Ep. 2 - Inaction Is Risky: Karen Stuckey on Leadership Boldness

The silent killer of market relevance is the corporate paralysis that comes from waiting for perfect data. In an era dominated by market disruption and shifting consumer behaviors, the instinct to slow down and protect current margins often feels like the safest route. We sit down with Karen Stuckey, former Walmart Senior Leader and corporate board director, to dissect why the greatest threat to your organization or your career isn't making a wrong call, it is the refusal to make a call at all.

We get into the critical mechanics of driving growth through uncertainty, transitioning from a reactive stance to a strategic offensive. Karen shares her firsthand experience balancing leadership judgment across retail and CPG sectors, outlining the exact point where a delayed decision morphs from responsible caution into reckless stagnation. Our conversation highlights the difference between calculated risks that carry firm contingencies and blind gambles, the mental shift required to manage large-scale corporate transformations, and the specific signals that tell a leader the market has already moved. Karen also opens up about her own high-stakes career moves, including stepping away from a president title and a comfortable P&L role to jump into a completely unfamiliar corporate ecosystem.

The reality of executive leadership is that nobody can guarantee a flawless outcome, and trying to shield a company from every variable creates an entirely new category of operational risk. True organizational speed requires rigid discipline in the metrics you can control so you have the remaining bandwidth to pivot when the market forces your hand. Viewers will walk away with a functional framework for auditing their own decisiveness, evaluating innovation budgets without chasing shiny objects, and understanding how unique past expertise can become a primary differentiator in a brand-new role.

If you care about driving corporate transformation, sharpening executive judgment, and building the operational discipline required to move fast in volatile markets, you’ll get a lot from this episode. Please remember to subscribe to the channel and share this conversation with a colleague who needs to hear it. For those listening: What is the biggest decision your team is currently delaying in the name of gathering more data, and what is the actual cost of that waiting? Let us know in the comments below.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining me today at the Commerce Collective. I am Deanna Baker, your host, and today's topic is around the art of risk taking. And when is it actually riskier to play it safe than to take the risk? So I'm excited to get in this today. And so let me just set the stage. We are living in a time when caution really does feel like the right answer, right? Whether it's the economic uncertainty that our customers are feeling, whether it's AI disruption, it could be just changing consumer behavior, or certainly organizational pressure and the pressure for profitability and to make sure that we perform on all fronts. All of these things can really cause leaders to slow down or to just hold back and be cautious and hang on to what they have. Yet, we all know we've seen some of the most successful companies that have forged ahead and also careers that have been built for people who took that risk when others hesitated. Now, I'm not saying throw all caution to the wind and just go for it. Because the flip side, we've also seen those companies who have failed in their attempt for a big idea or a new risk, and the companies suffered. So today's topic is around how do really great leaders determine when to take the risk and when to hold back. So today, joining me, I'm very excited to have Karen Stuckey with me. Karen is a highly respected executive whose career spans retail, CPG. She's on private and public boards, and she's an executive advisor to companies. And I'm very, very happy to have her with me. Just a little background. Karen spent 18 years at Walmart in senior executive roles. She previously served as the president of CasualWare at Haynes Brands for seven years. And she's been on the board of directors for the container store and currently serves on the board of At Home and Guildan. I've had the privilege of knowing Karen in several capacities. As a supplier partner, we actually negotiated across the table from each other, if you can believe that. As a leader, I think she's been my leader more than once at Walmart, as a peer and as and uh currently as an amazing friend. So I am so excited for what I know will be a very candid conversation about leadership, judgment, and all of the risk taking that comes along with it. So welcome to the Commerce Collective Karen. Deanna, thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be on your podcast. Thank you. Um so let's just jump in and talk about, you know, how do great leaders think about risk? Um, it's not the absence of risk because it's always there, right? Um, and it's choosing literally, um, and I think there's we're gonna find it's there's an art and the science to all of those decisions. Um, but let's start with you, Karen, and and just when you hear the word risk, what does it mean to you today versus what it would have meant to you earlier in your career?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, I'll start with actually what it meant to me early in my career, because your your position evolves as you gain experience. Um, I'd say early in my career, risk for me was all about what happens when I would take an action, when you act. And you would ask things like, oh, what happens if we do this? And you're still building your career. So there's a fair amount of fear of doing the wrong thing. So fear in that case, it almost magnifies the potential losses of anything you would do. Over time, you realize to what you just said, you know, you have to have some risk to get any kind of growth. And I've evolved my thinking quite a bit to where I recognize now the greater risk actually is in what happens when you don't act. What happens if you don't think about what you're going to do? And frankly, that same fear can often discount the potential gains that you might have out of that. So to me, I've really learned and and you know, found myself actually, I wrote out something that I used to keep on my desk all the time because at any point it would help me spur on to take the action that I knew I should take, where sometimes your inner self wants to shrink in and not do that. And it was the big risks bring the big rewards. Don't be afraid to take that risk. Instead, develop a healthy fear of missing out because you didn't take the risk. And that's really um served me well in the later years of my career, both personally and professionally.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

