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Agile Leadership and Cross-Department Collaboration with Sarah Fruy · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome. Dear listeners to the speak in flow, podcast. Where we dive into strategies and unique stories to help you and your team achieve maximum potential and flow. Today, I have an amazing leader. She's a Vp of marketing with over 20 years of experience in software as a service and Ad. Tech. She has orchestrated marketing announcements for
• 0:27
  Melinda Lee: big companies, such as Google, Tiktok, Pinterest, and contributed to the sales and marketing organizations within Pantheon, which achieved unicorn status and 1 billion valuation.
• 0:42
  Melinda Lee: Her name is Sarah Free. Hi, Sarah!
• 0:46
  Sarah Fruy: Thanks for having me.
• 0:48
  Melinda Lee: I'm so glad you're here. We're going to dive into so many wonderful techniques and strategies around communication and teams
• 0:56
  Melinda Lee: before we go go there. I know you've been when you were with Pantheon, and I just mentioned how it achieved you unicorn status and 1 billion evaluation. But you were there early on. Can you tell us?
• 1:09
  Melinda Lee: Actually, you know, before we jump into that story, tell us more about why you're passionate about marketing and sales.
• 1:17
  Sarah Fruy: Yeah. So I actually started my career in sales and had an amazing Cmo at the company I worked for. It was called videoegg at the time team. Say, Media
• 1:26
  Sarah Fruy: and I was working on a lot of individual ad campaigns and telling all these stories for all these different advertisers. And I was really inspired by his ability to to really focus on our company's message
• 1:36
  Sarah Fruy: and our go to market, and how we how we sort of presented ourselves as a business, and it made me raise my hand and say, Hey, I want to go
• 1:43
  Sarah Fruy: work for the marketing team and and tell these big stories and really focus on how to like up, level the company that I work for and and promote it to the best of my abilities. And that's really what's kind of driven me throughout my entire career. Maybe a really passionate marketer, but also a very like empathetic partner to the sales team of of knowing what it's like on the other side, and and trying to, you know, a great advocate for some of the struggles and pain points that they're dealing with as a marketer where I'm I'm there to sort of support them and help them achieve their goals as well.
• 2:11
  Melinda Lee: Wonderful, and what do you think made it different made him be able to communicate the company differently than others.
• 2:18
  Sarah Fruy: I think he was a true visionary. His name's Troy Young. I'll name drop a little here. He's 1 of those people. He was a great mentor for me early on in my career, like I said, and was just one of those people that when he stood up and spoke he listened, and he was really inspiring, and if he critiqued my work it was always like I was learning something from him in the process. It wasn't just like, oh, you messed up, or you did something wrong, or this, this could have been done better. He would take the time to sort of coach and and bring me up and up, level me at the same time. And it was just great
• 2:45
  Sarah Fruy: leadership. You know, experience and exposure, and just really inspired me to want to, you know. Follow in his footsteps and and try and have a similar impact as as leader myself.
• 2:56
  Melinda Lee: That's so great cheers to the amazing leaders out there who are visionaries, and also people oriented and helping to mentor others. So
• 3:04
  Melinda Lee: that's wonderful. So, going back to that original question about Pantheon.
• 3:10
  Melinda Lee: tell us about what it was like before it got to its status. This great status.
• 3:15
  Sarah Fruy: Yeah. So when I joined, it was very much, you know, like your bay area tech startup
• 3:20
  Sarah Fruy: we had a great product and a lot of great people but like a lot of companies, you know, teams were kind of silo. We were really focused on our individual functions and kind of like, you know, passing things along, and when stuff was ready you would sort of run forward and kind of march towards a bigger calendar. But it was really sort of all hands on deck trying to to do our best to to move the business forward. But a little bit siloed in terms of our abilities to communicate, and really like coordinate, you know, across different teams.
• 3:49
  Melinda Lee: I love that. I love that analogy. And what you said just pass it forward. It does feel like that. Because we're so. Yeah, you're you're invested in the company, you you believe in it. Yet you're still focused in what we do or what you do within the the department. And you feel like, okay, passing it over is is communicating.
