Leadership Author Series - Elizabeth Bieniek

share their thoughts and perspectives with the world. So today I'm super excited to introduce you to Elizabeth bien Nick, an innovator who led the team developing WebEx Hologram. Elizabeth the author of Cake on Tuesday, which explores her approach to fostering innovation through culture building and leadership. So Elizabeth, welcome to the show and say hi to our audience here.

I needed a title that reflected that. And there's a chapter in the book called have Cake on Tuesday, and it came from one particular stretch on the project that the book is about, where things were just a little little slow, a little bit of that slog a little We had to make our own magic at that season.

And I was having a conversation with my opsoleet at the time, who was fantastic about how do we interject some fun, some levity, how do we create something to rally the team around when there's not a major milestone to do that, And she had this great idea of creating a wheel Fortune style Wheel of winning and put everybody's name on it that was on our team at the end of our staff meetings, we'd spend it and if it landed on your name, Lorenzo today, all right,

you're getting the cake. This week and a cake would show up at your door two days later for no reason, no questions asked, and it was our staff means were on Tuesdays, so that's where cake on Tuesday came from. It was just a way to really celebrate the journey.

day and the minutia of the work. And then a lot of times when you have great people and great leaders, we're so hyper focused on the work that we need that silliness or that thing or that's something that's not like a part of the normalcy that kind of breaks us out of that shell. So I absolutely love that.

And then what as you kind of followed up on that over time, you know what I mean, like, what was the were there any ideas or any elements of impact to the business or to the team that kind of like grew legs from that initial approach.

you're you're dealing with tough problems. If you're not injecting some fun into that, you can burn out really really quick. And I think that's something you can see anytime you're working specifically on a bleeding edge tech where you don't have a guidebook to fall back on. You're really figuring it out as you go. So I do think in those scenarios, I mean you see this in all different industries.

Paramedics and firefighters like usually some of the funniest people that you'll find because they're great at just balancing things out. When you're dealing with major problems, you need major humored to keep you saying and grounded. So I think that did set the tone with our team. I think culture is something that's incredibly important and you really have to work to build that right from the get go. And once you have that, you have to foster it. You have to keep feeding it. It's not a set it

and forget it kind of a thing. So having that level of fun and making sure that was important, it wasn't an afterthought, it was part of doing work. I want to go be happy to go to work. I want to be happy to show up and enjoy this team. And if I'm not having a good time, then you're probably not having a good time and we're not gonna want to keep doing this. So if we need to be elbow to elbow all the time, like, let's enjoy the journey.

were really really focused. So I love that. I want to jump into the book a little bit here, specifically, on some things that you talk about, and one of the things that really stuck out to me right away was kind of this the power of disagreements. You have no idea how much I love that. I'm a sucker for really great, healthy debates, and for me, I get really nervous when it gets quiet, when my leaders, when my teams aren't kind of like, you know, grinding against

each other a little bit and having some disagreement. That's when I get nervous, because then I feel like we've given up, like nobody cares anymore. And I know it's not the case, but that's how I feel. So so walk me through a little bit about that. What do you mean when you say the power of disagreements and why that's so important to fostering not just innovation, but great cultures you were just talking about.

aligned and all get along. But I think there's a very fine distinction between we need to be working together in unison towards the same mission and moving together as one towards that. But that doesn't mean we're going to agree one hundred percent on everything. And if we do. Another quote I use in that chapter, is it something I heard of one as a kid that always stuck with me that if two people always agree, one of them is not necessary. And that was very impactful to me,

just thinking that's kind of a good point. So if you have a team of people that are just yes, ma'am, yes theirs kind of thing, and nobody's bringing up dissenting opinions, every idea that gets brought up is going to remain as shallow as it first was. You need those disagreements and dissenting opinions to help make it better. And if you have an environment that fosters that and welcomes that, and that's something you have to do that in action,

not just the word. And there's a lot of times I'll say like, any idea is welcome, and then somebody brings up an idea and it gets shot down, So you have to make sure your culture and your behavior back set up. But if you do have that environment where you want the descending opinions like help make my idea better, that's how you can go fast. I think specifically an innovation where you are again building the proverbial airplane.