My mother would use the quote when I was young of Deanna, I'm sorry, no guts, no glory. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of sayings around risk that absolutely don't recall how often we refer to them. And just not letting fear get in the way. Um, and so I think that's that's great. And I might just deal with that shamelessly and write it down and put it on my desk. Um, so talking about leaders in general today, do you think in the last decade you've seen leaders become more risk-averse, or or how would you position it as of late?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

I would say that in general, leaders are now more risk-averse, but not at all intentionally. Um, we are now in a situation where things move so quickly. There's more scrutiny, there's faster information cycles, there's much lower tolerance for error. And consequently, then we as leaders operate in an environment of unintentionally avoiding failure versus focusing on creating success. So, yes, I think that that is definitely um the situation today.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

When you think about risk, how would you um differentiate a calculated risk versus one that's just reckless? Because at the surface, both are risk, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

They are definitely risk, and one of my favorite topics. You know, a calculated risk can be tossed around a lot, like you know, take a calculated risk. Um, a calculated risk always has a contingency. And many people will um use the word, I'm taking a calculated risk, but completely forget about the important element of that means you have to do the calculation. So if you just plunge into risk saying, I thought about it, and you don't really think through all the different angles of what could happen, might happen, would happen, and what you would do, that's your contingency. Without that contingency, then it becomes reckless and it's it's lacking judgment.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

I've often visualized, like, if this is my risk, um, what components of it can I de-risk? Like what elements of it do I know that I can, you know, understand and be confident how it's going to turn out. So that truly what you're left with is not as large, right? Like you're a little more, you're still uncertain, you know, it's still a risk, but you've again it's it's making those calculations and it's it's pulling off the things that you can answer that are certain so that it's not as big a roll of the dice.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Right at that point. You peel it back and make it manageable. It is a bit of a mental formula. I mean, every leader as you gain in scope or in responsibility, you start to look at the upside or downside potential of actions you might take, the probability for each one of those, you might look at that. But one element that's often overlooked is the risk of doing nothing. We spend a lot of time talking about the risk of doing something, but we discard the fact that doing nothing is a critical element of risk.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So, how do you know? Like, how do you kind of hit that limit when you know that waiting is is the bigger risk?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Well, in truth, I mean, the world is changing faster than our willingness to adapt. I mean, everyone loves to talk about how they love change, and then the next thing they say is, but you go first. Yeah. So so we love the concept of thinking that we do that, and and the world's moving faster and faster. So a hint is that every single time you wait and it makes the decision either harder or more expensive, or perhaps might make you less relevant, that waiting in itself has become the risk. So, you know, you've got all these different inputs, you know, and they they kind of start to like make a pattern in the same direction. You know, the cost of waiting starts to become higher than maybe the value of more info. And we've all gone through the value of more info and looking at whether you are truly seeking more info or are you seeking certainty, which is really different. You know, certainty, you know, perfect information is not that available to leaders ever. It's almost a luxury. You know, you you're rarely available. So if you're finding yourself asking for, you know, one more report or one more meeting or one more month, and and there's not a likelihood that it's gonna change the direction, that's when you recognize that judgment has to take over because the delay you are creating risk for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Right. And you have to push yourself to and in retail, um, the variables keep changing. So you're never gonna find I think that's the judgment, it's never there because everything around it keeps changing. And so you do have to get a little uncomfortable in the gray and just understand that I'm gonna get the majority of this right. And then what isn't right at the end of it, I'm gonna pivot. And I I I can, but it's worth it to me to go ahead and make the call because of the greater good, what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

