Latest / The Failure Gap / A Conversation With Dana Sednek, Chief Consultant
Transcript
- Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (00:00.174) Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap podcast where we talk with leaders about navigating the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Dana Sednick. Dana is an expert in digital transformation and advises executives around the world. With over 20 years of Fortune 500 experience, she's held titles like Chief Analytics Officer and Head of Learning Technology. She's been helping organizations transition to digital work since the early 2000s. She partners with clients like Cisco, Masterclass, my personal favorite, United Airlines, I am a million mile flyer, and Harley Davidson to solve complex problems at the intersection of people and technology. She includes supporting AI transformations and analytical strategies. Dana, welcome. thank you, Julie. I'm glad to be here. Yeah. Well, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because I know that you have had a lot of amazing experiences helping organizations transform themselves. But before we get there, why don't you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your path to leadership? sure. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. So I actually, I am a mentor at my college alumni at University of Colorado Boulder and helping with being a mentor is really about helping young students or early career folks understand that a career path isn't usually paved. and kind of marked out from one place to another. And so my leadership career path really began early days. I wanted to be a divorce mediator. And I that was so fabulous. Like, what this, you can navigate relationships in a really kind of tough time in two people's worlds. What might that look like? And so my career has really become this tapestry of all of these different. kinds of tools and experiences that I've had over the course of my career that has led me down a path of this like integration between technology and people. And so that is, it's a little bit about the lessons that you learn as you keep going through finding things that you really love. I love creating alignment with groups of people and I don't love creating alignment with people who are getting divorced. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (02:24.654) Right? you just learn that along the way. Yeah. Yeah. It's such an interesting thing to have as, you know, something that you want to do and then to decide that you actually want to take those skills and that ability to help people navigate tough conversations and apply it more in a group setting. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what, of course, you've charted for yourself is you've I love this idea of a tapestry of experiences that you're bringing together. to help your clients as they seek to transform themselves. I'd love to hear a little bit just about you personally. Are there things that you've ever thought to yourself, well, it'll be a good idea if I did that and then you just don't do it or things where you've actually leaned in and gotten yourself aligned and gotten it done? Yes, I love this, Julie. Let me start with the one that I'm currently in the middle of my learning trajectory in personally. My husband and I, have two teenagers and two dogs. And recently, so a year ago, we made a move from what we thought was our forever house in Denver. It was a 1950s mid-century modern decorated the way that I would imagine like the Jetsons would have decorated, right? And we decided to make this move to a bigger place that might give us a little bit more elbow room. And we bought what we like to affectionately call our A-frame cabin in the city. So we bought a 1962 A-frame on this like giant one acre lot and it needs a lot of work. And we're like, it'll be fine. We could totally tackle it. No problem. We've got it. But what we didn't really realize is that we decided to like take on this project of retrovating a house, right, bringing it back to its original glory, and taking care of such a larger property in terms of like all of the stuff that you have to do to keep keep up with the darn thing. And so my husband and I are kind of smack in this middle of like, my gosh, we have found ourselves in over our heads. This is like simple things, Julie. Mowing the lawn takes a day. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (04:41.294) because it's giant, where it used to take, you know, like 45 minutes. Fantastic, right? And so just that kind of shift into the experience of, wow, we have all of these big projects. They are not something that we can just tackle very quickly because of its scale and size and commitment has become, you know, a little, it's become overwhelming. definitely, I'm like in over my head, how do I even start? In fact, you see here, I'm in this like mid, I call it purgatory. I used to have this fabulous office, shed quarters in my backyard that was set up and perfect and great. And now I am moving my office into another area of our house because my old office was too dark and neither of them are ready to be able to be in. So I'm in this like middle, it's literally how I feel. I'm in this middle ground of the way that I want it to be in my vision for the future. the process how to get there. so, you know, time and scale is playing with my mind a little bit. there are so many things in there that I think are so wonderful that, you you agree that this sounded like a good idea, right? You actually did it. And now you're in the process of understanding what it means to be in this new place. And I think that's actually so often true in business, too, that we think, yes, that's the right direction to go. But it's not until you take action that you can really appreciate what it's gonna take to make it happen. We like to say at Kerikin's group, action precedes clarity sometimes. So clarity comes once