None Of Us Is As Smart Individually As We Are Collectively - Scott Herren CFO Cisco

Title change!! We ALWAYS recommend this podcast to our clients. We listened to it again recently and realised its former title did not do it justice.  The new title is something Scott Herren, CFO at Cisco, talks about passionately in the podcast and we believe is a better representation of the entire episode.  

If you have listened to this podcast before - it is a great second listen 😃

Scott is the true humble leader, it is never about him, it is all about the team and the power of what the team can achieve together. With his vast experience, his authenticity and his transparent approach,  it is no surprise Scott was approached by Cisco to be their CFO. 

Scott shares how his career journey has unfolded, how he is settling into Cisco and why taking care of Cisco’s 75,000 employees is his number one priority. 

We also get a great insight into AutoDesk’s transformation to the SAAS based company and it’s incredible market cap growth.

Our favourite quote from Scott  ‘To be a leader, people have to want to follow you’

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn! 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

Sam 0:10

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast for tech industry leaders and aspiring leaders who want to help their companies execute faster. As always with virtual, I'm at home in Bucks surrounded by dogs. Vicki's over in Deepest, Darkest Oxfordshire. So, Vicky, who have we've got on the podcast today?

Vic 0:26

Oh, well, Sam, I am absolutely thrilled with our guest today. So we have Scott Heron, who is now the CFO at Cisco. And Scott, we've caught up recently to talk about this podcast and what we were going to talk about on it, but I was counting back, and it's 14 years since I worked for you. It's unbelievable how the time is.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Time flies, isn't it? It's amazing how you can do that math and go, that was 14 years ago, but in my head, I haven't aged a day. And I'm still kind of early 30s, kind of in my mind.

Vic 1:02

Exactly it. But you know, even though it's 14 years, when we set up the Amplified Group and we asked for a reference from you, you were one of the first to come back with it. And when I asked if you would give up a little bit of your time to record this podcast with us, you didn't hesitate. And I just think that just demonstrates the type of leader you are. So I'm so thrilled that you're on with us today. And what we're going to talk about is leading change and who is responsible for the human element. Because, you know, we just said Scott is CFO at Cisco, and yet I know, having worked for you, how important it is for you to be looking after your people and leading winning teams. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Sam to get started. But thanks so much, Scott, for being here.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

No, happy too, Vicky. And we're we're going to talk about people. And part of the reason that I was so happy to provide a reference for the Amplified Group and to be here is you we have worked together. And you're one of the people that I have a high degree of confidence in and value for. And so it's nice to get a chance to reconnect after a few years.

Vic 2:13

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Sam 2:15

Fantastic. So I mean, CFO of Cisco, I mean, that's a seriously big job. Do you want to start, Scott, maybe by telling us how you got there? You know, it's been a hell of a journey.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, well, it's been an incredible journey. And I'd love to say, Sam, that, you know, as a 22-year-old, I set my sights on being CFO of Cisco and just executed the plan to perfection. But of course, nothing could be further from the truth. You know, I studied industrial engineering actually in undergrad and met my wife, who's also an industrial engineer. Uh, or she she's actually a real engineer. I don't consider myself a real engineer, even though I studied engineering in school. And um thought I was going to be an industrial engineer my entire career. I loved it. Uh, we were engaged. She was a year behind me. We were engaged, and so I just accepted the closest job I had to where we went to university uh at Georgia Tech. And uh that job ended up being half engineering and half finance, uh, working for IBM. And then, you know, the next job was in finance, the next job was in finance. I looked around after about 10 years and said, I'm not an engineer, I'm actually a finance person. I probably ought to go get a finance degree. So then I went back and got a business degree so that I could actually do my job effectively. And then from IBM, I went and spent three years at Federal Express in Memphis, Tennessee. Um, interesting, great company, by the way, very well-engineered company, great place to work. Uh, but it was a little change averse, right? And when you live in technology, you live in the world that we live in, you love change, you thrive on change. It's like, I love this. And it felt suffocating. You know, FedEx at its core is an airline. And airlines make money by being more efficient today than they were yesterday, and then more efficient again tomorrow. And so change is the enemy of efficiency, and so is changeaverse. Left there um after only about three years and went to work at Citrix, the small little software company, Sleepy, based in South Florida, which of course is where I met Vicky and several of the Amplified Group uh team at this point, um, spent almost 15 years uh at Citrix. And, you know, it was at a time when the company was growing rapidly. There was an enormous amount of talent uh at Citrix, which allowed us to have this growth. And uh we went from when I joined, which was after you did, Vicky, um, we were about 470 million in revenue the year I joined. And when I left about 15 years later, we were north of 3 billion in revenue, right? So a lot of growth. And when the company's growing that quickly, you get opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise get. We had kind of Citrix had kind of a next man up mindset, right? Who's the next, you know? Someone needs to move to Europe to run this the operations team. So I hopped on a plane, moved to Europe, ran operations for two years, came back to uh Florida and ran a product team for three years, which was 500 plus engineers. I hadn't written code in 20 years at that point, uh, but led a product team for three years, moved back to Switzerland to run the European sales team, did that for three years, where Vicky and I worked together pretty closely uh as and worked with Martin Kelly at that point as well. Uh back to Citrix and back into finance in the in the United States. Left there uh in November of 2014 and joined a software company as the CFO called Autodesk. And if you don't know Autodesk, you may have heard of AutoCAD. That's that's one of the core products of the company. And I joined uh Autodesk in part because it was a great opportunity and I liked the people, but in part because they were making a transformation, going from selling perpetual licenses with an annual maintenance agreement to selling everything on subscription. And I had been pushing really hard for Citrix to make that same shift, and it's hard. We'll come back and talk about that. But those kind of transformations change everything inside a company. Uh, and you end up changing a lot of people at that point, too. So um went there to be a part of that transformation. Over the course of six years, we went from at Autodesk about 40% recurring revenue to 97% when I left and grew the value of the company about 5x from about a$12 billion market cap to north of a$60 billion market cap in the course of doing that. It wasn't straight up and to the right by any stretch, but we did that. Of course not.

