Innovation & Leadership for Aspiring Organizations | Elizabeth Bieniek

I don't know how to people. [laughs] And it was really focused on the idea of understanding people at the core, the human dynamic side of it, and a lot of times we can try to focus on efficiency gains and say, you know, how do we move all these chest pieces around, make this work, and sort of forget that you're dealing with actual people. There is no destination. There's no I've arrived. I've achieved. I've got this title. I've got this accomplishment.

You're really, you're always learning, and the more I learn, the more I know, the more I experience, the more I realize, I don't know anything. [music] Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast where we dive into the minds of leaders and innovators today. I'm excited to have Elizabeth Bianneck with us. She's an author, speaker, and consultant whose work spans over two decades in innovation and leadership.

She's recognized as one of the top 10 most influential pioneering women in technology, and her career spans Fortune 100. Innovation has shown us the importance of what she calls good people in. Elizabeth, welcome to the show. Thank you Melissa, great to be here. I want to start out and just talk a little bit about your career path and talk a little bit about some of your pivotal roles and experiences in corporate America.

Sure. I would say I took this scenic route in my career path, so definitely went around and saw all the sites on the way. The commonality across even different industries, different roles was the desire to always want to ask why. Not from the point of just being annoying, but really wanting to fully understand and wanting to understand how my piece fit into the whole understanding what are the challenges we're facing. How could we do this better?

And I think that eventually wound me into a strategy role for a Fortune 100 company, and I got a great chance to ask why and asking them why a lot more times turned me into proposing an idea for a startup way to pursue new tech in that space, not thinking that I would be involved in it more thinking, hey, we as an organization should be looking at this is

a great opportunity. But then the whole who should lead this, what should we do? Nobody was standing up to that and I ended up just sort of, well, nobody else is going to do it. This needs to be done. Let's just do it. Again, thinking I do is for a phase and then hand it off and then another phase turned into another phase and then eight years later, I was like, oh, I guess I'm doing that.

So it was an interesting journey that got me into what I would say accidental entrepreneurship inside of a large organization. And then most recently my change is parting ways with corporate America as of this last spring, branching out on my own, launching my own consulting, speaking firm. And I wrote a book that really captured on that journey, that accidental entrepreneur journey. And what is that book called and what can we find inside that book Elizabeth?

The title is Cake on Tuesday and the subtitle is 25 lessons to unlock corporate innovation. And it really is just the journey, the good, the bad, the ugly, the learnings along the way of finding myself in that accidental entrepreneur role and what I learned about myself, about people, about tech, everything along the way. So you can find that book, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, pretty much anywhere you can get a book, Cake on Tuesday. I love it.

And there's one thing that you said that I think is so important in our journeys as innovators and leaders is going with it and sticking your hand up and figuring it out as you go. I think a lot of times in leadership, we just wait until we have all the boxes checked and then we step into roles. But I think a lot of what you were talking about at the beginning is you just went with it. It needs to be done. Someone's got to do it. I'll do it.

And you kind of just, what I like to say, road the stream, road downstream on the raft versus kind of fighting the path upstream. So I love that you mentioned that. I want to talk a little bit about what your vision was when you co-founded WebExes, hologram, and just maybe some of the challenges you faced with bringing that product forward in your journey.

Sure. At the time I can mention I was in a strategy role for Cisco and my role was really looking more at strategic partnerships and we had someone else in the organization that focused on the long range strategic planning for our organization. Same manager that managed both our groups and I was having a little bit of maybe a cheeky conversation with my then boss about poking holes that are long-read strategic plan and saying, why don't we do it this way?

I think we could be doing so much more external to the company, getting outside of our four walls, outside of what we know and really be, shake this up, be groundbreaking. And he was being particularly tolerant that day and decided to give me some runway and kind of challenge me back if you think you can do better than show me. And that led me down this path of being given an inch, so deciding to take a mile of what can I find out?