As you're flying it. You can't wait till you have all the research and all the facts and have that all figured out and I've got evaded, I've got my market validation. You're going to be too late to the game. So you're moving very quickly with minimal data, and so you really rely on other people to poke holes, and hopefully the holes are getting poked by your friends and your colleagues before it goes out there and the market

and flops. So you want the people that are going to bring up those conflicting opinions because the end goal should be what I'm bringing to the table, what you're bringing to the table, all these other people are bringing to the table. We've all got a piece of that puzzle, but when you put it together, the sum of all the parts is greater. That's that's what you're going for.

But how do you make that happen in a healthy way, especially initially, like again once once you have the team down that path and they all understand the value that they each bring and that this is an expectation that we have to do to make sure the best idea wins. What are those first maybe couple of meetings look like or what are you doing to open up the space to make it okay for us to have these different opinions and not necessarily take it personal.

need to give freedom. And I one hundred percent I think it's the same when you're telling leading a team, you need to as a leader, you need to set boundaries. You need to be clear about that. Can't just be hey, we're gonna have an open dialogue and debate about anything and everything and who cares what the outcome is and we can talk for seventeen hours. You need some sort of parameter because there's there's some goal you're trying to achieve, Like we need to make a decision, we need to

build something, we need to move forward. I this game when you were being up the question that gave me a flash back to my first management job twenty some odd years ago, and I remember having this conversation with my team back then, or did I They asked me what my management style was, and this was my first management job, so I'm like, well, I'm to figure it out as I go. But I had made the answer of I am a collaborative leader until the clock runs out,

and then I'm command and control. And I think that worked really well, and that's something I have continued to use throughout my career of I want to hear upfront all those opinions and your question of how do you make room for that? I think if you say it, I'm big on say what you mean to me what you say. So when you have those first meetings, when you're still figuring out what a project is going to look like, be very crystal clear on here's the end

goal of what we're trying to do. This is what we're trying to build, where we're trying to go, what we need to accomplish. Here are the known parameters that we have, time, budget, money, resources, whatever case is. But then within that, say, now we got to figure out how we're going to get there, how we're getting from A to B. Thoughts ideas and open it up and you can throw some thing out as the first idea.

Just be careful you don't throw that out with the feeling that, oh, I can't I can't poke holes at that because that's the boss's idea and I can't go against that. So you definitely have to poke holes at your own idea and throw out and say this is where it's impartial. This is where I'm getting stuck in my own mental process, like this is a problem. What do you guys think? How can we do this better?

What can we add to it? And I think, again, if you back that up with behavior, you don't shoot down people's ideas, you don't call somebody out in a room, you don't make somebody feel stupid in front of a crowd of their peers. So you have to back it up with behavior. But once you start having some meeting like that, like that, you get some really great dialogue in collaboration and people build on each other's ideas. But then when you start running out the clock, then you

all right, great, those awesome. Here alls different opinions. There's a lot of different approaches we do. We can't do all of them right now. Let's do this, and then you can throw that out and you can get feedback on that, like any thoughts, feedback on that approach. But the end of the day, you do have to make a decision. That's the buck has tot up with somebody. So collaborative up until a point and then command and control.

do it so often because it's so true. There's so many things there from yeah it is, we're living it, you know, like we're living like this is exactly what leadership is, right. I think it's so great. So I do want to take a quick break to hear from word from our sponsors. But when we get back, I'm going to ask Elizabeth about going outside.

I saw this term and I immediately thought of like me taking my bike to the big field to play with all the kids and there and there were no parents around, and it was a lot of like we had to figure out number one, what we were gonna do to have fun and not get in trouble, and then number two whatever we were going to play a lot of times we had to make up the rules and make adjustments, but there was so much just joy, and looking back on it, I think innovation and courage and confidence and

all these things that came with it. So I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into this, just around going outside as a metaphor for you. What do you mean by that?

play Mario? Can I do?

And I remember there's this little stream that ran and through the woods in our backyard that if you poked it a certain way, move some rocks around, move some leaves around, you could actually make it run a fair a fair amount. But otherwise it would just get a little stagnant and get filled filled up. And so I spent so much of my time just outside playing around with stuff like that, And like, hey, if I divert

the water path here, what does this do? And like, oh, let me just make a mud puddle over here and like I find a critter and stick it in there and do so much is just expiration. And I think because of having that ingrained and me as a kid, it's something I still well. I tell my kids to

do it all the time. Team just go outside. But I think it's something I use more metaphorically when I when I get stuck with something, anytime you get caught up in your own thinking, trying to solve a problem, really trying to look at things from a different angle, just physically taking a break and going outside. We are creatures that were designed to be a nature. We weren't

designed to be in these little cubical boxes. And I think that's very stifling on your creativity and your perspective when you have a literal four walls closing in on you. So the ability to just get out of your environment figuratively and literally and allow yourself the luxury of a different perspective, I think that's really what helps thinking, problem solving, inspiration, innovation, ideation.

