Culture

Andrew Falcon

February 26, 2021 by

Andrew has made a career out of injecting energy, ideas and discipline into small- to medium-sized high growth services companies for more than 20 years. He spent more than 11 years as the global COO of Fjord, an international innovation and design agency that was acquired by Accenture in 2013. As COO of Fjord, Andrew worked with the founders to develop the strategic direction for the agency, and oversaw financial and operational performance, investments, IT, HR and international expansion. While at Fjord and Accenture, he grew the agency from 50 FTEs to more than 1,400 FTEs and 36 global studios. He is now focused on helping founders and investors weave together a long-term vision with the right operational targets to produce an efficient and responsive delivery capability that attracts talent, strategic partnerships and fuels business growth.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I believe there are so many ingenious ideas, products and services that can make the world a better place, which are all fighting to be experienced. Partnering with entrepreneurs to enable those ideas operationally and to build teams that can bring those products and services prime time gives me a natural high. I’m always seeking ways to make every business activity more impactful, and making teams feel more recognized and appreciated motivates me. To me it’s all about people and purpose. I want to give more people the opportunities I’ve had in building companies, to share my experiences and to unleash the next great service or product offering!

While you were at Fjord, you saw the firm grow from a small company to more than 1,400 people in 36+ cities. What were a few surprises for your leadership team during this journey?

The excitement of growing a business will always throw up surprises — both good and bad ! Most were manageable but there were a few that required a great deal of thought. For example, we knew our choice to be acquired by Accenture Interactive was founded on sound principles and business objectives, supported by a collaborative and protective acquiring team. However, I don’t think we fully appreciated the challenges that came with bringing together such different cultures. Navigating those decisions and challenges required more collaboration, communication and education (in both directions) for a longer period than anticipated but the positive results flowed from there.

Another example was experiencing the Peter Principle first-hand. Leading small studios and design teams by designers is cost effective and can work, however, elevating our best designers to lead large studios and countries with non-design demands became increasingly challenging, particularly given the speed of growth and increased client demands. We needed to become more intentional in this over time and we had to find proactive alternatives to our designers’ career aspirations.

When Fjord was acquired by Accenture, you helped lead the integration of the team into Accenture Interactive. What should services execs plan for when bringing a new firm into the fold after an acquisition?

For any acquisition to deliver on its intended purpose, the journey should start well before the deal is inked. It requires active senior leadership support and participation on both sides, a clearly articulated common purpose, and an underlying trust that both parties will seek solutions to every eventuality that wasn’t anticipated.Post-acquisition almost everything rests on authentic, effective and regular communication to the acquired team. Plan for this time and ensure the right people are delivering the messages. So much is assumed at this stage and assumptions often result in misunderstanding, distrust and attrition, which is the single biggest concern when acquiring a people-based business!

You’ve led a very diverse set of teams around the world – people who are technical, operational and creative in nature at startups and extremely large companies. What has that taught you about effective organizational design and how to scale teams and culture?

Peter Drucker infamously said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I couldn’t agree with this more. I’ve learned that having a collaboratively structured, well communicated, and empowering culture, will serve as the most important lens through which nearly every decision is made. Within this unique culture, team members need to be bold, generous, collaborative, communicative and always curious. Client engagements need to be fast, flexible, and people-operated. It’s even OK if they are a little unstable, as that ability to experiment without a fear of failure can go a long way. When designing companies, we should think more of a flotilla of multi-disciplined Hobie Cats than a single super-tanker.

Heidi Spirgi

January 29, 2021 by

Heidi has spent her career helping organizations tap into the power of their workforce. She is currently the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Cornerstone, a talent management technology company whose solutions are used by 75 million people around the world, and has held leadership roles at The Marcus Buckingham Company, ADP and PeopleSoft. In 2004 she co-founded Knowledge Infusion, a strategic HR consulting firm that was acquired by Appirio and eventually became the foundation for Appirio’s Workday cloud services practice. She has been recognized as a Top 100 HR Tech Influencer by HR Executive Magazine, and is a sought after expert on how leaders can promote gender equality.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

People are the heart and soul of any business, but no more so than in services. Tools and technology lack value on their own, it’s the people behind them that really make the difference. People-first businesses, whether products or services companies, are also just a lot more fun to be a part of and lead. When you look at employees as humans first, workers second, teams are a lot more trusting, collaborative, engaged and motivated. That’s when innovation flows!

You have a track record of creating strong, high-performing team cultures. What factors are important when it comes to creating a strong culture?