• 4:08
  Sarah Fruy: You go do your thing.
• 4:10
  Melinda Lee: Here you go. I did it. There it passed. Here you go, pass, and then it's like, Pass a baton. But then that's really not communication, but people may think that it is.
• 4:18
  Sarah Fruy: Hmm.
• 4:18
  Sarah Fruy: yeah, cause you're sort of in that box of like. Well, I delivered the product or the messaging, or whatever. Now your team has to go promote it, or you have to go sell it and each people like has, like their little place in line in sort of this linear fashion.
• 4:31
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 4:32
  Sarah Fruy: You can start to think more like cyclically of like, how do we like reflect back on that work? How do we like align our timelines. How do we, you know, collaborate better? That's where you start to work more as an organization versus like an individual team.
• 4:46
  Melinda Lee: Right? So before we get into that like, tell me, what were the you think the negative impacts of it? You mentioned silos anything else.
• 4:55
  Sarah Fruy: One of the symptoms was like misalignment in terms of timing like. There was an incident early on in my career, where the product team was working on a new feature, and
• 5:05
  Sarah Fruy: you're ready to release it. And the release happened to be right around Thanksgiving, and as a marketer, that's not exactly for some businesses that could be a great time to launch a new product, especially if you're in technology. Not so much. Those people tend to go on vacation.
• 5:18
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 5:19
  Sarah Fruy: Things like that and and so we would have preferred to have made this announcement in January like, kick off the New Year. We've got this great new feature where the product team was like, oh, it's done! We have to announce it has to be ready.
• 5:30
  Sarah Fruy: And we were just very like misaligned in terms of our go to market, and how we wanted to sort of approach that announcement, and I think the result was that everybody felt it could have gone better had we been coordinated and communicated. Better about like the timing and and the release, and things like that.
• 5:45
  Melinda Lee: Hmm, so so one team thought it was a good idea where another team didn't think it was a great idea, and it was just a misalignment of.
• 5:52
  Sarah Fruy: Yeah, kind of goes back to that product was like, well, we we told you, we're gonna deliver this feature this year. And we did. Here it is. Now go!
• 5:58
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 5:59
  Sarah Fruy: We're not in a place right now where it's a great time to make a big announcement. And so it was. No one's fault like no one did anything necessarily like wrong in the sense of like their jobs. But it was one of those things where, hey? If we had all talked about this a little bit more upfront and aligned better on, like the timelines and things like that. I think that the whole, you know campaign could have gone a little bit better.
• 6:20
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, what was the morale at that time.
• 6:23
  Sarah Fruy: Oh, I mean, you know, it's it's 1 of those like work, hard play, hard environments where everybody is there because they want to be there. They're they're super passionate. And I think that's where you get a lot of these.
• 6:34
  Sarah Fruy: you know, the passion is is strong. So that's where it's hard to like point fingers of like. Well, nobody really like did something wrong, but it didn't go as well as it should have. And
• 6:47
  Sarah Fruy: and so I think it's just that. It's just like a lot of people kind of like, very siloed, very passionate about what their work and wanting to do better. And then us kind of like taking a moment being like, Hey, like we all could have done better here. It wasn't like one functions
• 6:59
  Sarah Fruy: failure, or something like that.
• 7:02
  Melinda Lee: That's good.
• 7:02
  Sarah Fruy: I think our shared desire to really move the company forward was what it made us kind of like, reflect and think about like how can we? How can we change this behavior in the future to avoid this kind of situation?
• 7:12
  Melinda Lee: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm glad that you didn't run into the pointing the fingers and blaming. And that could have happened.
• 7:19
  Melinda Lee: And so so it sounded like they took some time to think about, what could we do? How can we change this? And so what was implemented?
• 7:26
  Melinda Lee: To change it?
