Transcript

[00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to our week of coffee with Digital Trailblazers. I’m glad you’re here.

We’re going to give everybody a few minutes to get started to join us.

This is our September 19th episode, episode 142 inching away closer to our 150th episode.

It’s coming up in about a couple months, so clearly will happen this year and we’re going to have to figure out how to commemorate that particular episode this week. This week is a special episode for two groups of people.

We are going to be collaborating with those of you who are digital trailblazers on the rise and want to speak to about how to step up in your career and start being in position for even greater leadership roles and maybe even C level roles at some point.

And then we’ll also be speaking to those who mentor and lead and manage digital Trailblazers and how you help them get to that point where they can be ready for leading a challenge around this.

I’m coming this week off of a few days I spent in San Francisco.

I was able to meet with Kristen Fart Charlie, who will introduce herself in a few seconds. But Kristen has been a supporter of the Coffee Hour going way, way back.

I think she’s one of the first people I just being remembering her as a regular listener and she’s joined us a few times as a speaker when we used to have the audio version. So this is the first time she’s joining us on the video version.

I was able to meet Kristen over at Workday a couple days ago, so it was the first time we met in real life which was a lot of fun.

And I will tell you, I probably knew this framework at once before in my life or read about it, but the Chief Learning Officer over at Workday reintroduced it to me.

This model called the 70, 2010 model for learning and Development and suggests that people learn 70% from on the job experiences and challenging tasks, 20% from feedback and working with others, what they call social learning, and 10% from formal training like courses and readings and podcasts and things like that. So that’s the 702010 rule or approach. It’s developed at the center for Creative Leadership, at least that’s what Gemini told me it is. And we’re going to use that framework today to really talk about how we help digital trailblazers rise to the challenge, grab the baton that’s being passed in front of them and really be ready for increasingly more responsibilities, more complex leadership roles and just being more comfortable taking on more challenges that’s our topic today and I’m glad to have our regulars here. Derek is here, Heather, Joanne and John.

And again, welcome Kristin Farley to the group.

Kristin, please do introduce yourselves and yourself and we’re going to start our first question.

Sorry, my headphone is cutting in and out. We’re going to start our conversation today around on the job experiences and challenges that Digital Trailblazer Digital Trailblazers should seek.

Welcome to the floor and introduce yourself and talk about some of the experiences that you sought out and challenges that you sought out that brought you to your current role and get you excited about the future. Hello, Kristen?

[00:04:12] Speaker C: Yeah, hi. Yeah, I’m Kristen Farley. I actually just moved to Arizona from Maine, but I work for Group 1001, which is a insurance company.

So as Isaac said, I’ve been following him for in this webinar for years now. I think I was maybe like the on the fifth webinar as when I first started joining and listening.

And for me actually this has been one of the the pathways to my learning.

So probably what is that the 20% and really, you know, learning and listening from all the people that you have here on the show, as you know, as well as going out and then looking into the recommendations that are given on the show and learning from those pieces. So that’s been part of my journey. I think the other thing for learning for me is actually getting into projects that weren’t necessarily on my personal roles roadmap, but being able to join projects and actually learn, learn about other areas of an organization that I wasn’t necessarily, you know, directly correlating with.

[00:05:26] Speaker B: Kristen, tell us a little bit about your last role. I mean, you were working for a large nonprofit. You were in the knowledge management area.

And you know, a very unfortunate what happened to that organization over the last year.

And I remember having a conversation with you. I think you also joined the Starseed CIO Digital Trailblazer community. You had some time with Joe Paclisi about charting your future. So tell us a little bit about that experience of I’m sitting here, I know my job is at risk and I want to be able to expand into some other areas.

[00:06:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So it was, you know, nonprofit, the International Rescue Committee.

And as budget cuts were coming down the pipe, it was very nerve wracking, to say the least. And so for me it was really reaching out to people and finding out what’s out there and what it is. I wanted my next adventure to look like. And I say adventure because if, if it’s not an adventure Then it would be boring.

And so I started learning and talking with people about, you know, just what are people looking for right now in, you know, a person that’s going to step into a leadership role and finding out, you know, more about, is it really on the technical side, Is it really more on the people side?

And then also just reaching out to old colleagues too, and finding out what they’re, you know, they were seeing in the world and their new jobs and their new roles, you know, based on where they’re at and again, you know, asking very similar questions.

And I was finding that it was a mix that many people were like, oh, well, you got to have these technical skills, so you got to go and build on them. And other people were more on the empathy side of things and learning how to really not actually be empathetic, but actually communicate that you have empathy.

So you’re looking for a new role, being able to communicate that you have the capacity for empathy. You also have to have ways to describe what you’ve done inside of your current role and your past roles that really shine and bring out that. That piece.

And then the on the technical side, being able to show that you also had empathy within the technical space and didn’t come off to guard, you know, jargon, but, you know, talking to different people and getting their perspectives was really critical for me.

[00:08:10] Speaker B: And one last question before I go to the floor, Kristen. In your new role, obviously still getting to meet people and understand the business and working with your department and technologies. Tell me, what are some of the experiences that you’re seeking out there to know that you’re providing your best self and providing a lot of value to your new organization?

[00:08:37] Speaker C: Yeah, similar to mentioned, just beginning to be on projects that I wouldn’t necessarily have otherwise been elected to be on. So my role is technically the workday product owner, but I find myself, you know, in efforts to understand what the processes are and how the organization’s working, really reaching out to people in different spaces in the IT department and finding out what they’re using people data for. And then, you know, assisting in those projects to make sure that they’re bringing the right data from the product that I own to use it. Right. But then leverage that and bring more value.