Sam 6:50

And then I've seen that happen before. You know, you if you shift to a recurring, maybe you're you even go down for a little bit before you go up and to the right. That's exactly what happened, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

We went down at Autodesk about 20% in revenue from about two and a half billion to two billion and stayed there for another year before the revenue stacking of the recurring revenue model kicked in. And uh yeah, so it was a great experience. Um, it was there were days when I drove home thinking I was the world's biggest idiot because you know it didn't, it we didn't get everything right as we're making that that transition. Um, but I'm really proud of the way that played out. And I was getting to a point in my career where it's like, hey, if I'm gonna do one more, you know, I'm I'm not getting any younger. It's time for me to go think about one more. And the call for Cisco came in. And uh a friend of mine, Mark Garrett, who was the CFO at Adobe, uh, is actually the chair of our audit committee here at Cisco, called and he said, Hey, you need to think about this job because Cisco is trying to make a similar transition to the one that that you made at Autodesk and that he had made at Adobe. And uh that led to me meeting our the CEO, and he's terrific. Chuck Robbins, the CEO of Cisco, is just an absolute terrific leader and a great human being uh at the same time. And so after meeting him, I decided this was the one more that I was gonna go do. And so it's uh it was a very circuitous path uh to get here. And uh I'm I'm super um pleased and thankful to be in the position that I'm in.

Sam 8:20

Fantastic. What a journey. So at this point in your career, you've got a plan to do this with Cisco, and then and then you're out. Was there any you know you joked about it in the beginning, never any plan really to follow this path?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Yeah, it really wasn't. I again I'd love to take credit and say that I planned it all out carefully. He what I did plan, Sam, was I I knew I wanted to be a senior executive and in an operating kind of a executive role. And so early in my career, actually when I was at uh when I first joined Citrix, Vicky, back in 2000, um, I laid out what I thought was an inventory of key skills and experiences that I needed to have if I was going to be a successful executive. And rather than plan each job, when job opportunities came up, I looked at how would it help me advance in the skills I thought, the foundational skills I thought I had to have to be a success. And so that's what allowed me, or what that's what gave me the courage to take a job outside of finance into ops, outside of ops into engineering, outside of engineering into sales, et cetera, was I knew it would build skills in me. I'd either get fired or I'd build skills that I needed to build to get to the level I aspired to.

Sam 9:37

It gives me the feeling that should should you have one more after Cisco, you you would make a fabulous CEO with uh I have no aspiration for that.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

And and partly because um I don't need it for my ego. I don't need to have that you know that box checked in my mind. But also, I think the CEO job, you know, CFO job has changed a lot over the years. The CEO job has changed a lot, and in particular, the types of things that it's incumbent on you as a CEO to weigh in on. Not weighing in is is making a comment. Uh, but the things you have to weigh in on that are unrelated to the business side of things, and that's the side of me that I'd I'd I'd just as soon not have to put out there in the public for the the battering that you're gonna take, regardless of what your point of view is, you're gonna get battered on that. And that's that's not something you can interest me. And it just I I love what I do. I love and frankly, because I've done those other things, I am so much more effective as a CFO because I know what it's like to lead a team team. I can well imagine I know what it's like to lead a product team, and it's so it's made me better at what I am.

