How to Lead Engineering Teams to Success: Secrets from a 20-Year Global Expert!

You are authentically, wonderfully, miraculously, uniquely made on purpose for a purpose. So don't change that. As a fellow engineer, I know that 70% of projects fail due to poor leadership, costing companies billions of dollars. At the end of the day, it is spelled "J-O-B" not vacation. When two or more people are in agreement, miracles happen. If you find that you're in a constant, inspired to uninspiring, time usage, percentage, then maybe it's time to explore a new role.

I'm a huge believer in diverse teams, diverse perspectives, age, culture, all the things. I think it brings a more well-rounded teams. I fell into the trap of thinking I wasn't good enough for one reason or another. And so if there's anybody that's listening to this podcast that is thinking that about themselves, I would just encourage you to know that that's not true. That is a lie. Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.

Fernando, what sparked you to get into engineering and your passion for leadership? Well, hey, Melissa, thanks for having me on. I'm super happy to be here. I love the first question. Yeah, you know, I started... I always liked, you know, math and science is a pretty typical story. But I always found that the classes that I enjoyed most were the ones that moved maybe, I guess, away from some of the theory and moved towards more the practical application of the theory and of the science.

And so that's when I knew kind of early on that I... what I loved about engineering is where the theoretical concepts, how things work, the laws of physics, the laws of an electro... Electromagnetic and all the physical laws, how they get applied to bring value to people and to make a better place. And so I love that idea of... on the engineering side of like bringing that...

It's what this intersection of theory and reality and bringing value in that space. And then just before that, fundamentally, I just love to build things. My hobbies are all around building we were talking earlier about. My love of DJing and building musical sets is kind of very similar to that. So engineering is this cross-section of math and science with art bringing that to bring valuable solutions to humans. And I love doing that.

Yeah, and as a fellow engineer, I know that 70% of projects fail due to poor leadership. It's unbelievable 70%. I've lost in companies billions of dollars. And I want to get your perspective from a leadership standpoint. How can we turn these fail failing projects into successful projects? There's something you can point your finger to and share with us on, hey, why so many of these projects fail? And these are something that can be done to make them more successful.

Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser? On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence. Hit the subscribe button now. Don't just watch, act. Yeah, so I love the question. And there's several things that came to mind immediately. I remember early on I was looking for the answer to this question.

I was a young first time front line manager and I had a software schedule that I wanted to make sure we made it on time and we were falling behind schedule. And I was looking for some magic on how to make it happen. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, how do you so much of engineering is requires innovation and invention. And I was like, how do you invent faster or how do you predict your ability to invent something.

And I was struggling with this question and I took a tour of an animation studio, I grew up in Florida. There was an animation studio in Disney and and had just opened up. And I noticed they were they were animated hand animating a movie. And I thought to myself, okay, animation is art. And I have a schedule, how do they, you know, create art faster or on schedule, how do you do that? How do you combine this, this need to create with this need to meet a deadline.

Surely the animators at Disney are going to have some insights. So I asked him this very same question. How do we do this? What do you guys do to predict your schedule for your delivery date. And the guy's answer was very unfulfilling. So I'll start there. His answer was well for an end. Today is a Saturday and you're taking a tour of our facility. And as you can see, people are drawing.

They are here drawing not for the benefit of the tour. They are here drawing because we are behind schedule and we are working overtime. And I thought to myself, okay, that's not the answer that I was looking for. And so I've struggled with this question throughout my career and the closest that I've come to an answer is starts really at a very basic human principle. And that is as human beings, we are incredibly powerful when we decide to do something.

When we set ourselves to do something, we are incredibly powerful and we are super powerful when two or more agree to do the same thing. So when two or more people are in agreement, miracles happen. And so I thought, huh, maybe there's something there because in technology, we are working as a team of thought workers.