If I, somebody granted me the strategy, the one for the day and I could own all of corporate strategy for this, what would I be doing? What would I be going after? And so I started really getting my head above the trees if you will and looking outside and seeing what's happening in this industry at the Thomas Focus in the collaboration, space corporate collaboration and saying, who's doing what's really earth shattering? What's new in coming? Why does the potential to be really disruptive?

Either in a good way or a bad way to our business. And I went to a ton of conferences, talk to accelerator startups, every demo I could get my hands on, I tried. And at the time, this was several years ago, at the time, really looking at augmented reality as a way to shake up the way we looked at corporate communications and holographic technology specifically of, can you find a way to feel as if you are together? The idea of co-present of being together when you physically can't be.

And holographic interactions were really cutting edge at that time in that everything that you saw out there was a record in playback or doctorate in some way. Nothing was real time capture. And there was a lot of interest and potential of, can we do this? Could we do this in real time? Could we capture a render in real time and have that feeling of togetherness in a meeting? So rather than maybe here, you be there, we have a screen between us.

Who we actually be together and have an interaction in that way. And we didn't know the answer to that. This was a new tech, nobody had done this before. Nobody had tried to do it in real time and done it successfully without significant lag or other issues. And so that was what this whole exploration turned into. It was really like baby steps along the way of, "Oh, that's an interesting idea.

Could we do it?" And then that led to, "Well, let's form a small tiger team and pulse people together and

check it out and see if we could do that." And I was like, "Oh, I think we could do this. What if we did something more? What if we put this together even more?" And again, not thinking I was going to lead this. At the time I was thinking I was creating a cool proposal to hand off to somebody else to lead. And then one thing led to another and before long I found myself saying, "Let's just do this." I love it. It's so fascinating to hear your story with that.

I want to talk a little bit about your philosophy of good people and just your thoughts on that as it pertains the leadership in uncertain environments as we are in our world today. My poor grammar of good people probably came from a conversation that my husband and I had. We have been fascinated with this topic for a long time and just a bit about this of transferable skills.

And the fact that people that are very good at something don't always necessarily have the appropriate pedigree or background or approval or permission to do that something. You don't know until you try it. They might be amazing at something. The idea that passion can count more than pedigree and the idea that what somebody's most amazing contribution could be might not have anything to do with what they've already done but more of the potential of where they could go and what they could do.

And we would find a lot of times over coffee or a cocktail having a chat about I encountered this at work, you encountered that at work and like well that's just good people or this person handled that situation poorly because and it's not a one for one trade out of. I'm going to take this person off here and put this person on there and boom that's just going to work.

People have different skill sets, people have different ambitions, desires, how they work their culture and they get jazzed and excited by different things and people are messy and fun. And just a whole big mess to get into. So the idea of good people was really around looking at the unique, crazy, wonderful individuals that you have and how to get the most out of them and help them be the most fulfilled in their role. First of all, I love the good people.

I think that's a great analogy and it's so spot on too because I think a lot of times in big business and kind of the world today, people are like transactional, right? They're like puzzle pieces, pull someone here and move them there, they're better over there. So it's a lot of, you know, it's not peopleing, right? Like you said, it's a lot of just moving people to solve a problem without actually asking them or being empathetic to their needs.

And I think what I understand in our world today is so many things are really unclear through even long term companies, publicly traded companies. There's a lot of change, there's a lot of concern these days, which is why we see a lot of really senior people leaving companies or transitioning to their own thing. And so I want to talk a little bit about this thread of uncertainty in our world these days and transactional lines that I need you to do this without helping people.

And so I want to talk about really guiding teams that are uncertain of the environment and how to keep them motivated and really focus on the mission, whatever the mission is, even when they don't know what it's going to be or they're unclear of their specific contributions to it.

Yeah, that's a really salient point for, I think, the dissatisfaction a lot of people have in their current environment or why things aren't working is not necessarily being aligned to the vision or understand how their piece fits into the whole or getting excited about it or knowing what they add that's unique. So I think really looking at can you convey the core vision, the core goal? What are we excited about? What are we trying to do and why?