Sam 10:41

And you know, the pressures and the dynamics of those various roles.

Vic 10:44

It just made made me think, you know, the opportunity that we had at Citrix to move into those different roles because I went from tech marketing to alliances running the Microsoft relationship with Nabil to moving into your team in the product group to running global SMB. So I and having that flexibility to to move around all of those different roles was was was just tremendous. And actually, I'm just gonna relate that back to the the conversation that we had with one of your apprentices at Cisco and how the the opportunities that they're getting to move around Cisco is is tremendous.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yeah, that that that conversation you you sent it to me, Vicky. Yeah, that's a super impressive person, by the way. Uh but I'm really proud of that apprenticeship program because of the opportunities it affords. And and whether they, you know, at the end of it decide Cisco is a great place for their career or not, they've seen what it's like and and they understand it. And that in Rihanna's case, not having a technical degree, she probably thought, I'll I'll never work at Cisco. And what she discovered is she has a very bright future at Cisco if she wants to stay here, even with the background that she's got. So it's a I think that's a super program.

Vic 11:57

Yeah, indeed.

Sam 11:58

Talk of uh apprentices settling into Cisco. How are you settling in? How long have you been there now?

SPEAKER_02 12:03

So, not that I'm counting the days, but I'm five days short of seven months uh at Cisco and in the CFO role.

Sam 12:10

That's pretty accurate.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

I mean, you need to code to have a pretty accurate uh I could tell you the number of hours too, but then it would have to be GMT versus Eastern Time. So you know, it's settling in well. It's a Cisco is a terrific company, and you I I knew that coming in because of some of the great places to work awards that the company has won in multiple countries. Um, and in fact, at this point, worldwide, uh, we're the number one uh great greatest places to work. Um so I knew it would be a good work environment. I've met several of my peers during the interview process and found them to be obviously smart and motivated and driven, but also just the kind of people you want to be around, right? Not just someone that, hey, they're really good, so I'm gonna tolerate the the quirkiness and the things that that aggravate me. We don't have that. Uh so we've got a lot of great leaders in the team. And I my timing was good uh simply because the you know the world is coming out of the pandemic by the time I joined. I joined here at Cisco in mid-December of last year, just as you know, the the vaccinations were coming out, and the world was beginning to start to think about what does it look like on the other side of the pandemic. So the business volume, we've talked about it in our previous earnings call, has picked up. And the company stayed the course on a lot of investments that are now at an early phase of, you know, now that those have been developed, early phase of customer investment. So it's a the timing was fortunate as well. So I'm I'm really enjoying uh the time I have at Cisco.

Sam 13:45

Fantastic. So we talked earlier about the transition at Autodesk from perpetual to subs. It's interesting that you made reference to Adobe because as soon as you mentioned that journey, my first thought was was going through that with Adobe in my time at SoftCat, kind of watching that be painful for a little while and then be a significant success. Maybe you could put a bit of color on that for our listeners. Quite an interesting journey, and one I'm sure you know many software vendors are on that route and resellers as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

You know, when we started down that path at Autodesk, uh and we were very public about it. Uh, and and Carl Bass, who was the CEO at the time, um, is a, by the way, another terrific leader, terrific human being, crazy smart, a lot of the same characteristics as Mark Templeton. Um, and but was fearless. Uh and he was very public. He had, you know, what I'll call a burning the boats kind of a moment where he said very publicly in one of our investor day meetings that in 12 to 24 months we would sell our last perpetual license. So he just put it out there. And that not only sent a message to the marketplace, it sent a message to everyone inside the company that, like, all right, the boats are burned, there's no going back, you know, figure out what it means to you to make this transition and get on it. Uh, because resistance is futile, right, at this point. Even though there was there were big camps of people who thought that may not have been the right decision. Um initially, as we went through that the course of that, our biggest competitors were actively marketing against us. They were they were approaching our customers and saying, we won't make you give up your perpetual license, you know, move to, I won't mention their name, but Company X and use our design software instead. And um, that went on for about 12 months and it had very limited success for our competitors. Uh, and you know, within 12 to 18 months, they were also saying, hey, we're moving to a full subscription model as well. So, you know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Uh, and so they went from this is a bad idea and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna steal all your customers, to this is a brilliant idea and I'm gonna do the same thing over the course of that time. It was a it was definitely trying. Um, you know, as we made that announcement, uh, the share price was in the mid-50s. We immediately our share price fell within a couple of weeks to the mid-40s, to the low 40s, actually. Um, activist investors came in, you know, with a point of view that was different than ours as the management team. We ended up with three activists on our board uh for a little more than 18 months. Um and through the whole thing, we just kept our head down, kept executing, kept hitting every point along the curve that we had laid out. And as we did, investor confidence that we were going to get to the fake, the the upside of that curve grew. And as it grew, our share price grew. It's really interesting to look at if you had a graph with time as the as the uh x-axis and showed what was happening to earnings per share because they went negative. We went from a positive earnings per share to fairly negative. Um, and then overlaid on that what was happening to our share price. The share price growth was pretty linear up and to the right, almost like y equals mx plus b, kind of linear, right up and to the right. Yeah, and yet earnings per share were coming down because we built confidence and we just kept our head down and kept doing what we were doing. And so it was it was one of the definitely the high points of my entire career uh working through that. Super fun. It drew on, by the way, all of the experience that we've talked about. Having spent time in sales, I knew what that was like. I knew the impacts. And we are very heavily uh at Autodesk, we're very heavily sold through resellers. I knew the impact it was going to have on our resellers. We were able to navigate that, you know, the product side of that. So it drew on all of the experience I had to that point. And um, we had a super strong team that was really unified in going through it from a leadership standpoint.