And I believe that separates a leader when we've all been in situations where someone will not make the call. They want another piece of information, they want another way to look at it. They want, and the more time goes on, the more it becomes, you're you become disabled in the ability to really move quickly. So a good leader really has to force themselves, know themselves and force themselves to um get comfortable in being uncomfortable, which is, you know, a well-worn phrase, but it it's pretty valuable.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Yeah. Well, even inside a large organization, like talking about, you know, with us at Walmart, um, there's a push internally as well with what your company is focused on, where it's going, where those resources are going. And let's say you're responsible, as we were, for our, you know, our piece of the of the pie. And um, I was keeping pace with my counterparts and my peers. And if that's where the company was going, I needed to make those bold decisions to make sure that my people could take part in it. And um that leads to some, you know, uncomfortable things that you have to go and do. But the greater good was to be a part of that, to be on that bandwagon with the organization versus feeling like, well, we need to go do these things first. And there is no catch-up. There isn't.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

And while you're waiting and kind of hemming and hawing and looking for more data and looking for more info, the world's marching by. They're marching by you and your team. And you and your team are becoming less and less relevant because there is no do-over on that. It's moved on, and now your inability to take a risk has now created you're not competitive.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

True. And that could be in the industry, it could be in your own company. Yep, absolutely. So, what signals tell you when it's time to move, even if you don't have that perfect information, Karen? Like, like you you talked a little bit about uh the cost of waiting is is more than is there one just one particular call-out that you would give us as an example?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

I think you'll you you even know it happens when the whether it's your your associates, whether it's your customers, where it's your uh competition, when everyone's starting to move in behavior towards the future as if it's happened already, and you're still standing on the sidelines, what's that leaf all get out of the way? That's when you know it's it's time to go. People are already assuming that's the route. You just are waiting to for some reason bless it or give the guidance. That to me is the ultimate signal, is when the the it's almost the market takes its own velocity and starts moving towards where it's going.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

And I would say that's probably you're too late. Um and so I think as you grow in your leadership skills, being able to feel that vibration of of being on the front side of that um really helps um to make those right decisions timely. Um if it's if you're if you if it's in your face, um, it's just gonna be a heavier lift.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

It's really learning as a leader to we like to, and we think we're being, you know, risk, you know, embracers if we sit just shy of where we become, or just on the other edge of where we're a little uncomfortable. When in fact, that's the safe zone. A tiny bit of discomfort is a safe zone. It's pushing yourself to how do you get to the edge of what's possible? You know, dwelling in the possibilities. How do you get there? That's when you become more comfortable taking risks. And I'm not suggesting it's easy, but if you're going to be a leader in as fast as the world is moving, it's critical.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Or you have become a risk yourself for your team and for your company.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

True. It's almost like having to live in a time machine where obviously you're looking at history, you're worried about the situation right now and managing the details of the day-to-day business, but you have to be the one that's looking far enough out and and anticipating what's coming next.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Um dwelling in like this fallacy that tomorrow is going to be just like today is a disaster. I mean, it will always change. So looking backwards and in that comfortable, cozy spot of how things are comfortable and you have total control um is kind of the beginning of the end if you stay there too long. True, true.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

So buckle up. Buckle up. Um, okay, I'd love to switch gears a little bit. And we've talked about great leaders, how they think about risk. What about career risk, right? Let's take it a little more personally. Um so looking back, okay, what was the one biggest career risk? Or you can give me two if you want, that you took. There are definitely two.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

There is a bunch of little ones, but there are two that were, I'd say, larger risks that changed the trajectory of not just my career, but my personal life as well. So uh the first one was after 22 years of retail. And we already had four, four kids now grown, thank God, you know. But 22 years of retail, and I decide that I'm going to move to consumer product goods, you know, and just like take the retail leadership I had and be like, well, I'm gonna learn all about the other side of it. I'm gonna learn about manufacturing and sales and consumer goods marketing and et cetera. And people were like, I have l they thought I'd lost my mind. Like, you need to sit down and have a moment. You know, it's like now my husband's my biggest cheerleader ever. He even paused for a minute, like, are you are I'm all for it, but like, are you sure? Um, and that was when I joined Haynes Brands. Okay. And I'd left retail and joined Haynes Brands. And um, the second would be accepting what at the time was a lower title. Now, not take it all tidally, because you know, you go to something this size, and this was Walmart, you go to something the size of Walmart, you were a much smaller fish in a much bigger pond, and you're leaving being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. So it's not so much the title, but it was also a non-PL role. I had built my whole career having PL roles because for females in the industry, it was always that the female leaders were never put in the PL roles. So I really coveted and then protected. You wanted that scorecard at the time. That PL that was really important to me. So taking the risk to not only leave a president title, move into a non-PL role, and move my entire family halfway across the country and basically start all over again, where they gave up tenure, the kids moved school, all that. I just picked us up and plunked us in Arkansas. Um, was a pretty big risk, too. So two of those were big risks. I I, you know, yeah, they were risks. Wow. And and so how old would your your children have been at this time? Um, our youngest Emily was just entering the fourth grade, and our oldest Sarah was just entering high school.

