Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Leading with Resilience: Kim Storin's Path in Shaping Tech's Future
65 Plays9 months ago
In this insightful episode, Kim Storin, a seasoned leader with experience at companies including Dell, IBM, and Zayo Group, delves into the intricacies of transforming corporate culture and overcoming global market challenges. She shares her journey of navigating significant challenges in revenue-generating roles and the lessons learned from these experiences. Kim emphasizes the importance of mentorship, self-advocacy, and resilience in the face of adversity, providing valuable insights for women in technology and leadership roles.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Women in Revenue
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Resilient Revenue, a women in revenue podcast series designed to magnify the voices, victories, and valuable insights of trailblazing women in revenue-generating roles. Each episode will showcase stories of resilience, mentorship, and self-advocacy. You'll learn exactly how these remarkable women are breaking barriers, redefining success, and showing us the transformative power of unity within the tech industry.
00:00:31
Speaker
So join us as we embark on this enlightening journey toward equality and empowerment in the world of resilient revenue.
00:00:43
Speaker
Okay. Hey, everybody.
Meet Kimberly Storen
00:00:45
Speaker
Welcome to Women in Revenue's Resilient Revenue Podcast. I'm your host Heidi Therian, and today we are connecting with Kimberly Storen. For those who don't know, Kimberly has held director and C-level marketing roles in companies like Dell, IBM, and most recently, the Zayo Group.
00:01:04
Speaker
I am so excited to connect with her on today's topic, transforming culture and overcoming global market challenges. Hey, Kim. Hey, good to see you. Same. So I did a lot of research and.
00:01:20
Speaker
I was like, I'm so pumped to talk to you about all of these things. Came up with all of these questions on my own, really pumped. So first and foremost, let's just dive in to one of our core questions here, which is just in general, like an icebreaker,
Overcoming Challenges at Dell
00:01:36
Speaker
right? What is an experience where you faced a significant challenge in your revenue generating role? What did you do to overcome it? What did you learn from the experience?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, it's such a good question, right? Because I think so many times we don't really think about the challenges, right? We think about what we've accomplished and all of the amazing things, but those challenges are real, right? And we base them every day and being able to look back and understand that challenge and what we would do differently is the true definition of agility. So I love that question.
00:02:10
Speaker
And I think for me, ultimately, I had some really big challenges in probably every job that I've done, every transformation just by the definition of transformation is a challenge. And having started my career in the crisis management and communications space, and then spending a lot of time doing M&A, but I've lived with these challenges every day. The one that I was thinking about as you're asking this question,
00:02:39
Speaker
was I remember being a kind of mid-level marketer at Dell, director level position, coming in from the outside, having done a lot of M&A, but it was really my first opportunity to lead in a go-to-market function.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I was one of the few women on the team. I was really like in my first industry role coming out of management consulting and didn't really know what I was up for in terms of the integration challenge. Coming from a consulting mindset, being at a company and industry is really different, right? You can't just turn in your integration playbook and hope for the best with the company, right? You're running that playbook.
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, so I was running the integration for this billion dollar storage company that we had acquired called Compellent based in Minneapolis and we were integrating them into Dell's enterprise solution business essentially, right? The infrastructure business.
00:03:38
Speaker
And one of the things that I didn't realize at the time as a go-to-market leader is how challenging it would be to integrate a channel-first business into a primarily rest business. So Compellent was 100% channel. Everything slowed through the channel. They had 90 NPS. This is customer-centric organization.
00:04:03
Speaker
purely run through the channel. And Dell has become a pretty channel-friendly company, especially with some of the acquisitions they've done in recent years. But at the time, this wasn't that far off of when Michael Dell had written a book called Direct From Dell. So it's really, the channel was still barely new in the organization. And enterprise is leading the path there. But ultimately, it was still a pretty big departure from Dell's bread and butter at the time.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I worked on this acquisition for about a year and a half in the kind of the post-market integration and spent a lot of time working through the sales integration and the marketing integration and bringing this all together. Little did I know that we'd be tripped up with one, what sounded like a simple thing, which is co-chirming maintenance contracts.