And thought workers love to think. So the question is not whether or not they're going to think the question is, how do we as thought workers all aligned to choose to think about the problems that I want to have solved. So it's not whether or not they think it's what are they going to think about. And so as a leader to help make our dates, I view it very, a very top priority of mine. And I just share with anybody else who might want to, you know, explore this, explore for themselves.

He's super intentional about capturing your teams to mind share. And this is so powerful because then once you capture their mind share, couple of things happen. One, actually the agency is with them. Once they choose what to think about, they choose what problems to solve. My job as a leader is to lay the case for, hey, these are the problems I want you guys to be thinking about.

And thought people thought workers are thinking about problems all the time. It's not a, it's not a nine to five thought process. It is a, we're thinking about problems all the time. So how to make projects more successful greater than 70% of the time. I go back to give your technical teams to the agency to decide for themselves. Yeah, I'm behind this mission. Yes, I'm behind this vision. Yes, I choose to think about that more than other things that I'm thinking about.

And if you get two people on the team to think about it, that's like a order of magnitude more powerful. And imagine if you get everybody on the team aligned and everybody on the team in agreement saying, yeah, you know what? This is a worthwhile mission. We're going to be mission all about it. We're going to think about this at all the time so that we all pull together to bring the schedule to fruition on time, on scope, on cost, on quality.

Are you a high income professional looking for smarter ways to protect your wealth? Texas Freedom Fund gives you the opportunity to invest in energy assets leveraging proven fracking technology and prime access to global markets. With strategic oil and gas investments, you can build real wealth while benefiting from tax advantages under laws, dating back to the Reagan era. Take control of your financial future. Visit Texas Freedom Fund dot executive connect podcast dot com.

I love that. That's such a good, a good insight. We've made me think about being an engineer or being running technical teams. A lot of times you have to have a certain mindset. Would you're solving a problem like you said? And a lot of times were, you know, not to generalize. A lot of us are introverted people were mission focused solving problems. In your experience, what is the number one leadership skill or principle?

You know, if you had to pick one, that's most important for engineering teams that you've worked on. So, I laugh. I remember a very early on a general manager of mine in a company used to work for. One of the best GM's ever worked for and he was telling me this story. We had this mission critical project and. It was going back to the headquarters to ask for more time and more money and. They made him guarantee you will absolutely finish the product on this day.

Or else, right? And he's like, yes, 100% were going to meet the schedule. And he relates to story as he was flying back from headquarters. He's thinking, I've never met a schedule in my life. I've never done it. What am I going to do different? Because I've never met a schedule yet in my career. And his solution is very insightful. And he shared with me, you know, Fernando, that's when I decided to put a salesperson in charge of engineering.

So what is what he was really saying was, I need to put some value. It wasn't just a salesperson, right? It was a very smart person. But this person was very inspirational. And so. He did not underestimate this power of having an inspired team. That is, that is a line and that is focused because unknown unknowns happen all the time. And this is why schedules break. So the question is not whether or not an unknown unknown is going to happen.

The question is, how do we respond to that? And if you have an inspirational leader that yes is knows technology that yes understands the business. All of that stuff. Yes, but that is intentionally an inspirational leader. What happens is that's the, they define how the team responds with the difficult moments. Present themselves. Do they respond in defeat? Do they respond in a, you know, I'll just think about it tomorrow when I check in at, you know, 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. or whatever.

And then they respond of, oh my goodness, this is getting in the way of our mission. We are aligned with the mission. We're going to figure this out and we're going to do so in a way. I love it. You said that. We were saying that it made me think, you know, in early days in my career, I was an engineer on one of the largest concrete bridges built in the United States.

And one of the things I found early in my career is engineering people are doers. We all have a task that we're doing. But one of the things that teams I've worked on in the past struggle with was communication. And everybody was doing their own task when we were building a bridge, we had the painters that were, that showed up before the bridge was even built to, to paint the bridge that was not even built yet.