unknown 16:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

So they were tender, tender years. My husband had tenure as a teacher, as a head wrestling coach. I mean, it was a whole lot of family things that they were troopers and they supported mom and wife. Yeah. In, you know, I missed the pace of retail. I missed, I loved what I learned in CPG, but I really missed the constant chronic, suffocating, intoxicating elements of retail.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Absolutely. And I mean, the point you bring up is not lost on me that uh a career is not just ours. No, right? We own it with our family and they feel it, they go through it, and success or failure, you know, they're along for the ride.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So what what makes you successful in your career is uh choose the right spouse or partner.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Without it, you're kind of cooked. Exactly, exactly. So um, my next question is kind of a moot point, but I'm gonna go ahead and ask it. Have you ever accepted a role before you felt fully prepared? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Both of those, both of those. I I talked confidence into myself. I cannot say I went into them confident, but I talked about I put enough false bravado in myself to to like plunge forward if I'm gonna do this. So it didn't feel, I don't know that I I felt the emotion of I was taking risk or that it felt risky, but I certainly was not at all prepared for how different it would be. You you go to a, it was Cyril at the time, it's now Haynes brands, and it's all like classical consumer packaged goods marketing, and people are doing white papers all over the place. And I'm like, what the heck's a white paper? You're like, I mean, you there are all these things, you kind of fake it till you make it, until you figure that out. But you're learning that while I'm rapidly moving from like a VP role to a president role over the course of a couple of years. So clearly I I learned fast. But learning while leading is its own extra special formula of uh of of tension. Yeah. Because you want to do the right job for your teams. Um, I wasn't prepared for the resources I would or wouldn't have. I wasn't prepared when I joined Walmart for the resources you did not have at all. And I wasn't prepared for the control you don't have when you are entering and standing up a private, it wasn't even private brand, that was private label, when you were kind of merchant support in many ways. No PL, supporting them. And I was used to owning the PL make and all the having the D, you know. So it it rounded out my leadership skills in ways I had never anticipated. So it was there was a really silver lining to that, but yeah, it was scary, uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

You rose to the challenge. Yeah. That's great. So what career advice would you give leaders who are afraid to make a move?