00:04:55
Speaker
So this company, who had a 90 NPS score, wanted to provide one bill to their customer. It doesn't sound very revolutionary, but for a large company like Dell, who was used to just every time your maintenance contract renewed, right, you got another bill.
00:05:13
Speaker
And so we decided we wanted to try and keep the same customer experience of co-terming all of those maintenance bills. So that is basically pro rates. If you have a six month contract that the maintenance contract is up, then you only pay for the next six months so that you get one bill at the same time.
00:05:31
Speaker
It was the biggest systems challenge. Took six months to figure out how to do this. Against my better judgment, we ended up going, even though I had raised some challenges. And ultimately, we didn't recognize revenue.
00:05:48
Speaker
And as you can imagine, like in a go-to-market role, like that's your primary function, right? It's recognized revenue. And here I am, fairly junior in the organization, right? This like mid-level kind of early executive, one of the few women at the table, and I had to raise my hand and tell senior leadership that we weren't recognizing revenue. Oh my gosh. And basically,
00:06:14
Speaker
had to bring it back to the two system approach so that we could find a new solution that worked. And it was one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do to be that person to raise my hand at the table and admit that the
00:06:30
Speaker
couldn't figure it out. But it was also one of those moments where I remember our SCP rat Anderson who I worked for who basically said, I guess we should have listened to you because you told us this and shame on us. But it was such a huge opportunity for me to learn and grow from that challenge of feeling more comfortable in my own shoes with my own voice.
00:06:53
Speaker
to figure out how do I raise this issue in a clear, concise, outcomes-oriented way, instead of just raising, waving my hands, but really being very precise about the outcomes that we thought we might see.
00:07:09
Speaker
And so a hard lesson, but a big challenge, but it was huge growth. Obviously, to be able to pull back and get back to a system that recognized the revenue was really big, but also just gross for me in terms of that personal development of how do I find my voice and balance being one of the youngest folks around that table, being one of the only women around that table, and having the confidence to speak
00:07:36
Speaker
my truths, right? What I knew, it was just backed up with data. I knew it wasn't going to work. And I tried to communicate it, but I wasn't effective. And so it was a really big learning experience and something that has really shaped like my communication style and how I not just solve problems necessarily, but communicate the problems that I'm solving and the why behind the what a little bit more.
00:08:01
Speaker
Oh, that is so good. I don't know if it's so good, but it was a good lesson. Like the lesson in and of itself is so good that it helps you to level up the way that you were communicating with everybody.
00:08:17
Speaker
That is a hard pill to swallow to be the one to raise your hand and something like that. But also I feel like humbling in a way to be like, all right. And then at the same time, somebody being like, we should have listened to you as well and being like, all right, cool. You did hear me. However, let's how do we stop this train before?
00:08:37
Speaker
Wow. Interesting. I have a feeling that we're just packed with lessons. Different ways to fail. Exactly. Different ways to grow for sure. There you go. Wow. Speaking of growing, let's touch on driving cultural transformation and the impact that has.
Cultural Transformation at Zayo
00:08:56
Speaker
So as CMO of Zayo, you've been a driving force behind the company's cultural transformation.
00:09:03
Speaker
Would you share some moments that you deem pivotal or maybe even some strategies that has shaped the organization's culture and helped to positively make that transformation? Yeah, absolutely. So I firmly believe all of us should be culture officers, right? So there's nobody, no one single person in an organization that owns culture, not even the CEO. But I do think when it comes to
00:09:29
Speaker
culture-shaping transformation that the ownership for the how that comes to fruition really does reside with the CEO, with the head of people, and the head of marketing together in this trisecta, if you will. Because any cultural transformation at the end of the day is both a brand and people.
00:09:52
Speaker
issue, right? Because it is the brand and how our customers, our partners, our employees really see us and view us. And so it's how we get work done, but it's entirely, but it's also how do we engage with customers and partners externally? And so having both the people leader and the marketing leader have a seat at the table for that culture transformation is so critical. And ultimately,
00:10:22
Speaker
What we did at Zayo is we were basically, we are basically right a two and a half billion dollar startup in a lot of ways. The company had grown really fast in organically through acquisitions. So 48 acquisitions I think we're at now that make up the company.
