Transformation through People-First Leadership - Reddy Mallidi Head of Global Ops AutoDesk

Those looking for inspiration for how to drive successful digital transformation and how to pivot a global software business to a subscription model will know of the incredible success story of Autodesk

In this episode of #GetAmplified Vic and Sam are joined by  Reddy Mallidi who shares his journey from India to Wall Street, to Pentium 3 Product Manager at Intel, to Head of Global Ops at Autodesk, automating 200,000 man hours.

Reddy shares his incredibly humbling people first approach and his experience of the close correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording. Thanks so much Reddy, you are an inspiration!

We've captured the conversation highlights, key takeaways, and recommended reading here: Transformation through People-First Leadership - Amplified Group

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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, we're virtual. I'm at home in Buckinghamshire, and for once the sun is out. Almost feels like spring month around the corner. Vicki, how's the weather in Deepastarkest Oxfordshire?

Vic 0:29

The sun is also out, and so are the daffodils. So it definitely is starting to feel like spring.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

That's all good. Happy days. Can't wait. So who have we got on podcast today?

Vic 0:40

Well, we have today Reddy Malidi. And Reddy is based in are you in San Francisco?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I am, Vicky. The sun is shining. I bet it's a bit warmer over there than it is over here.

unknown 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Happy days.

Vic 0:55

So Reddy and I we met virtually when we both realized that we were fans of Scott Heron. I think that's fair to say, isn't it, Ready?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yeah, absolutely. We were talking about the leadership attributes, and then that was the connection for us.

Vic 1:11

Yeah, absolutely. So we connected through Scott. So thank you very much, Scott. And Reddy is the head of global operations at Autodesk. And with the transformation that Autodesk has gone through and with Ready's experience of head of operations, it's always fascinating for me to hear someone's perspective who understands the importance of people-focused leadership. Because I think we can get so bogged down in the operational side of things. We forget the people element. So to see Ready's passion and enthusiasm around what we do and around the importance of looking after your people, I thought it'd be great to get your perspective ready. So I'm absolutely thrilled that you've joined us today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

I'm so excited, uh, Vicki and Sam.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Thank you. Welcome. Great stuff. So maybe Reddit, you could give us a start. You've clearly had an illustrious career, as many of our guests have. Perhaps you could give us a quick history, a quick run-through of how you got to where you are today, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, Sam, you know, the way I view my career in three different phases. After I got my master's in computer science, I went to work on Wall Street as an individual contributor. And during that phase, my success is largely or was largely dependent on my contributions and the so-called hard skills. And then the second phase, after I got my MBA and got into management, teamwork was super critical. I was a Pentium 3 product manager. I managed Intel's flagship products, and I became chief of staff for the largest business unit general manager. I was part of the COO's product and technology strategy that was developed. This, all those accomplishments, when I look back, it's, you know, during the Pentium 3, we brought in incremental revenues like$800 million. It was not because of Ready, it was all teamwork. It was all teamwork, people from the FABS, people from manufacturing and super technical and very accomplished team members would come up with the ideas. We were able to get that. It was all because of the teamwork that helped us get to those uh goals. And then the third phase is as a leader of leaders. This is when I went to China along with my uh boss to start a channel business unit. And my focus has shifted to setting the direction, empowering your leaders, and results are derived and achieved through others. And uh I'm very fortunate. I'm very, very blessed where I am now as VP of uh Global Operations. And you know, I grew up in India where you know it's a very rural area. My father did not even finish high school, so I feel very, very lucky. And today I oversee 40 different services to customers, both external and internal. So that briefly is um has been my journey.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Wow, fantastic. That's a good old run. So from rural India to the heady heights of San Francisco. Yes, absolutely. Um amazing. That's so cool. That's so cool. And and now, after all of that crazy wonderful journey, you sit on two boards, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Um and and were you were you always expecting, but you know, was that your goal, or are you looking for more? Are you gonna sit on multiple boards?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