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Oh boy, I would say if you talk to people over the course of your career, and as you hear people talk about maybe career regrets, I'll talk a little bit about that first. You very rarely hear someone say, I had an opportunity, took a big risk, jumped and went for something bigger and failed miserably. People don't look at that with regret because most people that are willing to take the risk and take a bet on themselves figure it out. They may stumble, but a a flaming failure is less rare. What you hear probably ten times more than that is someone that's regretful because they had a big opportunity, they were afraid of the risk, they didn't take it, and they forever regret it. So I think that's something to to to really, really remember. Yeah. If a role if it feels completely comfortable on day one, it's very likely it's not big enough for you to really move yourself or your career forward. You have to have, I mean, if it feels comfortable, like I've got it down, you gotta learn to like I talked about managing to that edge, learn to push yourself into the possible and push yourself into learning new things, things you haven't done, things you're not comfortable with. And that's the only way you're gonna grow as a person and grow your career and grow as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Even if you find yourself in that situation, like I said yes to it, it's not a big enough role. I think that's where leadership kicks back in again. And you say, where else can I engage? And what else can I learn? How can I be indispensable by, you know, thinking more broadly for this organization and um from whatever experience that is, you take something new to the next role. Um and you always leverage what you had in ways you can't even anticipate at the time. Yeah. And um, you know, I think it's important because uh a lot of times, especially with LinkedIn and social media, um, you can fall into the trap of comparing yourself to someone else in their role. But each career is literally like your your fingerprint, right? No two are alike, and no in the same role will not fit two different people. Um I would say trajectory of a career will not fit two different people. And so literally, I mean, wherever you're planted, you know, doing your best and looking For those new opportunities, ways to engage, ways to look further out and bring um value to an organization or a team. Um, I don't see how that can have much risk at all, frankly.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Well, that expertise that you bring to a new role, and it's a new role that's unfamiliar, and you don't see how you're going to apply that expertise, but it actually ends up being your unique differentiating factor. So, case in point, 22 years of retail went to Haynes Brands. Well, I knew retail inside and out, and I uniquely was the retailer in a group of leaders that could converse and understand. You go to Walmart, you go to Target at the time. You know, I knew what that retailer was looking for and had a unique capability of aligning with them in a way that my peers didn't. Okay, come to Walmart. At one point, I was asked to stand up private brands and sourcing was in that. Because I had had CPG and manufacturing experience, I uniquely, versus my peers, right, could understand how to look at a sourcing through the lens of a manufacturer. Where do minutes matter? How do you level load costs? Those are things that, as a buyer, buyer leader, divisional, VP, you don't really learn the same way. Or you learn as much as the manufacturer will let you learn, or lazy. So I have found that if you don't see it at first, you find it actually becomes your kind of your secret sauce of how you take what you had and you uniquely then be you're different from your peers because you can apply more things. Right. So it's it's if you don't do that enough, you don't have it, you don't have enough weapons.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

That's true. That's true. Great advice. Great advice there. I want to shift us a little bit. Um, we've talked about risk and uh having to make decisions um with uncertainty all around. Um so in today's environment, what risk do you think companies should be taking that many aren't?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Oh boy, um, many companies, particularly as times are tough, and all the things I talked about earlier of how there's no tolerance now for a misstep. And uh understandably, um particularly public companies there, and and even private companies, they're beholden to shareholders for and stakeholders for performance. So they are largely, and it's an exaggeration, but you know, largely under investing in transformation. Now, what does transformation mean? It's different for every company. It could be tech inclusive of it could be talent, it could be their business model, it could be capabilities built. Now, it how you invest in transformation to keep yourself adaptable and competitive. And if you can't adapt, you can't be competitive because the world's moving too fast. Um, is really a lesson in you're protecting your near-term performance, but you're not building the skills to keep growing in a highly competitive industry that keeps moving. So companies keep assuming that tomorrow is going to look like today, like I said. And if they don't invest, I'm not saying invest, there's discipline around investing, but if you don't invest in your transformation and continue to reinvent yourself as an organization, you don't have a future.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Right, right. I think if I were sitting at the top of a company, I would want to make sure that I had very capable people that no matter what the rest of the organization was focused on at that moment, that they were free and they kept charging ahead and keeping us informed and pushing, give them the autonomy to push on the group to make sure that things weren't happening as we're focused on the problem at hand. Um, think about going through, you know, the pandemic as an example. I mean, that ripple effects of inventory years after that. How do you plan? Do you plan? Certainly, you know, hindsight's 2020, but we planned against stimulus, right? Money in that that just was not there the next year. Um, and it happened to the industry. And so you had the hockey stick up and down of trying to manage inventory. You hope you have individuals on your team who are not involved in that to such a degree that you can't look out for at that time, last mile delivery, right? Um, even back then, talking about early days of AI and what could it do in the future for us. You need those individuals. And if we're all five-year-olds chasing the soccer ball around the field together, there are huge blind spots that are just growing.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

You know, it's so true, Dean. And another thing that creeps into that is there's a lot of uncertainty. You know, we talk about the pandemic and all this. And sometimes in times of uncertainty, caution, it's gonna sound weird to say, but caution can be confused or misconstrued as strategy, you know, which sounds odd to say, but in uncertainty, speed is a competitive advantage. It was a competitive advantage for Walmart. Yes, you have some things you have to work out on the other side. You know, you over-delivered or you took too deep of a cut or you did something. But if it's accompanied with discipline, which we were just talking about, speed can in fact be your competitive advantage. And you need to balance and not call strategy what's really caution because you're afraid you really move. And I just want to be strategic about this, which can be code for I want to move slower than things are moving.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Absolutely. And we should have probably started with the word discipline, because risk taking cannot really happen unless you do have a firm control on the things you can control. And the ability to pivot. And right. So if you don't have a firm control on all of those metrics in your organization, then it there is nothing left to to be able to take a risk, right? And um, so that was one lesson I learned early on as a merchant is control the things you can control. And then that last, I'll call it 10%, um, is very manageable. And whatever happens in that 10%, you have the bandwidth to go handle it. And discipline wins out. Discipline does not mean you're not bold. True. Very true. So you're on a boards now, and I would love to know. You talked about being on the CPG side, on the retailer side. Now you're in a board seat. Um so as a board member, what gives you confidence that a leadership team is making the right bets?