Vic 17:50

You know, and I love the fact that you've just said that you had a strong team that was unified because clearly that's that's what we're all about. And and what what I was just also thinking about, you know, you and I spoke this week about our IT leader survey that is out um currently. And I just had a quick look through of the results that have come in so far. 80%, and it's on the nose, 80% exactly, of the responses so far have said they have competing priorities. So if you haven't got an organization that is 100% aligned and they know what that course is, and they're not all together on it, let alone the competition that's out there in the marketplace, it's internal.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Totally. You know, Vicky, these changes are so hard. Making the transformation that we made and that we're in the process of making here at Cisco are really hard because it changes everything. It changes the way you build product and the way you you get it out into the marketplace, the way you sell, the way you market, the way you work with partners. The finance organization had a lot of change that we had to do. The metrics that we looked at and the leading indicators were totally different. Um, everybody in the company had to change. And so what was great is you know, I talked about Carl having a burning the boats moment and just putting it out there. And it's like everybody get on board. Um it unified the executive team in the in the course of, okay, I need to I need to figure out what it means to me, and I need to go make those changes happen. Uh, because if you know sales and marketing changed and finance changed, but product didn't, yeah, you're gonna fail. Right. And so at the end of the day, having the leadership team aligned, and then because the the thing you also have to do as a leader is have the people on your team fall in line and understand it and really internalize that and make that change. If you don't get the people into that change and get their head and their hearts into the change, it's gonna fail. It is gonna fail.

Vic 19:49

Yeah. So how do you how do you do that?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

You know, it we did it through a whole series of things. We did it by being very transparent, um, internally and externally. You know, I talked about you know, 12 to 24 months, we'll sell our last perpetual license. I laid out a uh a slide that became, I want to say famous, probably infamous is a better word for it, at investor day that showed what was going to happen to our operating margin, right, through time. So again, time is the x-axis and dollars on the y. And our operating margin actually went below zero and went negative, or our earnings per share went negative and then peaked back up. And um, that line was a solid yellow line, and I made it thick so that people couldn't measure it and figure out exactly what the math was behind it. And that thick yellow line became known as the golden snake. And uh, we just executed every point on the golden snake. So I I went everywhere with that. I spoke to investors about it, obviously had spoken to our board about it. I got our whole leadership team to really understand the financial dynamics behind that. Um, I spent a lot of time with her, I had a quarterly call with all employees at Autodesk where I walked them through it and why it made sense. And so that was my part of it. The CEO initially, Carl, and then Andrew Anagnost was very open about it, about the dynamics, about the things that were going well and the things that weren't. And you have to do that, right? You have to have that level of transparency to have credibility and to have safe space for people to say what they think that they both did a phenomenal job on that front. And then we spent a lot of time as an executive team together, which actually annoyed me initially. Like, I got it, I got a day job, I got work to do, I don't have time to just sit around. And but what it meant is we were all so bought into this, we're all participated in big decision making. And therefore, we were all completely bought into the decisions that were taken. And some of these were pretty hard. And like I said, we didn't get every single one right. We ultimately corrected them, but we didn't get every single decision right up front. And so, also being honest, when we tried something and it didn't work and we To change course, um, created that sense of confidence that we were telling the truth and the the safe space, the vulnerability for everyone to say, Hey, I tried this and it didn't work for me either, right? It's okay, it's okay to try something and not have it work out.