No, you know, when it comes to carriers, uh, Sam, I have seen people taking, you know, two divergent paths. One is they would say, I want to be so-and-so, and they pursue it very vigorously. And there is a second type, there's a bit of uh experimentation. You take up a role, you bring your strengths, and you become really good at it, and also you learn. And what happens is then there are opportunities that come along, and uh you move into that new role. I fall into that uh second uh category. I took roles where I contributed and I also learned in each role. Uh from childhood, I always am, you know, uh learning is one of the things. I spent a lot of time, I read a lot of books. It's uh very passionate about you know learning the things. So that made me gain cross-functional expertise over a period of time and willing to go and experiment and learn areas that I have not known. So, you know, I wrote software and I went to do strategic planning, you know, very different skills, right? But I learned through through the uh the that progression, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I think that's really cool. I I think, you know, I think kids are too much told they have to have a plan. And I don't think the world works like that. I think, you know, I'm I'm a big cricket fan, so I use the analogy, you know, play each ball on its merit. You you know, you can only hit what's coming down the track at you. And you've got to change your game depending on what's going on. And I think that I'm definitely very much more with you in the experimental camp rather than having one great big strategic plan. I think we should be more open about that as a route.

Vic 6:47

I'm just just thinking about the way you were describing your career there and and how you've challenged yourself and you've you've learned new things. So I'm I'm just preparing today for a talk that I'm giving tomorrow for the Charter Institute of Project Management on for International Women's Day, and it's it's on imposter syndrome. That's what they've asked me to talk about. And I was doing some prep for it, and I was listening to someone talking about imposter syndrome, and they were talking about the fact that if we don't continue to challenge ourselves and learn and get too comfortable, we get complacent and then we don't feel fulfilled. So part of what you've just talked about there is you're just constantly stretching yourself, aren't you? And then maybe pivoting on that and looking at where that is going to take you next rather than necessarily mapping it out in such a way. Because I, you know, I started out as a primary school teacher, and then I had five or six different roles in in Citrix from starting out as a tech evangelist, thinking I actually thought I was going to be a Cisco techie to start with. That that that yeah, to to running Citrix's SMB business, to then going to the Emerald and doing something almost totally different again. But it was just as you I think the analogy that you just gave there, you don't know what balls are being thrown at you, you've just got to see. And the tech industry is moving so fast, isn't it? You've got to be ready to to adapt. So it's a it's a great philosophy to follow.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Oh, thank you. I mean, it's in the agility is very, very critical. And if we are not uh learning constantly, in every every role there, you will, in my opinion, uh, if you plateau your learning, that's time to change. Yeah, that's time to change.

Vic 8:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, it is.

Vic 8:35

And in fact, um, Beacon Force, which is an app that we are bringing out to help organizations that we've been working with become self-sustaining, they track trust, but they track intrinsic motivation. And one of the pillars of intrinsic motivation that keeps us motivated is are we constantly being challenged and are we learning new stuff? And how are we in charge of our own own career? Those are two of the seven pillars that they measure for intrinsic motivation. So that's bang on with what you're saying, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah, I I would I would imagine that if you looked at the most successful people, those who are lifelong learners will make up a higher percentage of successful people. You know, those who like to learn, I always used to describe it as feeding my brain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

By the way, it's also incredibly uh healthy for your brain because you know, every time you learn new skills, as I don't need to tell you, Sam and Mickey, you know, no new neurons, even at a later uh stage of your life, they continue to form, and it's good for you know your brain health and cognition and all that stuff. So there's side benefits to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Yeah, yeah, really important. Really important. Yes, yeah. Cool. So maybe you could tell us, if you don't mind ready, a little more about your role at Autodesk and the transformation you've been involved in that you've you've helped drive.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, so you know, Sam, in my role, uh the transformation came about in uh two different ways. One is transforming the global operations into the best in class, whatever we do. Um that means in uh customer satisfaction, employee engagement, business automation, expert compliance, and pricing management, et cetera. In this case, establishing the strategy, getting the people alignment and driving hard to get the results, they become super critical. And I'm very, very proud to say that we have an excellent team, very humble, always motivated to do the right thing for the company and get the results. So they came along the journey, and we are best in class operations organization, but by any conceivable uh metrics. The second one is the digital transformation. This is this is happening across many, many companies. It came uh largely when Scott was still around. It started in financial uh transformation and then it uh morphed into a bigger program. It's more systems-oriented, but involved large, large, huge teams and huge amounts of investment, quite a bit of matrix management, and it's replacing the old legacy systems, old processes and business models for revenue recognition, SKU management, treasury, financial reporting. So there was a huge effort to change those. And we went live on time, and uh, could not be more proud what the team was able to do to get this done in the middle of COVID. You know, when we started, there was no COVID, and then uh three months later, uh COVID hit us, and we had to work all everyone worked from home. It was uh very, very demanding, but the team did an outstanding job. I'm so, so proud that we were able to get it on time.

