome to modern digital business. Lee,

 

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thanks for having me on. I'm really excited about our conversation and so

 

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excited about our book. I'm so excited about this book as well, too.

 

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So just to get everyone on the same page, ken and I

 

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co wrote a book. It's been in the works for

 

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about 1518 months now, and it's been

 

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released just recently. I'm very proud to announce the

 

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rival my latest book. Ken, your first book, business Breakthrough

 

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3.0. Ken, how does it feel now to be a published

 

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author? Well, it's exciting, and obviously,

 

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I couldn't have done it without you, Lee. So it was really exciting to work

 

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with somebody who's actually written books in the past and put

 

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into place something that you and I have seen so

 

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many times is companies are

 

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really only a collection of people, and they have those entrenched patterns.

 

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And if you can really think through those patterns, not only do you

 

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build a highly profitable, fast moving organization, but I know

 

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one of the key things. You and I were both excited. That's a win for

 

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the company, but it's also a win for the employees,

 

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because when you create that kind of dynamic organization,

 

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customers love the business, and employees simply love their job.

 

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Ken, when you and I first started working on the book, we focused

 

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a lot on what we call the subconscious mentality and how

 

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organizations have a subconscious mentality. When I think of

 

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in our own subconscious minds, the thing that comes to mind the most is

 

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when you see commercials for

 

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restaurants showing you pictures of food that make you hungry,

 

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and you're more likely to spend more money, the more,

 

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the hungrier you are. I can actually say those words.

 

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I really can. But the idea is, your subconscious is what's equating

 

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the site of food with the actual increase

 

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in hunger. It's not a real increase in hunger. It's a perceived subconscious

 

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reaction to seeing the food. The same sort of

 

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mentality applies to businesses as well.

 

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Businesses have their own minds. Yeah. Well, let's go back

 

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just to that part about us individually, because I've spent a lot of time

 

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thinking about why I do the way things I do, why employees,

 

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what's really the motivator? And I'm again, big believer,

 

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aside from the business part, is we all have kind of got this subconscious

 

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mind that's running us really based upon patterns that

 

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are millions of years old.

 

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We feel safety in numbers. Why? Because a long time ago, maybe a

 

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dinosaur might have eaten us if we weren't safety in

 

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numbers. You think about training like you've ever heard like NLP,

 

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where our mirror matching, where if somebody has the same posture

 

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as us, we feel more comfortable with that person. Well,

 

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you think about businesses. Businesses are really just a collection

 

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of people that believe in those same kind of patterns.

 

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If you're not careful, could be running your business, could be poisoning

 

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your business, or could be really helping your business scale. And I think that was

 

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one of the things that we thought, like, there's something really here to uncover

 

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because it's really the patterns of success. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

 

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It's breaking old patterns, creation of new patterns that

 

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make sense for your organization and rebuilding

 

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your business essentially from the ground up. So we

 

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talked a lot about the importance of culture and we both know that

 

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culture is critical to every organization.

 

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Ken, what do you think about that?

 

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Well, I always think about we've talked about this and

 

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worked with a lot of companies. A lot of companies. Like if you walk in

 

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and you say, hey, culture is important, everybody will say Culture

 

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is important. Every consultant will say, Culture is important. Every company

 

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will say, yes, culture is important here. But what we talk about is

 

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really being purposeful in your culture, defining it

 

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and living it. Because again, a lot of times people have words.

 

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But culture is really powerful because it encompasses

 

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not only your mission, your vision, your set of core values,

 

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but how you're living it. Like, for example, let's say that

 

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your culture is no aholes here, just throwing it

 

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out like raw. But you have a salesperson

 

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or you have a leader who's fantastic at their job but treats

 

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everybody like dirt. And leadership overlooks that

 

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you're not living your culture. And that's like a poison in

 

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the body, a poison in your company that just feeds in

 

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and slowly all the people that showed up because of the culture

 

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disappear. And usually those are your best people. And Leah,

 

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obviously we don't name companies and all that kind of stuff, especially different experiences,

 

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but we've seen companies where they have a culture that attracts

 

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the best talent. Like people hear about it,

 

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they come the top talent even if they're not getting top dollars,

 

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join the company. And then suddenly they

 

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don't announce that they've changed the culture, but they start to hire people that are

 

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not aligned to that culture. And bad things happen.

