Adaptable Leadership w/ Jeff Brittain

In this week’s episode, Jeff Brittain, Managing Director at FedEx Institute of Technology, University of Memphis, and seasoned global IT leader, shares his journey into leadership, his career path from engineering to IT leadership, and the life lessons he's gained along the way. He emphasizes the importance of communication, adaptability, and maintaining positivity in leadership roles, while reflecting on his own evolution as a leader with a "professional casual" style. The conversation also touches on Jeff's passion for fitness and problem-solving, showcasing how these interests contribute to his holistic approach to life and work. This inspiring episode highlights the "something extra" that defines impactful leaders across industries.

Guest Links:

• Jeff’s LinkedIn
• FedEx.Memphis.Edu

Credits: 
Host: Lisa Nichols
Executive Producer: Jenny Heal
Marketing Support: Landon Burke and Joe Szynkowski
Podcast Engineer: Portside Media

Transcript

Lisa Nichols  00:02
Chromosomes, little strands of nucleic acids and proteins are the fundamental genetic instructions that tell us who we are. At birth, most people are born with 46 chromosomes, but each year in the United States, about 6000 people are born with an extra chromosome, making them a person with Down syndrome. If you've ever encountered someone with Down syndrome, you know that they are some of the kindest, most joyful people you will ever meet. They truly have something extra. 

My name is Lisa Nichols, and for 30 years, I have been both the CEO of Technology Partners and the mother to Ally. Ally has something extra in every sense of the word. I have been blessed to be by her side as she impacts everyone she meets. Through these two important roles as CEO and mother to Ally, I have witnessed countless life lessons that have fundamentally changed the way I look at the world. While you may not have an extra chromosome, every leader has something extra that defines who you are. 

Join me as I explore the something extra in leaders from all walks of life and discover how that difference in each of them has made a difference in their companies, their families, their communities and in themselves. If you like this episode today, please go to Apple Podcast or wherever you listen and leave us a five-star rating. 

I am thrilled to have Jeff Brittain on the show today. Jeff is a senior advisor global IT leader, and just a normal guy living the dream. Jeff Brittain, welcome to the Something Extra Podcast. I am so delighted that you're making the time to be with me today. Thank you so much for that.

Jeff Brittain  01:36
Oh, Lisa, it's an honor. You are a force of nature, and any time I can spend with you is fantastic. It leaves me fulfilled as well. So, thank you.

Lisa Nichols  01:45
Oh, thank you for those kind words. I appreciate. I can pay you later. Well, you and I are fortunate to know one another in a couple different ways. Bayer, Monsanto/Bayer has been a client of Technology Partners now for 28 of our 30 years in business. We absolutely love that partnership, and so grateful for and you and I see each other at CIO conferences and those kinds of things. So, very, very fortunate to have known you and to, like I said, had that partnership with, with Bayer, it's been, it's been wonderful. But we've got a lot to discuss today. But, yes, we have a lot to talk about. But what I'd love for you to do is just give our listeners a quick snippet of, of your childhood. Where did you grow up? I know a few things about you, and this is not Lisa saying this, okay, Jeff writes this about himself that he was a math geek. 

Jeff Brittain  02:48
Oh, yeah. So, you've read some, I think that's deep LinkedIn work right there, I tell you. So, so I grew up in Oklahoma City. I grew up in a suburb that has an Air Force base in it, Tinker Air Force Base. So, every two years, about 25 or 30% of my friends would leave because their dads or moms, or back then, mostly dads would get, restate, stationed somewhere else in the world. So, we had kind of a core group of us that grew up together, and about every two years, you'd have 30% that came in, and they have a lot of fun people that do that. So, I grew up in Oklahoma City, and I like to say, so, I'm a city boy from a small city, which, you know, so I've got relatives that grew up in the country. So, I'm a little bit of a country boy. But I'm not really a big city person, you know, I'm a middle city person. But that means I can go anywhere, and I have as much fun in New York as I do in a cow field, you know, throwing bales or something like that.

Lisa Nichols  03:52
I thought you were gonna say, throwing in cow chips. 

Jeff Brittain  03:56
I did go to Oklahoma State University, and I have, I have done that. 

Lisa Nichols  04:01
You have done that. 

Jeff Brittain  04:04
Proudly.

Lisa Nichols  04:05
There you go. There you go. You did a lot of sports too, right?

Jeff Brittain  04:11
You know, kind of a jack of all trades. You know, I'm a little bit on the height disadvantage side. So, you know, I did some wrestling, but I was on swim team and enjoyed all that. So been very active. Now I'm big into CrossFit, and one of my favorite places actually near you guys in Maryland Heights. So, when I'm in St. Louis, I've got a gym I go to there, shout out to CrossFit Levo and Antoinette and all that group. 