Vic 12:24

You know, what what you've just said though, it's really interesting how you just described what you did because you talked about two things, but the bit you started with was team, and you actually you finished with team as well, and the the business bit was sandwiched in the middle somewhere. But one of the most important things that we're trying to get our clients to understand at the moment, and I think you and I have had a brief discussion about this already. In fact, you pulled it out of our tech leader survey and said, Vicki, you need to do a graph on this because this is this is your big bit of news. Was that McKinsey over their last 20 years, they've looked at the transformations that they've been involved in, and only 30% of them, and this is quite a big deal for them, I suppose, only 30% of them have been successful. And yet they recognize what changes that 30% to 80% is when they put an equal amount of focus on the people as well as the business piece that you're changing. And and they're really clear about this. They they say this is not about getting HR involved and saying, HR, you're responsible for people, make sure they do it. It's about everybody in the leadership team that's driving that transformation, making people a priority and having an equal focus on people as they do actually on the on the business side of it. So for me, the fact that you started your description there with that bit, that's clearly important to you.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, you know, Vicky, regardless of what uh anyone's function and role is, people should always be a top consideration. People should not be subservient to other priorities. Uh, business and people should get equal consideration. As an example, our customer-facing teams, as I was uh saying, we have a very high customer satisfaction scores in the 90% range. Typically, in a low 80s is considered really good. And our team also deals with the most complex web of systems and processes I have ever seen. These things evolve over a period of time. So the complexity became very, very large for our teams. As a company, we have great employee engagement scores. As an organization, we probably have one of the highest engagement scores, which means probably top 1% in the industry. And uh many studies have shown if uh studies that McKinsey published and then HBR published, very strong correlation between employee engagement and the customer retention and satisfaction. In fact, what my team's results show that they're very valid. We fully validate that correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Now, coming to uh the transformation, it has a huge people element. You need to bring the team along because transformations are not just a systems transformation, they involve cultural elements. You need to align the team on the strategy, even if the strategy comes from the top, but you need to get them aligned. The second one is on the execution. If you want to get it done, you want the teams, the people need to be aligning with the same purpose. Yeah, you're always marching to towards that. And on business automation, I can give you an example. Uh, what we started as a very small automation effort, and there were ideas coming when we uh broadcast it to the team across multiple functions. There were ideas coming from every internal team and experts automated to automate things. They saw the value in it. It's a lot of uh companies. Oh, you know, if we automate that eliminates the jobs, there is that apprehension. But that was not the case because we brought the people along with us. And uh just last year we were actually able to automate over 120,000 manual hours that helped our teams. Wow. And then the year before, about um 65,000. So together in the last couple of years, we automated uh almost 200,000 manual hours. It tremendously helped our teams. It's all tasks.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, your people can get on with the fun stuff, the stuff that makes a difference. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Exactly, exactly. You know, I uh I I can give you uh a lot more examples. You know, we have the export compliance where we screen millions and millions of records every day. And today, with the automation effort, 99.9% of that is automated, and then when the system flags, then our uh experts in expert compliance, these business analysts, they go and make sure that you know they're uh looking at uh the flagged accounts and they they do the diligence, but if they have to do millions and millions every day, it's not possible, right? So they love it, and they're focusing on the most ROI, the ones that they need to check in, uh check the accounts against all these rules and uh compliance things.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Long term, that must be really good for staff retention because they're involved in the more interesting stuff and the stuff where they feel like like they actually make a difference rather than just routinely processing processing stuff in a mechanistic manner, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yes, yeah. I mean, even in Europe, when I was in uh Europe uh in a Dublin office, I see these because you know there are uh so many uh compliance uh things, and then there's uh tax calculations across multiple countries. There's a lot of cut and paste, and then I was like, hmm, this should be automated, and it it helps our you know frontline uh folks, our specialists.