 

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Yeah. The mindset that we need to make

 

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money or we need to solve this business problem and this person will

 

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solve this business problem. I know they've got these

 

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cultural issues. We'll just deal with those separately. In fact, the matter

 

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is you don't deal with them separately and you can't deal with those

 

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sorts of issues separately. They're part of your culture. And if you don't stay

 

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aligned with your culture, your whole organization will fall apart.

 

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Yeah. And that's where I like in our book, we really tried to

 

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have actionable ideas. Like, we're talking about it here at the high level.

 

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What is Mission Vision and how do you set about a

 

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core values? But we also talk about how do you actually activate

 

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that, how do you instill that in your organization?

 

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And we talk about even some of the metrics I forgot the

 

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exact metric. But if you think about employees that

 

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say they're engaged, the quality of work

 

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that they do, versus somebody who feels they're just a cog on the wheel,

 

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they're just going through the motions. And the efficiencies are night and

 

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day at all scales of organizations.

 

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We know that culture is important. Yeah, that's so

 

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true, Lee. And just think about it from a stats. I know one

 

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of the things that really got us motivated is

 

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this is crazy. Literally two thirds of

 

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us. Employees are not actively engaged in work. That means

 

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that they're going to work and they're not bringing their whole self.

 

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Two thirds of the entire employee base

 

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in the United States, according to one survey, are not actively

 

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engaged. Not only is that a terrible way for them to

 

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spend, the most important thing that they have on this planet

 

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is their personal time. That's a waste. But that's a waste

 

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of efficiency also for the company. So one of the things that I'm a big

 

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believer of doing culture and some of the things that we share in the book

 

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and doing it right is the impact it has not only

 

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to get to the employees, but the companies. And what we're

 

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seeing when people do it right and do some of the things we've talked about

 

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as much as a 30% to 40% uplift

 

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in the efficiency of the organization registered by multiple different

 

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frameworks. But just as importantly,

 

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I think, to both of us, is you see almost the

 

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same amount of increase, sometimes 30, 40, 50,

 

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60% of employees saying that they're

 

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actively engaged in their job. In other words, they enjoy what

 

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they're doing and they feel that they deliver value every day. So this is

 

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a huge win, the things we're talking about. That's why I'm so excited again

 

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to be on the podcast. And it's part of that subconscious

 

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mindset that creates the organization. And that's

 

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the data that makes this really a true statement.

 

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Now we're talking about measuring here now

 

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and the sorts of data that you can measure and should

 

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measure in order to show that you're making improvements in the organization.

 

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But what we're finding is that companies

 

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often make one of three mistakes when they determine

 

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what data they want to measure. They either measure not

 

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enough data, they're insufficient in

 

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determining what they're trying to measure within their organization,

 

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or they measure too much data. They're gathering every little piece

 

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of data and then they can't get value out of that quantity of data that's

 

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available to them. Or they just measure the

 

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wrong things. They're measuring something that is irrelevant

 

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to what the real core problem is.

 

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Ken, what's your thoughts on those three things? Well, I think we

 

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point this out of the book. There's a couple of things I'm a big believer

 

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is at the end of the day, people always do what

 

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they're incentivized to do. So you got to be really careful as

 

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a leader, as head of a company,

 

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what you measure. And they always

 

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say measure what matters. But I like to think about a different way.

 

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And I think we hit this out in the book. I know you and I

 

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are 100% aligned is outcomes over activity is

 

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what are the key outcomes. And that goes kind of ties into some of the

 

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frameworks, whether it be objective key results or different critical

 

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thinking frameworks. But you need to measure the right

 

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thing. You need to keep in mind be careful what you measure and

 

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display. We also talk about showing it to employees. Like if you're measuring it at

 

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the executive level and no one sees the data, you might as well not do

 

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it. It's not going to drive any behaviors. What you want to do

 

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is measure outcomes. So outcomes is what

 

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you drive, not activity. Because think about how many

 

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times we've seen a really big

 

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400 million dollar It transformation.