And I think back to those days as, and maybe this was the start, you're making me think that maybe this was the start of my sales career. It was more costly for them to take all their equipment back across the United States. So I, I talked to these painters into painting something else in the meantime and found them another project so they would wait until the concrete was, was poor so they can, they can paint.

And so I, maybe that's it for Nanjo. I think you've helped me figure out how I ended up in sales. I was a motivational creative person. So I think all these years I've been wondering how I've ended up in sales. And there you go, a motivational leader. And, and I think it's so true that, you know, when everybody's inspired and motivated to do their best work, people, you know, five o'clock comes and people aren't looking at five o'clock.

It's four o'clock saying, oh my gosh, I have 59 minutes to go. Everybody's all in and ready to do a good job because they're inspired and they believe in their leaders. So I love, I think I would absolutely agree with that. And I think each listener yourself, myself, everybody listen to this podcast could just have the data point of themselves.

We've all had those moments of inspiration. We've had all those, these moments of breakthrough, of thought breakthrough. And we could, we could probably remember a time where that happened. And it wasn't necessarily in the office or in the, or in the virtual office between, in between the, the work hours, those inspirational moments oftentimes happen.

You know, how many times people say, wow, I woke up with the idea or first thing in the morning or while I was in the shower or while I was off for a jog or while I was doing some exercise. So inspiration strikes 24/7. It's all dependent upon what am I. Kind of thinking about like I go back to what do I choose to think about. And if I choose to think about my problems at hand.

Then that's when those, there's moments of inspiration are going to strike. And they're going to be for, and they're going to help me solve those problems. Yeah, I love that. I wanted to ask you, I know you've led global teams. I, at one point in my career, led global teams. And curious how you lead global teams, not only from a cultural standpoint, because there's different, there's different dynamics leading people across the globe, but also a time zone standpoint.

They may be, you know, seven hours ahead and you need to get engineering projects done. So I want to talk a little bit about, I'm going to call it resilience and time zone leadership. How do you, how do you do that? And maybe you can shout a little bit about your experience or maybe some tips and tricks. Sure. So I think, I think the, the, the time zone problem specifically. You know, it's, it's hard and if you, and if you have East Coast, West Coast, Europe and Asia.

There's, there's never, there's never like the, you know, it's five o'clock somewhere comes, comes, comes, comes in the, comes in the, comes to mind, because yeah, it's five o'clock somewhere. And so how do you work around that? And I think, you know, I always like going to as a leader. And this, I think, applies, this kind of little formula or model or framework applies, whether you're talking cultural.

Time zone, generational or whatever kind of difference you might as a leader be, you know, have diversity in the team and, and, and be working through. And so to me, I'm like, okay, what do all these things kind of have in common? Well, well, they all have in common that everybody is human as a human being. That's the common denominator. How do I respect as a leader, the human being? I talked a little bit earlier about the respect for agency.

From a time zone perspective, well, how do I respect the human being from a time zone perspective? And so, you know, it's not, it's not uncommon then for, for I think intentional leaders to say, you know what we're going to alternate. Not every meeting is going to be, you know, convenient for one specific, for one specific time zone.

And so that was kind of like, you know, a lot of people do that for me, the, the hardest part though, dealing with teams and having lived abroad, I lived in Malaysia for three years and lead teams there and was, was this translation of, of, in America, right, for me, it's super easy. And in all of parts, it's super easy to come up with sports analogies and people understand them, whether you're, whether you're a sports fan or not, people kind of understand sports analogies.

And so, and so, and so having to think about how am I, if I, if I want to use a story and I want to use a metaphor as an example to get a point across.

And so, I was intentional about, okay, what kind of a cultural, what would resonate in this cultural setting versus what I was, what I was used to, I remember I, I just less than I was in a town hall and I was telling a story about finishing strong and let's finish strong and I came up with a perfect football analogy of an example of where this happened. And I found that I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to spend 20 minutes explaining football. First, in order for this thing to even make sense.