So really beginning to learn about how people perceive people. Data has been important to me so that then I can also, you know, bring the value of my role out as well as learn from them and their roles.

[00:09:35] Speaker B: So I’m hearing relationship building, I’m hearing following how people are using tools Today Derek, welcome to the floor.

We’re talking about the types of on the job experiences and challengers are real digital trailblazers should seek out.

Love to hear your perspective on this.

[00:09:57] Speaker A: Yeah, good morning everybody. Yeah, so when I look at this, I look at it more from a cyber point of view. When you’re looking at artificial intelligence now kind of being the driver in the marketplace and people are looking to use it, you know, the jobs that I would think people would want to get into is how they can better understand to, you know, thwart against those possible AI driven threats that are out there. So one of the things that comes to mind is AI driven incident response. You know, looking at either if you’re in a company already, try to become part of that team to help them work with AI type threat detection, looking at different type of triages for AI type attacks. Those kind of things come to mind. Also looking at simulations on, you know, artificial intelligence type cyber breaches. So working with simulations, what those look like, reaching out to better communicate with your stakeholders I mentioned earlier and how they can adapt to looking at and recognizing those threats. Another thing I would bring on board if you’re looking at not only artificial intelligence threats, but now artificial intelligence governance. So if you work with systems that are using artificial intelligence, what kind of governance compliance they need to support so you can better identify those threats that are coming through. And this will be working on some of the things that Krista mentioned, the ethical side of deployment, looking at some of the regulatory aspects of it and just anything across the domain. So when you look at all the different business units that are within an organization, you know, it’s artificial intelligence is going to touch pretty much all aspects of that, not just the communications, the legal, the at risk teams, all those need to be involved. And I think getting some sort of similarity or getting some familiarity to what that looks like and be able to translate that and use that within your organization is going to help give you the experience you’re going to need to help keep that job a little bit longer.

[00:11:38] Speaker B: Derek? I like hearing about simulations because it leads to other avenues, things like hackathons and being involved with experiments. I mean, if organizations are learning about AI, so you know, organizations learn by people learning and getting involved and those are great experiences for trailblazers to get involved. And you know, then when you think about any form of governance, you know, I just wrote a piece for CIO which I said, you know, guardrails is really the new language around governance. It’s pretty much the same thing. And you know, guardrails also encompasses strategy. Right. Not just what you don’t want to do, but what you want to do.

And I think those are two clear areas for trailblazers to get involved with. Hey, Joe, welcome to the floor. What are the prized areas if you’re a digital trailblazer and you want to be able to contribute but also grow from on the job experiences and challenges. Where are you placing your chips?

Joe, you’re on mute.

There you are.

[00:12:45] Speaker D: Sorry, I thought you were going to Joanne. She had, she was.

[00:12:48] Speaker B: You’re next.

Oh, somehow. How did she get in front? Because. Oh, sorry. I went to Joe. Joanne, we’ll get you next. I’m sorry.

[00:12:55] Speaker D: No, no, no problem, no problem. I, I, Kristen, welcome to the floor. It’s great to see you again and, and I’m glad you’re here.

The, the, the rules that you cited, Isaac, certainly have always believed it. Experience is the best teacher and you gain when you are curious.

Curiosity is what keeps you going to talk to the leaders in other departments.

Cross functional experience is absolutely invaluable if you’re going to become a good leader and a trailblazer. And the other adage, sorry I’m using so many of these worn adages, but thinking outside the box, always be asking the question, why?

Why do we do things this way? Why do we do things that way?

I wrote a piece, I’ll just briefly allude to my legend of the holiday roast. If you’ve ever read that blog post, you know it’s about a little girl asking her mother who eventually asks her mother, who asks her grandmother why they cut the roast in half when they cook it. And they, of course, have made up all sorts of reasons why it’s always the way we did it. It makes it juicier, it cooks better.

And when they get to great grandma, she finally admits that the only reason they cut it in half was because her oven was too small at the time to fit the whole roast.

And if you’re not curious and you don’t ask and get to the root of the reason things are done the way they’re done, you’ll never invent that new, better, faster, smarter, cheaper way that’s going to bring new customer satisfaction levels, new products to your customers, and new sources of revenue or reductions in cost, overhead, or risk.

[00:14:43] Speaker B: Always good advice coming from Joe, especially about getting out of your comfort zone and using curiosity as a driver. Folks, we have some really good comments going on here. I’m seeing Ashish. Ashish, welcome back. I haven’t seen you for a little bit. I feel vicarious learning also contributes to 5% in the way we gain knowledge.

A platform focused on cultivating leadership, freedom and authentic growth. We’re building what I call an OS for becoming. This is Amarant. Amaranat.

Amarnat. I’m sorry, I think I got it right in the last. I’m talking about a platform that he’s working on, Joanne. A platform you’re working on as well.

We’re talking about on the job experiences and challenges digital trailblazers should seek out.

What are your top three? Joanne?

[00:15:37] Speaker E: My top three?

[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Speaker E: The. The best way to truly learn and in ingrain in yourself the new skills that you want to have is to teach. And so I would say top of my list is mentoring other people.