Lisa Nichols  04:37
We had not talked about that. I did CrossFit for several years, and I've never worked out like that before. Jeff, I'll have to tell you a really funny story. So, one day I go to, to CrossFit class, like at 6am or something, and go there and there were no cars in the parking lot. It was just me and the CrossFit instructor, the instructor. I did so many wall balls. I'm like, if I ever pull in this parking lot again and there are no other cars, I am turning around going home, I'm out of here.

Jeff Brittain  05:11
And I'm a big fan of exercise, you know, especially as I'm getting older. So, I went skiing with my wife and oldest daughter. She lives in Idaho. We were in a couple of more rural resorts out there. And, you know, skied a whole weekend over one of the recent holiday weekends. You know what? I was great. Didn't have any problem and so it's important to do those 300 wall balls, or how many of them you did that day, because it helps life. You can walk upstairs and, you know, people in their 20 kind of giggle, but you know, when you think about what this means for your life. If a tree falls down, I can take a chainsaw and cut, you know, the limbs up, but I can do a nice clean on the log and throw it into the pile. And that's all due to things like CrossFit.

Lisa Nichols  05:57
I agree, I never, I never felt stronger than when I when I was doing that could lift benches over my head and all kinds of things. But it reminds me, though, Jeff, I'm glad you brought that up, because it is really important. Danforth that founded Ralston, here in St. Louis, wrote a book, and think the name of it is, "I Dare You" and he is just talking about the four-legged stool, and health is one of those. And he's like, you know, wealth, I don't care how wealthy you are, if you get unhealthy wealth cannot buy health. 

Jeff Brittain  06:33
That's correct. 

Lisa Nichols  06:34
But health can help you build wealth, right? And relationships and everything else. So, it is really, really important, and especially as the decades clip by, it's really, it's really important. Well, I know that you went to school for engineering, got a degree in engineering. So that makes sense, because I know you really enjoyed math, so that makes sense. Started your career at Accenture, good, awesome company, but you've had an incredible career spanning all kinds of IT leadership roles. Jeff, across multiple industries, and we're gonna dig into just a few of those. But who are what inspired you down this path of engineering, or did you fall, are you an accidental engineer? I don't think you're accidental because of your math background.

Jeff Brittain  07:21
No, so, so it's on purpose. And my father was an engineer, and you're gonna say he encouraged me. No, no, my father wanted me to be a lawyer, so I was big into debate. I love to argue. I'll take any position on anything, and if someone's not arguing for the other one, I'll jump on the other side and argue that position. I want to have a more holistic approach to what's going on. In fact, my wife, one time said, Jeff, Will you just stop arguing? I need you to, I need you to be serious. What do you really think here? And then of the option to go right in. So, I was encouraged to go to law school, and when I was in school, you know, TV shows like LA Law were big, and so, like everyone and their grandma was in law school, and I just didn't want to do it. I'm sure I could have had a wonderful career, and I've got friends that are lawyers. But for me, what was natural was problem solving. 

Jeff Brittain  08:16
So, my father was an industrial engineer, and he basically said, Jeff, please don't I don't want you to, you know, I want you to go do something else. I said, No, I love it. So luckily, my school that was close by, Oklahoma, State was one of the top five in the program the nation at the time. And so, I did that. And I would argue an engineering career is great for no matter what you do, because you figure out how to help. How do things work together, whether that's a real physical thing, like an assembly line, or whether it's a group of people working together on an idea to try to take it forward. Those kinds of experience on, how do you learn how to put things together as a skill I've taken through my whole career.

Lisa Nichols  08:56
Right. That is so good. And how things work, problem solving, right? I mean, I don't care what degree or what career you're in, it's problem solving and critical thinking skills. I love that. I love that. I cannot tell you, Jeff, how many people I have talked to, and their parents wanted them to go down one path. And you know, I mean not to be disrespectful to our parents, and we need to honor them and honor their wisdom, right? But I, I've got a very dear friend that, that I grew up with, that his dad wanted him to be a dentist, but he was, his dad had been a musician. Was a great musician in and of it himself, right? But his dad said, no, no, no, don't be a musician. Go be a dentist. And he did for a couple years, and then was like, This is not my calling. And ended up, and he's done very, very well as a musician. So, it's, it's hard, you know, because you do want to honor your parents, but at the end of the day, you have to know yourself.

Jeff Brittain  10:03
You know. And look, these are not such horrible decisions, right? So, you're going to be a lawyer or an engineer. But you can certainly understand the appeal of being a dentist to someone who's a musician, right? They're doing gig work.

Lisa Nichols  10:18
Hard.

Jeff Brittain  10:18
Just know you're out, you know they're starting work at 10pm and finishing at 3am every day and all this kind of stuff. And so, I could give you a feel of dentistry. 

Lisa Nichols  10:28
Exactly, exactly. Well, you've worked at Bayer, Merc, other major organizations, what have been the biggest leadership lessons that you've carried with you, Jeff, no matter what industry, what role? 