00:10:38
Speaker
And so, as you can imagine, like, coming on board and having to understand, like, with all of these acquisitions, like, how do we actually... What is the Zayo culture? And how does our culture support this monster transformation that we're going to achieve?
00:10:54
Speaker
It's a big challenge. And so for us, we really had to step back and put our business under a microscope and think about like with all these acquisitions and this huge opportunity on the precipice of a big transformation, like why do we exist? What exactly do we deliver to the market?
00:11:16
Speaker
How can we better serve our customers? And why are we different than the others in our market? And communications infrastructure is a pretty commoditized market. So positioning is hard at the corporate level and at the product level. So we really wanted to spend a lot of time being introspective, but also listening.
00:11:38
Speaker
in order to understand really how do we truly define why we exist and how we're differentiated. So we undertook a big kind of purpose and culture project to really think through those questions. And I really, having done this work previously in another organization, I knew that having that well articulated purpose
00:12:04
Speaker
was really going to help us drive the operational, the culture, the global sales and marketing transformation that needed to happen. And getting to the core of why we exist was really the first piece of that transformation. And so he ended up spending a lot of time listening to the market, talking to analysts, talking to our employees, working with our executive team to understand that our brand purpose at the end of the day is this idea of connecting what's next.
00:12:33
Speaker
And being able to understand that we are in the midst of what I like to call the bandwidth economy, right? You can't, I woke up, I don't know if anybody even felt like this, I woke up this morning and the Peloton did not work. I've thrown the wind along onto Wi-Fi and you're not connected and you don't know what to do. And that's the world we live in, right? We live in distributed work environments.
00:12:58
Speaker
We live in a world where content is coming to us every way, shape, and form through our devices. And none of that could exist if Zayo didn't exist. So being able to tell that story, not quite an ingredient ram story, which I've had to do before, but really the powering of an experience, right? And that work.
00:13:24
Speaker
from a culture and transformation perspective was really critical for us to being able to articulate the vision for the transformation, the ambition of the transformation and the North Star of where we were heading, right? Which is, it's a very customer-centric
00:13:41
Speaker
and bandwidth economy as purpose right that we connect with next for our customers who are doing really cool things from edge computing to like satellites and internet and doing
00:13:56
Speaker
powering all of the major cloud providers and every financial services institution. And also being able to tell that story was so critical. And our employees and our customers have really rallied around that. And it's helped be the guiding force for the turn around that we're in. Wow. It sounds like it very much positively impacted the company's not only performance, but maybe even the employee satisfaction.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yes, we can always constantly focusing on how we get better, right? But I think we provided the foundation for us to be able to start to work on those things. Because at the end of the day, people need to feel tied to a purpose. But there's so many attributes of a company that make people want to work there. So I don't want to be disingenuous of saying.
00:14:47
Speaker
But yeah, focus on the purpose is going to solve all your individual problems. But I do believe that no amount of benefits or perks or what enter incentive here, right, can be up for the fact if a company does not have a clear, clearly articulated purpose and the impact that they have in the world.
00:15:11
Speaker
And you have to have purpose. And I love, too, that you had mentioned that this isn't so much of an ingredient brand piece. It's more of an empowerment experience. And I think that emotional impact, we all are emotional beings at the end of the day. So let's face it. And we all want to help. And we want to be seen, heard, understood, and have a purpose. So that's beautiful.
00:15:36
Speaker
We always debate, is the B2B space less emotional than consumer space? And I'm like, it is so much more emotional. Am I by the wrong pair of Birkenstock? Am I emotionally distraught? No. If I spend a million dollars on the wrong infrastructure for my company and I lose my job, holy shit. That's an emotional purchase.
00:15:58
Speaker
My ego is on the line. My reputation is on the line. The size of the purchase is on the line. Way more emotional in the beat of Ace of Ace than in the birthday cycle.
00:16:11
Speaker
I love how you put it that way because I personally would have thought consumer space would have been more emotional, but how you put it, I'm like, oh no, it definitely is the business space. Because not only are you making a decision for your business, but it is going to impact the business and those within it as well.