SPEAKER_01 28:41

You know, it's interesting because one of the boards I'm on is a CPG company, you know, apparel consumer product goods, Gildan, um, who just talk about a full circle moment, acquired Haynes brands. So they take a different kind of risk because that's a very stable, mature company that just acquired a company of almost its same size. So there's a whole different way of looking at risk and and gains and opportunities, et cetera. I also said on a retail consumer-facing board that, you know, they're they're coming out from reorganization. So the ways you look at efficiency and the um energy around the pressure to start to turn around quickly is very different. But in both cases, when you look at leaders within those organizations as a board member, because now you're not delivering for them, you're guiding, coaching, counseling, asking questions to make them look at it a different way, um, helping where you can, but not doing it. Um, it's less about the mentality of those leaders insisting or focusing on being right. You'll get leaders that have to be right. It's more about the leaders that I see as very strong that focus on getting it right. I don't mean to sound like it's a rhyme, but focusing on being right versus focusing on getting it right is all the difference in leadership because any leader that tries to guarantee results hasn't really done their homework. There, no good leader guarantees results because they're not guaranteeable. This is such a volatile industry. But the best leaders demonstrate really sound judgment in what they do and they could develop contingencies and they have discipline. And ultimately, a leader that has sound judgment, develops contingencies, will take a bold move, but also like, you know, has evidence to fund it, you know, um, ultimately delivers those good results. They recognize the difference between having money to spend or having money to invest. Very different results.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Uh what I'm hearing is is having an air of humility as they approach the problems. Um, and they it's not about being right. Right. It's not it's not ego. It's not ego-driven.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

It's research-earned confidence.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

And I would even think when as the the board asks them questions, how they receive that um non-fensively tells you a lot about the team.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Or they'll come back, I learned from that question, or that question stimulated me to go back and look at something, and I've not changed my thinking, but I've evolved my thinking or deepened my thinking, they'll all those are signals of like focusing on getting it right, not trying to be right.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

It's a really unique perspective as a board member. Really insightful. If there's a leader listening to us today and they feel stuck between caution and opportunity, what's the one every leader there? Is there one thing above all that you would would want them to know?

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Yeah, I would I would ask them to remind themselves and remember over and over again that choosing not to decide is still a decision. So when you choose not to decide, don't get tangled up in comparing the risk of whatever action you're thinking about taking. Um, and comparing it to some fantasy of like this perfect safety. There is no perfect safety. Not acting does not give you perfect safety at all. So instead, I would say compare it to the risk of standing still, because that is a huge risk. The future does not reward waiting for certainty. It never will. And instead of asking, what if this doesn't work? Try to ask yourself, what if we do nothing and things move on and we're left behind? And to me, that is a much greater risk and much scarier outcome than taking a calculated action. Absolutely. Great advice.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

I'd like to do something fun and different. Um, I'm calling it the fast five, Karen. Okay. And I'm just gonna give you um a statement and you tell me, is it a risk worth taking or proceed with great caution? Well, at least they're both moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Yeah, yes. It's not a it's not a take it or don't take it. It's like take it or take it slower. Exactly. So let's see how this goes. Okay, you ready?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah. Um launching new brands or a business uh during economic pressure. Proceed with caution.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Proceed with caution. Yes. There are the the industry is littered with things that weren't thought through well and launched, or too many things are launched and they aren't differentiated enough. So you should you should definitely launch new things to grow. But you need to be very disciplined and very clear about what's necessary and what need is it going to meet.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

And I can almost uh in part of that thinking through, most things don't start from zero. Right? So if it's a new brand or a new business, what's it replacing? Right. How much were you getting out of that? Because that's part of the opportunity cost of the new thing. What else are you throwing at the wall?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah, exactly. There's only so many things that can be thrown at the wall.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

