A Leader's Story - Episode #3 - Stacie Atwater

welcome to a leader story where we explore the unique Paths of extraordinary leaders in each episode we ask the same seven questions to our guests revealing the diverse Journeys and insights that shape their success join us as we uncover the stories that make each Leader's experience truly oneof a kind today we're excited to introduce Stacy Atwater a season leader with over two decades of experience in business technology and it operations currently the senior director of business technology at go1 Stacy has also held key roles at solid procore Technologies and Western Digital her expertise spans Enterprise applications data analytics and operational excellence join us as we dive into Stacy's Journey leadership insights and the impactful work she's driving in the tech industry let's Dive Right into our conversation with our first question Stacy what is one decision you made that was a turning point for your leadership yeah this is a great question really it it honestly was just discovering how much um I really do love building and leading teams and you know kind of how I got there was a few companies ago I ended up leaving that company to um to go to another company is when I went to saladine and the position that I was leaving was a was a team you know leader um managing the finance and legal Applications had a a great team but um you know I ended up leaving to go to zadam and and the position at zadam was not in a leadership position it was not I didn't have any direct reports I wasn't in charge of architecting the strategy and the vision and you know deciding how the team was going to operate and I quickly realized you know this is probably not the best decision for me because um I realized that's exactly what I love to do I love building teams I Love Leading teams I love problem solving with teams um not having the ability to to do that I it was very um eye openening to me in that moment that okay no this is not the right decision I really do need to be in a leadership position so it was tough but yeah um you know really good lesson I think it's just really important to know what you what you like and what you want to be doing and um so I learned it the hard way but it was still a great lesson the only way you would know that is to make the the wrong decision right and you have to make that decision to really figure out what you want right that's right and I I think you know when I when I reflect back on it I think why did I make that decision and part of the reason was you know there were so many of our previous you know um colleagues and leaders that had landed over at salad and so and you know the opportunity to stand up a you know A5 billion dollar startup like that sounded crazy and so I was like yeah let's do it um but when I reflect back on you know why why did I want to you to accept that role and I think I thought that it was going to give me more room to breathe and it was going to be less stressful and um you know we I just come off of proor you know run at their IPO and leading up to an IPO is just it's crazy it's just that there's so much work to be done and so I was tired but I realized that um it actually was more stressful for me because I wasn't fulfilled interesting you know I wasn't fulfilled and so it actually stressed me out even more because I just felt like I'm not um you know really inspired or really like super attached to the work that I'm doing where I always feel that way when I've got a team of people that I'm leading you know it's super good I'm in awe of the what you just said around how it was more stressful uh being unfulfilled and that I think is something that people just don't think I'm there's more fomo probably on your side of not joining and then come to find out no this this is a different type of stress that comes with you know not being where you're supposed to be that's good go to the next question so now that you're back into what you want to be doing at go1 um how do you Foster Innovation and creativity within your team our you know one of our thematic goals for the year is elevating the employee experience through technology I'm just really challenging my team to think of ways that we can do that um whether that's through enabling self-service you know looking for opportunities to improve or automate processes make data more accessible think like the key is just really making the space and creating the opportunity for the teams to actually do that it's so easy to get caught up in a cycle of like we're too busy to innovate because we're keeping the lights on you know it's it is really hard for people to think strategically when their hair is constantly on fire trying to make space um for the team to be creative and Innovative is to understanding what's keeping us from doing that you know if there's if there's an area or an application that's just really unstable or a stakeholder group that's always unhappy it's like we instead of constantly putting out the same fires over and over again we got to go figure out why that area keeps catching on fire so be and a fire investigator instead of a firefighter you know and then when you have less fire it just creates a calmer environment where people actually have the brain space to be able to to dig into a problem and say okay how can I actually if this is repeatable then I can automate it so like let's dig in and figure it out is it a technology Gap that we have I think that's that's the easiest way I think I can explain to do that can can I double click yeah so you know you bring up an interesting point right because I think sometimes your teams and team members conect value to some of those mundane things or yes um and so how how do you remove them from that so you can open up their creativity I recently ran into this problem so when I first got to to go one I wanted I immediately was started looking for opportunities to to make the employee experience better through technology and and I immediately wanted to bring in move works and you know explain some of the different use cases for a tool like move works and you know one of them is um it's like password resets like you know and I said to the team nobody here is getting juice out of resetting passwords right right and most of them said no yeah we hate this but there's a few people that are like no actually I mean if if you automate those things now what now what am I going to do right and so I think being able to ease the fear of automating people out of jobs I think is really crit and you have to explain to them like what replaces the mundane work if you didn't have to if you didn't have to turn through 50 tickets of of password resets every single