you take that step. And now you're getting a lot of clarity about what it means to renovate and retrofit a house in the style that you have it. Totally, totally right. Like you don't know what you don't know until you get in. And once you're in, you're like, right. Well, I thought it was gonna, you know, I thought it was gonna be pretty quick and easy, but you don't. you don't know until you get there and you're like, wait a second, all the designs that we want, they don't do it that way anymore. So we have to find somebody special to be able to do, you know, do it in the different way. So it is, there's a lot of parallels for sure. And I love that you didn't wait until you knew everything to do, to make a move, right? And I think that sometimes that's so hard in life and end in business, right? Is we just want to know everything before we say yes. And that's just not practical. A lot of times you have to go. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (07:08.236) and then you discover and then you learn and then you adapt and you grow. And it sounds like you and your two teenagers and your two dogs are doing that. We are in the thick of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a great example. Thank you for sharing it. I think you said that you had two. I want to make sure I don't leave one of them off the table. Yeah, so the question that you had asked was an experience personally and then also professionally. Yeah. Right? OK. Yeah, great. So recently, I mean, as of about a year plus ago, right, we were introduced to this whole new world of work when it comes to generative AI. And, you know, the hype and the mystery of what generative AI is all about is something that's interesting and exciting for me. So I always like to live and experiment with technology that's on the edge, places where we... do get that experience to kind of jump in before we really know what we're doing or even maybe know what we're gonna get out of it, right? And so I went on this journey to begin my kind of education at the front end. I went to the MIT's executive certificate in digital transformation. And it was an online certificate program that introduced me to a handful of some of these folks who are kind of on the edge of leveraging generative AI, both with businesses as well as with their students and talking about the transformative possibilities of what GenAI does, as well as how it's already transformed their classroom, right? As they're teaching new engineers who are kind of coming up into of learning how to code. this whole kind of dive in to generative AI has been really interesting in that it has transformed the way that I do all of my work anytime, all of the time. I have a second brain and have trained my GPT to understand my voice, my tone, my brand. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (09:24.362) my case studies, everything about my business so that it can help me kind of think through a couple of things as I work as an entrepreneur in kind of moving forward in my own kind of career and my own job as a consultant. So that's been really interesting, right? Like it's a little bit of a new path in this tapestry, but it continues the conversations of what digital transformation is all about. I was early game. in like video conferencing, right? And now as we emerge out of video conferencing and back to the office and all of these things, the impact of generative AI is going to be immense. And so many people still either had their head in the sand or are just beginning their journey on being able to kind of learn about what you can do with this new technology. Yeah, it's really incredible. I think for some people it's a little scary, for other people it's inspirational. For other people, it's a little, like you said, like, that's not my thing. I don't need to worry about it. And, you know, those people might be surprised in a couple of years in terms of what they're doing. But I love that you had this urge to learn, right? I think what you're, what I'm hearing from you so clearly is a learner mindset, right? Like, I want to go learn about that and I'm going to go to the best place I can think of to find out more and to continue to discover. what I want to know and what I need to know in order to take advantage of this emerging technology or this emerging trend or things that are happening out in the world that are going to affect both your clients and how you work personally. I love that. When you think about a learner's mindset, one of the things that I, when I coach kind of new consultants or folks who are figuring out or thinking about either career transitions or going towards, you know, forwards in a career, You know, I like to bring up my own definition of what an expert is, right? Like when you are at the edge of things where nobody else knows what the answer is either, all you have to be is two pages ahead in order to be an expert. So like, go learn some stuff. It's okay that you don't know everything because nobody else does either, right? And so some of that like permission to... Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (11:44.842) to go and learn some stuff and be okay with not getting it right the first time or not knowing all of the answers when you start. I think that's a really big component both in the digital transformation practice that I have with customers and clients. A lot of it is about permission to experiment and giving stakeholders and groups the ability to say, like, wait a second, we don't know the answer. Why don't we go try something new and different? And, you know, while we're doing it, let's look for some surprises and delights. Instead of coming together with a goal or an end in mind, we might not know what that is. You know, I really appreciate what you're tapping into here because I do believe in my experience, and I'm curious about yours, that people stay stuck in agreement that something is a good idea and they don't go do anything about it because they're waiting for permission, especially in business. They're waiting for somebody to say, yes, you should go do that or for somebody who already knows the answer to come in and supply that. And so they're waiting for that on ramp almost when a lot of times you just have to go and you have to try and understand and learn and react and adapt as you go. And I think that really does. I think you've tapped into something here that not just in digital transformation, but in a lot of spaces in business. holds people back and keeps them stuck in agreement. Yeah, agreed. You know, I think, you know, a lot of times when people are risk-averse and organizations are risk-averse, what they want to have is they want to have a super clear project plan with like the KPIs and the measures of success and where we're going to be at the end of this thing and like hyper detailed so that there is some feeling of control. However, when you go to cast of vision that is big or differentiated, or changing the major course of your organization, you have to put out a vision of what it's gonna be and then begin to start defining some of those things through iterative design, through experimentation, through feedback from the users or the customers of whatever it is that you're transforming so that you can design a directional path, not a destinational path for both. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (14:09.632) work and think careers. Julie, there's this really great book that I have been reading that I think is just so great and super interesting, I think, in the way that we often frame success when it comes to the work that we're doing and of course our careers. It's called Directional Living by Megan Hellerher. So she talks a lot about with a career path is that Sometimes you've got to start out being directional instead of destinational because you don't know what the destination is going to be. I didn't know that I was going to work in EdTech and tech, you know, back when I was taking mediation courses. I had no idea what that really would look like. It just evolved over time, right? And create these like new adjacencies that kind of happened as discovery and delight. And so, One of the wisest things I often do with clients is help them through kind of gathering the shared wisdom and expertise of the room in a way that begins with the future in mind as a kind of wider victory exercise to say like, hey, y'all have decided to do this thing. If we really nailed it. three years from now, what might that look like? And not have that necessarily come from the executives, but come from the whole of the group so that it's a shared vision for what possibility looks like. When it comes to permission, Julie, I think there's three things. There's permission, potential, and possibility that we have to tap into as a collective to say, We can actually do this. What's stopping us from doing this? We have permission to go do this and fail. That's okay if we learn some things. And a little bit of that glimmer of what potential could be if we were to embark on this journey together. Yeah, I love that. It was possibility, potential, and permission, right? You need all of those things to step forward and to start to explore the possibilities and what's Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (16:30.818) What is the potential that's out there? You mentioned another thing from the book that you're reading, which was, I think you said directional, not destination. Is that right? Yeah. So directional living versus directional. Yeah. And I run my organization very much outcomes-based. organizations come to me, they have an urgent need or are thinking about some kind of transformation. in their business, whether it be a people transformation, a technology transformation, a process transformation. And we work a lot on outcomes, like what are you trying to achieve? Where do you want to go? What is the outcome that you want to get to? And this book has been really interesting in a career perspective to say, well, you might not know the answers to some of those things. So what might it look like to be able to start down a path that is very experimental? that doesn't actually begin with the outcomes in mind, but begins with the direction or the general sense of what you want to achieve instead of the, know, minute KPIs of the very thing that we're going to manage that then doesn't allow for kind of learning and growth and adjacencies and intuition in the wider sense of the project, right? Yeah. You know, I like to say people love scorecards, right? And they say what gets measured gets done. And I like to say what gets measured often gets manipulated. People will do what they need to do to get the check mark, but they're not necessarily doing the right things. And then you'll get pushback from measurement people that say, then they're not designed properly or whatever. But I swear to God, I have seen people do the most amazing contortions to meet the scorecard without getting a step closer to the outcome that's designed. I've probably done it myself, right? I hold myself to that as well. There's a delicate balance between qualitative feedback and input and quantitative. We often try, right, for control to get to the quantitative when sometimes... Exactly. When sometimes it's just a qualitative measure of like, we feeling like we're on the right track? How is the relationship going? Are we learning? Like, what are the things that we're doing that is giving us momentum? Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (18:52.312) connection, alignment in kind of where we're all trying to go together. And we forget to maybe measure those or check in with those and recheck ourselves when we're going through projects that we might not know yet the total destination of what they will be. I think you're right. There is an intersection. And by the way, I do think that metrics are helpful in some ways. It's just when we become obsessed with them. that they start to create challenges in terms of getting to the outcome that you want. And it feels like that intersection of quantitative, like what are the things we should be counting, and qualitative, what are the things we should be checking in on, keeps you heading in the right direction in a much more elegant way than the obsession with a destination that drives itself towards the highly quantitative metrics. Yes, I love that, Julie. I also think that, you know, it's interesting, right? Like, I sure do love a good scorecard, but I love a good scorecard when we can use it to be able to learn about some of the reasons why things aren't working the way that we thought they were originally going to work. And so if we can have those meta-conversations, you know, oftentimes in any kind of digital transformation, happen, we Paula Abdul it. That's what I like to call, right? Like two steps forward, two steps back. And sometimes the two steps back actually helps us get four steps ahead later. And when we're only measuring, you know, via numbers or like, yes, this is green or no, this is red, this is bad, we need to fix it. If we don't take the time to be able to unpack what we learned when we didn't quite make the mark that we had set in advance. then we miss the opportunity to change the score, change the number, make an adjustment based on what we learned. Yeah, there's something about that opportunity to continue to move forward while sometimes nudging into a different direction. And that leads you, as we all know from the space program, right? Small changes in your trajectory can lead to big changes in your destination. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (21:08.654) And sometimes that's all it takes is learning and being willing to move a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right, which I think might be another song reference. don't know. That sounds like some kind of country line dance that we could do in our electric slidey kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Well, hey, when you think about your clients that have taken on this enormous task of digital transformation and you've worked with some really interesting clients in this process. When you see the companies start to get momentum or leadership teams start to get momentum as they start working towards a successful digital transformation, what are some of the things that really stand out to you? What are some of the behaviors, some of the decisions, some of the ways of working that you see leadership teams starting to lean into as they turn the corner and start to see some success in their transformation? Yeah, I love it. You know, oftentimes we start with the end in mind, which I love. Starting to get alignment as a core team or as a whole team of an organization. The first thing that I think is super important is getting a clear vision of not only where we want to go, but where we are today. And oftentimes, that becomes kind of the most ah-hahs. When we write a, so in design thinking, we call this a from to, right? And so we build this vision of what victory could look like, but then we also have to click down into like, well, what does that look like today in the way that we are operating or the way that we are working? And what is it gonna look like once we achieve this victory or this vision for what we're going to, is going to happen? And often when I am with clients kind of working through this from to the current state is where there is a ton of misalignment and things that go unsaid that need to be said because they will impact the journey to get to where they need to be. so oftentimes I, you know, through this exercise, the benefit of like Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (23:28.728) putting it on the table and saying exactly where we are for good or for bad actually allows us to give permission to say, yes, this is what we're actually working with, right? And we need to watch out for some of these things or we need to build capability or commitment because we have, know, siloed roadblocks that are gonna get in the way or You know, we don't have the skill sets necessary to be able to do this or you know, like for many reasons, there's, you know, we don't yet know exactly what our investment is going to be with regard to this, right? This from to helps us to begin to articulate. I think the three things that you need in order to be able to kind of advance change with a group of people. not just one person, right? But an entire organization. If you're going to move the ship or if you're going to jump to a new ship, you need three things. You need direction. How are we going to do this? What is this really going to look like? You need commitment. Hey, are we all in? We're to jump to this. we going to go together? And then you need capability. That third part about skill development or capability development that includes some of that permission giving of like hey, it's okay if we don't know what that's gonna look like. You're gonna jump with us still, right? So direction, commitment, and capability, those three conversations really come out of that vision and then from two types of exercises that we do early on in any engagement. Yeah, I think that's so helpful to think about. It brings to mind for me, there's an old expression, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And I feel like you're adding to that to say, if you don't know where you're starting, any road will get you there. Also, right, you need both. And that understanding of where are we starting and where are we going, what's our direction, what's our commitment, and then what are the capabilities that we have today, and what are the capabilities we're gonna need tomorrow, and how do we pull that all together so that you can start to move in the direction that you would like