• 7:27
  Sarah Fruy: So one of the things that we we did as a company was one of my counterparts in on the product team. He was training his team on agile methodologies and they were going through scrum master training. And he was a big proponent of
• 7:44
  Sarah Fruy: Let's make this a company wide effort like, I don't want just my team to be thinking this way. I would really think that it has a better impact if the whole company can. And so he came to me. He came to other leaders within the organization was like, I would love it if you would join me in training and learning how to do work through through this agile methodology and
• 8:02
  Sarah Fruy: kind of explained to me how it works. And I was like, you know, this is really interesting. I'd love to be a part of it. And so
• 8:07
  Sarah Fruy: myself, folks from the marketing team, we had people from finance. We had people from sales. We had people from Hr. We had people from product. We had people from engineering. The whole company had representatives. It wasn't the entire organization that went, but we all had people from our departments that showed up for a couple of days of in person training, and got certified on agile scrum masters.
• 8:26
  Sarah Fruy: And what we walked away with, which I think was really valuable, was a a common alignment on how we can manage projects better through through agile, but also like a vocabulary that we were all using. That was the same. So when we talked about project management, we were using this language, we were all using the same language
• 8:44
  Sarah Fruy: and and then we brought those ideas in that way of thinking back to our teams. And it became a cultural change for the whole organization. It wasn't just Shawn's team was better, or my team was better. Or my department was better. It was like the whole company kind of got up leveled in the process, and we were all focusing on like, how can we bring more agile to the work that we're doing? How can we
• 9:04
  Sarah Fruy: work in an iterative fashion, break projects down into smaller tasks that are more manageable. So people aren't getting stressed like, Oh, there's this huge thing that we have to do. Well, now, each thing is actually 4 smaller things, and those 4, 4 smaller things are 2 smaller things, and then it becomes like, what did I have to do today? What did I have to do this week versus I have this big project that's due at the end of the quarter
• 9:24
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 9:24
  Sarah Fruy: It's a lot less stressful. It feels a lot less manageable. And then another. You know, communication tool that we got from that was this idea of retrospectives? Where, at the end of a milestone or project, you meet with all the stakeholders, and you talk about what went well, what could we have done better? And what do we want to do in the future?
• 9:42
  Sarah Fruy: And that would bring folks from different departments together again as well? And so we were talking together in a way that we hadn't before. There was a lot of like. Oh, we did the thing now. We moved on. We moved on. We moved on. But now it's like, No, wait. We're coming back together. We're talking as a group in a way that we don't normally in our jobs. It's normally like, you know, team meetings, or all hands or things like that. And pulling these individuals in these smaller retrospective meetings was another great way that we sort of
• 10:06
  Sarah Fruy: improve communication and learn from our experiences, and also got rid of like bad habits and bad behaviors that are ineffective, you know, approaches that weren't working for the company, and everybody got stronger, and I think it was all of those things that sort of contributed to our success, and hitting that unicorn status, and really like catapulting the business forward.
• 10:25
  Melinda Lee: Interesting. And what were some of the the bad behaviors, or be on, you know, because of the silos or the things that you felt like.
• 10:34
  Melinda Lee: because you would think that it would be not. It would be more of a person from a bad behavior, because something's happening within an employee.
• 10:42
  Melinda Lee: But it could be a whole overall environment issue that's creating this bad behavior like, what are some of the symptoms that you think that that people can see your managers can start to spot if it if it's
• 10:54
  Melinda Lee: starting to become unpredict. Yeah.
• 10:57
  Sarah Fruy: So I think one of the things about agile is is not pointing fingers at individuals, but focusing on the process.
• 11:03
  Sarah Fruy: So trying to take emotions out of it of like someone so did show for the meeting. And because of that, you know, we didn't get we didn't hit this deadline. Don't blame that person. It was just like we had. We missed like the project missed deadlines. Milestones weren't achieved when they were supposed to be so. How do we project manage better so that we aren't missing the deadlines that we agreed to like that would be like a way of.
• 11:24
  Melinda Lee: Oh, I see. Got it!