It was not very successful, but I found out that they were into, you know, badminton was an example, so they weren't a bad man, so I could stay with the sports. They were doing dragon racing at the dragon boat racing. So I'm like, well, let me learn about dragon boat racing, understand what that means and then maybe learn a lesson from there. So, so the framework is I try to now bring it down to the human quality, because that's the one that we all share.

And then, and then respecting the humanity, respecting the culture and respecting the time zone is where I would build it up from there. And it made me think, I know one of the things I, I love the example, I think it's so relevant. If you've never played football and you don't understand football, you can't understand what one's talking about.

I know in those situations, I've personally used AI to help me better understand cultures or regions of different parts of the country, because there are very unique differences. And, you know, I might say something that's not meant to be, you know, taking a different way and it's misinterpreted. And so a lot of times I've used AI to help me, you know, understand where people are, what the cultures are, what's popular.

And so I want to get kind of your thoughts, there's so much right now that's new and exciting in the world of AI. And I know I personally use it a lot, like in that cultural example, give me a quote or give me a this or tell me about that. And, you know, how do you balance the, the, the old with the new, right? I just found this out the other day, that, you know, semi conductors are in so much of vehicles that I had no idea through listening to, you know, different things on the internet.

And so how do we keep the old but bring in things like AI and other new technologies? Yeah, well, and I think that kind of goes back to your first question for me, why did I get into engineering and I think many people that get into engineering love technology and love staying up on technology, right?

And I'm sure that's kind of built into the DNA of the people that work that we're talking to and talking about and that we that we personally are, right? For sure, large language models, artificial intelligence is the most exciting aspect of, of our space and quite frankly, it transcends everything going forward.

So when I think of AI from an engineering and or from a business perspective and I love your cultural example, I've never done it for that, but I think that's a pretty cool, cool way to think about it. When I think about it from a business perspective, I think about, okay, how does AI, how could AI benefit our customers? So could it help me enhance a product or service that we are offering them? How could AI help us internally? Get more productive.

And how could it help me personally, right? Just be more efficient or more, yeah, productive. And so, and so I think it's important when we're thinking about new technologies and specifically to this, to this question when we're thinking about artificial intelligence is kind of getting start getting very specific on how I, how I want to use it. What problem do I want to, do I want to solve? And so,

I've touched upon these one at a time. So for personal use, I got to craft an email, I got to, you know, come up with a presentation. I think it's incredibly important to, at the end of the day, the person, the human owns the content. And so AI is great for helping me think things through, helping me consider other avenues, maybe go from a blank sheet of paper to a sheet of paper that has something on it that I can then, that I can then build on.

But as it's, it's really funny because it also happened with, with internet and with search, people can smell. This is a pure AI response, right? And so I think it's very important that force for personal use. It's your content, start with your content or start with AI for an idea, go through a couple of iterations. And you own the content at the end of the day. So I think that's super important because people can see through it.

For team, we're using it, we're building up models internally to help us do, for example, more mundane tasks around spec creation. So we feed it all of our test cases, we feed it all of our product documentation. And now I can use, I can use our internal AI engine to help me generate a new specification, but the same rule applies. AI splits out a specification. Okay, now I've on a product person. Let me take ownership of this specification, read through it, does it make sense?

Doesn't apply, then the adjust from here. So it's a great way to get started. But it's not, I don't think is the answer to like, okay, that's the finished product. And then for our customers, we're bringing AI solutions for them to help them solve their toughest problems around pricing. I do a lot of work around inventory management.

So how can we help provide functionality to our customers that help them manage their inventory more efficiently and pricing is one area because that's, you know, like it when I'm dealing with inventory and I want to sell product, which our customers do. What you price something at is is is the name of the game. And so can we use AI to help guide our customers in with regard to that to the extent that we can. That's a product or service that we can provide them.