Jeff Brittain  10:42
Oh, wow, great question. So, kind of two things come to mind. I'll give you, let's say a favorable story and then a lesson learned story, right? And so, the favorable story is that you cast a big shadow. So, what you say matters more than really, even you know. And so, the way I've interpreted it isn't that you have to be perfect, but it means you have to explain why. So, I'm a big, big proponent of helping understand, helping people understand the why. And sometimes it's a mission statement. And you know, it's like Bayer has a wonderful mission statement of Health for all and hunger for none, right? Every I can tell you all, 150,000 people in the organization truly believe that and want to have health for all and hunger for none, but it could all the way down to here's why we're doing this project. We're doing Project X because we want to accelerate the time it takes to get new laptops out to people, which is not so exciting, except when you extrapolate that over 20,000 people, if they get away, it takes a long time. So, I'm a big believer that you have to say why, and it could be here's why we made the decision. We could have done X, Y or Z, and we're picking Z. Z is not the best answer. We go with A but we don't have the money or time for a so we're going to go with A as a way to keep going, or whatever that is. 

Jeff Brittain  12:16
And I found over the years that people really, really appreciate it. And I think from the lessons learned, I'm one of these people, I kind of wear my emotions on my sleeve, so you don't have to really guess what I'm thinking. It'll come out. And so, you know, there were times that I would be overly cynical. I love satire, right? A good, witty, cynical joke, just I'll giggle, you know, What's the joke? Right? At that age where I think I'm 29 but my humor says I'm 12, but I feel like I'm 110 in my bones. So, you know, I've got a bit of a sarcastic sense of humor, and I think that held me back. In fact, it did. I had a I had a boss early, early in my career, that said, Hey, Jeff, you're brilliant, things are wonderful, but I got to be honest, you're a jerk. He used a different word, but he goes, you're a jerk. And I thought I was being nice and like, you know, leavening up the mood in the room. And I really took that to heart and said, No, the way you come across affects other people. So how do you create an overall, not Pollyanna, but you know, how do you create an overall positive environment that people going on? So, I think my lesson, I would say, for people, when you're a leader, you're a leader, and people look to you, and so be positive, be uplifting.

Lisa Nichols  13:47
That's good. That is good. And I always say, how we come across and how we show up can completely change somebody else's life for the better or for the worse, right? It really can. What would you say, Jeff, is your leadership style, you know? And did I mean, obviously you've already answered this question, but I was going to ask you, did it evolve?

Jeff Brittain  14:15
I would say I have what I like to call a professional casual style. So, I want to be confident, but have humility along with that, so I would never be defined as that kind of stick in the mud that things had to go a certain way. So, I'm very much about the mission, and not so much about the process on how to get that done that can be in conflict with people who are all about the process. Process is good. It's there to make sure that you don't make mistakes again and again and again and again. Sometimes you need to understand that you need to change the process. So, I'm definitely casual yet serious. That confuses people, right? Like, hold on, which Jeff is here, the casual, the serious Jeff? And I said both are always here, right. So, I'm very curious about our outcome, but I want us to have fun along the way. And the way I realized and so what this means is that my style can change the fit the content that we're in. 

Jeff Brittain  15:20
So, we've all taken the Myers Briggs, or the personality profiles, or the I've got a chart over here on what color you are, and all this kind of stuff. And historically, I was always a little bit of everything. So, if it was a chart, most people were up here or down here, I was in the middle, right? Or if it was bar graphs, I was always level at the top, and I remembered succinctly. It was my 20th high school reunion. I was at a group of a group of friends. My Home base was the math geeks and the smart kids and all that kind of stuff. But I went and talked to the football players and the people that liked the party and all the kind of different kinds of clicks that were there. I came back to the table and they said, Oh, that's right, Jeff, you were a free radical in high school. You were always able to connect with every group. So, I had a home group, but I was able to connect. So, my what I try to do is bring a style that's necessary for that given team to be able to respond. Some people call it being authentic. Some people call it being inauthentic. I like to say you need to adopt your style to be fit for purpose. 

Lisa Nichols  16:32
You're adaptable and you're agile, you know, which is really our important tenets, I believe, for a leader. So that's really good. Well, listen, I read a couple quotes about you.

Jeff Brittain  16:44
Okay.

Lisa Nichols  16:47
And then we can dig into him further. Here's one. "Jeff's leadership is defined by clarity, empathy and a relentless commitment to innovation. He isn't just a leader, he's a builder of possibilities and opportunities."

Jeff Brittain  17:04
Oh, wow. I'm honored. 

Lisa Nichols  17:05
I absolutely love that, a builder of possibilities and opportunities. Here's another one. "Talking about Jeff in only an IT related role is way too limiting. His real strength is persuasive mix of breakthrough thinking and the ability to inspire others to see the possibilities."

Jeff Brittain  17:27
Oh, fun. That's sweet.