Even if it’s in the, in a very modest way. Whether it’s to Kristen’s point of view, you know, showing empathy even or showing the ways in which you would express empathy or being data driven or being curious. The best way to really adapt yourself to a new method is to teach it to other people and so find something that sort of ignites a little bit of passion in you and then communicate that over and over and over again to Joe’s point to other people in various ways. Because we do that for, for.

It’s a methodology that works really, really well for digital trailblazers because it gives you the opportunity to step out of your comfort zone to lead projects that you wouldn’t normally want to be a part of. It gets you over the fear of volunteering and stepping up your game in new ways that are maybe outside your comfort level. And it also brings value to a lot of other people because it’s perceived as a leadership skill. It’s valuable to the juniors in your group who you are trying to help get ahead.

Not to replace you but or threaten your position, but rather to communicate to them that you are a voice of authority.

So that would be my first one. Second one client facing work where whenever you have an opportunity to be customer focused, even if it’s in a minor way, do it. Because then you begin to understand who ultimately you are trying to please. It’s your frontline employee. Yes, if you’re a project owner or a product owner, but also the actual customers, the people who pay your salary, those are the ones you really need to get to know more and more. And so then the third one would be in the course of being client facing, understand how to deliver data driven information in a storified way.

If you can create an anecdote a story, true or false? As long as you’re communicating the point of the data, then try that as a method because that will get you farther, faster, particularly in climbing the leadership ladder.

[00:18:26] Speaker B: I love that. I love the three, you know, where I’m leading this. Joanne, this is going to be a list for everyone. The last time we did this, we ended up with a list of AI jobs for the future and that became a blog post.

And this will be a blog post probably a week out. Let’s bring Heather to the floor. Heather, you see the good, the bad, and maybe in some cases the ugly people who, you know are looking for roles, but maybe they didn’t challenge themselves enough in their last experiences and finding ways to, you know, get involved in things that are outside of their day to day.

So I’m interested, what are your top three?

[00:19:10] Speaker F: Well, I’m not going to go to top three because I want to take it from a perspective.

I was thinking of this topic and I was wondering what high school students should do, what college students should do, the experienced candidate, people that have been riffed, mature workers who are returning, and those people who have not looked for jobs in a very long time.

So for each of them, there’s certainly crossover to things that have been already said. I love what Derek was saying about there are horizontal skills that can apply to many of these areas. So whatever you gain, no one takes that away from you.

To Joe’s point about adages, I’ve got one for myself. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I absolutely believe in fixing and making better anything that can be, even if it ain’t broke.

But I want to talk about for high school students, for people that nieces, nephews and your own children, the ability to try internships or co op programs if you’re already in college, because these are going to give you real world examples, examples and experiences. And once you’re an experienced candidate or someone who’s actually working on in a company, whatever job training programs they have, or sometimes when you’ve been riffed, they will offer you job training. Whatever is offered to you, take it. If it’s free, do it.

Oh, I don’t think it’s a good idea. No, it is. Because even if you don’t gain anything, and chances are you’re going to gain something, it really is valuable.

Someone else mentioned hackathons. I think shadowing people that either you could be in high school and it’s like, oh, my mother knows somebody who’s a.

My daughter did this. She Shadowed a graphic designer and she said, oh my God, I never want to do that. So she got that out of her system. But it gave her the opportunity to see that mentor programs and peer to peer programs, they’re not only internally. So you can be a mentee or, or you can be a mentor. So somebody on both sides of the table, it really gives you the opportunity. And it doesn’t have to be within the company, it could be outside as well.

I mentioned job training and outplacement services. This is another thing. If somebody offers it to you, absolutely take it.

Then people have side gigs. You know what, I always wanted to try something, whatever it might be, can be completely out of your area of expertise. But go in and get a side job, find out if this is something that would be a passion for you.

Online forums are a great way. Online communities are a great way to learn.

And then microlearning, you know, there’s bite size elearning modules that are being offered all the time, podcasts such as this one, other webinars, there are things that are being offered, probably even more offerings than you have time for. But absolutely participate.

[00:22:06] Speaker B: All really good examples. I’m also going to throw a question out here before we bring John on. John, Matthew Fissler is asking how do organizations create a safe environment to promote vulnerability and curiosities?

I answer a really good question coming from a company that’s trying to build a startup. Relai, this is Joanne’s company. Joanne, have that in the back of your mind so that you can answer Fisler’s question.

John, your ideas on 70% experiences. Just want to hear where you get the experiences that will that expand your knowledge and understanding of the world.

[00:22:49] Speaker G: Well, this may be a little controversial, but I think it’s really best to understand like what direction your company’s going and what direction your company is going to be sunsetting. And try to do everything you can to navigate the work that you do in the direction of get your company’s going. That’s, that’s the first thing I would say. And then I think you always have to look around in your department and look around in your company and try to figure out like what, what, what should we be doing that we’re not doing or what can we improve on that, that we’re not doing great right now and try to try to like convince people if you don’t have the power or if you have the power, try to do projects that, that kind of, and socialize it and talk to everyone and just kind of share Your ideas of, of the things that you think the company should be doing and then ask everyone else around you like about that and try to get their thoughts on like what’s the most important thing for our org to be doing for our, our group, for our company to be doing and just have that dialogue. And I just, I think if you’re doing projects kind of along that like you get put into parts of the companies that do really exciting things and you get great experience.