Vic 22:13

Yeah, and that's that's fundamental to to what we where we start with with the clients that we work with. And I'm I'm gonna shut up in a second, Sam. But the other thing I just a lot of leadership teams that we work with to start with, what you've just said about the fact that you were like, We're together again, we're spending all this time together, it feels like you're not spending your time in the right places. But one of the most important things that we try and get leadership teams to understand is you need to go slow to start with, to spend that time getting aligned. And once you've got that, then you can go quicker. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

That was completely. That was actually one of the phrases that we used a lot, which was go slow to go fast.

Vic 22:52

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

You've got to go slow up front to go fast. Absolutely. That was one of the key phrases we had.

Sam 22:59

So now you find yourself at Cisco doing the whole thing again with a hardware company, right? That was a joke, by the way. I know Cisco, I know Cisco and our software company. You don't need to correct me.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

It's so great to have you say that, Sam. Because you're right. We are a hardware company, but we're one of the biggest software companies in the world. You know, if you annualize, we just started announcing what our software revenues are on a quarterly basis. It's 3.6 billion last quarter. So that annualizes out to something, you know, in the 15 billion range. Um that makes us the fifth largest software company in the world. And and no one thinks of Cisco as a software company, yet we're bigger than we, you know, every every other company except for Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle. We have more software revenue than anyone else in the world. So it's so we are a software company, but we're a hardware company.

Sam 23:47

Not bad for a hardware company, eh? Brilliant. So with with a beast the size of Cisco, how do you how do you keep in touch with people around the organization? How many people work for Cisco from starters?

SPEAKER_02 23:59

About 75,000. Uh okay, so one or two then. One or two. It's uh the the scale is uh is mind-boggling at times. Uh the scale, both in terms of people and in terms of the amount of business we transact, you know, round numbers 50 billion a year. Um, a lot of people have to love you to sell 50 billion worth of technology in a given year. You know, and I'd say staying in touch with people is that the the we're making a similar transformation. So let me zoom out for a minute and come back to your question. Um, moving to pretty much if it can be delivered as a service, we're gonna do that, including the elements that have hardware involved, we're gonna start to sell those on an as-a-service basis. And we've already we've already launched the first couple of those offerings. Um when you do that, I talked earlier about the effect it had at Autodesk, it's the same at Cisco. It changes everyone's job, it changes everyone's mindset. The company has a great regular check-in process where we as leaders will talk about there'll be specific business topics, but then we open up for QA. And what's what's been super gratifying for me to see, even at this scale, we have a really active QA session. People aren't, there's enough safe space that people aren't afraid to jump in and ask questions. And at times, you know, put put us on the spot, put me on the spot about, you know, financial questions that get asked. That transparency and that ability to have the direct interaction, instead of, you know, at the top you can rely on the tier that works for you to talk to the tier that works for them that talks to the tier that, you know, like and that things get so filtered by the time they get to you that what you hear is what you want to hear, as opposed to what's really happening. So the open paths of communication across the line are super important. Um, I'm gonna I've begun a similar thing that I did at Autodesk, which is a company-wide quarterly webinar where we talk about not just the financial results and how we look from the outside in, but why we're making the transformation and why it's so important and why, and and I try to the word I use is demystify finance, right? Uh, and being a finance guy, I'll I'll throw a few rocks at finance people for a minute. We have our own vocabulary, right? And and and that vocabulary can be super intimidating if you don't understand the terms. Um, having been an engineer, you know it's all about define the terms, and then I can problem solve, right? And so what I try to do in those is take these complicated financial terms that we talk about and make it something that mere mortals can understand, right? I love people that can do that with technology. I try to do that with finance. And so we do that and have them really understand and internalize what the change means. Why is it important? Why is there because change is hard. For a lot of people, change is quite hard. And it's so making the transformation successful is as big a change management issue and mindset change as it is a technical issue and a systems issue and a development issue and a sales issue.

Sam 27:03

Which group do you think have found it the hardest? I guess for sort of product and development, maybe the way in which it's consumed is less important than the ultimately the service that they're delivering to customers. In my experience, it's maybe sales that perhaps find it the toughest with the changing compensation schemes and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Uh, you know, it's hard across the board, Sam. And and yeah, I think from a functional standpoint, you're probably right. It probably has the greatest impact in the way they get their jobs done on the sales teams. I I certainly felt that way at Autodesk. I think that will be the same at here at Cisco. And if you don't change the compensation, you don't get the behavior you really want. Exactly. Right. So you have to make those changes and then you have to articulate why it makes sense and you have to get people comfortable driving to a different set of metrics than they've driven to historically. Um, and you know, when you're in sales, you uh are very focused on what are the goals, but I mean, because it's a significant part of your compensation. And so you have to make those kind of changes and and and really have them internalized. It's the most difficult to get sales comp right when you have a foot in each camp.