So yes, you and I may have been on this road together at some point. I'm not sure you have. Um, cutting innovation budgets.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Do you risk it? I would I do not think it's a risk worth taking. I think it's when you proceed with caution. It's a double-edged sword because I just finished saying you have to invest. You must invest. So cutting goes against my grain. What is necessary there is to differentiate between where am I investing and where am I chasing a shiny object? Because everybody else is doing. AI is a perfect example. Budgets are like over the top spending. And is all of it something that's utilized right now or and that's related to your business, or is it something you're just hearing the hype? So you got to get on the bandwagon. So I'm not suggesting you wouldn't invest, but being very thoughtful about what you're investing, why you're investing, what you expect the outcome to be, and what you're gonna do if that investment doesn't turn out. So it's proceed, do it, but do it with thoughtful caution.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

I think my caution to that would be is my organization ready to accept that innovation? Exactly. Right? Because otherwise it lays fallow. And creating, and I can't like the organism cannot, you know, accept it. Right, then it's wasted your money. So um thinking about how to prepare your team or your company for it is is part of it. It's part of taking, yeah. So uh leaving a staple job for a growth opportunity. Absolutely worth taking.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

You have to say it in yourself. You've done it. You've bet in yourself, yeah, but you've bet on yourself because people get afraid to move to the next. Well, no, you don't push like any race button on everything you know already. If you move into another role and it isn't what you thought it would be, or it isn't your cup of tea, or it did whatever, the company reorganizes. You always have what you know. You can always go back and do what you did before. It might not be the same location, it might not be the same title, it might be the same salary, you know. But you have skills that you can deploy. So this fear of like you're gonna be, you know, on a beach selling fruit or something, like you, you're you're employable.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Bet on yourself, love it.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Okay, here's one publicly admitting failure.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

That hurts, right? Yes, it is. Um, I would say proceed for the transparency, but the magic is in how you do it. Because if you don't carefully um explain what you're admitting, why it happened, what you've learned from it, and what you're doing about it, then you're simply causing you or your company to have confidence loss by the public or stakeholders or shareholders. So it's a it's threading a needle on you. If you've done something in error, you should take accountability and admit it. But you've gotta navigate how you do it, where you do it, and when you do it. Absolutely. Sooner rather than later on the way. It never gets better, it doesn't go away. No, it just it just starts to erode trust. And if you don't have trust, you can't have loyalty because trust always comes before loyalty, always, always in everything in life. And if you can't have loyalty, you can't have growth.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

I mean, it starts a whole circle.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

And inside an organization, you know, we were taught that bad news should travel faster than good news. It absolutely and it is very good comfort. Okay, and my last one for this not so fast, fast five, is speaking truth to power. Proceed.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

I would always say go for it. It's a risk worth taking. Recognizing that they are power and you are speaking truth, and it needs to be done with respect. It needs to be done in a way that doesn't put the person in a corner without a way out. It needs to be done and said in a way that the individual can hear you and not your emotion. Um, and it needs to be fact-based, not feeling-based. So, yes, do it, but do it the right way.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, Karen, when you look back at your career, and as we finish up today, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I I'm gonna give you the final, final say were the moments that shaped you the most, the ones where you played it safe or the ones where you took the risk.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

It hands down, where I took the risk, hands down. There are times I didn't take a risk and second guess myself. Um, but things worked out in in that I poured into I I it made me think about how much I really could do with what I had, and I doubled down on my skills and it turned out great. Um, because you'll have disappointments in your career and you'll think, oh, I'm gonna go do something else. I'm not appreciated. But when you stop and think about is am I running away from something or am I betting on myself for something? Um, but always, always bet on yourself and take that risk and trust that you'll know how to figure it out. Absolutely awesome.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Sage advice from my good friend Karen Stuckey. Um, would you come back sometime? I would love to come back. I would love to go deeper on a lot of people. These are deep subjects, yeah. These are deep subjects. And um, I think the audience would appreciate it as well. So we will definitely plan that. But thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Thank you, Deanna.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

It's been great. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone. Thank you for joining the Commerce Collective. It's part of the Doing Business in Bentonville platform. I'm your host, Deanna Baker, and I will see you next time.