And then the other thing is, is that I just, I think it’s really important to, to talk to people that are at kind of at your level at other companies or in other industries and try to talk to as many people as possible. Maybe offer to buy people coffee and just, you know, talk about the projects you’re doing. You know, try to understand the projects they’re doing, look what they’re excited for. And it’s a lot of times you can find really neat solutions to stuff that you, you know, you, you, you know, maybe you can help them out, but maybe you’re working on some problem that they’ve already have a solution from. And I just, I found that a lot of fun and totally invaluable. Can I make a comment to Matt Fisler’s Absolutely. Question? So if you, if you want to be in a safe org, like people like, if, like there’s some behaviors that absolutely like are toxic and you just can’t have them in a safe orgs. And so the number one thing is if you want to be in a safe org, it’s, it’s like when people bring bad information, you can’t yell at them. You actually got to turn it around and be really appreciative of them for bringing the bad information. And some, sometimes people say things like, well, don’t bring me a problem unless you have a solution. But sometimes people, they don’t know how to have a solution to it. Right? And so then that can turn them off from bringing problems on. And so you can kind of change that and say like, it’s great if you have this problem and you’re able to bring a solution, but if you don’t have a solution, just expose it. Like, we appreciate that you exposed a problem and we’re not going to shoot the messenger ever.

And like when you really look at who’s responsible, it’s usually like the people that get yelled at aren’t usually the responsible problems. They usually get put in impossible situations.

[00:25:15] Speaker B: Good stuff. John, we’re going to go into our second question.

I’m Going to share a couple things here.

Number one, in terms of experiences, I think in addition to Joanne’s recommendation of going and being involved with customers, I think it’s really important today whether you have the opportunity to work for a startup or get involved with partnering with a startup or just even speaking to a colleague or a friend who is at a startup.

This, you know, the velocity, the ups and downs and lefts and rights of a startup are tremendous places to get experience and learning from. So whenever you get that opportunity, I think you should go out and grab that. And our second question here, the 20% around feedback sources.

I truly love when people who I do not know reach out to me and I try to do my best to get back at, be able to reply back to them and answer questions. But you know, if you want to try yourself at a learning experience, do a cold call, reach out to people, ask them a question, don’t be rejected by the lack of response. Just go out and do it again.

Get involved with your organizations and your groups. I see Joe raising your hand. I mean, Joe is a tremendous resource for feedback. He’s involved with the SIM membership and training program for a good number of years.

Joe, you must have a good list of people and organizations and approaches to get feedback other than just getting feedback from your loss.

[00:26:58] Speaker D: Absolutely. And to John’s point earlier, you know, who do you want to have? Let’s start with your own staff. Who do you want to have reporting to you or working with you? And the answer is what you don’t want is yes men. You don’t want people who will blindly follow you and never challenge anything that you have to say.

I love to surround myself with smarter people, people smarter than me. And believe me, there are a lot of them. And I have a very, very vast network, as you point out, Isaac, not only sim, but I also chair an investor group and I have some very smart partners.

I go to industry conferences all the time. I’m addicted to online publications, notably posts by my good friend Isaac Sokolik. And I learn a lot from all of these different sources. I want my staff to say, hang on, Joe, that doesn’t make sense. I don’t want them to follow me over the cliff. I want them to tell me we need to make a left or this is, this is not going to go well.

And I do, I do seek that counsel. My first leadership principle. I have three leadership principles. My first and foremost is if there’s a problem, I want to be the first to know. Again, going back to what John said, if you screwed up, just come and tell me.

I’m not going to scream at you. I’m going to say, okay, how do we fix it? And then second, how do we make it so that problem can’t occur again?

And then third, maybe what lessons can we take away from this?

That’s always been my approach.

[00:28:37] Speaker B: Excellent. Joe, let’s go. Derek, where are you getting feedback from?

[00:28:42] Speaker A: So I agree with Joe with looking at sim. That’s a great organization I’m also a part of. But when you’re looking at things such as the cyber security community or looking at artificial intelligence, you know, you’ve got like you mentioned earlier, hackathons that, you know, Black hat, you’ve got rsa, you’ve got ISC Square, you’ve got Security World. All these different places to kind of get information. These are already established communities, but people coming from different backgrounds, from different industries to kind of give a diverse thinking of what their experience of what they may be looking to towards the future.

There’s a lot of open source collaborations that are out online also that people get feedback from. Work with adversarial tools, libraries, threat modeling, type frameworks, all these things are available, most of them are available online.

Other things to look at is just cross industry type think tanks. So there’s a few that are out there work with cyber security.

CyberPeace Institute is one that comes to mind.

These are all different things. And then going back to the ethical realm that was mentioned earlier, you know, AI ethical type roundtables, some of those are starting to form and again some, most of these can be done online. And also look at the academics. A lot of universities now are creating these working groups as they’re creating artificial intelligence type classes that people can participate in. And the key thing is to share those experiences. More of a crowdsourcing type thing where they can get diverse, diverse backgrounds, diverse experiences so they can take it back to their business culture and better understand what can they do better in their particular business.

[00:30:11] Speaker B: I love the idea of going to these industry groups and get, just getting involved. I think that’s the message here is just get involved.

You know, obviously we can’t be in a physical meeting environment every day of the week or even every week. There are plenty of online communities that you can get involved with.

Liz.

Really, really strong networker, really strong believer of feedback. You’re always asking me for it. What, what is your advice for everybody?

[00:30:40] Speaker H: Oh well, thank you for the compliment.