 

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Everybody has a bunch of activity. Checkmark the

 

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project's on time, on plan, and then it fails on

 

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delivering the outcomes. I think we

 

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talked a little bit about this in the book. One Fortune

 

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50 healthcare company that had done in this case a cloud

 

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transformation, they failed and

 

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spent I think 5100 million dollars. The first time they failed,

 

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did 5000 million in both those times they were measuring

 

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activity. We're going to go to the cloud and then we're going to

 

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be more agile. Our teams are going to be more engaged,

 

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we're going to be able to recruit better people. It wasn't until they

 

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really focused on why are we going to the cloud, it's really to drive that

 

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agility what are the outcomes we're trying to drive with this activity,

 

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in this case moving to the cloud. And so I'm a big believer,

 

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whatever it is, focus the teams. And again, I know we've got

 

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this in the book, focus on those outcomes over activity

 

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and then make it visible to the employees, share it with everybody so they know

 

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how they're being measured, which is on outcomes. And teams can

 

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pivot. I know we talk about autonomy with constraints in the book,

 

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but if you've got your teams aligned with the outcome, then everybody's rowing in

 

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the same direction. They're in different parts of your organization,

 

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but they're no longer siloed. They're working together. And you give them

 

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the autonomy because they can pivot on the strategy to get the

 

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outcome as long as they achieve that outcome.

 

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Yeah, that fits in really well into something that I don't think we

 

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talk specifically about in the book, but I certainly talk a lot about.

 

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And that's what I call the Valley of despair.

 

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This is when you're going through a migration or a transformation project.

 

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Inevitably, as you go through that project,

 

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the disadvantages of the migration show up

 

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before the advantages do. You have to put in effort.

 

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You put in work. You're transforming your application. So your

 

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application slows down before it speeds up. It gets more complex

 

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before it becomes simplified. All of these sorts of things happen,

 

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tend to happen, with the negatives starting to appear

 

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in a large scale project before the positives do. And so

 

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you see a dip in your application and whatever you

 

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value within the organization before you

 

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start seeing the ramp up at the end to the

 

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real value you're looking for. And I call that the Valley of Despair.

 

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That low point. I see so many companies forget

 

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what they're striving for and why they entered this

 

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project in the first place. When they're in this valley, all they're seeing is the

 

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negatives. All they're seeing is the problems. Should we have started this cloud migration?

 

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Things are more expensive now. Things are more complicated now.

 

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Our application is slower. Why did we ever do this?

 

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Well, we did it because of these sets of

 

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objectives that we were trying to accomplish when we got to the cloud,

 

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but we're not there yet. But so many companies will actually stop

 

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right in the middle of that valley when things are worse than they

 

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were before and won't finish their project or won't finish the

 

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migration because they've lost track of what they really valued in the

 

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migration and frankly, why they started doing it in the first place.

 

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They're measuring the wrong things. They're evaluating the wrong things

 

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they're achieving. They're focusing on the wrong objectives.

 

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Leah I think that's so important. That valley just reminds

 

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me going back to at the end of the day, companies are just

 

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collection of people. And I don't know the right way to say I

 

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think I always think about the Kubler Ross change curve. But if you

 

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think about any type of transformation when

 

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you're changing people because people like, we don't like change. Right.

 

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It's uncomfortable at first. It's that shock

 

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and denial, like, why are we even doing this? And then it's

 

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kind of like, oh, disappointment. This isn't going to work. I don't know if this

 

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is going to work. And then once they start to see it, then it's

 

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that pivot, and then you've got that pivot up in acceleration.

 

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And it's funny that you said that. Whether it be like an It project

 

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or I've run marketing teams or sales

 

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teams, you got to have the right strategy. And we talk a lot about in

 

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the book is like, what are the tactical strategies to

 

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succeed? So you have to have that, but you also have to communicate

 

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that transformation you were just hitting is we've got a plan

 

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in human nature. We're all going to have doubts,

 

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but let's stay on the plan, let's focus on the outcomes,

 

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and then we'll get past this dip and everybody will be excited. It's the

 

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same thing. I go back to autonomy. When you first introduce

 

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outcomes over activity into an organization,

 

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at first it's like, wait, what? You're going to

 

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let me make decisions? I'm going to have autonomy.

