Latest / Speak In Flow / Why Leaders Are Terrified Right Now

Transcript

Why Leaders Are Terrified Right Now · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome to the Speak and Flow podcast, where we help CEOs build leadership teams to run the business with them and not through them. Today, we are talking about leading through uncertain times.
• 0:16
  Melinda Lee: How do we have transparent conversations, even when we don't know what is happening, when there's lots of change? How do we make the right decisions? Joining me today is an executive technology and operations executive with 25 years of experience. He is the CEO of Flow City.
• 0:35
  Melinda Lee: Welcome, Eunice Atif.
• 0:38
  Y A: Thank you, Melinda. Pleasure to be here.
• 0:41
  Melinda Lee: Hi, Eunice, it's great to have you on here, and I'm excited to dive in. So let's start off with this first question. There is a leader out there who has stopped to listen to this podcast.
• 0:53
  Melinda Lee: And they're busy. What do you hope can change in this person's life if they take everything into account, or at least one or two things into account, what you're about to tell them?
• 1:06
  Y A: Well, first of all, the feeling that you are isolated is true, that you…
• 1:12
  Y A: the sense that you do not know everything that's happening, and the fear of missing out of critical information is a real thing. So they have my empathy and my support for that. And the second thing is.
• 1:27
  Y A: What they should not lose sight of is
• 1:30
  Y A: they don't have to have all the answers all the time. The team…
• 1:35
  Y A: relies on them to lead them through these uncertain times and uncertainty in general. They do not expect perfection. They expect,
• 1:46
  Y A: truthfulness, and they expect transparency and authenticity. When they do know, they should say that. When they are inserting, then they should say that as well. And that's okay.
• 1:56
  Melinda Lee: Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too. When people…
• 2:00
  Melinda Lee: sense that you're, lying or pretending and not telling the entire truth, then you're… you're breaking the trust. So be more authentic and… and speak about it quickly, as quickly as you can.
• 2:15
  Y A: 100%, and we went through many situations, COVID as being the most,
• 2:23
  Y A: I want to say stereotypical example of, we did not know what's going to happen by the end of the day.
• 2:29
  Y A: So it was very difficult to communicate what we will do tomorrow when we had no idea what will happen two hours from now. And there are a few other examples like that, but I think COVID is the most common that we all live.
• 2:43
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 2:44
  Y A: What was expected back then is.
• 2:46
  Y A: Will I get paid? Are we gonna be in business till end of week? Are you gonna basically guarantee a minimum of income?
• 2:56
  Y A: As long as we are…
• 2:58
  Y A: all together in this thing, you have my loyalty and you have my attention, and as executives, we had to send that message, like, yep, this is how much I know, this is how much I don't know, this is what I'm trying to do, and the rest is, I will let you know as soon as I have more updates. Meanwhile, yes, we are in this together.
• 3:15
  Melinda Lee: And you have a story about, being in a company where they had different information behind closed doors, and then… but the narrative that they were communicating to the public, to the staff, was, very different. Can you share that?
• 3:32
  Y A: Well, I was part of, I think, 3 companies that went through acquisitions, and every time… once you go through the first one, then you pick up the sign, then you know what's going on, but now, hindsight…
• 3:45
  Y A: Looking back.
• 3:46
  Y A: Yes, I was part of both conversations, one in the, in the open, where there was one narrative shared with the employees. No, no, no, we're fine, everything is fine.
• 3:58
  Y A: Nothing to see here. It's business as usual, but behind closed doors, there was another narrative, it's like, we gotta package this thing, we gotta make these changes, we gotta lay off these people, we gotta…
• 4:10
  Y A: hire these other people. And that dissonance, that difference in narrative between what happened behind closed doors and what we shared publicly created some,
• 4:23
  Y A: well, I called it dissonance because it is, but it created a conflict in how we communicate around sensitive topics, and there are signals that employees definitely pick up. People are very smart, and they understand their own culture, or the culture of their own companies, so when they start noticing even subtle differences, then they start
• 4:41
  Y A: questions. Now, how much can you reveal when you are
• 4:46
  Y A: told not to share anything. That actually
• 4:49
  Y A: puts people like me, or at least put me in the past, in some unethical situations where I had to choose between concealing what I had to conceal, but also share enough to remain truthful.