So I wanted to, to give you a quote from a, from a CIO I worked for at one point that bad news is not a fine wine. It doesn’t get better with age.

I just want to throw that out there if anybody would like to use it. It’s always good to hear bad news early and often.

If you, if you bring that to your teams, it’ll really opens up that dialogue. But yes, I am a firm believer in, in open networking and, and leveraging your relationships to learn from them.

Personally, I am a member of at least three networks. Some of them are in it and some of them are not.

[00:31:29] Speaker F: Right.

[00:31:30] Speaker H: I mean if you think about it, you know, you can network in your churches, in your synagogues, you can network at your gym. You can network anywhere that where you know people and you have friends.

You can learn about what they do and how what they know and learn about, you know, your communities and what they what you can, you know, find out more about them. Recently in the past year I was in the members in transition group that Joe runs and I met a bunch of people there learning, you know, looking for a new role in, in project management office. I met somebody who knew somebody and turned into, I ended up getting this fabulous role SVP of value realization and, and a credit union. Now I know nothing about credit unions and so what am I doing? I’m going out into my network on LinkedIn and, and other friends and trying to see who knows anything about credit unions and finding people and setting up time and coughing with them for 30 minutes here and there. And we’re going to set up our own little coffee chat as a group to talk about challenges and credit unions. So I encourage you if there’s a niche and you can’t find the specific thing you’re looking for, feel free to set something up yourself and see who knows what.

[00:32:56] Speaker B: Thank you Liz. Folks, just want to welcome you all to this week’s coffee with Digital Trailblazers. We meet here every week talking about different leadership process topics, technology topics impacting our innovation, leaders in our organization or people I call Digital Trailblazers. Our episode next week is something we’ve talked about quite a bit. The real cost of tribal knowledge, why losing your people can bring ops to a standstill. Yes, we will get into the conversation around AI and knowledge management and getting over the fears of being a subject matter expert getting involved in AI programs.

October 3rd we’ll be talking about agility at risk, smart AI and data governance that drives innovation. And a couple places you can make sure to track our upcoming episodes. You can visit the new coffee page drive starcio.com Coffee and there’s a button there to add to your calendar a recurring link so that you’ll never forget or end up with a meeting during these coffee hours. So Please do visit drive.starcio.com Coffee if you’re looking for feedback advice, the Star CIO Digital Trailblazer community is a place for that. We have a whole section of Advisory Connect programs. This is a place to meet leaders like Joanne, like Joe and Heather.

Kristen has taken advantage of those and you can learn more about the Star CIO Digital trailblazer community@drive.star cio.com community thank you all of you for joining this week. Joanne, I want to hear about your feedback sources and I just want to throw in this question from Dennis. I think it’s one that we should all try to answer for him because it’s a good one. What was the one thing that helped you change from a single contributor to a strategic leader that helps others grow and develop?

So Duran, what are your feedback sources? And and you go back all those years and think about how did you take out step out of being an individual contributor?

[00:35:20] Speaker E: Okay, well, the answers are actually kind of joined.

The first thing I would say for feedback, one of the best sources of feedback is in something that most people don’t even think about, which is standards development, either whether it’s technical standards or technology standards or in an industry that leverages heavily technical standards. So whether it’s Derek with with cyber security or any other, I started participating in a group called Inemi probably 25 years ago and it was not one of my choices because I thought, oh, dull, boring.

But in actuality, if you look at industry groups as those or technical standards development as having a purpose, they’re trying to fix a universal problem for an industry or the industry overall.

It’s a way that you can validate your thinking about how you problem solve.

It helps you develop the critical thinking skills as a feedback mechanism and it brings value to a very large community. They can be frustrating, they can be annoying, they can take a long time to get a standard through. But once IEEE or any other standards body approves it, you know that you work an active contributor to a domain standard. Sometimes it’s ISO, sometimes it’s within a specific industry. But that’s a great source of feedback. It’s also a great source of networking because you’re all as a team trying to solve a problem and that develops friendships and relationships in a way that you don’t really expect. I can now hearken back and look at that and say that was one of the best decisions I ever made was to actually buy it. Even though I was resistant at first.

It’s been part of my community and I’ve done a lot of other, participated in a lot of other groups, whether it’s IEEE, ISO, IPC. I currently sit on the board of directors of Mesa.org you know, whatever your involvement level is, that’s a way that you take your individual contributions and you bring them back to your own company as well. And that starts to get you a little bit of following and a little bit of notarizing.

And if you leverage that capability not to, not to play your own trumpet, but rather as a means of giving the organization value add, it’s tremendous to your career.

Because when things come around at the end of that standard, oh, we have to adopt a standard. Well, gee, you happen to have a domain author as one of the people in your organization.

Who better to ask, who better to have you lead that organization as they transform?

So that’s kind of a long answer, but those are the things I think are most important in terms of feedback. Because the individual feedback you might get from a group member could be bad news, could be very good news, but either way it’s a little too close to home and you will always have a personal stake in it. No matter how much you try and keep it at a high professional level, people’s emotions do run into those conversations.

[00:38:55] Speaker B: Excellent, Joanne. I love the idea of getting involved at standards and then something you and I do, Joe, does. I think pretty much everybody who’s a standing group here, write something. Write something on social media, write a blog post, contribute something.

You will not get tens of thousands of people reading what you write generally, but you will probably get some feedback, particularly if you post on channels like LinkedIn and your network sees it and be ready for all forms of it. But there’s nothing wrong with getting some critical feedback at times.