Before you get into the minutiae of this is exactly how we're going to do it. And I think when you convey that and you can get multiple people aligned to this is the north star, this is where we're going. It's not going to be a straight path. There's not a game plan, there's not a roadmap, specifically working in innovative technology.

Most of the things that you're working on, they've never been done before or they've been done tried and failed before or the technology has changed drastically than it was out even six months ago. So you never have certainty, you never have this like, oh, this is the plan, it would just follow this formula and that's going to work. There's always ambiguity and when you and your team are comfortable with a certain level of ambiguity, that's when you can get really creative.

You have to be aligned on the goal. So the whole thing of this is where we're going, we're all going to this place. This is where we want to get to. This is the outcome. This is what success looks like. That you have to be crystal clear on like, what is success for us? And that success metric might be learning. It might not be, this is the exact product we're going to make. So some of that you're figuring out on the way too, but we need to learn X, the answer to this, this question.

And if you're all clear on that, but you give some freedom of how you go about approaching that, then I think you get some really amazing, innovative responses from your team. And you start seeing that brainstorming or brainstorming of them building on each other's ideas. And your journey is not going to look very linear in the way you thought it was going to be going there, but you're going to find some amazing wins along the way.

And if you all keep that North Star in your sights, you're going to end up at your goal. It's just the path to get there is going to be different in what you thought.

Yeah, I love that. Which kind of brings me to what I wanted to talk about next, but I do think some of the best fixes or problems come from the least likely places. Sometimes, technical, non-technical people find solutions for technical people or vice versa. And so I do, I love that. I think that's spot on. I want to talk about emerging technology. I know I can't get through social media or any magazine without hearing about technology and AI.

So I want to talk about kind of your thoughts on any emerging technology. That balance is kind of the human connection with any technological advancement. So bridging whether that's bridging gap between human connection and innovation or any other kind of technology from your perspective. Yeah. I think the point you made about sometimes the best ideas come from people who not in technology and self-proclaimed. I'm an English agree.

I think it's hilarious that I ended up in a technology field, to be honest, because that wasn't my racial plan I was planning to go. But even as you said that, maybe think about a web of a hologram and the very first patent on the team. It's an amazing cutting edge technology and end to end holographic collaboration system. The first patent on the team came from our obsolete with an accounting degree. It was just amazing because she had an idea of, hey, this doesn't really work.

What if we did it this way and just thinking out loud and when the end you're just like, that's the patent. And then they got poking up on that and fleshing out what it was and she wrote up an amazing patent. And that was the first one on the team. So I think being open to the fact that your ideas can come from anywhere. And a lot of times with technology, we can sometimes over glorify the tech and get excited about technology for technology is sake. Like this is amazing.

This does this thing that's never been done before. Cool. Does anybody want that? What are you going to do with that? So we were thinking about how you're actually going to use it. I think that's why WebEx hologram was successful because the original goal wasn't to say, let's do something cool in augmented reality. Let's do something cool with holograms. It was a, how do we solve this problem of feeling together when we simply can't be? We're in different countries, continents.

How do we fix that? It was always focused on the connection. And because of that, the amazing technological advancements were to support that long term goal of connection. And so there was always a purpose. There was never a, let's add a bell and whistle for no reason. And I think that's true with anything. I think you're seeing that with AI now. It's been interesting to see a lot of companies jump to fee in, not knowing what they're going to do.

Just thinking, oh, gendered, AI, we got to do something there's something there. But if you don't have a goal or purpose or a mission, why are we trying to do something there? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to do better? What problem are you trying to solve? How does this help people? Great. How can we now look at the technology to support that? You can't really start with the tech first because it's always about the people. Yeah, I love that.

And it's funny that you said that because I am an engineer and I work in non-engineering processes and practices now. So it's funny how they crossed over. Yeah. You know, you jigged an iDrive, right? So I love it, but I think that's a really good point is being open to what is this technology or widget going to solve for the people that are using it. And I agree. I think everybody is building things without thinking about, was anybody going to buy it?

And I think some of the best companies in the world that we all use, that's where they started. What are we going to do for our customers? But solutions are we solving for these issues? I look at social media alone, like how that even got started was the people connected. And look at it now. There's everybody uses it. You know, billions and billions of people a day and hour a minute. So I want to kind of just kind of with the last part of what we're talking about.