Vic 18:46

I know so many organizations that we're working with that would benefit from what you just talked about. All these scale-ups that we're that we're working with that are really so much stuff. It's like we go back to Groundhog Day. How do we automate this? How do we automate this? I think I think we need a whole podcast just on that, Ready.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

We should, we should, yeah. Process a process automation podcast.

unknown 19:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

I love it, Mickey. Yeah, our passion for automation and AI, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, but you you know, you'd be surprised how many organizations don't have and or maybe even can't document their existing processes in order to get them into some form of automation. Yes, yeah.

Vic 19:35

So one of the things you just talked about, Ready, was when you were talking about automating, you were having all these ideas coming from lots of different people, but our tech leaders survey has highlighted that actually, as Jeffrey Moore said back in 2015, we're in a crisis of prioritization. I still think we're in a crisis of prioritization, and that's really come out loud and clear from the tech leader survey that we've done. And actually, we're saying that we we've been starting in the wrong place. So we start with looking at the priorities instead of starting with uh actually let's get the team dynamics bit right and let's get as ensuring that everybody's got a voice, and then we can actually have a decision rather than just the loudest person talking. What's your perspective on that?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

You know, in the last 25 years, I have worked for three different companies, Vicky. Um, I'll tell you, this is a huge challenge for many companies, organizations, and leaders. Um if everything is a priority, then there's no priority, right? So Jeffrey Moore was so, so right. It's it's a it's a crisis. We we have to do really a good job because what happens is now companies are realizing, especially with COVID, well, everyone's uh days got stretched, yes, and they're only 24 hours, and you need to take care of the families, balancing that. And so it is very, very important that you set those top priorities, one, two, three, maybe five, but that gives you a guidepost. Okay, when resources, schedule, and uh uh budgets are constrained, then which one is going to take higher priority?

Vic 21:30

I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I'll give you an example. When uh I was you know leading the uh digital transformation program, we were getting ready for uh user acceptance testing, and then uh things not always go as planned, right? This is where you need to regroup and uh change the things. And when we needed the resources, and fortunately, I have a big bigger team, and fortunately, we also have Really high customer satisfaction score. So I made a priority call and then said, you know what, we can take a little bit hit if our handling of the issues coming from the customers take a hit. That's okay. But this is higher priority. This project is very high priority. It's number one priority for the company. So I moved temporarily about 35 or so resources to help on that. So the the result was it's you know, we we've uh completed uh, we went live with very few issues on the project side. Those resources came back to do their regular day job. But that's uh because we have that one, two, three, four, five of priorities, it helped us guide where we're going to take the how they're going to guide our decisions, where we're going to compromise, versus everything is a priority. It's like, okay, you know, you're stretching people thin, especially when you know everyone is working so hard and working from home, lots of challenges. So you need to have uh those priority lists done and broadcast and well understood.

Vic 23:07

And and that for me is so critical because Patrick Lencioni, who I'm, as you know, I'm a huge fan of, at leadership level, if there is a if there is more than a degree of separation on how those priorities are ranked, as it comes down through the organization, then you're creating competition further down the chain. And people are competing against each other. And for me, that's how silos form, and that's one of the biggest things that's slowing down organizations.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I I think I've referred to it as divergence problem.

Vic 23:40

Divergence, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

You know, the the fur the further you get away from the source, yes, the the larger any divergences in thought become. Yes, because they go out at an angle and the Absolutely, that's exactly it. The angle remains the same, but the the difference is magnified the greater you are from the source.