That's just one example of many that we can do. But the same is true for all three, which is you have to own the content. You own the, the human being has to own the deliverable has to own the content. Yeah, I love that. I think there's so much. There's so many nuggets there and it made me think, you know, back in the day when I worked in engineering, I was designing footings for power plants. And it was like every day was copy paste copy paste copy paste and I got into this place where.

You know, I don't want to say that I wasn't as smart as I used to be, but I wasn't as smart as I used to be and I had a really cold to be. And learn and teach myself new things because every day was like ground hogs that was designing the same thing. You know, your perspective is for engineers who are, you know, electrical engineer or civil engineer and everything's kind of copy paste of lush than a previous day.

Can you talk a little bit about what are some best practices for engineers to keep learning, keep, you know, challenging themselves and staying relevant to the field. Yeah, I like that. I had a couple of thoughts as you were as you were talking. And, and, and let me know let's see where it goes. Let's see where this answer goes. And if I didn't hit it, then please let me know.

But, but I always think about, you know, we started with, hey, what did you love about becoming an engineer and becoming and getting into this career. And even if we pivoted along the way into sales or into other other aspects, there's reasons for that. And we were passionate about and there's decisions that we made. But, at the end of the day, it is spelled J-O-B, not vacation, right? Or it's spelled W-R-K, not vacation, right?

And so with anything, there's certainly aspects that we love about it and that we're passionate about. That's why we got into this business in the first place. And yeah, it's life and it's work and it's job and there's aspects of it that are mundane or aspects of it that are boring or aspects of it that eventually lead to being uninspiring for us, right? And so, I always used to consider, like I had this metric in my head of, of in the in the given week.

What percentage of my time was spent on the loving, the passionate stuff and what percentage of the time was spent on the not so fun stuff. And you know, if it was a great week is an 80, 20 week, that's a great week, right? 70, 30 week is a good week, 60, 40 week, probably was a hard week. If you've had a 40, 60 week or a 30, 70 week, that is a bad week, right?

And so, and so I always kept this metric around, okay, in this role with this company at this point in time, what's my metric of stuff that's energizing me and driving me versus aspects of the job that maybe aren't.

And, and you know, you can have a bad week or a bad month, right, or bad season, but, but if you find, and this is a career kind of career advice question, if you find that you're in a constant 50, 50, 40, 60, it's fire to uninspiring time usage, percentage, then maybe it's time to explore a new role. Because here's the funny thing, what's maybe 70, 30 good and 70 mundane for me for one human is probably 70, 30 for somebody else, right?

And so, and so even as a leader, it's important to say, okay, is everybody at least 60, 40 or better on my team? Am I at least 64 or better on for myself? And so I think it applies to once to oneself in terms of let me identify those areas. And if I think about career changes that I've made in my life of which there's been several, they've mostly been prompted by this ratio being off.

And those have been the most beneficial rotations versus higher salary, higher position, you know, more, more stripes on the proverbial sleeve of the uniform. Right, those career moves are to me have been less fulfilling and less successful than the career moves that have been more oriented around moving into a space where I'm going to be passionate about what I'm doing more often than not.

The other aspect of this that I'll share with you and the same thing with when I think about my team, hey, it's my team members passionate about what they're doing. Maybe this would like to be super innovative and they're doing more maintenance stuff and maybe hear somebody that's really likes doing more maintenance stuff and they're in the innovation side. Okay, let me flip these and then get get more everybody more energized.

The other model I just share with you really quickly and I read this somewhere and I don't remember where so I can't give it proper credit, but it's it's an acronym and it's loody, l uti. I'm a learner, user, teacher, and this applies to person and team. We focus a lot on user on being super proficient at the task at hand.

But I say that's only part of the thing that we should be focused on and quite frankly, if we focus solely on user proficiency for self and team, we're going to get into this burnout stage of getting less and less inspired. I think it's a question of what am I learning? What am I proficient at? What am I improving and what am I teaching others to do?