And I highly encourage everybody to do that.

Let’s bring Heather up. Heather, where should people get feedback from?

[00:39:43] Speaker F: Well, I think in many organizations there’s some type of or should be some type of formal review process.

And many companies that I’ve worked with have a 360 degree view where you have to get solicit feedback from people in other areas, not just on your own team, but you do need, let’s say say someone who works for you, someone your boss. And then in other areas. And when you get a perspective from someone that may not work with you directly or every day, it could be mind opening or mind boggling either way. And I think that whatever feedback you get, whether it’s formal or informal, is to listen and to act.

Make sure that what you’re hearing, you’re able to hear and process and then be able to perform some kind of response that could either better it.

If something needs improvement, continue to grow in that area. If you’ve shown that you have some kind of acumen in that area, but being able to show that you’ve made some progress or some change. I know plenty of young people that have fought really hard to get promotions and then when they started to demonstrate, well, you said I had this area need improvement, I did this, I had this area, I responded. And eventually your time will come and you can be pleasantly surprised when you see that people acknowledge and recognize what you’ve accomplished.

[00:41:18] Speaker B: Thank you, Heather.

Welcome back. Kristin, love to hear where you get your feedback from, but also maybe answered your version of Dennis’s question. What was the first thing you did to step out of an individual contributor role? Welcome back, Kristen.

[00:41:34] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think the answer is the same for both.

For me, it was like I was always getting the feedback, stay in your lane. And to be honest, that was actually the driver to sort of like not stay in my lane.

But it meant that I needed to learn from, you know, other people and ask questions in a way that made them feel like I was learning from them. And I did learn from them. So, you know, kind of Joanne’s point earlier, you know, customers, every department or every other person essentially is a customer of you. And learning and listening and to the customer and what they need from you helps you then turn that into actionable steps that you can take to, you know, solve a problem that your customer, you know, quote unquote, is having.

But then you also get that feedback of, you know, your customers are going to tell you what’s not working as well. And so you get that opportunity to learn from it and transition and pivot without being outside of your lane. But at the same time, you’re outside of your lane. So that was.

[00:42:44] Speaker B: So. So, so you get that feedback and you sense that it’s wrong. And you know, you know, now you start moving around to the outside and, and looking for things.

And one of the things I just said to you yesterday, I just want to reflect on when we met. And I said, you know, you know, part of stepping out of comfort zones and staying out of your lane is to get comfortable with technology.

Right? Don’t just talk about it. Get your hands dirty. Go watch how people are using technology, maybe tell us a story or tell us an anecdote of how you went about doing that.

[00:43:23] Speaker C: Yeah, it’s, you know, with technology, I think for me it was in the space of networking and an entre. So, you know, really beginning to say, okay, well you know, how does it actually work and sort of doing that learning on my on side of, you know, how does entour actually work and what are the its connectors and how does it touch other systems? Help me to go to some of those departments and then be able to ask, you know, really detailed questions that, you know, I didn’t know until I, you know, researched about how the connectors work and how the data that they were looking for to drive the next set of data for allowing identity access to different tools. So just really digging down into what they knew so I could ask better questions.

[00:44:17] Speaker B: Excellent. I mean, just like, don’t be afraid to just figure how things work.

Thank you, Kristen. Hey Liz, where do you get feedback from?

Where do you get training from? Let’s bridge into our next question, right, the 10% of formal training and any other thoughts you want to share with anybody, Liz?

[00:44:37] Speaker H: Yeah, I would say getting feedback, one of the things you want to look at is where, where you feel discomfort, where you’re feeling discomfort in your interactions or in your skill set, that’s a place to look to get feedback.

If you’re having discomfort in or frustration in your career progression, in your knowledge base and your interpersonal relationships in how in managing the politics, wherever you’re having discomfort, that’s a place to look to get feedback and to take a look at where you could get some kind of insight that can help smooth things things out. And you’d be surprised at where you could get that feedback from because it can come from almost anywhere. And I worked with a coach once who said listen for the gold, right? You could get really good insights from almost anyone. If you’re listening for what can actually contribute to your further progression as far as formal training.

I mean these days you really have to be self directed as to what you’re, you know, digging in to find stuff on.

I mentioned before that I’m looking for, you know, to learn more about credit unions. So I’m looking for information about credit unions. There’s like a conference that I’m booking to go to on credit unions. If there’s, you know, if you’re looking to get certified, there’s a million certifications on, on LinkedIn. Most of them are free.

And if you show the interest and the aptitude and you start applying them and demonstrating your usage of it, you’d be surprised at how much your leadership gets on board with supporting you with actual training dollars.

[00:46:30] Speaker B: Excellent. Liz, thank you for joining us this week. Derek.

You know, I almost want to ask you the reverse of this in the security world because there’s so much training and certifications around the, you know, around different aspects of security, broader niche areas.

I almost want to get your sense of like how do you get trained without having to go to these courses? Like, what are you doing to actually get, get hands on learning?

[00:46:58] Speaker A: Well, as mentioned earlier, some of the times it’s just shadowing some of the people that are actually in that space within your organization.

That’s usually where it helps to kind of help you figure out. Is this something you really want to get into? Figure out what your current skill sets are and where you need to increase those to help make you more vers in that particular space. But as mentioned always, some of the other, you know, public forums that are out there, like the Red Hats and Some of the IC squared and infoseC world, they also have workshops that you can attend. Not full blown courses, but they’re things that you can take to again get a better understanding, better simulation, what’s taking place.