Lisa Nichols  17:31
I mean, what would you say about that? This is so funny, like I want to, I want to camp out a little bit on a couple words empathy. I want to hear your thinking around that. And then inspire. And Jeff, I will never forget actually being on a panel. I was moderating a panel, and one of the girls on the panel said, when I became a leader, she goes, I knew that I needed to inspire people. But I'm like, How, do I inspire? That's a good question, right? But I would love to just hear your thoughts around at least a couple of those words, empathy and inspire. 

Jeff Brittain  18:11
All right. Well, let's start with empathy, because without that, it doesn't matter, right? It's a little bit critical to our discussion. So, you know, I really think that we're all on this planet to help each other. All right, so any situation I go into, I first, ask myself. Second, ask myself. A third, ask myself, How can I help? Now that's not necessarily, how can I sell something, but it's, how can I help? And to be able to answer that question, you have to then understand what's going on. So, you know, one of the things that I think has really helped me in my career, that I think would be beneficial for your listeners, is, you know, I didn't make this up, right? There's been around forever. You can read the Bible, talks about it. Stephen Covey, others, but you know, really seek first to understand. So, tell me about what's going on in your world, right? And listening to the podcast that you have published before we're recording this one about a gentleman, he had a great thing about, you know, how you doing at home, how you doing at work, right? 

Jeff Brittain  19:19
So, I think empathy for me is understanding, right? It's you, yes, it's might be crying at a movie when it's a sad scene that's built, because people cry in these kinds of scenarios. How do you understand what's going on? And if you, if you can do that now, you can have a conversation with anyone. So, one of the benefits of being a free radical is I can talk to a fork truck driver and a CEO at the same time and right next to each other, and kind of shift what's going on. And when you talk to a board member in a big company, you know they are trying to inspire, and half the time they just want to know, Hey, so what's really going on? Like, are people listening to me? Are they not? Where do I need to refine my message? You know, kind of give me some clarity here on what's going on. So, I think if you can understand that, you know, even the people at the highest level of your organization, whatever it is, they're just trying to do the right thing today, and they need the best information. So, if you could help them do that, do that. All the way down to your team. You know, imagine, right? If you don't give them information, how do we help? So that's why I always go back to seek first to understand.

Lisa Nichols  20:35
That's so good. It's so good because what it allows you to do, Jeff, and prevent you from doing is making assumptions.

Jeff Brittain  20:43
Oh. Hey, look, I could write a book. 

Lisa Nichols  20:46
Making assumptions about things before you have the facts and really understand the root of whatever it is, right? It's so critical, so critical.

Jeff Brittain  20:55
So, let's kind of take that assumption piece and I'll move it to the, the inspiration piece. So, let me tell you what I don't do is I don't try to manufacture something to get people. Well, you know, you have town halls and you can have an event. I like cake and cookies as much as anyone, sometimes more than other people. That's why we do CrossFit is to keep that in check. But it's how do you paint a compelling picture the future that's worth going after, right? And it's all about creating a breakthrough. And there's a course I took 12 years ago or so, in breakthrough leadership that has transformed my career from that point forward, saved my marriage, probably saved my relationship with my kids. And it's all about, how do you create this kind of picture of the future, right? And so, you know, I would say what's important to inspire is to tell it like it is, and get people to think a little bit out of their kind of common world. 

Jeff Brittain  22:14
So, let's think about this podcast. This podcast, Something Extra, is a wonderful way to honor your daughter, right? With Down syndrome, extra chromosome. And what I love about it is it moves that from being what potentially is a downside. And I'm sure you could write several books around you know, tough days, I think that's powerful. Honey, you're special because you've got something extra. And you know. So, I think that's part of inspiring others, is to help them know what's the something extra that we can do as a team, that they can do as a team member moving forward. And I'll give you maybe two quick examples there. One is at work. I mentioned laptop onboarding, there was a time in the middle of COVID, we were really struggling. There were supply chain issues, and you know, I won't go into a lot of detail, but we had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people that were starting the company and didn't have a laptop. And, you know, we're paying contractors to sit there, right? Because they can't be productive.  

Jeff Brittain  23:35
And so, I sat down with one of the leaders that understood this, and said, Hey, what's going on? And I said, Well, you know, it's Person X over here is not doing their stuff on time. So, I wouldn't talk to person X. And I said, Hey, we're perfect. It's person y over here that's not getting their stuff done. And so, I got us all together and said, Hey, let's just be real and let's look at some numbers. And what we found is, out of the, you know, five or six groups of people that had to come to get together to do this. You know how many of those were on schedule, more than half the time? Zero. So, the literal number was 47% so on average, each group was, was on time, no more than 47% and when you add that together, that equals, it ain't going to work, right? So that moment when the entire team understood, Oh, wow. Then the idea started popping. So, then you, you almost the project ran itself. The team came on board. They figured a really low-cost way to do this. We spent a little bit of money on getting a project manager to do some work and save the company 10s of millions of dollars in lost, protected productivity because of this. And we felt good about it, so good that I'm in a board meeting. I'm at a dinner with the board, and this comes up and about how great this is. And what we did in the US became a model around, around the world for our company. So, that's kind of one way to inspire. 