And if I have a good balance of that, a certain percentage of my time learning, a certain percentage of my time proficient, a certain percentage of my time teaching, a certain percentage of my time improving. If I do this at scale, then it helps person and organization avoid getting stuck in a mundane rut of turning the crank over and over and over and pouring the footings and waiting for the cement to dry. That's an important part, but that's not the only part of the job.

So, so, so how do I make sure that as a team we're learning using teaching and improving? I love that. There was so many good things in that and I think one thing you mentioned that I love that you said is, you know, several years ago, I had somebody report to me that was an introverted person and I was leading a customer facing sales team.

And I think that person did not like doing sales. It was a non-technical or a non-sales personality. And I think I love what you said is if someone is technical, they should be in technical roles. If someone's in sales, they should be in sales row. So if you're in a role where you don't like to sell or you don't like to do the technical responsibilities, it's up to you to share with your manager.

I like to do more of this and communicate that because not all leaders are, you know, like you and myself where we're aware of where people's roles should be. And so, I hear that a lot with people that they're in the wrong role or their role has been switched to something that they have no experience. And so, what happens is a lot of times people either find their way out of that company into another company and it could be a great and pleased.

And so, I guess step one is finding someone to talk to whether it's HR or your direct manager to say, hey, I've been putting this new role. There's it's a real, I'm non technical and I'm doing a technical role. And then, you know, kind of step two to continue to learn like you were saying it's so important. Are we growing and learning and working together? And so, I love, I love all of that. I think it's really great.

Which leads me to my next question I wanted to ask you about, I'm a huge believer Fernando in diverse teams, diverse perspectives, age, culture, all the things. I think it brings them more well-rounded teams. So, I want to get your thoughts on why diversity manage, why diversity matters and how it looks for you leading diverse engineering teams.

Okay, awesome. And I'm actually going to bridge back. I like them and I like that you're a bridge engineer. So I'm going to bridge back to the statement that you just made because I think it actually rolls right into this question. And so, this is the importance of authenticity. And oftentimes, and this happened to me in a technical career that's challenging, high fast pace, high charging industry.

And I think it's a pressure cooker and can be a pressure cooker and and everybody's feeling the pressure. Everybody from the leadership on down. And oftentimes people aren't at their best behavior when they're under pressure. And actually, there's actually, you know, I think saying right that says a person's true character is revealed when when things aren't going, aren't going well.

And so, my first point is in terms of having the conversation, I found that the first person that I had to have a conversation with was myself. And here's what the conversation needs to be. And in the world, that's very pressure. What people tend to hear and say is Fernando or Melissa, you need to be more of this or Fernando Melissa, you need to be less of that or Fernando Melissa, you're not enough of this or Fernando Melissa, you're too much of that. Right. And if you hear that often enough,

the person can start internalizing and thinking, oh, I'm too much of this. I'm not enough of that. Overwhelming here, I'm underwhelming there. I need to be different. So the first conversation is no. You are authentically, wonderfully, miraculously, uniquely made diversity. You are uniquely made and wonderful on purpose for a purpose. So don't change that. If the environment is or you're interpreting the environment, say to be saying, you need to be different.

And then what needs to be different is is the environment that you operate in. That's what needs to be different. And there was this great experiment that was done by a very accomplished violinist. He was a virtuoso. And, and he was playing his violin in the subway. And, and at the end of the day, this virtuoso violinist, nobody knew totally anonymous, just playing this violin on the subway collected 30 dollars in tips.

The next day, this person had sold out Madison Square Garden for $1,000 a seat. Same virtuoso.

Same virtuoso. In the subway, you know, people gave them $30 worth of appreciation and maybe that's pretty good for a subway, right? But the subway people are trying to get on the train and you're going places. In Madison Square Garden, people were paying $1,000 a seat to listen to the virtuoso. You are a virtuoso. It's my point. Play your violin where it's appreciated, where that's the value that you bring. So that would be less than number, my kind of just response to that.