 

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I don't know if I like that. I think I just like to do what

 

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somebody else said or what's the boss's plan? Or oh, it's this new

 

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transformation leader. I guess we'll do what they say and then

 

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they flip it on you and they say, no, I want you to

 

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drive these outcomes. And then suddenly you're sitting with it as

 

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an individual contributor, as a manager, going through, okay, well,

 

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wait, hold on, I'm responsible for those outcomes. So activity

 

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is no longer success. I don't know if I feel comfortable. But then

 

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going back to human nature, once you feel like now you're in charge of

 

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your own destiny, you know what success is outcomes.

 

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You've got alignment, you've been empowered to make the decisions,

 

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then you start to get that excitement and happiness and you feel so

 

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much more fulfilled in your job. So it's so funny how

 

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whether it's an It project, whether it's a personal transformation,

 

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whether it's a turnaround in the business or turnaround in a team or

 

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new leader, it seems like we always go through that same pattern

 

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of down, okay, is this really going to happen? And then assuming

 

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you've got the right plan up into the right, it all.

 

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Goes to show that a business and a human

 

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being all have the same mentality model.

 

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They have a mentality, they have a personality,

 

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they have a culture that has

 

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to be understood and has to be appreciated in order to

 

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succeed. Yeah, I absolutely

 

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agree. One of the other part I think that goes with that,

 

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what's the other structures? I think we've hit on like company mission, vision,

 

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core values, critical thinking frameworks,

 

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what to measure. But I think the next part is really also as

 

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far as a company and enterprise. And again, you and I

 

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have done Fortune 50 to startups,

 

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been all different sizes. You got to make sure

 

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you have the organizational structure to drive successful

 

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actions. Love to spend a few minutes on

 

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that. Absolutely. That's the next of the

 

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five main distinct processes we talked about. I think that's actually

 

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number four, which is organizational structures

 

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and how your organization

 

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acts, the way it's structured. And if you want to have

 

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your organization respond in a certain way, you want to

 

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organize it in a way that allows that response to occur.

 

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No, I totally agree. And one of the phrases a

 

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mentor of mine used to use when he was thinking about organizational design

 

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principles is I always like those simple phrases,

 

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just think about this is you get what you design for.

 

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And I've seen so many times where,

 

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let's say one team that reports up under this person

 

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and this leader and this other person reports under this leader

 

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and they're not in the same page. And people lower in the organization have lots

 

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of friction. There's just a disconnect. They're misaligned.

 

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And people are like, why are these team members misaligned?

 

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Well, they're doing exactly what the organization

 

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was designed to do. If you have poor organizational

 

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design, or again, be very intentional about

 

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that, like sometimes from an organizational design you can create healthy

 

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tension, which I think in many cases is good for an organization.

 

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You've got some kind of checks and balances, but you can also,

 

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through poor organizational design, have unhealthy friction.

 

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And that's just where people get frustrated with each other. They're not

 

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on the same page. So it's really important

 

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to do that. And I know we go into some really detailed principles.

 

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If people haven't heard of Federated direct

 

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line reports center of Practice we go into a lot of

 

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different people processes that you can set up from an organizational design

 

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so that you get the outcomes that you're driving for because we can have

 

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all the other things done right. But if you have poor organizational design you're

 

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going to have poor results. I think back to a

 

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rather small example, but I think a very pointed example. I think a

 

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lot of us might relate to. My very first project out of

 

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college. I was working at Hewlett Packard and had

 

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a manager that there's this two person project.

 

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There was a person who was writing the code and a person that was testing

 

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the code. And my first job was to test this code.

 

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I was straight out of college, wanted to do well in my job.

 

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I wanted to know what are my requirements, what am I supposed to accomplish?

 

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My manager said, Your job is to find as many bugs as you possibly

 

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can. So I set out to find as many bugs as

 

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I possibly can. And every time I found a bug, I said, I found another

 

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one, here's another one. And I was so happy that I was doing

 

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what I was supposed to be doing. And I was reporting to my manager saying,

 

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look at all these bugs I found, look at all these bugs I found.