Jeff Brittain  25:10
And I think I'll tell you this other one is so I had an opportunity to move to Switzerland. So, my job moved from at the time, Memphis, Tennessee, which were the legacy laboratories for what became Bayer consumer health, to Switzerland. And my job moved to Switzerland. So, I got the call, Hey, do you wanna, or do you not? Do you wanna, right? And so, the choice is, you quit, or are you gonna move to Switzerland? That's not such a bad thing, right? That's pretty exciting. So yeah, my wife and family and what kind of went from it might to maybe, to probably, to definitely, to we are. It's going to happen. Got there and my wife was miserable, my kids were miserable, right? They didn't speak the language or in another culture, you don't know how to do groceries, all this other kind of stuff. And I caught my wife on the phone with her mother crying, saying, I think we made a horrible mistake. Well, I happen to have a call with my coach from this breakthrough taught me this breakthrough stuff, and he asked a really simple question. He goes, Well, have you told them why? Have you told your wife and family why you moved outside of the job? And I said, Well, come to think of a little embarrassed. But no, no, I know. I haven't, I haven't told him why. And he goes, Well, don't you think they might appreciate that? And my coach is younger than me. And so, I said, You know what? You're right. 

Jeff Brittain  26:43
And so, at dinner next night, or whenever we were together, I said, Hey guys, do you guys know why I came over here? And they said, Honestly, no. And I go, well, because the company is in this moment where everything's now digital, and by being, being over here, we can transform key aspects of the company to being really leading and being digital. And seeing my wife and my kids, they sat up, they kind of got, oh, this is kind of cool. And then I caught them telling their friends, oh, so why'd you guys move? Well, because my dad's helping the company be more digital. So, that's a way. I didn't say, How do I inspire my children to be happy, I started, how do I help them understand why we're doing this? Long answer to your question, but I think, you know, inspiration is the output of caring.

Lisa Nichols  27:44
Oh, that's good. Jeff, that's really good. Well, you co-wrote a paper. I'd love to talk about this. You co-wrote a paper on human centered design when you were at Merck. Our listeners, some of our listeners are going to know what that is. There's going to be some listeners that are like, What are they talking about? Can you, for those that aren't familiar with this philosophy, can you kind of explain it? What is it? Secondly, how has this approach influenced your leadership? 

Jeff Brittain  28:19
Okay, great. So, human centered design is a way, and this is it would apply to anything. And I would argue, you know, I've got a mug here from my favorite coffee place in St Louis called E Coffee, you know, right? That is a human centered design, right? It holds the liquid. It's got a little handle on it. And so, it can apply anywhere, but in a software term case, typically people would say, what are the requirements and what do you need? And I needed to go do X, and I needed to add one and two together, and I needed to create this check or this invoice, or count this inventory, or do whatever it is, which are all great. But if you take a product design mindset, and this is an innovation frame called design thinking really came of age about 10 years ago. It's still very much, very relevant, but it's how do you really design with a point of view in mind? 

Jeff Brittain  29:13
And if you have a point of view, I'll give you an example. So, we've got a product that is a digestive health product. It helps you do number two easier, right? In fact, that team likes to say they're number one in the business, number, number two, and, but we were having trouble kind of getting people to understand kind of why you need to do it. And in one of our design sessions, it wasn't, how do you make it taste better, or whatever is going on? Because it actually didn't have any taste. We realized that one of the people we were designing for was a concerned mother, and the point of view was, a concerned mother needs a way for her teenage daughter to eat more healthily and have a better digestion. Because she feels guilty for not having time to make enough quality food at home so her child eats nothing but junk food. All right. 

Jeff Brittain  30:15
So, now think about the way that you would design the computer systems that support that brand, and the marketing behind it, and the way that you create, the packaging, all of that once you knew that you were designing for. In this case, that mother or for the child who doesn't want to take medicine and doesn't, you know, I'm 16 years old. I'm 15 years old. I need whatever I want. I eat a bunch of French fries. They don't get any weight, right? But once you have that human centered design, it changes everything. So that I can't say this was done on purpose, but looking at the common theme in my life. This theme about how do you help, and how do you have empathy, and how do you make sure you understand is something that transforms what's going on. So, this is an academic paper I wrote with a faculty at the FedEx Institute of Technology around, you know, human centered design, and how do you can use that to transform the way that an organization looks at in that, case, computer programming. 

Lisa Nichols  31:20
And that's so cool. Well, I know that they do that too in in marketing, in that you know, Jeff, because it's really kind of you. You say, Who is your consumer of this product, right? And it's almost like setting up that persona, what's important to them, and then designing the product to meet that need. So, I love that. I love that. Well, thank you, because there may be people that are listening that have not heard that term before. But here's the thing, we've got a lot more to talk about. We do need to take a quick break, and we'll be right back on the Something Extra Podcast with Jeff Brittain.