It's amazing for that. So when I want going through the process of writing the book, I kept hearing I think my mom's voice talking to me from heaven of like just go outside. When I get stuck like godside. And so that theme is recurrent throughout the book because it is just a huge metaphor for problem solving in my life.

ourselves out of that. And I just love the idea of just kind of like get out there and and and go go poke the mud with a stick, you know, like just go do something that is going to is going to just have you go experience things in a different way and then bring that back together. So I love that metaphor for sure. You know, in the book you have you have five parts, and I want to talk about each of them. The first one, starting is hard.

I think it's such a great call out there, and there's something in there that that that stood out to me around being disagreeable. You know, you talk about going outside of your comfort zone, finding uniqueness and embracing simplicity, but but being disagreeable. I read that and I'm like, it's it's such a great call, but I think that sometimes people may not. You know, it's one of those words that when you read it, you kind of project your own definition onto it. Yeah, right, versus like what

you mean? So I'd love you to maybe talk a little bit about what do you mean by you when you say being disagreeable?

important thing. And it came from I start out the book with a story having a chat with my former manager of it was very much like that Monty Python, good morning. I'd like to have an argument, And part of it is just me being native New Yorker. I'm like, let's let's just let's go things go. Let's let's let's start. And he's based in California, and we like to have

that coastal conflict, I think. And we were having a coffee one morning and he oversaw he was a VP in our department over several different groups, and I was just in one small facet of that. At the time. I was working on business relationships and strategic relationships. He had a separate group that was working on strategy, and I was not really involved in that other than tangentially, we do some long range planning and I might have, you know, the relationship angles to it, but it wasn't

really involved in corporate strategy at all. He had a great leader that ran it and the whole process and all that. But I was just feeling confrontational that morning give him our time over coffee. And we were in the process of doing this long range strategic plan, and I'm like, why do we call it a long range strategic plan? You're only looking three years out and you're only looking internally at adjacent technologies. That's not long range and that's not strategic. Why do we call it that?

And he was very very patient, very kind, very patient. So he put up with all my Shenanigans. But I think that morning he just kind of took the approach of like, calm and bluff if you will, of all, right, what should we do? If you think you could do a better, longerach, strategic plan, show me do it. And he gave me some leeway to go do that. So I decided to take that, give me an inch, I'll take a mile. So I ran with that, and I

spent that led to going outside. I spent a lot of time going external to our company, going to all these every incubator, accelerator, startup conference, everything I could go to, and trying to figure out what's on the horizon in this technology space, like what is some emerging tech that could really disrupt our current business model? What's out there? And that led to one thing led to another, and a lot of that was the project behind Cake on Tuesday.

But it started with being disagreeable, and I wanted to start with that. In the whole concept of how do you start starting is hard because a lot of times it's simply looking at things from a different perspective. It's having that contrary view, that contrary approach. And you mentioned that you end up parenting references so I'm gonna throw it in. I feel like you open the door on

that one. It's fair day. So it's the you're familiar with the Chick fil A logo, It's like the little chicken head with the the rooster with a comb on top of it. My son when he was I don't know, maybe five at the time, we were driving by one of those restaurants and he saw the sign. It's like, Oh, that's that restaurant, the one, the one with the foot on the sign. I'm like, but once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. And if you look at it in the mind of a five year old, it kind

of looks like a foot. And so that's just there's so much about having kids. It just immediately they don't have the preconceived notions, they don't have the bias, they don't have all this baggage of this is how I'm supposed to look at it, like an I kind of drawing up a chicken head and like it looks like

a foot. So sometimes when you look at things from a different perspective and you have that disagreeable thing, it might be like, look, this is your great strategic plan, because it's the same thing you've done for fifteen years, but I'm looking from this little side angle and it

doesn't look that good to me. So I think being willing to have those contrary opinions and bring them up and bring them I was maybe being a little vivid of a jerk with my boss at the time, but bringing them up in a point of like, how do we make this better together? I think when it comes from that perspective of can we do something different for both of our benefits, then it's usually pretty well received.