• 5:04
  Y A: And the teams do pick up on that, and that's your credibility on the line, that's the commitment, that people start questioning, am I trusting the right people here or not?
• 5:15
  Y A: It happened more than once, but in one case, it was so obvious that literally people would
• 5:21
  Y A: That was the only thing they were talking about, is.
• 5:25
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 5:25
  Y A: being sold? Is my job safe? Yes or no? And some of them went as far as, you know what, I'm updating my resume, I'm out of here because I don't think you guys are telling me the truth.
• 5:36
  Y A: So, it created some tension. Was there a better way to handle it? I would say probably yes. Was it justified? I would say also probably yes. There's a reason why you don't share, because you are,
• 5:50
  Y A: in the early days of negotiating deals, you are actually under the legal obligation to keep everything secret. So the lawyers get involved, the CFOs get involved, and you're sworn to secrecy for a reason.
• 6:04
  Y A: But here, we're talking about the impact on culture and behavior and relationships between executive leadership and employees. It definitely takes a hit, and it should be mitigated and managed.
• 6:16
  Y A: Through open communication. You can say, probably there will be some changes, and if you can issue those guarantees that jobs are safe, then you should do that as soon as possible to defuse the tension.
• 6:29
  Melinda Lee: I'm gonna tie this for, back to what you do, at Flow City, because I think there's an interesting parallel between communication, because when you spoke about how communication has a ripple effect, like, from executive leadership to employees, and
• 6:47
  Melinda Lee: you know, we wanted to have that streamlined, we want to have that effective, we want to have the right communication all the way downstream, but then sometimes, it's not as smooth, or the information gets lost, and, in this case, the information was incorrect, so people started making things up.
• 7:06
  Melinda Lee: For Flow City and what you do, how does that support… is there a way that Flow City supports communication, too? Making it more tight, making it more streamlined?
• 7:19
  Melinda Lee: And.
• 7:21
  Y A: Yes.
• 7:22
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, for the audience, you could tell a little bit about what Felicity does first.
• 7:26
  Y A: Yeah, we have to, yeah, to set the stage, Flow City is a platform that ingests
• 7:32
  Y A: the organization's reality, artifacts like meeting notes.
• 7:39
  Y A: what do you call it? SOPs, data from CRM, ERP system, metadata, everything that the organization produces as artifacts to document the work.
• 7:51
  Y A: and to document plans and intent. All of it is ingested, and there is an AI-based, but also deterministic engine that takes all of that and starts making sense out of it.
• 8:04
  Y A: to show you where the structural gaps within an organization is, where the issues are, and what the fixes should be. And that creates a blueprint, a digital blueprint of your whole organization that captures the DNA of that organization
• 8:22
  Y A: then it can be translated into executable solutions. For example, if you capture the DNA of your organizations, expressing how you
• 8:33
  Y A: Sell your products, or what kind of products you have, and how you make them, and how you support them, and how you bill for them, and how you manage your teams, and how you recruit.
• 8:44
  Y A: what the goals are over the next few years, all of that creates a context for Flow City to reason through it.
• 8:52
  Y A: Find the structural gaps, flags the challenges, and shows you the opportunities, and help you build that blueprint that can be translated into CRM, ERP, or custom solutions, or just a reflection of what the policies or SOPs are missing, what kind of framework you should adopt, and so on and so forth. That gives you a baseline of reality.
• 9:16
  Y A: This is reality as you see it, but also as an objective, agnostic platform sees it.
• 9:24
  Y A: and reasons through it. From there, you can develop a communication plan. You can say, these are the goals, and for us to reach the goals, these are the steps we have to go through, and practically, this is what it means to you.
• 9:36
  Y A: sales team. This is what it means to you, my delivery team. This is what it means to you, my HR team. That way, in their own language, they have a clear understanding of what the translation of the intent is, so they have action items that they can act upon.
• 9:55
  Y A: And many, many times, that's the missing link between, hey, we'd like to make this company great, let's make this company great again, and to, okay, well, what do I have to do in the next 3 months to actually support that goal, and do I have to change in the
• 10:12
  Y A: third quarter, what I've been doing in the last two quarters, or I have to do more of the same. These questions, they are very difficult to answer on an ongoing basis, and I remember my job as a CEO of Arcus
• 10:24
  Y A: A lot of my time was actually spent with the middle management trying to explain why they have to do things in a certain way, so they can support other departments, but also support the goals of the company overall.