time like iPhone you know puts out a new iPhone um you know it happens like every single time the new iPhone comes out we're like okay we know we're going to get a bunch of password reset requests it's just silly if you didn't have to do that what could we be doing and that's when you really get to start building a really fun portfolio of work for the team to start thinking about if I didn't have to do this and what fun and exciting things could I be doing you know that's good I mean how much better is it to have a system implementation like move works on your resume where you can say I automated 38% of the tickets that were coming to my to my service desk like that's gamechanging you know for sure it's just get dispelling the fear and just getting them excited about what they could be doing instead of the mundane repetitive Soul sucky Tas you know that's really good that's really good I think that actually leads well into our next question so how do you balance driving results with maintaining a positive team culture yeah I think on this one um prioritization and workload management is super critical because how do you know that you're working on the right things I I think there's nothing more deflating than constantly having to prioritize a project and then back burner it and you know bring it back and then you deliver and it's not what anybody wanted and so just making sure that you're working on the right things at the right time for the right reasons I think is is really critical so we have a pretty you know solid process for intaking work and then prioritizing that work and constantly recalibrating the prioritization order with stakeholders to make sure hey when we first got this request three months ago this was the most important thing is this still the most important thing yeah um and then planning and executing that work and then just doing cycle over and over again I guess that goes to the next part of it is you're putting the right people on your team yeah you know because I think I big believer if you you got a team of a players they want to deliver value they want to to be able to complete a project and celebrate the end of that project and celebrate what they delivered to their stakeholders how they made their lives easier and better and B players can't fly under the radar on a team like that no you know and the brilliant jerks won't last either so I think it's really just like making sure you have the right people on on the team and then also just making sure you're prioritizing and resourcing the right work that's good that's good in my experience I've seen you know the same if if if people know what they're doing why they're doing it they know you as a leader have their back the ROI on that comes in Spades from a positive team culture perspective it's it if you're continuing have to Pivot and move to wherever the executive or whoever yells loudest like you're saying you know that that that just easily derails a positive team right away no no matter what work you're doing there's not very many people I know that have the stamina for that kind of whiplash you know yeah it's just it's it's dizzying and it's just not at all rewarding teams that are constantly busy but never produce anything you know and it's not that people aren't working hard they are but they're just not productive they're not performing and that's frustrating too you know yeah 100% so we we're going to Pivot a little bit here ask a question can you describe a moment when you had to make a tough ethical decision you know there's definitely been been times or have been faced with making the right decision for my team and the company versus the right decision politically and most of the time it it's it's it's usually around those big business transformation initiatives that nobody wants to touch because those projects are are the projects that got people people I always say this promoted or fired you're either up or out you know and it's because it really it really opens up a lot of opportunity for just inflammatory reactions I no one wants to be the person who comes in and just blows up a system that they inherited that's not what the business needs anymore but that you know the person who originally designed and implemented it still there loves it thinks it's great but everybody else hat it you know yeah those are just really tough conversations to have and you can just kind of leave it alone you know and do what your boss thinks you should do even though it's not the right move for your stakeholders or the company that's the the unique opportunity and Al also responsibility of being a leader in it we are the common thread throughout the entire company and so we do we have a responsibility to make sure that we are connecting the dots across the company I can't just think about this application because I have to think about the upstream and the downstream applications and the user experience and the data needs up there and down there as well I can't just make a siloed decision that's going to satisfy you know one person even if it means that it's you know yeah I throw match in the gas tank you know yeah exactly and it plays back to the positive team culture stuff too right it all plays into that because it's easy to to let it stay and fester that's a good point I mean and that's the the other thing is it's setting the right example for your team making sure that they know they need to make the right decisions for the company not just self-serving that plays well into the next question what role does feedback play in your leadership how do you both give and receive it for me it's huge I I like to think that I'm a pretty self-aware and intuitive person but yeah but I mean I've also come to realize that it's never it's never a bad thing to just double check and make sure that the message that I'm delivering or the approach that I'm trying to take or the solution that we're going to try that we're going to deliver making sure that it's landing on people and impacting them in a way that I'm intending because it doesn't always come across that way you know um so you know constantly soliciting feedback on on that I think also this is specifically being an ID and being a service to the business making sure that that our stakeholders are happy with what we're delivering and sometimes that means you have to open the door to have a difficult conversation about maybe people on your team I would much rather have that conversation directly with that person than have them come over the top and then have that conversation with my with my boss you know yep so yeah I think soliciting feedback is definitely it's huge for me and delivering feedback it's I mean it's tricky I think our