Vic 24:03

So I think I've experienced, you know, you you're sitting in a team and you're looking at another team, and you're supposed to have the same goals, and you're thinking, why are they doing what they're doing? And it's because at the leadership level, there's a tiny uh discrepancy between actually what is the top priority. And I think the the aha moment that I had in in our conversation with Jeffrey Moore was yes, it's okay to have these priorities, but please stack rank them and actually have that discussion and make that decision. And then everybody knows where they stand and they understand the expectations. Sorry, I'll get off my I'll get off my soapbox, but it's a huge, huge.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

No, it's really it's really important. Don't stack rank your people, but do stack rank your priorities.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

There should be, Vicky, you you you're so right, there should be no ambiguity, there should be no dissonance as far as the goals and alignment on what those priorities are.

Vic 25:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

If we all know, oh, this is number one priority, we we will act and we'll make decisions accordingly. Yes, and the leaders of every function, every group should be communicating that to their organizations and then oh, okay, this is uh well, we have a resource issue, and then guess what? The top one gets the priority, right? It's clear. Yes, that there's ambiguity.

Vic 25:36

Yeah, and and for that, so one of the pieces of advice that we're giving to these um scale-up organizations that we're working with is that they need to go slow to go fast, and that they because because everybody's going at 100 miles an hour, and it does really feel this year that we've come out of the gates in January and everybody's got their foot flat down on the accelerator, and we're all racing, but they're racing against each other instead of taking the time to start with to actually make sure that that plan is in place and then they're all going in the same direction.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Oh, yeah, the plan is I, you know, planning is part of my DNA. And since I worked at one of the most planning and very structured companies for a long time, um planning is super critical. I uh I go crazy when I don't see the plan. But at the same time, you need to have the flexibility, things don't go as planned. This happens, uh I'll give you an example. Way back in my early career when I was PM3 product manager, uh, this uh CPU, uh, the brains of the computer, right? And it came when it came out of our manufacturing, it came a third uh slower. Right. And and uh you know, we never had backup plans. There was no plan B. And uh so how do you make it happen? Uh and there was a huge meeting, no one was blamed. Again, this is where I think people first leadership uh should uh come through is how do we solve it? So all the brightest minds, and we all got together, and then at the end, yes, we were able to get it to the frequency, uh some technology tweaks needed to be made. But uh what I'm saying is we had a very solid plan, but you should be able to change it as needed, and so what we actually ended up uh going instead of going the desktop first as plan, we ended up going on mobile first, and then desktop launched. So you need to have that flexibility. That's where have the plan, but be agile.

Vic 27:56

Yes. What a brilliant story. I'm sure we can all relate to that.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Lots of stories.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Absolutely. So when we talked earlier, we talked about career agility or flexibility or experimentation. Um, you know, having been, I'm not suggesting remotely that you're anywhere near the end of your career. You're clearly still a very young man with with many years of uh excellent leadership left in you. But if you were starting again, what would you what would you say to yourself when you know when you were an 18-year-old starting out in on this journey?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

You know, Sam, that that's that's a fabulous question. Um software skills are hard. It almost feels like the opposite, but software skills are hard, and they take a long time. They take a long time. It's not it's not like uh you can you know take a manual and learn Python code and write a program, right? It's uh those are in in my career and my life, I found them. The harder skills are a bit easier than the softer skills. Um it's uh if I if I'm 18 years old, I would focus, I would probably focus a little bit more heavily on the softer skills because it involves people. It involves people, and how each one of us are made is the effect of billion variables, you know, where you grow up, or your parentage, your economic, your culture, religious, and all those variables make us who we are, right? And so we are very unique. And you know, that's why cultural changes in any organization or company takes two to five years, right? And I would have uh focused a bit more on the softer skills, hard skills you can learn. I mean, you know, 15 years after I stopped writing code or 1518, I went on to build an application for my daughter uh because I wanted her to learn SAT vocabulary. I learned uh, you know, uh Python code and built an application on the phone. It's it's uh I'm not saying software skills are easy to learn, but relatively speaking, uh the softer skills. How do you you know deal with the conflict, all those things?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

The softer skills side of things is is to some extent about experience because it's you know it's it's not a written-down fact. Whereas the you know, the harder skills to some extent, you know, you learn how the code works and then you can build it.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Right. The softer skills are not qualified or well defined.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

There's no manual for human beings, right?