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Lisa Nichols  32:25
Well, welcome back everyone to the Something Extra Podcast with my friend Jeff Britain. So, Jeff, one of the biggest jobs of an IT executive is really to communicate. IT is expensive, right? It's a very expensive line item on the P&L, but to communicate the value of I teach or the rest of the organization. How do you what do you believe that a leader? How should they think about doing that? And what you know, do you have any advice to help others understand that? Because oftentimes they do. They just see it as a big line item or as a necessary thing, but really, we know now that technology can drive performance, can drive revenue. It's not just about keeping the lights on. 

Jeff Brittain  33:13
So, if you're a technology executive or mid-level manager or entry level person, or, if you're not, this question is going to really resonate, right? Because it's a big line item. And when you're looking at, where do I spend money? Do I spend money on, you know, the raw material that goes into my product, or to put it into hiring new people, or do I put it into new systems? That question is going to come up. And the way that I've seen when I've been most successful in my career, and when I look at others, they're most successful when they reframe the question. So, it's never the objective to say, how do I spend more on IT? Or how do I make a better system right? The objective is always, how do I serve our end customers, and, you know, partners along that value chain in a way that is better, faster, cheaper, right? And in some cases, cheaper is not even involved. If you're selling, you know, if you're, you know, Louis Vuitton handbags, you're not really interested in cheaper, for the price level, you might be on the cost, but how do you make that work? So, I think the most important thing is to focus on what's the result that we're trying to drive in market. 

Jeff Brittain  34:37
One of my stakeholders I worked with when I lived in Switzerland, was the head of marketing for the company, and this kind of question always comes up, what do we do? What do we prioritize? And what I loved, what she said, Patricia Corsi, wonderful leader. She's now moved on to another company, but she would always say, What product with what brand in what country? You get really specific. Okay, so we're going to try to do aspirin, low dose in the US, you know, for people over 50, right? So, once you're there, then you can really get to, okay, how do, what are we trying to do there, right? It's not just sell more pills in a bottle. Like, how do we affect, you know, cardio health in this example and how to go forward. And when you do that, the budget magically appears. 

Jeff Brittain  35:32
So, I'll, I'll tell you something very mundane that no one really cares about, but everyone, everyone knows that is an issue. Is when we were coming back from COVID, we were opening up, we've got about 200 sites in the US, and I forget how at one time. Oh, I do know we had 947 conference rooms. And of those conference rooms, guess how many could hold more than 12 people and had both video and audio in the room. A low number, let's just say, lower than 10% at the time, and there was no budget for conference room upgrades. And I was on the country leadership team at the time, we sat down and said, what are we really trying to do? We're trying to bring people back to the office. We're trying to enhance collaboration. We know that now people can work, you know, anywhere, and provide value. We got to do all this stuff together. So how do we make that happen? And so, I just made a series of phone calls and put people in room and said, look, we've got to figure out a way to allow, you know, all in the US, all, 19,000 of us, or 9000 that are in offices, you know, work better together and work better with people that are remote. And how do you do it? And, you know, magically, money showed up, right? So, the people that work on facilities and said, Well, we're going to need less facilities, so let's shift some money around. 

Jeff Brittain  36:59
So, I think really focusing on, it's like, it's easy to say value, but really focusing on, what are you trying to get done? What are all pieces that have to come together? I'm a big fan of a model I learned early on at Accenture, that it's all about people, process, technology, and data, right? And so, I would even expand that to where it just doesn't matter what the full list is, but everything that has to be in place to make it happen. And when you include technology into that, things change. You know, you and I are in the CIO roundtable group, and one of the recurring themes that's coming up now is, what's the role of IT in HR? And you know, certainly it's to build HR systems. But when you think about generative AI, generative AI, in many ways, is generating job descriptions, certainly evaluating resumes against job descriptions, you know, creating processes on how people go forward. 

Jeff Brittain  37:57
So, when you think about all the benchmarks that are out there about percent of ITs, percent of spend on IT. Those may no longer be valid because now you know something like HR, you know, a good HR rep is never going to go away. You've got to, oh, you're going to help people that understands the situation, that says, you know, here's how we're going to bring heart to this, you know, scenario. So, we're this isn't about replacing anyone, but it's about understanding the role of technology in all of our companies, organizations going forward. It is fundamentally changing. So, I would say, don't worry about the budget, worry about the outcome, and then paint what has to happen for the outcome to have to come to fruition, and then the budget will be there.

Lisa Nichols  38:43
That's so good. Well, you, you set me up for the perfect segue. I want to talk to you about Gen AI. And you know AI, Gen, AI is on the tongue of every CIO. I know, right? And I know that you've done your own personal work with AI, and you're like, I want to learn more. You know, how do you and you've already talked about HR, I mean Technology Partners. I mean Jeff, there's really, really not a function that we're not using some form of AI and complex. I mean, it really, truly. But what are you seeing, though, like with, with a eyes, it becomes even more well adopted. How do you see it transforming industries? And, you know, it doesn't matter which industry, I mean, it could be whatever you want to choose.