00:16:30
Speaker
I actually have something you had mentioned that somebody in the beginning when you were like, you know, with the initial challenge when you're like, okay. And he goes, we should have listened to you. Was that guy a mentor? Because we all know that like mentorship and guidance can play a crucial role in career growth. So I'm actually curious if you have a mentor advocate story of somebody maybe who significantly impacted your professional development.
00:16:58
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. And in that case, that was one of the best bosses that I've had in my career, right? Which I don't know if definitely a mentor in that sense, but mentors have played a big role. And I would say not just mentors, but also sponsors, which I think are
00:17:15
Speaker
slightly different. And people that can help shape how you think, how to approach a situation, how to engage differently or align differently with the team, like that's a mentor. Like the sponsors that person who can do all those things, but is also going to go to bat for you, pound the table for you, and make sure that your name is on the shortlist. And I think I feel very blessed to have been
00:17:40
Speaker
like surrounded and I've nurtured, right? So it's not just happenstance that I happen to have great mentors and great sponsors, but it's also because I've really nurtured those relationships and spent a considerable amount of time and effort and preparation in those relationships.
00:17:56
Speaker
I've had a lot of great bosses who have taken me under their wings. Dell, AMD, IBM, just great leaders who have really been great sponsors as well, who have helped me have a seat at that table, helped ensure that my voice is heard, helped make sure that the opportunities were available to me as well as helping them for our machine.
00:18:20
Speaker
my thoughts, but I think also in my action. But I think the other piece is having mentors outside of just your day-to-day job because you do need to have that fresh perspective. People who are keeping you on your toes that are not necessarily overwhelmed by the day-to-day politics and infighting and bureaucracy of a company.
00:18:43
Speaker
For me, one of those mentors is an executive by the name of Michael Gale. He is the CMO at a company called Wind River. I've been working with him since 2013 at this point. It's been a while. Because we've never worked at the same company, he's always been an outside mentor. He's really helped me focus on my strengths and understand where I can make the biggest impact.
00:19:09
Speaker
He really pushes me on ideas around AI and digital transformation and really helps me cover my secret sauce. Like conversations that I can't have with my managers or my sponsors at work. Where really creating an environment where I can ask the dumb question and pick his brain and know that it's within those four walls, either real life or virtually.
00:19:35
Speaker
So, yeah, it's been like, I've really focused on nurturing those relationships and having that network that really spans my whole personal board of directors, you know, as well as, you know, as those people that are in the organization.
00:19:52
Speaker
It sounds very crucial to me to get, like you said, that inside perspective, but then also that outside perspective. And I love that he challenges you. That's the big piece that I am grateful that I have in a sponsor as well, but also that I crave to continue to add for sponsors or mentors in the future. And I think
00:20:16
Speaker
That's amazing. So you had actually mentioned that you have this collection, but did it just unfold organically or did you look at the person and say, yes, you are that person and I really like I want you to eventually be my mentor. The reason I ask is I'm looking for advice that you could give to maybe other women who are seeking mentors. How did it work out for you that they became
00:20:43
Speaker
So I would say all of the relationships that they all have been very organic. But I say that organic in the sense of playing with that side, like people who you connect with that you can have those conversations with. But then it does become a little bit formalized at some point, right? It becomes like where you want to maximize your time with that person and coming prepared, like knowing what you want to talk about, like using their time wisely.
00:21:08
Speaker
Whether that's a formal program or not, I was part of a kind of early executive mentorship program earlier in my career and paired up with somebody that I never would have expected. Was not in, even in the realm of like sales and marketing. It was really like, like someone in the more technical like operations elements of it. And.
00:21:33
Speaker
That mentorship, even though I never would have sought out that person, it was one of the best mentorship programs I've been through. No, it was finite, right? We had a six-month mentorship. I generally keep in contact, but at the time, it was something that was so pivotal to my career at that moment in time.
00:21:53
Speaker
in terms of helping me better navigate the executive ranks, being able to understand insights of a different organization that was not in the front of the house, if you will. And again, leveraging that opportunity, especially when it was less organic. It was less about getting coffee and more about really being in this formal mentorship program. But that's where that preparation really came in handy.