• 10:39
  Y A: So, back to uncertainty, we're living…
• 10:43
  Y A: around… and we're surrounded, actually, by uncertainty, constantly. Things change all the time, and,
• 10:52
  Y A: You multiply that by the number of executives and the number of middle management, and the number of employees you have in your organization, then that uncertainty is multiplied
• 11:05
  Y A: And you're dealing with complexity, and you have to manage both aspects, both dimensions at the same time. So to cut through it and have that sharp laser focus all the time is not an easy task.
• 11:19
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, well, we'll… yeah, and then also, sometimes, like you said, to cut through it, you stick with it.
• 11:25
  Melinda Lee: And then, like, there's so much, so many variables, so this is almost like a… you call an MRI, an assessment where you're at, so it gives you more confidence that you're making the right choice, and you're directing and guiding the people in the right way, because sometimes people can…
• 11:45
  Melinda Lee: They say, well, you know, I'm doing this, XYZ, why are we doing ABC? And does it really make sense?
• 11:53
  Melinda Lee: And like you said, you spend a lot of time with the middle management and, explaining why is it that they needed to do what they needed to do, so I could see how this Flow City could support their efforts, because they see it more of a outside, perspective.
• 12:10
  Y A: Yes, and mental management is just an example. You could be spending a lot of time with the board, you could be spending a lot of time with the C-suite, or with your clients, basically articulating what the value prop is.
• 12:22
  Y A: whichever action you end up adopting, it has to be anchored in reality, and that reality is hard to see without that MRI report.
• 12:32
  Melinda Lee: Yeah. Do you find that the… the leaders are incorrect? Because they… I would think that they know where the structural, pitfalls are in the company. Do you see that this, this report will…
• 12:50
  Melinda Lee: Shows them wrong.
• 12:53
  Y A: It will… it will… no, it's not about getting it wrong or right, it's about displacing the center of gravity
• 13:02
  Y A: Away from the political network of an organization to something that's more objective, everyone can point to.
• 13:09
  Melinda Lee: Hmm, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:11
  Y A: Let's say the Flow City reports indicated that we have to… it is a much more comfortable position than saying, I…
• 13:21
  Y A: recommend to do XYZ, because that's a politically charged statement, even though it can be, backed by facts.
• 13:30
  Y A: But we know organizations are political ecosystems where you come with political goodwill and capital, and you start making arbitrage decisions. Do I spend my political capital on this fight, or do I keep it for the next fight?
• 13:46
  Y A: And, the truth starts getting diluted the same way the responsibility
• 13:52
  Y A: gets diluted. When you adopt an agnostic platform like Flow City, it doesn't care about people's emotions and political capital, it cares about facts, and it can point
• 14:06
  Y A: to the source of its recommendations. Now, you can agree with it or disagree, but it's a much safer position to present a report.
• 14:15
  Melinda Lee: Definitely.
• 14:16
  Y A: It is to actually go in a head-on collision with your boards or with your C-suite.
• 14:24
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 14:26
  Melinda Lee: I agree. I think so that… and what kind of companies, what size companies?
• 14:34
  Melinda Lee: Is the right size for this.
• 14:37
  Y A: I would say.
• 14:39
  Y A: all companies are welcome to use it. But it starts showing higher value where you have
• 14:47
  Y A: enough complexity that excludes the human's ability to keep everything together. Right.
• 14:55
  Y A: within one brainstorming session, because you tend to get distracted, there are so many details, there are so many layers, and Flow City does very well just looking, taking that complexity, and
• 15:09
  Y A: isolating the issues, categorizing them, but also keeping that connection alive when needed on an ad hoc basis. So, where complexity starts increasing, typically mid-market, enterprise.
• 15:23
  Y A: then Flow City becomes a no-brainer, because it helps you think through the layers where one person or even a small group of people cannot keep track of all the moving pieces.
• 15:36
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, and what are some examples, what is one example of a structural improvement that it can find?
• 15:41
  Melinda Lee: Once you put in all the information, you said it finds structural .