The first thing is to ensure people, leaders included, have a beginner’s mindset. If you approach everything as a student, rather than believing you know everything at the outset, you don’t close your mind off to new ideas. This was one of the reasons why Knowledge Infusion was so successful. We had industry expertise and a passion for our work, but we didn’t necessarily have a playbook for the kind of consulting we wanted to do. And that’s not a bad thing. The second thing is to create an environment where it’s safe to take risks. I tell my teams to actively seek those OSMs (oh shit moments) where you try things you haven’t done before and have no idea how it’s going to end. It’s in those moments that you grow and create breakthroughs for the business.

What advice would you give founders who are just getting started in a highly competitive ecosystem?

Don’t try to be all things to all people. When you expand your offerings too fast, suddenly it becomes more difficult to differentiate. The market doesn’t understand who you are or your unique value proposition. You still need to be opportunistic, but in a thoughtful way that allows you to identify the downstream trade offs. It helps to establish a set of guiding principles, a set of beliefs that act like guardrails to keep you on track when those shiny objects and short cuts seem tempting. And try to act bigger than you are — invest in marketing to establish your brand and build credibility early on. If you’re competing against the big guys, you have to look and act the part and B-level marketing will sink you.

Toni Pavlovich

January 28, 2021 by

Toni is a results-oriented, culture-first kind of leader who started her career as an F117A Stealth Fighter avionics engineer but now spends her days navigating the world of enterprise software. She currently leads Splunk’s Professional Services and Sales organization, a $200+ million P&L with more than 850 sales, services and partner delivery professionals in more than 20 countries. Toni has experience across nearly every aspect of a business and the customer journey, whether that’s technical pre-sales, sales, professional services, global support, mission critical services or customer success management. When she’s not busy building, mentoring and managing her teams, Toni can usually be found competing at any number of sports or volunteering at the Longboat Key Turtle Watch.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I started my career in engineering and product sales, but spent the majority of my time as a leader in people-based businesses. People are the heart and soul of any company, and there is nothing more amazing than creating a culture and environment where high performing teams are learning and growing, providing huge value to customers, and feeling accomplished but challenged. That’s a sweet spot for me, and results in great talent and a thriving business.

You manage teams on five continents. What advice would you give to founders looking to expand internationally on managing a truly global team culture?

This is too hard to summarize in a few sentences but I’ll start with a big one: think and act globally, but with a local lens. By that I mean leaders have to be clear on overall objectives and direction, while being thoughtful and respectful of the culture, language and diverse needs of local employees and customers. Too many U.S.-based leaders come at it with a U.S.centric mindset. Be conscious of what you say, what policies you put in place and what actions you take. Even small things like creating flex meeting times that respect time zone differences can make a big impact.

How has the cloud changed things when it comes to meeting the needs and demands of enterprise customers?

As customers move from perpetual or on-premise to cloud technologies, their expectations of vendors have shifted alongside. They now expect a regular cadence of new features, seamless updates, instant fixes, proactive pushes, even telemetry. If expectations aren’t met, they feel much more empowered to leave and find a new vendor. This means companies have to get the right services to customers, at the right time, with the right resources to speed customer adoption; it’s imperative that they’re getting value every step of the way so they renew and expand. However, that takes sales, services, support and product teams working together, which means everyone now owns customer success. Not one particular group.

As a vocal advocate for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), what do you think companies can do differently to help women excel in technology organizations?

Making progress in this area takes real work, not just talk, and it can’t just be owned by HR. It needs to be infused throughout the company as a business imperative and treated as importantly as other drivers for success. It requires leadership and holding everyone accountable. A good place to start is to benchmark where you are currently and be realistic but set aggressive goals. Collect the data, use it as a foundation, measure your progress and communicate how you’re doing. Be purposeful in creating a diverse pipeline of candidates and ensure you are creating a culture that is inclusive.

Ryan Denehy

January 25, 2021 by

Ryan is a serial entrepreneur, investor and hands-on advisor who has started three companies, and is now the founder and CEO of Electric, a IT solutions company with more than 20,000 end users and 400 customers. He started his first venture-backed company, a digital ad network called Banquet and his second company, Swarm, a retail analytics company for SMBs, a few years later. Both began with a services-based model but over time transitioned to managed services and eventually pure software, and both had successful exits to publicly traded companies (USA TODAY/Gannett and Groupon). That journey has given Ryan broad experience in all aspects of revenue strategy and proven his ability to craft a vision, build the team, and get the job done.

What do you love about leading and growing people-based businesses?

People-centric approaches (versus software) give founders an edge when it comes to speed. A smart services team can form a hypothesis, create a solution, bring it to market, and iterate and improve it, and within weeks have a seven-figure commercial business unit up and running. That is significantly different than what happens with software-driven companies, and is a unique competitive advantage if managed correctly.

You founded and successfully grew businesses focused on managed services, including Electric AI and SWARM Mobile. What is the biggest mistake companies make when expanding into managed services?