Jeff Brittain  39:41
Happy to let's talk about kind of three different perspectives, if you will. One is, I'll share a little bit about what we talk about inside the CIO roundtable that you and I are part of for the listeners. The other is, I'll tell you what the academics are thinking, and then I'll give you some kind of anecdotes and what's happening in the venture community and stuff like that. So, I think there's clearly a recognition that fundamentally, we now have a technology that goes faster, bigger, maybe a little bit easier, at least seemingly so on the out front than we've ever had before. Fundamentally, though, this is no different than steam engine, printing press, automobile, you know, putting a paddle on a stick so you get your canoe down the river faster. It strictly the tool to get things going on. So, I'm reminded of that famous movie from Charlie Chaplin "Modern Times," right? Where the man gets stuck into the, the machine, right? It's no longer about the man anymore. It's about the in that case, the industrial machine. 

Jeff Brittain  40:48
So, so number one is, you're looking at the greatest explosion and opportunity that the world's ever seen, for good and for bad, right? Since the internet, probably since mobile and Apple devices and all this kind of stuff, fundamentally. So, there are tons of use cases. Kind of the classic ones that come up would be marketing content. How do you create marketing content? I've graduated from corporate life, and I'm starting my own advisory services, and so I used AI to create a marketing plan, right? And so, but you're never going to, like, instantly do it. You're going to look at it and kind of hone it and say, Okay, we need more depth here or there. So, market plans, chat bots and help, like, just how do you get information? Prior to this, to our podcast, I use chat GPT at voice mode, and said, I'm getting ready to be on a guest on a podcast. Tell me what are examples that people do that are really compelling, and tell me some mistakes that people can do and so we can avoid that. And by the way, I've kept on one of the mistakes, which is rambling, right? So, you don't do that, but it's fascinating. So, I think the use cases are as big as anything financial, operations and networking, managed cost, so there is a big one. Those are the use cases. 

Jeff Brittain  42:18
Inside the CIO roundtable, security. So, if you talk to a board or a leader, it's all around security, both. You know, embarrassing stuff, making sure that you're appropriate you're not letting things out that you shouldn't, but even to really, really serious, hard security. So, you make sure that your AI systems are built in a way that can't be leveraged for evil, right? And how do you do that? Certainly, you want to protect your own intellectual property, but how do you do that? Security is number one on people's mind, I would say even more than data privacy. Data privacy, you've got somewhat control of but if you're not secure, then someone's taking stuff, right? Just finished a course through Stanford University Online was fascinating. And the recurring theme in that course, and now switching to the academic side, is AI is here for people. People are not here for AI, right? 

Jeff Brittain  43:21
So, no matter what you do, you have to make sure that you are living into the values of your, of your organization, that you're communicating why this is important to what things are doing. And whatever process you've built, you know, generative AI, you've done that in a way that allows humans, people call it human in the middle. I would argue it's kind of human in the beginning, human in the middle, human in the end, checking there, that it's fit for purpose, that it's a human centered design, that you got a way to check it, and all these things. So, it was really interesting that even at the academic level, it wasn't about the technology itself, right? Although, if you're a deep math data scientist, I can tell you you're into neural networks, but it's holistically how do you use the technology. It's keeping people in the middle so they understand and they actually have control over them.

Lisa Nichols  44:18
It's so good, so good. It is here to stay. So, for those out there that are kind of on the fringe, I don't know, should we? Should we think about this more? I mean, you, you should. 

Jeff Brittain  44:33
Oh, you absolutely should. And I forget this originally, but it's often attributed to the head guy Nvidia. But AI is not going to take your job, but another person who knows AI probably will. 

Lisa Nichols  44:50
That's good. Yes, that's very well said. 

Jeff Brittain  44:54
I didn't come up with that. Someone else did, but I truly believe it. So, spend five minutes, download a couple tools, play with it, and you'll be amazed. I had a friend call me just last week said, Hey, I'm trying to build a big pivot spreadsheet. How do I do that? And I go, I forgot how to do all that, but here's what I would do. Pull up copilot. Tell it what you're trying to do. Ask it to create your spreadsheet for you. He called me back 30 minutes. He goes, This is amazing.

Lisa Nichols  45:21
You made a believer out of him. Good. Well, okay, so, how do you let's talk a little bit more personal. How do you personally, Jeff, keep yourself motivated and energized? And I'm gonna couple it with this. You have a personal motto. You have had now for about 15 years. What's your personal motto?

Jeff Brittain  45:48
Living the dream. That's my motto. 

Lisa Nichols  45:51
Love it. 