you know team's people they want to be led by by people that are going to to challenge them but also reward them but also have that difficult conversation with them yeah you know um it's hard sometimes to deliver especially when it's negative feedback you know yep um but I think if you do it in a way where you walk into the conversation just assuming positive intent good and with an intention to deliver positivity while also just being very direct but diplomatic you know yeah um there's um there's an author that I a book that I read not too long ago um ra radical cander have you seen that book yes and she talks about how clear is kind you know being clear with your feedback and being direct about it it's you're actually doing that employee a disservice if you don't give them that feedback because that's so true that's 100% true yeah yeah that's good that's that's really good moving on to the next question how do you continue to grow and develop as a leader yeah I um I think it is really um just leaning into to the uncomfortable and taking risks and picking up projects and initiatives that are just the right balance of oh I know how I'm going to solve this but also this scares the crap out of me you know this is really scary um when I think back on the most challenging teams or projects that I've been on in my career I look back that's the time that I was growing the most there's that um that saying um jinny Redi um growth and comfort can't coexist yeah that's no that's good it's so good and it's true I tell my kids this too you know even like you're always exactly where you're supposed to be even when it doesn't make sense and even when it's uncomfortable and especially when it's uncomfortable because those are the moments that are going to stretch you for sure yeah wow that that that's that's like I I hadn't heard I mean I've heard probably summarizations of that quote I've never heard that's that's that's mind-blowing stuff that's really good it's a good one and I think true it's grounding too because when you're in those moments and you're in those situations where it's like God this is so uncomfortable oh this is so frustrating you know how am I going to get through this am I going to fix this it really requires a deeper level of thinking and problem solving like tapping into your own skills of influence you know like I always tell my team we got to draw a bigger Circle here you know like we're missing something we got to draw we're not seeing the whole thing let's draw a bigger Circle and unless you're you're like forced and pressured into that situation then you don't like you you just don't really learn those those skills you know yeah last but not least what leadership book has influen you most and why yeah this is I this is a tough question because um there's so many great books out there you know um I'm a huge um Ben horowits fan hard thing about hard things great book um Phoenix project you recommended that book to me I think like 10 years ago that was a life Cher um but I think if I have to pick just one book it's the advantage by Patrick Lon sitting right back here yeah I mean it's totally shaped how I how I build and Lead teams honestly um because I think his the whole um the whole notion of the whole realization of the fact that you can build a team of the you know smartest most credentialed people with all the certifications and all of the degrees but it doesn't mean that they're going to work well together yep you know um so just making sure that like again going back to the whole prioritization and you know making sure that the team is accountable to each other and they're all kind of rowing in the same direction like that is the key to to building performing teams is the people on the team you know we learned about Patrick lenion like probably what 15 years ago and he's just yeah everything that he comes out with is just gold you know and he he it's true it's it's really all about that team Health the organizational health I mean you prioritize that and you realize that that it's all about that it's all about the cross functional and cross- team collaboration and cohesion you can throw anything at a team like that and they'll handle it no problem but you you throw something really tricky in front of a team that you know again like highly credential um but they don't know how to work together they'll get nothing done well then then having the team profile right of the humble hungry and smart right so making that as you know individual attributes that we can hire and measure against easily right I mean you can teach skills all day long right especially in it right if they've got the aptitude and they've got the uh the fit for the culture of what you're looking for I'd much rather have that any day of the week and then you know send them to some class and and fill in the gaps because going back again to positive team culture right is is so important you know yeah I totally agree it's so true there's plenty of opportunities I mean that's that's what go one does we're an online uh learning aggregator content aggregator so there I mean there's plenty of opportunities to upskill and cross skill and but I mean it all it starts and ends with the individual you know yeah yeah yeah that's really good well Stacy thank you so much for your time I really really appreciate it um you know my hope is that people continue or that see these things at different stages in their careers and um you know just starting out wanting to be where you are today or even people that are past where we you know where we want to be but maybe able to gain some insights based off of this so um again I really really appreciate your time um and and and insights and you know they're invaluable and you just as a person as is awesome and you know definitely uh thank you I really appreciate it it's been super fun it was really it was really fun I really appreciate that you out of all of the people you have in your network that you tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to participate in this it's just so awesome so thank you appreciate yeah I appreciate it thanks so much having Stacy on today's episode was a true pleasure as she shared so many thoughtful observations from her leadership story thank you for joining us on this week's edition of a leader story if if you enjoyed the episode please like And subscribe to help more people discover these inspiring leadership stories and don't forget to tune in every Tuesday for new episodes see you next week and keep writing your own unique leadership story

Channel: A Leader's Story

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Id: -E-8m_AWXZ8

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2024