unknown 28:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

In other words, I'm still selling a big part of non-subscription, and I want you to sell subscription and getting that balance right so that the customer gets to buy what they want to buy, not necessarily what the salesperson has the biggest motivation to sell. And that, you know, living in that in that in-between land is really, really hard in terms of sales comp. Um, you know, it's also though, the if I look at it from a different dimension to your question of who's it been the hardest on, I think it's been the hardest on people who have been at Cisco a long time and enjoyed a huge amount of success. I mean, we're, you know, a Dow 30 company, 50 billion in revenue, 200 billion plus market cap. So we did a lot of things right. And we have a lot of smart people that did a lot of things right. And you have to go to them and say, hey, the walls aren't on fire, but you need to change. You need to change the way you think, you need to change the way you've done things, all the success you've had to your career, kind of park a lot of that and start thinking differently. It's really hard on that group of people, whether they're in sales and finance and marketing and product, it doesn't matter. It's that I think that that what got you here won't get us there is is tough.

Vic 29:22

Yeah, I'm I'm seeing that a lot with my clients at the minute, actually, because you know, we know the tech industry is booming and that that's where we're focusing. And yet an awful lot of organizations are having to go through change. And you know, I was working with a client last week, and one of the AVPs has been there 24 years, always hit his numbers. Everything's why why do I need to have change?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

And it's you got it.

Vic 29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Yeah, check change is easy when the walls are on fire, when you know, when your survival is at at question. Yeah, change is changes harder when there's when you're not in that position. And it's like, yeah. You used the expression earlier about burning the boats, I think it was. And that you know, that's almost what you need to do, force the issue. You you you you you really do. And you know, I think burning the boats uh is an easier phrase for people to internalize than resistance is futile, uh, but it means the same thing, right? One feels like I'm imposing my will on you, the other is like, hey, you we have no option, here's where we're gonna go. Uh, but it's a like you have to be unequivocal, right? Because what you can't have is passive aggressive behavior.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

Yes, crop up.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

I'll sit in the meeting and nod and go back to my team and go, I'm not bought in. This doesn't make sense. Let's keep doing what we were always doing, right? Passive aggressive behavior will absolutely kill you as you try to work through one of these transformations.

Vic 30:42

That is actually what drew drove me to do what we're doing now at the Amplify group, seeing that in action, because it just slows you down completely. And and kills morale too.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

It totally slows you down and kills morale.

Vic 30:56

Yeah, absolutely. So, what what we love about the Lens The Oni methodology that we have, first of all, it starts with that vulnerability-based trust that that you've talked about that you have. But then you need to have the robust debate. And and the key to and as I was talking to this guy last week, the most important thing is he needs to feel like he's been listened to.

Sam 31:15

Right.

Vic 31:16

Because provide that forum in in a scalable approach where people feel like they've been listened to and they've they've been considered, even if it's not the direction that they want to go in, if they feel at least they've been heard, then the next point is then they're much more likely to commit to the disagree, you know, to the decision. So it's the whole disagree, but commit. But I will do because I've been heard.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Totally agree. And it is about being heard. It doesn't mean I'm gonna agree with you, but I'm gonna listen and I'm not just listening for you to stop talking so I can say what I want to say again. It's like I'm really listening and internalizing what you said, and I get it because a lot of the decisions you have to take are not black and white, are not just, well, it's obvious this or that. Like there's so much subjectivity in those in those decisions. And being had being able to say, I heard you, I've taken that into account for the following set of reasons. We're not going to go that direction, we're gonna go a different direction, then then they can disagree and commit, right? But you've got to get to that point.

Vic 32:18

Do you know what? If if this was um being shown as a video, you'd see me grinning like a Cheshire cat because I remember sitting across the table from you so many times where you had listened to my point of view, and boy, did I feel listened to. I really did. And that, yeah, that's my experience of working for you. You always made the time to listen. And yet, you would say, I've listened to you, I've taken your and this is the course we're going in now. I are you on the boat? Are you in the bus? Are you coming with us?

SPEAKER_02 32:54

I I think it's a key part of leadership, and it's back to you know, none of us individually is as smart as all of us are collectively. Absolutely. And if I don't listen to you, if I don't create the safe space for you to say what you want and then actually listen to what you're having, what you're saying, I don't get the value of you. I don't get the value of your background, of your experience, of your different, you grew up differently than me. You've got a different point of view, you've got a different lifestyle. I don't get that value if I don't listen. Uh again, I still have to make a call. As the leader, you still have to make a decision. And it may be I heard you, but for the following set of reasons, we're gonna do something different. But I I I forego that value that you can bring if I don't create that space and really listen.