00:22:22
Speaker
So letting him know the day before our session, here's what I want to talk about this month. The list of topics, the agenda, facilitating that conversation in a way that became organic in the moment, but was very thoughtfully planned and gave him the chance to think through how could an executive in this world help someone in that world.
00:22:46
Speaker
And so I always think, yes, they're organic, but even when they're inorganic, where you are part of that formalized program, how do you get the most out of that? And it turned out to be one of a great marriage partnership, but it was a great mentorship partnership that was really able to help me through a very challenging time in a way that I wouldn't have existed.
00:23:10
Speaker
Again, with the different perspectives, but internally this time, correct? Yeah, exactly. Wow. But fostering those relationships in the way that makes sense, right? And thinking really being strategic about who are your mentors, who are your sponsors, who's on your board of directors. Yeah. Don't leave it the chance.
00:23:32
Speaker
I love that you have so many different perspectives too that are helping to guide you or provide feedback because then at that point you can utilize the experience that each of these individuals has to not only inform your decision, but to enhance it, I think.
00:23:53
Speaker
because you're putting your own secret sauce into it, right? There is some self-sourcing, of course, that comes from, but it is nice to lean when you need to or to feel like you have that kind of close-knit community, essentially, that you've organically developed. That's great. Speaking of mentorship,
00:24:11
Speaker
I'd like to touch base on collaborative leadership and vision, right?
Collaboration in Leadership
00:24:17
Speaker
So going from helping one another in one way to collaborating in another. So driving cultural transformation definitely requires effective leadership and alignment across different departments. Touched on it in a previous question, but how is it that you have collaborated with other C-suite executives
00:24:38
Speaker
to really create a unified vision for the organization's culture and what role did marketing specifically play in reinforcing this vision both internally and externally?
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, interesting. I think ultimately you can't drive transformation of a business or a culture if you're not bringing everyone stable. It just won't stick. It has to be tops down in the sense of it's not led by a leadership. You'll never get by it at the lower levels of the organization.
00:25:14
Speaker
So yes, like tops down is important in that sense, but it can't be singularly led. It can't be a marketing effort. It can't be a people and culture led effort. Like it has to feel like a collaborative leadership led effort. Again, every single one of us are chief culture officers at the end of the day. So having that mindset. But one of the examples I think of, so while I was at AMD, I led the brand transformation there.
00:25:42
Speaker
as part of the broader turnaround. And there's a couple of things that led to the success of that turnaround, obviously. I don't even like to look at the numbers because, like, I think to myself, I sold my stock too soon. I think it's like a thousand plus percent. Oh, gosh. I'm getting a 284% break in stock price while I was there. So it is definitely a darling transformation. Story at Wall Street, if you will.
00:26:09
Speaker
But I think there was really two things. Number one, before we made any decisions, I conducted truly comprehensive market and brand research. Before I brought a single person around the table to have a conversation, I went and got the data. What did our customers say about us? What did our partners say about us? What did the people that we wish
00:26:33
Speaker
what our partners and customers say about us. True, like some unaided and aid in awareness, even in those studies. Like it was a monster piece of research, but we had to start there to guide the conversations because otherwise it becomes, I've been here for 18 years and here's my perspective.
00:26:52
Speaker
So starting with that allowed us to have a much more open and honest, like collaborative style, because we always had the data to fall back on, right? It was always that anybody at a table could call out and say, wait a second. That's not what the data told us. We're going down the wrong path. And there was a few times of that, right?
00:27:14
Speaker
Everybody knows how it is. You get excited, you start snowballing, and then you realize you've diverted from the path that you originally started down. And then the second piece was bringing together all of the cross-functional leaders and letting them be part of the brainstorming around the purpose and the strategy. So flew everybody out to Seattle, rainy, cold February.
00:27:37
Speaker
I locked ourselves in a room with an agency for two days and just let people feel part of it and to bring their voices. So we had one representative from each of the different areas. So we had a GM of a business, we had chief legal officer, we had somebody from finance, people who never had probably been part of that kind of brainstorm before and all of their voices were
00:28:05
Speaker
incorporated into where we ended up landing. And obviously marketing's job, my job at the time was to ensure that I'm hearing the voices, anchoring on the data, not over indexing, right? On any one singular voice and always bringing it back to the core.