 

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And everything was great till suddenly my coworker sat

 

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me down one day and said, why are you celebrating so much

 

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of the mistakes I'm making. And that's when

 

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I realized that, no, that wasn't really what I should

 

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have been trying to do. That's what I was directed to do. That's what I

 

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was being rated on doing. That's what I was being graded

 

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on doing. But that wasn't the goal. The goal was the both of us

 

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was building something that was supposed to be high quality.

 

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So we sat down, we figured out what we really should be judging each other

 

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on, brought that back up to our manager, who totally

 

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agreed and went with that. But it was just a simple example.

 

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But that same sort of problem shows up in larger

 

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organizations of different sizes of shapes, et cetera, is you

 

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get what you organize for, you get what you value

 

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within the organization. And that may be good,

 

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that may be bad, but whatever it is that you're asking for is

 

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what you're going to get. And that may not fit in well with the

 

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rest of the organization and may not be actually what you're looking for. You have

 

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to think more expansively about what you're trying to accomplish in

 

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order to get the right goals for the organization rather than

 

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the individual goals. No, I think that's so

 

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spot on. Lee. And again, one of the things that I know we really try

 

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to do in this book is really put a how to to do some of

 

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these things because I've seen so many times where people just don't have

 

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the experience. Or maybe not even the power to maybe they've got

 

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the experience. But how to articulate that? Maybe to their

 

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boss, their VP, their SVP, their CIO, their CTO, their CPO.

 

Speaker:

But these things show up repeatedly. And I'll give you just a couple

 

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of examples. I think some of them we put in the book. There was

 

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a company that I worked with again, private Fortune 50

 

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company. And as part of like a cost move, they said,

 

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you know, in Agile we don't need any project managers,

 

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so we're going to get rid of all of them except

 

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for this core team at the corporate location.

 

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So we're going to take them all out of the business units immediately

 

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because Agile is magic and you never need anybody to do any projects or coordinate

 

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anything. And so they had this team and

 

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these teams were assigned to

 

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business units. So business units could say, hey, I'd like to

 

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have this resource. But there was no

 

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structural alignment. So they reported to somebody in kind of,

 

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quote, corporate. And so what would happen is the

 

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person at corporate would take people off those projects

 

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because somebody else was louder at a different business unit.

 

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So what happens? Again, you get what you design for.

 

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So the business units, they had somebody that did this role. Now there's

 

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somebody at corporate that could come or go at any time. They had no visibility.

 

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So what did they do? They do what people naturally do. They created some

 

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new title called something else that's not project manager that did all

 

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of the exact same roles as before. And the inefficiency that the

 

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organization was trying to solve for, they created even more because now they had this

 

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central team that no one really trusted or did anything with plus

 

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copies of all of that back in all the business units

 

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versus and this is that term we used. Again, I know it's a lot for

 

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those of us, maybe this is my too heavy lifting, but that term Federated or

 

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Direct, like who's your customer? So if they would have been clear

 

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that that central team lived to serve

 

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the business units and were federated to the business

 

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units leader, so who's the customer? Not that central

 

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leader. That central leader was designed to serve the business units,

 

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that structure would have given the company the savings they were looking for

 

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and not have created that duplicate. So again,

 

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super important. I just want to give one other example for the poor product

 

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marketing people that are almost in any company I've seen this so many

 

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times is product marketing reports to marketing

 

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and then products frustrated with product marketing

 

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because they're not communicating it the way the product leader sees

 

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the vision. They're communicating it how the marketing team sees the vision.

 

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Or if product marketing reports to product,

 

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then marketing team is really frustrated because they're not getting all the

 

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things that they need to share in the marketplace because

 

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it's going according to what product thinks is important.

 

Speaker:

And in both cases, either one of those is simply

 

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wrong. This is a really good example is you have to decide

 

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where do you want to have the hard line report and you want to have

 

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a dotted line. So product marketing should always have two bosses.