A lot of schools now offer, you know, AI and cyber security type stuff. MIT comes to play. They have it for managers. Those are just starting out. Those that actually have a little bit experience in how to take that much, much further and they’ll give you a certificate on top of it. Harvard offers one called Cyber Risk and Resilience. It works with strategic frameworks and how to align the business goals with resilience type strategies to put those in place. And then, you know, also look at other groups like the SIM that we mentioned too. Sometimes they have workshops or things that will take place. We don’t have to take a formal course, but it’s another introduction into that particular space to help you work. There are other few things that you can work with podcast or other services. One I like listening to is Cyber Wire and it kind of gives you updates of the speakers, different people in the industry to kind of give you insights, some of the challenges they may be experiencing and some of the new innovations that are coming up, people are looking at that you may consider to adopt. So it just kind of varies as far as what, what you’re looking into and how deep you want to get. There’s something out there for everybody, but you do have to look for it.

[00:48:35] Speaker B: You know, I want to Encourage anybody who’s listening in the security field that needs some help around this. Do reach out to Derek or reach out to me or Joanne or Joe if you’re outside of the security field. There’s a ton of learning material out there and absolutely easy to get lost. So if you want feedback, you know, is this course good for me? Should I make the investment in here? It’s a question I often get because you know your enterprise, your company has you wired into certain channels of learning and you should take advantage of that.

As others have mentioned, there’s a lot of free training out there.

If you are a subscriber to LinkedIn Learning, do visit starcio.com AI Transformation My new learning course on digital transformation for leaders in the Genai era is up there for you to take plenty of good examples there. I really like Chris’s recommendation too. Keep track of what you are learning and there’s a great book I read that really helped me get organized around how to take notes in the digital area. Forget the name of it but every year around January I publish a blog post of all the books that I’ve read from the previous years previous year and which ones have made an impact with me. So do read, do share a review, do tell people what’s working for you in terms of what you’re learning. And those are just some of my examples of where formal training can be hyper useful for you. John, what are you doing to learn?

[00:50:11] Speaker G: Well I, I do all sorts of stuff to learn.

I was gonna if make one comment on you know, becoming a manager and that to me the biggest manager biggest difference between a manager and employee is that a manager acts like an owner of a company and they take accountability on things and to me there’s nothing else. It’s like almost a bit changes in somebody’s head and they have behaviors that are, that are slightly different and they start taking accountability and ownership of things and that’s to me if you want to be a manager that’s that’s what’s what it’s really about more than anything else how I learned. I’ve gotten so much guidance and feedback and mentorship and I am so appreciative of what I have. I really grew up in the professional world at a company, those large consulting company that had very strong culture of it and it was really helpful most of the time.

One of the things I always did is try to get on the same page as my manager. I was doing something that probably a lot of people do but I would sit with my Manager, make sure I really understood my role and my responsibilities.

And I would understand, like, what does success look like and what do I have to do to make you happy? And, like, you know, like, at the end of the year, like, what do I have to do? So you say good things about me and help me get me to the next level. And a lot of times I had really good managers, and they’d be like, okay, we’re all in the same this together. Like, all, you know, rising tide rises, all boats. And so, like, if you do this, it helps me. And then, like, we’ll both collaboratively do stuff, you know, better in our career. And so I had those conversations almost every year when I could.

And then I try to look up to people that are doing great or interesting things or people that I would like to aspire to, and I try to get coaching from them. When I run into challenging situations, I go get coaching from them. And that’s been so helpful. But the one thing I’ll say is I’ve gotten so much conflicting feedback saying, oh, you need to be more assertive, you need to be less assertive, you need to be more aggressive, you need to be less aggressive, and you. And it’s even like within the same week from different people. And at some point, you just have to figure out who you are and who you want to be and then decide that that’s the way you’re going to act on things. And so after leaving that large consulting company, I’ve become the one thing I’ll say is a lot calmer, more relaxed and nicer person. And I just decided that’s what I’m going to be. And there’s some consequences I face because of that.

[00:52:23] Speaker A: But.

[00:52:26] Speaker B: Thanks, John. I really like this recommendation here. Be prepared for conflicting feedback.

That’s part of what you’re going to get when you ask for it. Got a few minutes left. Joanne, where should people get formal training from?

[00:52:41] Speaker E: Well, I think one of the. One of the best sources does come from industry groups. There’s a lot of learning programs that they sponsor or that are supported or. Or authorized by them. I’m not talking about training companies, I’m talking about the industry groups. Because you will find that you get the benefit of two things. One is a formalized training on issues within the industry, meaning if it’s a, you know, learning a new process or learning a new capability, that’s one aspect. But the other is you’ll get the perspective of those who are deep in their industries. And I think that that as a Formalization of on the job experience is fantastic because then you’re learning from people who have gone the same path that you may be going.

You’re learning from their experience. But the perspective they apply to what is considered more formalized training tends to tell you where to concentrate and where not to concentrate or what’s fluff and what’s, you know, real really stuff to pay attention to. And I think from a leadership point of view, that’s probably one of the best ways that you can not only move from an individual competitor, contributor to a leader, but it’s also from a leader to moving up that food chain.