00:28:23
Speaker
of what we were trying to achieve. Ultimately, we were really able to roll out. It was a six-month end-to-end brand transformation from purpose and strategy. And this is not just the brand, right? This is the company strategy. So, brand and company strategy all the way to
00:28:42
Speaker
pamphlets and collateral in stores in Asia, right? Six months. And I really believe that was the case because of the data and the collaborative approach. Otherwise, and I've done it the other way too, where it hasn't been as collaborative or it's been more of a marketing owned exercise and end up getting down the road and nobody likes it.
00:29:10
Speaker
right? It doesn't represent us. And then you end up having another three months of around around trying to, to wordsmith things. And so because everybody in that room saw themselves, the change management was
00:29:27
Speaker
And it was just, and we did, there were a couple of things that we did, even as we got down to like how the brand was represented and the look, the feel, the voice, the imagery, like all those pieces.
00:29:42
Speaker
like, ended up hosting a kind of gallery opening, if you will, with a bunch of options. And we had the executives sipping champagne, walking around, voicing their opinion. Oh my gosh. Of course, you don't really care what the head of procurement thinks about the kind of role.
00:30:01
Speaker
Everyone felt some sense, like they felt it was appreciated. They were part of the whole journey from like strategy and purpose, grounding and anchoring in that purpose to how that brand is articulated. And they really bought in. And so I felt like in that sense, like while I was the conductor, it was a marketing led activity and process, but it was owned by every single one of us that were in that room.
00:30:30
Speaker
Wow. That whole process, I feel like it's a way better way to go than having it be marketing led and trying to go back to your point and wordsmith because at that point, if people aren't allowed to communicate and see themselves in the solution, they're just going to be heels in all the way. There was some magic there in all of that.
00:30:51
Speaker
I didn't have any ideas. Although I will tell you, we also crowd, we wanted to make it really collaborative. So we crowd sourced a tagline, right? Not our purpose, our strategy with our employees. And that was a terrible idea. How did that go? I don't know. It was fun. It provided for a lot of laughs. I'll tell you that. But it was funny. I would not go down that path again.
00:31:17
Speaker
So it sounds like this approach was very inclusive. Yes, and I'm curious, which brings me to the next topic of wanting to touch base on inclusive culture across diverse markets. So Zayo operates, we understand this, on a global market.
00:31:40
Speaker
which includes many diverse cultures and work environments. How do you ensure that the company's cultural transformation efforts are inclusive and also resonate across various regions and teams?
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I think there's a few ways to do that. There is a need for process and kind of almost a system overall, right? Because at the end of the day, global can drive, the corporate headquarters can drive a strategy, but the rollout of that strategy has to be owned and lived by the organizations that are in those regions. And so really ensuring that
00:32:24
Speaker
you provide for the right model that allows everyone to understand that North Star, understand the guardrails, and then giving them the freedom to localize and customize as needed to represent their teams, their customers as well in regions. And we can't assume to know how everything will resonate, but we can also
00:32:54
Speaker
be cognitive and take some steps. One of the things we did is check purpose statements and taglines and ensure that like Chinese translation, for example, was not something offensive or warm. Just even the basics, like start with the basics, make sure that you're being culturally respectful, but then building a system and a process to let those teams
00:33:21
Speaker
really drive some level of localization. And so I think that's really, really critical at the end of the day is the strategy is the North Star. Providing those guardrails, I want 80% of the decisions to be able to be made in region, right? And only 20%
00:33:42
Speaker
to be not clear from the North Star and the guardrails. So how do we provide enough that they can be accountable in the region to represent to employees and to customers, to partners, what the brand is, and making sure that we're evolving and that we're recognizing that we have a forum to bring concern, especially at the beginning.