The hardest thing about expanding into productized services is figuring out the division of labor in the value chain. It’s easy to chase big dollars and do it all, but sometimes (well, often) less is more. At SWARM, we ultimately decided to focus our efforts on integration and software and pushed a lot of the commodity field work to channel partners. At Electric, we’ve been really clear about what our humans should do versus someone else’s. This focus has been key to scaling.

What advice would you give founders as they move from the initial start up phase into scale mode?

The best advice I can give is to look at your business objectives 12-18 months from now, and then look at the team that you have today. How confident are you that each leader can own their part of that new number and get the job done in 12 months (not today)? The biggest danger with a scaling business is hitting a wall and it’s entirely avoidable if you look far enough into the future and assess your team on tomorrow rather than today.

Julie Barker

January 23, 2021 by

Julie has been entrenched in talent strategy, recruiting and people operations for technology and IT consulting businesses for 15 years. Her focus on helping leaders and managers build world-class teams and a culture that fosters and inspires those teams, has made her an invaluable part of many companies’ growth story. She has helped companies navigate growth at nearly every stage, from scaling sub 30 employee start-ups to supporting large global organizations of more than 100,000 employees. Prior to founding her own talent consulting business, she was the VP of Talent at Zylo and Senior Director of Recruiting and Talent at Appirio. Julie also chairs the Indianapolis chapter of DisruptHR, an information exchange designed to energize, inform and empower HR professionals.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

People are at the crux of any business. They are not only the majority of a company’s costs, but also its greatest source of sustainable competitive advantage. In services organizations, you get to work with so many smart, talented people who bring real value to their clients every day, and see first-hand the impact that their work has on a business. Being a part of that journey, and crafting the programs and processes that support these individuals as they build amazing careers, is incredibly rewarding.

You have worked with a number of founders and leaders throughout your career and through your work with DisruptHR. What do you think is one of the biggest talent-related challenges that founders face early in their growth journeys?

One of the biggest challenges company’s face early on is laying the foundation for an inspiring culture and making that foundation scale. Many early teams are built on leaders who have worked together before and have a shared vision, but how do you grow beyond that to something that everyone is a part of? CEOs and founders need to have a talent partner from the beginning who can help drive strategy from a people perspective and provide balance with other executives who are charged with driving revenue and customer growth.

What advice would you give to founders looking to establish a leadership development program?

Leaders directly impact how your team members view the company and that impacts the business more than you realize. Be intentional about developing your leaders, and craft a leadership program that matches your values. Don’t try to copy someone else’s successful program that has been fine tuned for their business strategy.

What advice would you give founders looking to scale their business and team quickly?

Give hiring the time and attention it needs. Hiring is a lot more than filling open reqs. It’s about creating a destination where people want to join and stay. Bring on leaders who are passionate about building teams and who are always recruiting, not just when there is an open role. If you’re intentional about your recruiting strategy – how to hire to your values, what’s unique about your company and how you will scale the process over time – you will be in the driver’s seat.

Megan Adler

January 23, 2021 by

Megan is a branding and marketing pro with deep expertise building brands from the ground up. In 2002 she founded Sublime Designs Media, a branding and creative marketing firm that takes a fresh approach to solving a wide range of marketing challenges. Whether it’s helping cloud services companies stand out, helping a 20-year old medical physics company modernize their brand, or helping a space camp transition into business services, Megan thrives on thinking outside the box.

What do you love about helping entrepreneurs and founders?

I love helping to make change happen. When you work directly with a founder, you can effect change across an organization — or even an entire industry. It’s exciting to watch that unfold as the founder meets goals and scales the business.

You’ve helped dozens of product and services companies create brands that stand out and stand for something. What is the secret to creating a memorable and impactful brand?

The secret to creating an effective brand is connecting with customers. Your customers are filled with important insights about what your messaging and design should look and sound like. Rather than guessing as to what they want or need, you should ask them. They’ll tell you why they hired you, how they see you as different from competitors, and what sold them on your services. You’ll be surprised to learn that it’s often vastly different from how you perceive yourself and your brand. These insights are invaluable input for your brand strategy. When you use them as the foundation for your brand, you’ll connect with customers emotionally and engender brand loyalty.

What are the elements of an effective brand strategy?

An effective brand really rests on three things:

Knowing what drives you. This is your mission, values and brand promise. These three powerful elements should act as your north star for decision making and everything around your brand.
Having a simple, consistent, and differentiated story. People have limited attention spans. Nothing captures their attention more than a compelling brand story, especially when it’s told in a unique voice.
Crafting a visual identity. This is what makes your brand look and feel different – your logo, fonts, colors, icons, graphics, and photos. It will set you apart and create an emotional connection to your brand.