Vic 33:35

Yeah.

Sam 33:36

Maybe that should be the title of the podcast.

Vic 33:38

What's that?

Sam 33:39

None of none of us individually uh as good as we all are collectively.

Vic 33:43

Yeah.

Sam 33:44

Yeah. Yeah. I mean that that that says it all, doesn't it?

Vic 33:47

It does. Well, and it's why we do what we do.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Well, and as Vicky knows, the key to my success has always been having much smarter people than me work for me. And so uh so I I I live that every day. Like, these people are a lot smarter than I am.

Sam 34:01

What what went wrong with that strategy when you hired Vicky? You can edit that out, Vicky. It's fine. That was a big soft. We couldn't go, we couldn't go through a podcast without me taking the you know what.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

No.

Sam 34:19

So Scott, you after your magnificent experience that you've um outlined for us, what would you tell yourself when you were starting out when you were that industrial engineer trying to work out where you were going with your career?

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Yeah, so um a couple things. One is just be yourself. Uh, don't don't worry about trying, you know, if you've got an image in your mind of what it's like to be in whatever role you're aspiring to, executive or leader of your function, if you've got that image because of someone you've seen, um if that's not you, don't don't try to be that person. Uh be you have authenticity is so critically important because if you're not authentic, everyone can see it. You may think you're putting on a good act, everyone can see it. And that then creates a sense of unease and and can lead to a sense of distrust. Um, you can only be a leader if people are willing to follow you, right? That sounds pretty obvious, but it it the power of that is how do you get how do you be the kind of person that people want to follow, right? And part of that is is is authenticity. So I think I would have come to that conclusion sooner. I think the other thing that that I didn't do early in my career that I it took me a while to learn is you know, disagreeing and having a different point of view isn't making yourself a pain in the neck. It isn't, you know, some making you unpopular. It isn't gonna make people dislike you. Yet you have to represent your opinion in a professional way and in a non, in a way that's non-personal attack. Let's talk about the idea. Let's don't talk about you, you know, Sam, you're an idiot, and here's what I think. Instead, that's not gonna get you anywhere, right? And that's gonna drive defensive back.

Sam 35:59

I am though, you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Sorry, I should have used my name instead of yours. Um, but but putting that point of view out there, and and so I was reticent for a long time to put that point of view out there. If I disagreed with someone who was senior to me or had a different point of view that I didn't think was being considered, um, I was a little reluctant for a long time to put that out there. And I think being comfortable putting that opinion out there, and by the way, you won't always be right. It's okay to put your opinion out there and not be right. Um, that is something that took me too long to get comfortable with.

Vic 36:33

But what you uh have done as a leader over all these years is you've provided the environment for people to be able to do that. Because like I say, I remember doing that. I remember sitting there with Paul Burke and Keith Turnbull and us just absolutely having so many different opinions. What I didn't realize though, Scott, is uh, and it's what I love about what we do now, is it was all very subconscious, this process that we were going through. And what I didn't realise is actually there is an operating system for teams and how people work together and the things that you've outlined our job at the Amplified Group is it's about to make it more conscious so that people are actually consciously knowing that these are the this is the right thing to do. And the the work that we do in the boardroom, we say if you look at the the code of governance for boards, it's about boards having robust debate, and that's so that you get to the best outcome.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Totally agree. And and there's a whole set of things that we've talked about that drive that, Vicky. I'd say there's one more really crucial element, and we don't have time to develop it here, which is being really clear about decision making.

Vic 37:42

Parenting.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

So I'll I'll leave, but it includes saying, like, as we start into a debate, whose decision is this? And if the answer is three people raise their hand, like, no, no, no, no. This is gonna be one person's decision. Whose decision is this? And then what's the process behind how great decision makers make decisions and how they do what we talked about earlier? Because you are gonna have people who disagree and you have to have them commit. So that process behind decision making is one that we've also spent a lot of time on at Autodesk, and it really freed us up, it really allowed things to move much more quickly and allowed people to feel heard. So there's a there's a whole separate discussion around just decision making and and a rigor behind decision making. Yes, right?

Vic 38:27

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Well, people waste energy, I think, having those side conversations then because they've not said it in the room.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Oh my god. It's the meeting outside the room, right? The meeting after the meeting that is poisonous.

Vic 38:40

Yeah, it is.