• 11:26
  Sarah Fruy: That person, but blaming the process of like, did they? Did the team have too much on their plate? Were they.
• 11:31
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 11:31
  Sarah Fruy: And should we have had, like less things going on at that time, and focus more on like the work than the person? And then it feels less of like name pointing or finger pointing and name calling, and more like, we're all trying to solve this. We're all trying to make it better.
• 11:45
  Sarah Fruy: and like one of the things like, you know. But rather than like maybe bad behavior was like a wrong phrase. But one of the things that we were able to improve was calendaring of like product as these releases. That's great that they're doing. How can we sync that up with marketing? And how they have, like bigger initiative. Maybe we have like a big event that we're preparing for, and that that announcement, if we hold it for a couple more weeks or a couple more months will be way more impactful to announce at this large event. Where we have all these people.
• 12:12
  Sarah Fruy: you know, there, there's an opportunity for us to really make a much bigger impact versus just releasing it when it's ready. I mean, also like the tools that we were using, you know, making sure that, like our project management tool, was like the same for everyone versus like
• 12:23
  Sarah Fruy: earlier on everybody, kind of had their own tool, that, like the manager that department preferred, and being on the same platforms also, when you're sharing tasks and you're syncing these different things and you're providing feedback. You're logging into one system. You have one source of truth for everything, and that was another way that, like as an organization, we sort of like, made it easier for us to talk easier for us to give feedback easier for us to like, move forward and have transparency on the work that we were doing.
• 12:47
  Melinda Lee: I love it, I love it so. It felt more like everybody was in it together, and I really enjoyed what you were saying like it's about the process. It's about, how can we do this together versus
• 12:57
  Melinda Lee: pointing the finger at one person and.
• 13:00
  Sarah Fruy: Take the ego out of it right and focus on the work.
• 13:03
  Melinda Lee: Yes, if you're having.
• 13:04
  Sarah Fruy: Problems on an individual of like personality issues like, let's have those conversations privately with those individuals and sort of work through. Maybe some of those personality conflicts. But when it comes to like project management
• 13:16
  Sarah Fruy: like it, I think it's really kind of destructive when people start blaming others for for things that like didn't go well and focus more on the work of how could the work have gone better? And the process that we like approach to doing that work.
• 13:31
  Melinda Lee: and do you think that the process? The agile process is like you break down the project into chunks and then does every leader report back as a whole to as a group going back to the idea of it's not being siloed. How did you manage all the different individual projects, and get it all in alignment with everybody going in the same direction.
• 13:55
  Melinda Lee: How does that work.
• 13:56
  Sarah Fruy: Another. Another element that we use at Pantheon. That, I think, contributed to access was success was Okr, so objectives and key results.
• 14:05
  Sarah Fruy: And that was another, you know, institutional change that we rolled out over a couple of years like it took time for us to kind of like. Bring that process into the organization as well. But that is essentially that you have, like a larger company, goal
• 14:17
  Sarah Fruy: departmental goals, and then individual goals. And they all kind of cascade down. And
• 14:23
  Sarah Fruy: so one of the ways that that helps bring alignment is like the the best goals in terms of success are ones that are shared across departments, and so.
• 14:33
  Melinda Lee: Got it.
• 14:33
  Sarah Fruy: Or product, or all 3 of.
• 14:35
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 14:36
  Sarah Fruy: Have a shared goal.
• 14:38
  Sarah Fruy: Working on these projects is like, Okay, does this help us achieve our Okr.
• 14:43
  Sarah Fruy: Yes. Or if the answer is no? Then then maybe we shouldn't be doing that work. Maybe it's a great idea, and maybe it could make us, or bring us some new customers, or improve retention, or whatever the goal is. But if it doesn't serve the goal that we've agreed to, we kind of have to table that, and so like at a high level, you have
• 14:59
  Sarah Fruy: shared goals. And then, as the project goes on, I think it's like part of that. Calendaring is having like very clear timelines and deadlines for things of milestones that you need to hit. Like, maybe the product needs to be written by a certain point. We need to have a press release from the marketing team and sales needs to have a training on how they're gonna go to market with it.