Jeff Brittain  45:52
I have to admit, it started off first a little snarky. People would say, hey, you know, how's it going. And I'd say, living the dream. And then what I realized is two things happen. Number one is the person I would be speaking with, their face would light up. And then, you know what? I found out that my face would light up. And then what I realized is that I'm probably 60% of my own audience when I say this, right? So, unless you're in a truly dire situation at home or with your family on most days, we don't have problems, right? Whether you have Italian or Mexican for dinner is not really a problem. So, if you think about it, we are all truly, truly living the dream.

Lisa Nichols  46:39
Living the dream. Well, I'm gonna put you on the spot, because I know you know this in multiple languages. What, say it in some of the other languages that you know, Jeff? 

Jeff Brittain  46:52
Okay, so I'm gonna try and for anyone who's a non-native English speaker listening to the podcast, you know, I am me, so I've got my own accent. So, please accept me for where I'm at Just concluded many years working for a German company. So, obviously German is one, so "Ich lebe dan traum" means living the dream. The Germans will often say, Are you delusional? Are you crazy? Or is it a nightmare? That's kind of how they respond to it. And then I'll say and then maybe let you guess the language "Je vis mon rêve".

Lisa Nichols  47:32
Is it French? 

Jeff Brittain  47:33
That's French, right? So "I live my dream", and then probably "Je vis mon rêve", that's the right way to do it. And then, and I think it's Swedish, it's "jag lever min dröm", some something like this. Dutch would be "leven de droom", right? So, between German and English and then Italian. My favorites, my friends who are Italian, they say we would never say it like this. You must say it with passion. So, it's "vivere il sogno!", that's Italian. Portuguese would be,"vivendo o sonho", would be Portuguese. And then Romanian "trăind visul" and then Spanish, "viviendo el sueño". I've tried it in Hindi and Telugu and Mandarin. And I just my brain can't quite remember this. Had a wonderful trip to Turkey this last summer. I tried to learn it in Turkish, and I can't do that yet, but I'm working on it.

Lisa Nichols  48:48
There's still time. 

Jeff Brittain  48:49
There's still time. 

Lisa Nichols  48:50
I believe in you. I believe in you, Jeff. And I told you, you need to get a shirt with all of those on there. 

Jeff Brittain  49:02
I'll even give you credit. In small type at the very big at the very bottom.

Lisa Nichols  49:05
Oh, you're so sweet. Well, okay, let me ask you this. If you could give yourself, your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Jeff Brittain  49:15
Oh, wow. I should have seen this one coming. Have faith in the future. Do your best and don't sweat the details. 

Lisa Nichols  49:31
That's good. That's good. Don't sweat the small stuff.

Jeff Brittain  49:35
But which, it's a little duplicitous, right? Because we all have careers where we sweated the small stuff and the small stuff mattered. So, it's not, no, it's not, don't be sloppy, but just understand how everything fits into the bigger perspective. 

Lisa Nichols  49:51
That's so good. You know, we've got, like our family, we have a little saying among us. It's just not that big. Because you can make small things really big, right Jeff? In the scheme of things, it's just not that big. It's just not that big. All right, well, this is called something extra. So, I have to ask you, what is this something extra that you believe every leader needs?

Jeff Brittain  50:24
So, we've talked about this, but I think it's leading from a perspective of, how can I help? 

Lisa Nichols  50:35
Love it. And that is a perfect question to ask. 

Jeff Brittain  50:40
It is, I tell you what. I had a mentor, it was a partner I worked for in my early consulting days. And we would finish a meeting at a given client, and as soon as we kind of left that area, we're in our own area, the hallway or the car, whatever it was, he'd say, okay, he pulled his hands. He'll say, this person really loves what we're doing, but they don't have any power. This person hates us. This person's confused. This person doesn't really care what's going on. This is the person that's got all the power in the room and just would give me his take on what was going on. And what I found is that, that's actually an empathy approach and tactic. So, I would say, as a leader, pay attention to the people you're interacting with, put yourself in their shoes, understand kind of do they get what you're saying? Do they not? And what you'll find is that you'll naturally be able to pivot what you're talking about to make sure you're focusing on how to kind of help.

Lisa Nichols  51:46
That's so good. Well, Jeff, this has been so much fun. I know that it's going to help, I know that it's going to help our listeners. I appreciate you making the time to be on the show. And I'm so excited about this re-firing that you said, I'm not retiring.

Jeff Brittain  52:01
I call it graduation. Re-firing graduation. 

Lisa Nichols  52:05
It's gonna be really fun to see all that in store for you in this next chapter. 

Jeff Brittain  52:10
You and I were talking right our best years are yet to happen. 

Lisa Nichols  52:15
Yes, it's all a matter of mindset and perspective. So, thank you so much again. Thanks for being on the show, and I hope to see you again soon.

Announcer  52:24
Thank you for listening to today's show. Something Extra with Lisa Nichols as a Technology Partners Production Copyright Technology Partners Inc. 2019. For show notes, or to reach Lisa, visit tpi.co/podcast. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever you listen. 

*Please note, the preceding transcription has been automatically generated and should be used for informational purposes only.