to head? Yes. Yeah. You know, I think that when we've seen digital transformations really stumble, Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (25:44.226) Typically, in my experience, direction is reasonably well understood. Like, this is where we need to go. Commitment often is a little wobbly, perhaps, because business as usual or the demands of the day take over. I do think that this capability space is a really interesting one for people to be thinking about, because that inventory of what are the current capabilities, both individually and organizationally. And then where do they need to go and how do we map that could be a really fruitful exercise for people to go through. Julie, totally. You know, another thing that happens with digital transformation and, I love to work with the organizational sponsors who are like, hey, let's go do this. They often are some of those visionaries who are kind of ready to tackle it or, you know, that's part of their job scope. And some of the watch outs when you're working with people who get really excited about technology is that you know, sometimes on the shadow side, can start to chase glitter where you're like, we could do that and we could do that and we could do that and what if we did this? And all of a sudden, we actually have to come back down to the ground, check in with our from-tos and say, well, hold on, right? Like there's a difference between can and should. There's a lot of things that you can do with technology. However, there's a right time and place and a sequence or a cadence. that is necessary when you're balancing that direction, commitment and capability. know, oftentimes early in digital transformation conversations, when I'm talking to future clients to really understand where they're at, some of the things that I'm assessing is readiness and ripeness for the organization on being able to make that change. Readiness and ripeness sometimes sounds the same, but it is not. So organizations have to be ready to be able to make this change. And of course it comes across like direction, commitment, capability, all of the things, investment, time, you know, all of that stuff. But there also is this timing thing when it comes to ripeness. So I'll give you an example. so when I was at Intuit, they were first my client and then I went in as the Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (28:09.046) head of learning enablement. And I early on, even as their consultant helping them reimagine what global onboarding looks like, I identified that they were using technology that was preventing them from, their technology was actually preventing them from doing some of the things that they really wanted to do very quickly and efficiently with their learning capabilities. We couldn't send a two minute explainer video about anything. without uploading it to the 15 year old LMS where then somebody had to click on the link to register for the class and then get the registration and then enroll like 17 clicks in to watch a two minute video. From a user experience, the number of people who are gonna actually watch that video versus like, hey, here's an embedded video in an email. We can track all of those things. Seems like a simple thing, but with enterprise organizations, right? There's a lot of complexity with the technological roadmap and the tech stack that happens. And so sometimes you're like, wait a minute, we can't do this one thing. And you're like, that seems crazy, but it happens, right? Like there's just some of these, you know, bolted on tech stacks that just kind of miss a couple of key components. And so I worked with this organization over the course of five years in in really understanding what was limiting all of the learning and development organizations. So there were 13 L &D organizations across the 26 countries that the company was in. And constantly when I was having conversations with each of these different organizations who didn't report to one another, technology was one of the biggest pain points that they had. In fact, this learning management system was such a pain and causing so much pain, but no, like, They a couple of times tried to, you know, do an RFP to get a new LMS and that kind of fell below the line because it was never a priority yet it was still causing so much pain. So they were ready to make the transformation. The organization was just not ripe. And then what happened was the organization made a huge leadership change where Brad Smith, the previous CEO, retired. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (30:29.582) And Sasan Ghadarzi came in and changed some of the leadership dynamics. So we had a new chief information officer. had a new, and by new, I mean, they were at the organization, but they came into new roles and a new chief people officer. And that created the ripeness because they were hearing the pain of the organization with this learning management system with a new ear. And they were like, hold on, this is disaster, we really need help, right? Like somebody fix this, get us the new LMS. This cannot be how this is. And so the opportunity to then say like, well, what could we do here to be able to help transform into its tech stack from being 15 years behind to three years ahead that goes beyond just replacing an LMS? And so that ripeness gave the group of 13 L &D organizations with me leading the opportunity to have that conversation to say, what do you want to get out of learning and growing as part of a key lever for the business? We recommend that you actually enable a three-layer tech stack that includes an LMS but kind of puts it in the basement so that you can kind of get ahead to achieving your aspirations with the learning and growing that needs to happen for your employees. and customers and contractors, right? And so readiness and ripeness is just so important. And sometimes you have one and not the other. And sometimes you have to create, right? A little bit of ripeness. But it's super important to be able to assess upfront where you are because those are some places that can be barriers or hindrance to the thing if you just wait four months. you know, the environment may have changed and is now ready. Yeah, you need the fortitude as well as the environmental alignment that you can move through it in some interesting ways. You've mentioned a couple of things for people who might be considering going on a digital transformation journey. One is to make sure you know you're from two and where you're starting and where you want to get to, especially when it comes to direction, capability, or commitment and capability. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (32:56.11) and this idea now of assessing the readiness of the organization as well as the ripeness and is this the time to bring all of this together? And I think as you said, sometimes you have to push the organization to get there so that you can embark on these very big and very important mission critical often transformations that organizations often agree are a good idea but have some trepidation around really aligning and getting going and delivering on together. my God, totally. Totally. Yeah. know, the things that you have to align on, know, oftentimes we over index on the technology component of digital transformation and we forget about the people and process needs. And that usually is where the failure happens, right? That usually, if we're not attending to that three-legged stool, that's where some of the stuff falls down. You know. You still have to focus on making sure the technology works, but that's the easy part. Yeah, I mean, I often say that systems integrators can get the tech to work in almost any environment these days. Like it might be hard and there might be a lot of work to do, but at the end of the day, the tech is not going to be your problem. It might not be the answer that you want, but it's going to work the way that it's designed to work. That doesn't mean that you like how it works, but it does mean that generally speaking, the tech can get going. and the people in process work is where the heavy lift is. Yeah. Dana, this has been so great to hear about your thinking and your experiences and what it takes to get through a digital transformation. So many companies are going through this right now. And I know that your expertise is really valuable in terms of how to frame it, how to think about it, and then sometimes how to take action in a way that gives you clarity rather than waiting to try and figure out all the answers before you take a step. I love the way that you're framing up the idea of knowing directionally where you're going rather than over indexing to focusing on the destination and thinking about how do we start to move and learn as we go so that we can adjust. And even if it means taking a step back, maybe that next step forward is in a slightly different direction that leads to a better outcome. So some great lessons that you have shared here for us today. I am curious as you think about being queen of the world for a moment. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (35:20.384) If you could get people, whether it's your family or it's your team or your clients or any group of people that you might be working with to align to one thing, to doing one thing together and to come into that in a consistent way, what would that be? What would you love to see alignment in your world around? Yeah, I love this question, Julie. And in fact, it is the topic that is most interesting my brain right now. and one that I continue to have conversations with my, know, like anybody that I run into personally and professionally. And it's about the concept of talking, not about what we're learning, but what actually we're unlearning. Because I, you know, if I was queen of the world, having more conversations about the things that we are having to unlearn as a result of new places, new technologies, new things, right? New houses that you have to live in that take you know, three times the amount of upkeep time. What is it like having those, just having those conversations that are candid, that are real, that are visceral, that are hard about some of the mindsets and the frameworks that we have relied on for so long that we actually have to like go through the process of unwinding and unlearning for ourselves. So I wanna have more conversations of that. This is such a great idea, Dana, and I hope anybody listening can take a moment and just pause and think about what do I need to unlearn? Not what do I need to learn, but what do I need to unlearn? And I do think, Dana, that if we could get aligned to doing that hard work, because that is hard work, then we would personally, individually see some really interesting shifts in how we orient towards the work that we're trying to do, especially when it comes to things like big transformations. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's such an interesting thing to ask of the world to align to. So I really appreciate that. I'm going to take that to heart and think for myself about what are some of the things that I could afford to unlearn right now. Dana, I want to say thank you so much for being here today. You've shared some great lessons, some great experiences, and really interesting brain works and ways of thinking about tackling digital transformation. Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (37:38.016) And for anyone who's listening, please remember to like, to subscribe, and to comment on any of the episodes that you hear because there's some great information being shared by all of our guests. So I'm gonna say thank you very much. Have a great rest of your day, Dana. And as we move forward with the Failure Gap podcast, we're gonna be looking for great insights from leaders taking us forward in this conversation. Thank you so much.