In terms of leading diverse teams, as a leader, I really challenged myself to understand what instrument is playing with this analogy. What unique, what virtuosos do I have and not prejudge? What is a good role versus a bad role based on my filter or my lens, which oftentimes happen. As a leader, we can find myself and say, oh, this is a low value role. And this is a high value role. And this is a super sexy job. And this is a boring job. And I'm going to assign based on that.

No, all of them are super fun. All of them are super exciting. All of them are challenging. All of them are important. So find the right person who finds that. So to me, the diversity. Really, I operate at that level. I operate it at the what drives the individual human being level. And there's people that like doing more maintenance work. There's people that like pouring the concrete. There's people that like tying the rebar. There's people that like designing the circuit.

And there's people that like making sure that the circuit when it's laid out looks beautiful. And all the lines are beautifully laid out. And so. I do diversity that way. More so than anything else. And in that way, give people freedom to express their opinions, their express their thoughts and express their ideas. That was great. I love that. That was just I kept I'm speechless. That was so great. Thank you for sharing that.

I want to kind of enclosing and get any final thoughts or anything you want to share with our listeners that we may not have touched on or. But you feel compelled to share. Yeah, I mean, I think. I think I'm very passionate about this authentic. Authentic message. Because I fell into the trap. Of thinking I wasn't good enough. For one reason or another. Right. And. And that is a travesty. And so if there's anybody that's listening to this podcast. That is thinking that about themselves.

I would just encourage you. Or encourage that person to know that that's not true. That is a lie. Don't let that life fester in your head. Longer than it needs to. There's a reason why you're in the role that you're in. There's a reason why you're in the career that you're in. You've overcome adversity. You've overcome tough problems. You've figured things out already. Maybe you're playing your violin in the subway. Right. So go somewhere else. Or figure out how to add value in the subway.

Right. Either one could be fulfilling. And so. So that's what I would just say is. Be authentic. And then as a leader. As a leader. I would just share this real quick story. Change management is very important when you're in an innovative space. And doing things differently and learning how to do things differently. And improving things is very is very important. And. And. And you know, as a leader. I have good ideas. And I could see the big picture. And I could see what.

And I could see these high value projects. I need to get done. And so I had a lot of change management around initiatives. That I was that I was kind of starting and advocating for. And. And. And I was missing on the power of the organization. Because the power of the organization. I was actually not respecting the authenticity of the people on the team. And so one day I'm like, hey, are we focused on the right things when it comes to improvement? And they were like, you know, maybe not so much.

Maybe we should be focused on some other things that I was. I was inspired. I had just read the book. Atomic habits. I have it here on my shell. I just read the book. Atomic habits. Because I grew up in a world. An older world. Where it's like any initiative worth doing has to be, you know, 20% improvement or bigger. Right. If it's not that you're not focused on the wrong thing. Well, atomic habit is like 1% 1% 1%. So I'm like, I think we're missing out on the 1%.

So I'm like, I think we're missing out on the 1%. And so I came up with a new metric, the push versus poll change management metric. The push metric was every innovation that came from me. Any process improvement got pushed by the leadership into the organization. In this case, would be me pushing it into the organization. Versus the ones that were getting pulled from me into the organization by the practitioners. And I've mapped them on a scatter plot.

Of effort, load of high and value load of high. And a fascinating trend emerged. I found that the push metrics were yes high value. But high effort. The poll metrics were high value. Low effort. The best initiatives came from the practitioners. The best initiatives came from the practitioners themselves. Why? Because they had authentic awesomeness, creativity, ideas, insight and knowledge that I lacked as a leader. And so that's so cute.

So. So my in closing, my final words would be your authenticity is extremely valuable. And as a leader, listen. And keep an eye out for those poll ideas. And don't just think that everything has to be a push initiative in your organization. Thank you so much for an end of for being here. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your time with our listeners. That's the Executive Connect podcast.