• 15:17
  Sarah Fruy: and finance needs to make sure there's a new billing thing. And so all of these different departments know that by like the end of this month or the end of this quarter. We have to do these things, or else this project isn't going to be successful. And then the leaders of of the project kind of come together on a regular basis to make sure that we're on target.
• 15:33
  Sarah Fruy: If something's going on with product or marketing, or whatever function that says like, I can't actually hit that deadline. Then we all have to agree like, are we going to delay this, or are we going to move forward without that that element of the project and consider it like, you know, if it's 90% there instead of 100, there is that okay? And maybe that is but making sure that we're all clear in terms of like, if certain aspects can't be delivered on time, or we need to to push out a deadline or something like that that everyone's on the same page. There's no surprises.
• 16:00
  Sarah Fruy: Good communication, I think, reduces the element of surprise.
• 16:04
  Melinda Lee: Right? Right? I I love that idea of bringing everybody together to work on a project
• 16:11
  Melinda Lee: cause. Aren't those projects the best when everyone, all hands are on deck, I mean. Yes, everybody will have their individual goals. But to have some key projects that are aligned with the big goal.
• 16:22
  Melinda Lee: I mean you're bringing everybody together to work on something, and and then there are no surprises. You're you're communicating together all toward one thing or a couple of big things. Then I think that can really elevate the organization so much more faster, more quickly, right? In terms of.
• 16:41
  Melinda Lee: because the our organizations nowadays, I mean, we're we're in so much competition. There's a lot of things going on. And so having everybody work on some key initiatives together versus every department on their own initiatives.
• 16:54
  Sarah Fruy: Yeah, it's like, I mean, Simon sinek like, you know, start with. Why, that's a great.
• 16:58
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 17:01
  Sarah Fruy: like like
• 17:06
  Sarah Fruy: a great like capsule. Sort of like creating that. Why, for people right? When you have every department head mapping up to the same goal. That's your why, that's how you sort of inspire people that gives them motivation of understanding where they fit within that versus just being told. Oh, finance has to create this new skew. Well.
• 17:21
  Sarah Fruy: My job. But now oh, I understand why? Because we have this huge announcement. And this product's getting released. And that that product.
• 17:26
  Melinda Lee: Yes.
• 17:26
  Sarah Fruy: Revenue goals, and that revenue goal is going to get me, you know my bonus and all these things, and then it. It makes people more inspired and empowered, and wanting to deliver that result versus feeling like they have to deliver that result.
• 17:38
  Melinda Lee: And what happens when people when there's a change like what? If
• 17:44
  Melinda Lee: the the higher up you know the executives, they all decide that they're going to. Everybody's all okay. Everybody's all excited. We're doing this thing. Okay, we're all on board. And then and then suddenly, there's a change. We have to change things. Have you ever been in that situation where
• 18:00
  Melinda Lee: the change has to happen? And then and then people don't want to move anymore.
• 18:04
  Melinda Lee: they're resistant. Yeah.
• 18:05
  Sarah Fruy: The way, and that's another area where I feel like Agile has been very helpful for me as a leader is one of the things with Agile is like committing to a certain volume of work right? And sometimes, when things change, it's something that's getting added to your plate. It's very rarely that the the heads are like, oh, we're gonna do this. And you're gonna not have as much work to do. It's usually like.
• 18:24
  Melinda Lee: Exactly.
• 18:25
  Sarah Fruy: Gonna change something, and it means more work for you. And so like as a manager, one of the ways that I can advocate is like, Okay, well, we've committed to this volume of work for this quarter or
• 18:34
  Sarah Fruy: this month, or whatever. And by adding this to my plate, we have to take something off, because
• 18:39
  Sarah Fruy: either that or you need to give me more resources, or you need to give me budget. But that's a way that I can kind of like put it in perspective of like. If I do this, then either this isn't going to go as well, or we can't deliver that. And these are the tricks. Yes, I can do that, but my quality of work is going to go down in these areas, or if you want me to do the best thing I can. Then you need to give me more resources, and have just like a very real conversation, to manage expectations about what this change, like the impact of that's gonna have on my team.