done it. Hit the time out, but right, and let's break it right now, right right, Like yeah, those are the things that we have to do. So I love that. That's so great. You know, in the in the second part and set your idea in motion, you talk about strategic hiring like not really being a necessity, and I want to just like pause there for a second because I think that then a lot of research, a lot of dialogue. I have spoken with a lot of recruiters

around hiring and the importance of it. But what does that look like when you're thinking about that in your own lens of like strategic hiring? What do you mean by that? And who are you hiring to build the team in a positive way?

the rest of it is less important. You want somebody that can jump in and really get excited about and about that long term goal and fit with the rest of it. But you don't need necessarily the nitty gritty details of did you do this exact same thing at this in a different environment or the same environment as a competitor or something like that. I think a lot of times we get hung up on this. I want to prove an entity, so I'm only going to hire

somebody based on what they've done. And if somebody's applying for jobs because they want to do something different. So I think when you approach that from okay, yes I need some level of validation of what have you done? But what do you want to do? What are you excited about? What gets you jazzed about coming to work? What sets your soul on fire? Like? What do you dread or love or hate? Oh? Get let's get into it.

And I think when you have those conversations, you get to know people a little bit better and understand how they might plug into your environment. I have what I would say is maybe non traditional interview practices. I mean I have to adhere to HR guidelines. I'm not doing anything crazy and try to go and bungee jumping or something. But I would have usually different questions that I would ask.

I've had several people go through an interview with me and land nobody's ever asked me that before, but some of them are. Some of the questions are, well, actually, it's one kind of like what you just said. I went on hiring Blitz for a while because we're trying to staff up at one particular time on this project, and I had several open RECs at once, and you'd be coming into a team that was tasked with a charter of corporate innovation, and that was one of the

things I would ask people. I'm like, tell me what you think corporate innovation is like you're talking to your eight year old nephew and just seeing how they would put it, because it's so easy when you get into these fancy schmancy fields to be like use all the acronyms and buzzwords like that has no meaning, Like talk to me like a real person. And I always found that like your eight year old niece or nephew is kind of a good because it's a fun age like they get a lot, it ain't, So how do you

explain it in those terms? And I usually find people they'd have to think on the fly. For that, you have to really stop and think. I can't rely on buzzwords and industry acronyms and I can't use any of that that has no validity to an eight year old. So how do I actually break it down to nuts and bolts and explain the concept behind it? And I feel like that was always a good indicator of how you're going to deal with in biguous situations and working

with new stuff like innovation. I also I'm very big on panel interviews and case study interviews and preferably both together. I have a downloadable on my website about hiring for innovation, and I talk about this is the process I use, and this is why I liked it. Why I think did it worked because you get to see how people. Case studies are great to see how people think, and panel interviews are great to see how they would work when the dynamics of your team. It's like a mini experiment.

And it's fun too to just throw somebody into something that don't know what they're expecting and you're more likely to get an honest reaction if it's not too scripted. I gave a I was hiring a biz dev person at one point, and I gave them the interview question of it. You're gonna you're gonna present to a panel and they want you to make a pitch. You got fifteen minutes to make a pitch and then we'll ask questions. But your pitch is supposed to be about. Pitch me

a merger of any two companies. That was it. I gave no further direction. They would ask for more. Fore you get nothing else, Just pitch me a merger of any two companies. And people came with all sorts of things. Some things would be very relevant to the business who were in in the space and be a logical thing. Somebody pitches like dog treats in an ice cream shop or something. Anyway, you can get all sorts of interesting And it didn't matter. It didn't matter what they pitch.

What I wanted to know, how do you think about it? And how do you present an idea and how do you handle them field questions in a panel? And I think when you are looking at hiring, getting to understand one what really drives and motivates somebody and to how they think and how they approach problems and how they're

going to approach ambiguity and crazy questions. Those two things together can give you a pretty good insight of how they're going to work and jive with your team and towards your mission.