Sam 38:40

It is to see that happening. So, as we bring this to a close, would you be so kind as to give our listeners maybe three key takeaways from your illustrious career and wealth of experience, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

Three key takeaways. I think that understanding, regardless of your role or your function inside a company, understanding that you also are a leader. And it really doesn't matter what level you're at inside the company, you're also a leader. And part of being a leader is understanding how you become someone that people want to follow. Uh, and so leadership is about followership. Followership is about having a set of characteristics and behaviors that you bring to the office every single day. Um, and and so I think that's that's point one. I think the second is just remember this, and I don't know where I got this phrase, or maybe I made it up, uh, that none of us individually is as smart as all of us are collectively. Um, and if you just if you really internalize that and say, so how do I get the the value out of everyone collectively? Um, that will drive behavior and the way you conduct yourself and the way you conduct meetings, the way you show up in meetings, by the way, is also super important. So I think bearing that in mind is key. And you know, at the end of the day, every small company wants to become a bigger company, and every bigger company wants to become an even bigger company, right? And so there's as you think about growth, um, there's pluses and minuses to that. And I think the the thing you have to bear in mind, you know, going from Autodesk at about 10,000 uh employees, which is big, to Cisco at you know 75,000, the issues are the same. The numbers are bigger, but the issues are largely the same. Uh, and the so the way you solve it involves the same thing, and it's about people at the end of the day. It's about having the right people, it's about having an environment that allows the the intelligent people that you hired. No one sets out to hire idiots, right? You hire smart people. Uh really getting the value of the people you hire is about how you conduct yourself as a leader and as a leadership team. And so I think that maybe is a good summary for the things we've talked about today.

Sam 40:53

Fantastic. So, Vicky, we've talked we've talked team most of the way through. So I don't know whether we necessarily need it, but we should for form and continuity's sake, you should lead us into team experience if you don't mind.

Vic 41:06

Yeah, and I I will do, but I think actually Scott has just said it completely. So the reason this is on the the end of the podcast, Scott, is because we realised that there's so much in the tech industry about customer experience and employee experience. Well, for us and for how we show up at work, it's about the team that you work with. And I think you've just said that actually already. So but we've we've trademarked team experience. Um, actually, with Mark Templeton's help, he said that's that's what you should go for. Just go and trademark it. So we've done that, and I think there needs to be more emphasis on that. So I suppose what's what's your perspective on that as we close out?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

I I so two. One is I completely agree, and of course, this is one of the keys to Mark's success, is he always focused on on team experience. I'd say the second is it doesn't just happen. Just because you've got a set of people that are all reporting to the same person, and you get together every Monday for a staff meeting, and you, you know, you stay that doesn't create necessarily by itself, that doesn't create team experience. It's a conscious effort to create that team experience. And it's something that I've actually put a lot of, as I've gotten, you know, later in my career, I've put a lot more focus on because I know I'm not always going to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, I'm rarely the smartest person in the room, right? And so what I need is the team to really function. I talk about the difference between, you know, a swimming team where everyone does their own event. And if the sum of all their individual efforts is good, then the team wins, or a soccer team where there's one ball, and I need to know where everyone is. And we win together or we lose together. It's not I won my event. Oh, sorry, the team didn't win. Like I always want to be a part of a soccer team, or in your words, a football team, and not a not a swim team, not a bunch of individuals who are each really good at their event, and you hope that the sum of those uh is is good. You you really have to focus on being a team.

Vic 43:09

Yes. Yeah, and actually, I think you know, as I mentioned to you the the huddle after the European Cup, Gauz Southgate saying to his team, we we win as a team and we lose as a team. This is not individuals. And actually, um our strap line at the Amplified Use Group used to be um taking talented individuals and transforming them into an extraordinary team. Because as you say, you can have a bunch of talented individuals, but if they're not forming as a team, you're not making the most of it. So, what what you've just said, firstly, let me just thank you because wow, what a treat it's been for us to record this with you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

No, it it's been great to to to again to get a chance to reconnect Vicky with you and some of the other colleagues that we all work together with at Citrix that are part of Amplified Group and to meet Sam and see his incredible beard. This has just been a great morning. You're you're you'll you'll Too you're too kind.

Sam 44:01

I'm only compensating for the fact that I've got zero hair on top.

SPEAKER_02 44:09

I've got a beard that belongs on Duck Dynasty. It's it's it's remarkable.

Sam 44:15

Fantastic. I don't know whether I've ever finished up a podcast with someone being so complimentary about my uh about my my my face first. So thank you. I really appreciate that. But you know, that was a magnificent run through a stellar career and some really, really interesting insight. And you know, I'm sure that there are plenty of organizations out there who are going through that transition from you know upfront perpetual to subscription in some way, shape, or form, changing consumption models. You know, we're not fully there yet, so it it can only be of incredible use and value to our listeners. So thank you very much for that. I really appreciate it. It just remains to for me to say thank you for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. As always, your comments and your subscriptions are gratefully received.