 

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One, that's their HR report, which is who their

 

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tightest aligned to, but they've got two bosses. They also have

 

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either marketing or product. And when you do that, you not only set up

 

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the company for success, you set up your product marketing

 

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team for success. Otherwise it's like whack a mole with them. So for if you're

 

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a product marketing or CPO or

 

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a CMO, please make sure you have a Federated team be nice

 

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to your product marketing members. That's absolutely great

 

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advice. And whenever I've seen organizations that do

 

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that effectively, it's been successful. And when it's

 

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very clear when organizations aren't doing that successfully and the

 

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walls that get created and the siloed

 

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mentality that occurs when you do that.

 

Speaker:

Ken, this has been great. I really appreciate that. We've got a lot

 

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more that's in the book. We haven't even begun to talk about marketing

 

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strategies like product led growth, sales lead growth, et cetera, which we also talk

 

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about in the book. I'll save that for maybe another

 

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episode or for people to buy the book

 

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and read up on it. The book again, is called

 

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Business Breakthrough 3.0. It's written by Lee Atchison

 

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and Ken Garadovich, and it's available on Amazon.com

 

Speaker:

and almost any other place that business or

 

Speaker:

technical books are available. It's available in a hardcover softcover

 

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Kindle ebook version, as well as an Audible version on

 

Speaker:

Audible.com and other audiobook platforms.

 

Speaker:

Thanks, Ken. Thank you very much for coming on the Modern

 

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Digital Business podcast. And once again, it's been

 

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great working with you on this project and I hope we'll work on future projects

 

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as well. Eli, if I could do just one more shout out to your audience.

 

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I know this is important to both of us is if you take a

 

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read through the book, it helps you, helps your team, helps your team love their

 

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jobs more, helps your company move faster. Please send either

 

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one of us a note. Just makes us feel great. One of the things we

 

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both try to do is just make the world and business just a little bit

 

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better. So send us a note and thanks, Lee.

 

Speaker:

Absolutely. And in the Show Notes, I'll make sure to have contact information,

 

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of course, for my normal contact information, but I'll also have

 

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Ken's contact information so you can reach out to him. And Ken,

 

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you're available specifically for speaking engagements as well, is that correct?

 

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What I really love doing is speaking at organizations and really helping companies

 

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take some of the principles that we teach that we've learned

 

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to transform their organization. So if you've got a speaking opportunity to

 

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help your organization, please reach out. Love to talk.

 

Speaker:

Ken, thank you you so much for being on this episode.

 

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Enjoyed it. Lee. Talk soon.

 

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Thank you for tuning in to Modern Digital Business. This podcast

 

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Speaker:

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Speaker:

or directly on our website at MDB FM Reviews.

 

Speaker:

If you'd like to suggest a topic for an episode or you are interested in

 

Speaker:

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Speaker:

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Speaker:

And if you'd like to record a quick question or comment,

 

Speaker:

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Speaker:

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To make sure you get every new episode when they become available,

 

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click subscribe in your favorite podcast player or check

 

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If you want to learn more from me, then check out one of my books,

 

Speaker:

courses or articles by going to Lee Atchison.com.

 

Speaker:

And all of these links are included in the Show Notes.

 

Speaker:

Thank you for listening and welcome to the world of the Modern Digital

 

 

Ken GavranovicProfile Photo

Ken Gavranovic

CEO, CPO, CTO, EVP

There’s no limit to anyone’s potential. This is the foundational belief that has guided Ken Gavranovic throughout his career and as a leader working to empower others.

Thanks to a strong work ethic, a natural aptitude for technology, and a highly adaptable skillset, Ken found success early in his career. In 1997, he started Interland, now web.com, a pioneer in the SaaS cloud-provider space. At age 29, after growing the company to $200M+, he led its IPO.

Ever since, Ken has been responsible for hyper-growth at unicorn public businesses, gaining deep experience across various industry verticals, multiple leadership positions, and companies of all sizes. As Executive Vice President at New Relic, he helped grow revenues from $300M to $500M. As Vice President at Cox Automotive, he oversaw a $5B+ portfolio of brands, including AutoTrader, Kelly Blue Book, Manheim, and Dealertrack. In addition, he has been responsible for multiple IPO and private equity exits that generated ten to ninety times return on investment. This wide-ranging expertise has equipped him to guide businesses to scale in growth, transformation, and measurable results.