For any, you know, leaders or innovators or people that are, you know, non technical, trying to do technical things, any feedback that you have for them and how they can build resilience, innovate their, you know, motivate their teams, continue to innovate and, you know, maybe just any nuggets that you can share with them.

Sure. I love this idea or concept of demystifying innovation and taking it out of the, I've reeked tower of the top consultants and the top firms with the top pedigree from the top degrees. And really saying innovation is really just how do we look at something differently? How do we do something new or different, take a different approach? How do we take an old thing and just think about it in a unique way? And it doesn't have to be tech and it doesn't have to be earth shattering.

It just has to be a different angle, a different approach. So I think a lot of times we say, we say innovation and we immediately jump to like, it needs to be this amazing, never seen before technology. But when you can be innovative in your process, you can be innovative in the way you lead your people, you can be innovative in the way that you make your customers feel seen and heard, you can apply innovation to just about anything.

So for me, that message is something like if I had one thing I could be known for, I'd be like, take the mystery out of innovation and realize anyone can innovate anywhere in your sphere. And we should all be thinking about this. I don't think anyone should ever say, oh, I'm not an innovator. Why not? Yeah, I love that.

And I'm curious, are there any like specific practices that you practice regularly in your life that I've kind of got you where you have in your life, whether it's, you know, leader at a big company or your book or you're speaking or all the things you do, anything that you consistently do as a habit or a practice that you can share? I'm big about changing your perspective and a lot of times it means physically changing.

So whether that's going outside, turning the problem that you're looking on, a piece of it, turning it sideways, looking at it upside down, asking somebody else who has no background or experience in the space you're working in, hey, high level, give you 30 seconds on this problem. How would you think of it? Anything you can do to kind of get you out of a rut and shake up that perspective approach to get an alternate view, that's huge.

I think a lot of times we spend too long in our, in our, in our rut, so it's stuck in our own thought process, thinking, well, I've got the background in this. This is my problem. I don't want to burden anybody with it. Oh, they don't know anything about the space. I don't know if they can help. Just share it and see some of the best ideas really come from the most unlikely sources.

And even if you're not going to, you know, your brother to say, hey, solve my work problems, just having an alternate perspective will jog things in your mind of, oh, I didn't think about that question or I didn't think about it from that angle or, huh, you're looking at

that from this perspective. I thought we should look at it from this perspective. It'll be enough to just kind of get you out of that rut and get you thinking again. So I'm a big fan of shaking things up in that regard. Yeah, I love it. Any kind of final thoughts or anything that we haven't covered that you want to share with our listeners, any good wisdom Elizabeth? I think finding joy in the journey is probably the other thing that I really, really love.

I've probably spent too much of my early career thinking I have to get somewhere, I have to get to this threshold, this milestone, this next promotion, whatever the case is. And I think this just, the older we get, hopefully the wiser we get. And looking at things now, realizing there is no destination. There's no I've arrived. I've achieved. I've got this title. I've got this accomplishment.

You're really, you're always learning and the more I learn, the more I know, the more experience, the more I realize, I don't know anything. And I think finding the joy in that process and that learning journey, falling in love with learning, being excited about being surprised and realizing that when combinations are made that you never thought of when you're presented with something brand new, unique and fresh, that's one really exciting things happen.

So not feeling like as we get older, we need to be the guru and expert that has all the answers in our field. But being open to, hey, inspiration come from anywhere, innovation can come from anywhere. Let's just enjoy the ride. I love that. I always think I always tell myself embrace the stock because you're going to add one more tool to your toolbox and before long, all the tools are coming out of your toolbox, right? And so I love it. I think that's such a great piece of advice.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing your journey with us. I know our listeners will get a lot out of it. For anybody looking to learn more about Elizabeth, find her book. She writes for Forbes and Bloomberg, connects us her own LinkedIn. Thank you so much for being here. And that's the Executive Connect podcast. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]