00:34:06
Speaker
have a new brand and a new culture and a new purpose statement. There she is. I know. I love her. Okay. Basically North Star drives it. You can always come back to the North Star, but being able to have localization happen in different regions and they can make it, they can make it their own based off of
00:34:28
Speaker
And it could be the articulation of it. You want it to obviously stay in line pretty closely then or sort of ways to articulate it that show localization and show respect for local cultures, but also having you activate, right? It's one thing to build a brand and culture strategy, a purpose strategy, but you have to activate it. And that's where really that localization can take true effect and really impact the outcomes of that transformation.
00:34:59
Speaker
Man, I didn't even consider activation for something like that. But it makes sense that on a local level, that would be the driving factor. They would be driving at home. Oh, yeah, exactly. And bringing life and getting people on board and managing change management and things that work for change management in one culture don't work for change management in another. So recognizing all those pieces.
00:35:25
Speaker
So if we were to take this and do our final question of customer-centric cultural shift, right? So understanding that creating inclusivity and culture across diverse markets, you're leaving it up to sort of the region to define their flavor, if you will, of the North Star. Building a customer-centric organization
00:35:54
Speaker
is often like a crucial aspect of transformation. So how has the company's cultural shift really influenced its approach to understanding and also meeting customer needs? So I think it has to be one of the same,
Aligning with Customer Needs
00:36:14
Speaker
right? Because at the end of the day, like every transformation has to be grounded in
00:36:21
Speaker
what's in customer, right? That's the goal. Like obviously there's some level of like altruism that happens. At the end of the day, like most companies are in the business of making money, right? Maybe unless you've got like your special corporation.
00:36:37
Speaker
You mentioned and you're in the B Corp or whatever, but for the most part, right, companies exist to make money. They exist to make money for shareholders via the company itself. And so ultimately, why the company exists, that purpose statement has to be grounded in how you are helping customer achieve their goals.
00:37:00
Speaker
And ultimately, that becomes the crux of why are we transforming in the first place? We're not just transforming to save costs. All of that might be an outcome. But ultimately, it's because you're trying to drive more efficient customer experience, right? You want to be able to acquire and retain customers or have a better customer experience or have new products that fulfill different customer needs. It all comes down to what the market and the customer
00:37:29
Speaker
need and whether your company is delivering or not delivering on that. We always have to remind ourselves that the purpose is really answering the why for the customer, but in the same sense can also help answer the why for the employee. And so I think for us at Zayo, for example,
00:37:49
Speaker
We had to really figure out how to leverage this transformation. When I came in, everything was Zayo as the hero, right? It was how many miles of fiber do we have? It was how many companies have we acquired? It was how many, how much revenue do we have? It was very much like Zayo was the hero.
00:38:09
Speaker
And for this transformation to really succeed, we had to put the customer in the center of the story. The customer has to be the hero of that story. And Zayo is the enabler, which is the whole concept of not so much the ingredient brand, but the enablement or the empowerment brand.
00:38:27
Speaker
And so I think once we have really established the why for the customer, then we can go bring along the employees. Then we can really start to explain the why behind the what because the what exists in service of that customer. And then we can
00:38:47
Speaker
bring each and every employee along in that journey. But you can't start at a place that doesn't have the customer in the center, or it won't be a successful transformation because the company won't make money. That's what we're all trying to do. Nobody's going to buy. It's usually for the revenue generating of the company in Portland.
00:39:08
Speaker
going to market to. Exactly. Same thing, customer success. How are you servicing those customers? How are you helping enable them to be more successful as a result of your products for service?
00:39:23
Speaker
Man, so we've talked on driving culture, collaboration, mentorship. I feel like there isn't a topic that we haven't touched on, but I wanted to ask, what haven't I asked or what aren't we talking about that
00:39:39
Speaker
We should.
Leadership Attributes for Transformation
00:39:41
Speaker
Good question. I guess the only piece I think that we're missing of the story is like, how do you as an individual or me as an individual, how do we prepare to be the people that are championing this transformation or culture, brand, purpose, call it what you will, shift?
00:39:58
Speaker
And I get asked the question a lot, what are the skills that you need to do M&A transformation turnaround? And the answer is there is no skills. Like every skill is applicable to a transformational model, right? You need finance people, you need
00:40:18
Speaker
procurement people, you need human capital people, you need marketers. Every single person from a skilled perspective can play a role. But I think there's three attributes.