shoe store. I mean, that's what I would have gone with the right exactly. Yeah, we're going all in. Yeah. I love that. So I know the third part of the book you talk about adding oil and reducing friction, and then the fourth part you talk about leading through the barren middle, and you specifically speak about shielding and protecting the team. And I love that language because I know what it means to me, And I also know that sometimes this is one of those examples where it's

like it can be overused. People like we have to protect the team, and I'm like, well protect them from what? Like is there a line on the loose, Like what are we protecting them from? Right? Or are we talking about like keeping them focused and doing the work? Like like what are the you know, what are those things mean? But I'd love to dive into that a little bit deeper, just around when you say shielding to protected the team,

what does that mean to you? And can you give an example of maybe how you have brought that to life?

working for a large organization. We were basically trying to run a small, stale startup inside of a big tech company, and there are certain things that come with a large organization, and the proverbial things rolled downhill. So the idea of an umbrella was, I'm gonna protect you from all that corporate noise and the forums you gotta fill out and the checkboxes you gotta do, and the analyst reports here, and the make sure you're you know, getting your funding

pitch there, and all those kinds of things. As much as possible, I would protect my team from that, and like, you don't need to worry about that, just you just do you. And then the field is more is protecting

from the sides. There's all that stuff that comes up with just I went to so and so in this department and I couldn't get this because we're outside of the normal practice and they need a special approval from this or this group won't won't sign off on this for that reason, or these people want to know what we're doing and they're not part of the NDA, or what's just stuff. There's there's red tape, and there's back and forth, and how do you protect them from that.

I was very big on streamlining as much as possible. I have as few mandatory meetings as possible, have as few mandatory forms as much as possible. And this probably came honestly from I used to work in OPS a long time ago, and I was an OPS manager for an organization that when I inherited that role kind of interesting inherited. It's probably the best way I could say.

When I inherited that role, there were certain practices in place, and I knew these vpgms that I worked with the dreaded this one monthly OPS prop like, send me this form and I gotta fill it out and it's got hieroglyphics and I hate doing it. And so when I first took over that job, I sat down with each of the vps that was responsible for their thing and I said, look, this is the information I need. I will take it in whatever way a format is easiest for you. Do you want to call you we have

a twenty minute chat. Do you want to me to send it to somebody on your team they'll fill it out for you. Do you want to attach it to the leg of a carrier pigeon and send it to me on a napkin. I don't care. I just need the information. I'll make sure it gets into all the forums and the right check boxes are ticked and all that, But you have a business to run. You don't need to decipher this. I just need to know what's in

your head. And that worked really well in that scenario in that my approach was different with each VP that I worked with because you're trying to meet them in

the style that they're they're working in. But I felt I applied that with my team as well, because it's you're shielding people from the noise, You're shielding people from the red tape, Your shield people from all this, all the things, the extra the other is needed that's bogging them down from actually being themselves and doing their core competency. So shielding is protecting them from all that, whether it's coming from tops, down from the side, or just general paperwork.

you'll have it. And then I work with why are you spending all this time figuring out you're not a shipping logistics person. I have somebody who's really good at shipping logistics. Let me work with them on that. So I think, Yeah, allowing people to shine where they shine and step back from the area so that that are not their core competencies, you allow people to have a

lot more productivity. It's also a great way to get way more performance out of your team because you allow them to tenx and the thing they're good at and not waste their time and stuff that they struggle with exactly.

open up to new perspectives. I think that takes away sometimes our hyper focus on things like titles, promotions, the next job, and it's like just just realizing that those things are can can continue to happen as long as you're applying yourself to the work. And then you talk

about gratitude and joy and problem solving. So I'd love to just kind of you know, as you thought about that last part there, you know, of all those things, if you said, hey, you're facing rejection, finding mentors, maintaining self preservation, long game, you know, and then the the riving value piece, like which one of those things for you is like, this is the biggest thing for me that I think has the most relevancy and impact, you know, of the collection of all.

It's it's not like it's nice clear line. And I think early on in my career I had to come up with a story of why are you trying to pursue this area or this job, and looking at each of the roles I had had and the things I had done, what I was good at, and what I liked to do, I did come up with a story of these can look at first glance like completely separate things, but when you think about it, I learned this skill here, and then I was able to build on that, and

learn this skill here, and build on that and learn this even though the things looked all over the place. And so I think that very last chapter of the book, all experiences are useful if you learn from them is kind of the best way to capture that of find joy in all that and pull out the useful nuggets and discard the rest, because experiences are never going to go exactly according to plan, and what's logical to you

might not be logical to somebody else. But if it works for your long term journey and you're learning one bit of information from that, awesome, that's a step forward.