I mean, I did that a lot when I, when I was on my path to becoming a cio, I did it often and regularly, even with different industries, just to see what’s the difference. Like for example, across CIOs, you’re going to get a lot of different perspectives based on their contextual relevance, meaning what industry do they work in. It’s great to have that comparison that’s formal but informal at the same time.

[00:54:36] Speaker B: It’s such an interesting anecdote there, Liz. Joanne, like the different Personas of CIOs out there. And when you meet a lot of them, they come at the job and their industries from different perspectives. And it’s.

I don’t know if we can cover that in a coffee hour, but we should. It’d be a very interesting conversation, I think, if we did.

I do like your recommendations is really an important one for everybody is to make sure you go find and get industry experience.

I think events are really good for that, to get really broad areas.

At the workday event, I sat at a table with healthcare experts from Gartner and idc and boy, did I get a ton of jargon thrown at me that I pretty much knew. But every industry likes to have its own ways of calling customers and different entities and different types of transactions and different product categories. And, you know, it’s very easy to generalize these things. But when you get into the industry and see how people are talking, you can start feeling a little bit more confident that you can talk to talk with them. Got a few more minutes here, John. Go ahead, Go ahead, Joanne.

[00:55:53] Speaker E: Sorry, Isaac. I just wanted to make a quick comment.

You’re very correct in terms of what industry analysts will tell, will tell you in terms of jargon, but validate that with people who actually work in the sector because you may find that there’s a disparity there.

[00:56:10] Speaker B: As someone who’s been an industry analyst, that’s really good advice, Joanne.

[00:56:15] Speaker E: Well, I tried.

[00:56:17] Speaker B: There’s a complete acknowledgment there. We tend to talk in jargon as analysts to begin with. Hey, Johnny. John. John, you had your hand up. Go ahead, John.

[00:56:28] Speaker G: Yeah, I was going to say one trick if you ever want to go to a conference is write a paper, and then if your paper gets accepted, your company almost always has to pay for you to go to that conference. And so that’s the best boondoggle trick I’ve ever learned.

[00:56:39] Speaker B: Excellent. I did that as well. Joe and Krista, be ready. I’m coming back to you after Joe.

[00:56:44] Speaker D: All right, two things I want to do, and I’ll try and do them quickly. Back in the 90s, I was the CIO at a reinsurance company, and Urs Foley and I both volunteered for the ANSI x25 EDI Technology Committee to design the EDI messages.

Now, you have to understand that I had no experience in the reinsurance industry, and here I was with an industry group trying to design how companies would communicate amongst themselves in all of the many different transactions that occur. So you want to talk about a training forum. Yeah, volunteer for some industry group, as Joanne alluded to. The other thing I want to mention quickly is another training another source of training material. My good friend Yuri Aguilar, who’s the global CIO at Tokyo Marine, spoke at a conference recently, and he told us about the CIA’s training program. The CIA tells their agents that they should wait w a I t ask yourself, why am I talking? I should be listening.

And if you’re not sure why you’re talking, then waste ask yourself, why am I still talking?

It was humorous, but it really drove home the point that you learn the most when you close your mouth and open your ears.

[00:58:07] Speaker B: I love lessons from Yuri. Yuri is a great friend of two, and he’s got a lot of wisdom.

He’s worked at some of the biggest ad agencies, so places where you always have to be listening before you’re speaking.

Really good advice there. Thank Joe for joining us today.

Kristen, last word.

Training, learning, feedback.

Do you have a last bit of advice for anybody in terms of being able to take the baton and get to your next level of your career?

[00:58:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I kind of take two approaches or learned that one approach was more valuable than I thought it would be.

1 actually, I have been on different government boards, for school boards and things like that. And when doing that, I actually learned more about how people interact with each other. But I also met people from various different industries and So I was able to kind of pick their brain and learn from them. But also even in that we had workshops that we do as school board members to learn about different things about schools. But we also really focus on having that growth mindset and reading books about growth mindset. And that was really valuable for me.

The the second really is in the space of branching out into reading outside of, you know, sorry, mumbling.

Like if you’re working with a particular product, really working with those partners that you have and learning from them what they see as best practice and how they’re learning their product as they’re supposed to be the knowledgeable people. But so how do they actually learn about their product and really digging into that with those partners.

[01:00:04] Speaker B: Kristin, some really good, lasting advice here. Love the idea of going to government and school boards. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone the first time you step into one of those. And if you ever feel uncomfortable dealing with your organizational politics, you know, go to one of those boards and just, you know, be a fly on the wall, listen before talking. And you could just get really good insights on how people who have been doing this, you know, either careers or for a long time maneuver their way through dialogue. And it’s a little bit scary, but it’s an easy way of learning without putting yourself out there. Really fascinating conversations actually turned out far better than my expectations for this one.

So I want to thank all my guests. A special thanks to Kristen Farley for stepping out of her comfort zone. Joining us today to talk about how digital trailblazers prepare to take the baton. Folks, next week we’ll be talking about the real cost of tribal knowledge, why losing your people can bring ops to a standstill.

Really excited for that one. And on the third, we’ll be talking about agility at risk, smarter AI and data governance that drives innovation.

Easiest way to find coffee hours, go to drive.starcio.com Coffee click on the button to add it to your calendar and they will give you a link in there that will always redirect to the upcoming episode. Folks, everybody have a great weekend. I hope you’ll find some time this weekend to do some learning and reading and we’ll be back here next week for our next coffee with digital trailblazers. Everybody have a great weekend. Thank you for all the questions and insights on the common stream today as well.