00:40:30
Speaker
of successful transformative leaders. And that's curiosity, the ability to understand what's happening in the market, understand what's next, understand what the customers are feeling and seeing every single day of their life and being able to anticipate those changes, right? So that curiosity is really important. Agility is also really important. And I use that word in the sense of if curiosity is looking forward, agility is looking back.
00:40:58
Speaker
So seeing what we did last quarter, having a retrospective to say, it's working, go scale it fast, or it's not working, let's go kill that fast. That ability to adopt and go be agile and be able to recognize when things are really working or really not is critical. And then the third piece is the level of comfort that you have with calculated risks.
00:41:22
Speaker
And obviously there's inherent risk with every organization, right? Whether companies are skyrocket growing or they're in that transformation turnaround, like a pivot is always stressful, I think in a different way and has a different level of risk.
00:41:38
Speaker
And so feeling comfortable with taking calculated risks in your day to day, not just as an organization, but like being able to like really feel comfortable trying the things and obviously having the agility to look back and see what working and not working, but feeling like you can
00:41:55
Speaker
take those steps forward. And while transformation might not be seen as like those big moonshots, which you might see a big rose opportunity, white space opportunity in the market, there are a lot of little mini moonshots that happen throughout a transformation and feeling comfortable going out on the lip, having a hypothesis. Taking a calculated risk is really what leads transformative leaders down maybe a different path than traditional leaders.
00:42:25
Speaker
That's one thing we didn't really talk about, is how do you become one of those leaders that can help drive that culture and that transformation? I feel like I don't even know what to say. That's so cool. I love the idea that curiosity is looking forward and seeing what's out there, how customers are feeling, what they're seeing, what could possibly be next. But then agility is looking back and saying what worked, what didn't, and killing it or scaling it fast. And I feel like the agility piece,
00:42:54
Speaker
I've seen that people be afraid to scale or afraid to cut back because their ego or something is tied to the, well, I made this decision back then, so I have to double down on it. Definitely having that pilot mindset, right? Having that mindset of keeping it small, right, to begin with, right? So that you can prove it out in one way or the other without being too beholden to the pilot as this monster
00:43:23
Speaker
stake in the ground decision. So it really is a mindset shift in terms of and being comfortable. And what that means sometimes is that there is change. Like change happens regularly in transformation and really change is inevitable, but growth is optional, right? There's a great quote. And I really think that's the mindset that transformative leaders have to have.
00:43:46
Speaker
because, and not just transformative leaders, but also people that are on the teams during a transformation, right? Of having that mindset that this is a huge opportunity and that incremental change sometimes feels like a lot of change, but it is incremental. And that ultimately those open lines of communication with leadership and management really helps in terms of making sure that
00:44:15
Speaker
The change is well managed and not everybody's perfect, right? We're going to make mistakes. But thinking about like that in mindset enables you to have a, like to put pilots in place, to feel comfortable having this conversation with your team and bringing them along on that journey and giving them accountability.
00:44:34
Speaker
come up with those pilot ideas. It's a lot less scary to present a big idea if you're presenting it as a pilot. And so it gives people a little bit more comfort in knowing that it's a confined, measurable approach. And if it works, then awesome. And if it doesn't, that's totally cool. We tried. And it's a contained investment. Having that mindset and instilling that in the organization is really important when you're talking about this big monster transformational thing.
00:45:04
Speaker
One step at a time. Exactly.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:45:06
Speaker
One foot in front of the other. Thank you so much, Kim, for your time. Thank you for having me. This was fun.
00:45:14
Speaker
And that wraps up another episode of Resilient Revenue. These narratives are more than just personal triumphs. They embody the collective journey that we undertake as we strive for a future where every woman, no matter her career stage, location, industry, or demographic profile, has the opportunity to excel in her chosen field.
00:45:35
Speaker
Women in Revenue exists because we know amazing things can happen when driven, talented, bottom line oriented women are fired up and collaborating to grow their careers and organizations. We invite you to join our amazing community of 7,000 plus members. If you'd like to become a member for free, head on over to womeninrevenue.org to join today. See you next time on Resilient Revenue.