• 15:46
  Y A: governors…
• 15:47
  Melinda Lee: problems…
• 15:48
  Y A: There are certain laws, for example, reachability is one law, and when we look at
• 15:54
  Y A: All your context, and we can isolate this one critical task executed, or meant to be executed.
• 16:03
  Y A: by a team or by one person, but we will also identify that there are no connections between that one person and the upstream processes. Or there are no connections between that one team, let's call it a node in a workflow, in a network.
• 16:21
  Y A: and whatever is coming downstream. So let's assume I am a compliance manager, and I do generate a compliance report, but there is no…
• 16:32
  Y A: flow, or no process to… for that report to travel to the team that needs to know about it, the compliance team, or the CFO, or the controller, or the… or the, CIO, or the COO office, and
• 16:48
  Y A: Either there is no flow whatsoever, or actually the fields within that compliance report are not all aggregated to make it to the next level.
• 16:59
  Y A: Glow City is really good at finding those inconsistencies and those emissions. That's a reachability law that's breached, and it will flag it and say, you have this node right here that's completely isolated. It's meant to be the trigger for this
• 17:14
  Y A: reporting process, this is not going to run. It will never run under the current conditions. You are missing these fields, you are missing these triggers, and this is how to fix it. So that would be an example of
• 17:27
  Y A: things that get buried, in the complexity that no one sees anymore. It could be something simple, as simple as a checkbox that's missing from the CRF config.
• 17:38
  Y A: Or it could be just a whole table that's missing from your database, or a complete role that no one has ever hired for.
• 17:47
  Y A: Because they either got busy, or they made some other decisions.
• 17:53
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, very interesting.
• 17:56
  Melinda Lee: How did you come up with this? What was… the story.
• 18:01
  Y A: stories, 25 years of frustration, is going out there and building things and delivering, and realizing we delivered the wrong thing, and having to go back and
• 18:09
  Y A: Patch it, or rebuild And go back to the client, and apologize, and…
• 18:15
  Y A: That we provide the best service.
• 18:17
  Melinda Lee: I do distance.
• 18:18
  Y A: Years and years of embarrassment, and people pounding.
• 18:20
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 18:21
  Y A: desk, and screaming and yelling, it's like, okay, I gotta fix this, but you don't fix it by building just a better framework.
• 18:28
  Y A: I just, basically, I built something that I wish I had.
• 18:34
  Y A: 20, 15, 10 years ago, when I was going out there and providing.
• 18:38
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:39
  Y A: My consulting, services.
• 18:41
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:42
  Y A: Vouching for the quality of my team to provide the best solution.
• 18:47
  Melinda Lee: Right.
• 18:47
  Y A: That… that's what it's.
• 18:48
  Melinda Lee: And it's not… it has nothing to do with your team, it's just that we're not fixing the root cause of what the challenges were in the beginning.
• 18:56
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 18:58
  Y A: Exactly. I had access, I remember, Relation Edge, I had access to the best team. People came from the top.
• 19:07
  Y A: for consulting companies. We have the best talent in the business, and we still failed to, a few times, deliver what clients expect.
• 19:19
  Melinda Lee: I didn't.
• 19:20
  Y A: I remember, I mean, these are embarrassing moments, and I had a few of those, and that's when I started thinking, it's like, we need a better way, we need a better way. But not a better way, meaning we need a methodology that checks double and triple checks everything that's documented.
• 19:36
  Y A: Methodology frameworks will only take you, That far before.
• 19:44
  Y A: these structural failures start showing up again. So.
• 19:48
  Melinda Lee: That's true.
• 19:49
  Y A: That's what led to Flow City. We need… we need something different, a different approach to solving the problem.
• 19:57
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, I agree. Oh, I mean, it's led you here, and it's led you this far.
• 20:03
  Y A: Yes.
• 20:04
  Melinda Lee: And sometimes when you look back and you wonder, why did I go through all those things? Now you know why.
• 20:09
  Y A: Exactly, it was worth it. All those…
• 20:12
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 20:12
  Y A: yelling and screaming sessions, I think they were worth… they… they were the motivation to keep going and building something meaningful.