• 19:08
  Sarah Fruy: so that if if we are overwhelmed and we're overworked and things like that like I was very clear upfront like this is going to burn my team out, and I don't want that. So like, let's bring on a contractor for a couple of weeks and like it doesn't need to be a new hire just because you're asking for more resources. It doesn't always have to be some huge thing where you're like hiring people for months, you can bring on a contractor or find maybe a new technology that's gonna help like, take things off of your team's plate and and automate some sort of tasks and responsibilities.
• 19:35
  Sarah Fruy: and I think that's a way to sort of manage some of those things that can feel really overwhelming is sort of like.
• 19:40
  Sarah Fruy: How do? How do I chip away at this and make sure that I'm not gonna burn my team out in the process while still giving the management team what they they need to be successful.
• 19:48
  Melinda Lee: Right right, and having that clear, direct, honest conversation, and letting them know this is. And I love like you like you said, because you have very clearly the the capacity, the the job, what you have to do and like, okay, and letting them know to do a quality job, then you're gonna need, you need more resources or take something off. And so having that Co clear conversation with them.
• 20:11
  Melinda Lee: yeah, love that I've taken away so much from this conversation, Sarah, I like to end with the question that I asked all my guests, what is that one leadership, golden takeaway that you'd like people to remember.
• 20:28
  Sarah Fruy: So I think, you know, based on what we've been talking about today. The the big takeaway for me is really that when you think about how you can have
• 20:35
  Sarah Fruy: an impact as a leader, think bigger than just your team or the department that you're managing. But really think about, how can I lead this organization to the next level? And a lot of that comes from working with your peers on other teams and other departments and getting them to sort of implement that change and and bring that
• 20:53
  Sarah Fruy: forward with you. And I think that when you can collaborate across departmental teams and really think, bigger picture. That's how you really move the business forward versus really, just focusing on your individual team and departmental goals. And that's what's gonna and really move the business forward, at the same time.
• 21:09
  Melinda Lee: I agree, help really take the business because you're now seeing the bigger picture you're putting yourself in the leaders position and looking broadly about what can really help this organization thrive and be more cohesive, move together more effectively, and and being and using your voice, don't don't be afraid to use your voice to communicate. When you have an idea to make things more cohesive and effective, then
• 21:34
  Melinda Lee: speak up, say it, and, like you mentioned right. Use it across the organization, across the different departments and not just within your own. And that's gonna really help you shine.
• 21:44
  Sarah Fruy: Partnerships like. Don't go it alone. If you go.
• 21:46
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 21:47
  Sarah Fruy: It's gonna be harder when you when you gather a team around you and you gather support for your ideas. That's how like everybody, you know, wins together versus just trying to go it on your own.
• 21:55
  Melinda Lee: Right. And I think that with many of the leaders they're just thinking about. Well, I'm doing. I'm gonna go about it together with my department, and it's only within my department. But going back to what we had mentioned earlier people, just you don't just pass the baton about your job role, or what you've just done to the other department. And because it doesn't, it's not really effective like that within organizations
• 22:16
  Melinda Lee: to have a really solid organization. You're thinking, okay, big, more more big picture, more cohesive.
• 22:22
  Melinda Lee: Let's work together.
• 22:24
  Sarah Fruy: Absolutely.
• 22:25
  Melinda Lee: Yes, thank you, Sarah, so much. I had a lot of fun hearing about the story of Pantheon and your leadership, and all of your marketing experience sales and marketing experience. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you.
• 22:39
  Sarah Fruy: Thanks so much for having me.
• 22:40
  Melinda Lee: Thank you. Okay. Audience, thank you so much for joining. And until I see you next time I'm your sister and flow made prosperity flow to you and through you to others. Thank you. Bye.