• 20:18
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, and so going back to the conversation around leading uncertain times, it sounds like this is gonna help people with that, and help people with…
• 20:28
  Melinda Lee: Having the right information, and assessment, diagnostic, and knowledge about what is truly not working well, so we can communicate more clearly and authentically.
• 20:40
  Y A: 100%. Medicine led the way, gave us the example of how to approach,
• 20:46
  Y A: diagnosing issues and recommending, remedies. Engineering disciplines did the same thing. It's like, you know, let's take a look, let's gather the facts, and let's do our calculations before we
• 21:00
  Y A: solutions, and I think it's time for the enterprise software to be at the service of businesses and not the opposite, where we create software that solves real problems and doesn't just create busy work for IT departments and developers to keep it easy.
• 21:20
  Melinda Lee: Well, and then also to, like, make… I think they've done that before to keep people more pro… not efficient.
• 21:26
  Melinda Lee: So, so, like, IT and technology is keeping people efficient, but what you're doing is keeping it
• 21:33
  Melinda Lee: So that it's meeting the objectives and the goals and the intent of the company, and everybody is following that direction.
• 21:41
  Melinda Lee: And working through… Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:44
  Y A: You know, your IT team or consultants are actually working for 9 months, 18 months, building what you need.
• 21:53
  Melinda Lee: Right, right.
• 21:53
  Y A: meet their goals. You don't, right?
• 21:55
  Melinda Lee: You don't…
• 21:56
  Y A: sprint meetings, you get reports, you get JIRA boards and graphs.
• 22:01
  Melinda Lee: the end.
• 22:01
  Y A: It's like, okay, good progress, good progress, good progress, then the solution gets deployed. Things later, the ROI is not there.
• 22:07
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 22:08
  Y A: I committed hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing.
• 22:10
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 22:11
  Y A: consulting fees, and you're not seeing it, but you're trying to capture it after the fact. What I'm saying.
• 22:17
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 22:18
  Y A: try to capture it before any line of code is written, then by the time we start writing code, which with the use of AI, is no longer a barrier, we're actually coding for the right thing, and cause… the cause of failure just drops dramatically.
• 22:35
  Melinda Lee: from…
• 22:36
  Y A: hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to virtually zero. I don't think it will ever be zero-zero, but if we create a platform or an environment
• 22:46
  Y A: That can model what the future looks like, and can run through the scenarios and measure impact on business, then yes, we can start talking about a virtually zero cost of failure, because we eliminate the failure altogether.
• 23:04
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, no, I think this is a really good time, because people are into, you know, AI and how to, how it's going to help them support, the expansion of the company, and so this is going to help them to make the right decisions as they are thinking about expansion, and how the… there's so many variables, and
• 23:24
  Melinda Lee: changes, but this will help them give them a good sense, a better sense.
• 23:30
  Y A: Yes, and there is currently, or there has been, a lot of talk about automation.
• 23:36
  Y A: And I can see the benefit of that. If your teams are not executing fast enough, then agents can help you execute, whether making cold calls or processing customer service or tech support inquiries. Agents can automate a lot of that and do
• 23:52
  Y A: a great job. As long as you are automating the right processes, then you should be good.
• 23:59
  Y A: Question is, are you?
• 24:01
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 24:03
  Y A: How do you know?
• 24:04
  Melinda Lee: Exactly. We don't know, so here comes Flow City.
• 24:07
  Melinda Lee: Exactly. Well, awesome! Well, if someone wants to reach out to you, how can they get ahold of you?
• 24:15
  Y A: Flowcity.com? Flow. Okay. I mean, spelled behind you, F-L-O.
• 24:20
  Melinda Lee: That's L-O-W.
• 24:21
  Y A: Yes, S-I-T-I dot com, that the website provides more information, and that's the best way to reach out, or LinkedIn.
• 24:31
  Melinda Lee: Awesome. Thank you, Eunice. Thank you. It was so, so interesting. I really enjoyed and learned a lot about Flow City and about how the impact that it can have on companies, especially during uncertain times.
• 24:42
  Y A: Yes, yes.
• 24:43
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 24:43
  Y A: It was my pleasure. I enjoyed it.
• 24:45
  Melinda Lee: Thank you, and thank you, for listening, and remember, when you communicate, communicate often, communicate what matters, so people move together.
• 24:55
  Melinda Lee: Take care.