Vic 30:42

There isn't a manual, but I do think you can learn, and I think part of it comes with self-awareness because for sure, when I was in my early career, I would describe, I didn't know I was doing it, but I think I was pretty much like a bulldozer. You know, I was passionate about what I was doing, and I was I just wouldn't let anything get in my way at all. Whereas now I still have to practice it, but I'm really learning to be more quiet and to be more empathetic and to ask other people's opinions and to harvest those from the start. And that's really, I think, the main thing that we're helping our clients with now. I don't think I've used this analogy on the podcast, but I use it a lot. We talked right at the beginning already about Sam and his garden. So um, I had a really big vegetable patch down the bottom of my garden, and every spring I would go to my vegetable patch and it would be in beautiful, neat rows of seedlings. And my ambitions were all I was going to do a really good job. And then by the time summer came, I'd be hunting under the weeds to find it because I've been distracted and there'd be other stuff that I needed to do. So my good intentions had gone out the window. And then what I did was I decided to build a framework of raised beds. And this framework is five raised beds that I dug out and I lined. And the reason that this story is relevant, I do this when I'm in person and I hold up my I've I've got a prong of a fork that I broke my fork because the soil was so hard. And this framework of raised beds, it wasn't a complicated thing to do, but it took an awful lot of physical effort. Now, what that means is now when I go down to start this year off, it'll take me five minutes to get the beds ready, and then we're ready to go. And then actually weeding is five minutes because I've put the foundations in place. And it wasn't complicated, but my goodness, it took a lot of effort. And I say a lot of what we do, it's not complicated, but gosh, it takes an awful lot of effort. And I think where we differentiate ourselves with what we're doing with our clients, and actually, I've been working with the leadership team again this morning, and it was wonderful to see actually the things that we talked about in November, and then I was back with them last week, they're starting to use as muscle memory and they're practicing it and they're holding each other accountable too. Actually, this is how we need to work together, but they're practicing and they're helping each other with it. And that takes a lot more effort than going in and doing a workshop and going, right, we've done our thing now, we're off again. We've all got it.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vic 33:28

That's that to me is a complete waste of time. So sorry it took me a long time to say that, but I do think it it is possible to learn it. It starts with understanding ourselves, then about the team dynamics, and then supporting each other on this journey. And it makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Oh, it it it it does. You know, you you need to put the time, and going back to what you said, Vicky, it's you slow down to go faster. Yes. You put the plan, you put the uh the effort to make it easier down the road as you're giving that analogy on raising these uh vegetable or garden beds, right? Because then it becomes easier down the road. It's so you're spending only five minutes or ten minutes versus you know a few hours.

Vic 34:16

Yeah, and actually, I really like the analogy because we're about building teams of teens, and that comes from General Stanley McChrystal. And he talks about um not servant leaders but gardener leaders. And gardener leaders are those that create the right environment for their teens to flourish, and that's what you do as a gardener. You know, you you're providing you don't you don't grow the bean, you are not the bean, right? You're providing the environment for the bean to bean to grow. I don't know, maybe you were disagreeing with me, Sam, on on it, like whether I no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

I I I really I really like that analogy. I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but it it does make sense, create the right environment. And yeah, you you can't grow the beans, no, but you can put put stuff in place to enable the beans to grow.

Vic 35:05

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I really, really like that. Really like it.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

That's very cool. I I love vegetable gardening, and then when we lived in Portland, we were so always those, you know, we had uh in a big yard, but in in the Bay Area, uh, it's a luxury, so we don't have, but so we put uh a few herbs and a few tomato plants on the patio, but that's the actual basil plant on the kitchen window.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Sorry, in American basil.

Vic 35:37

Thanks for the presentation, Sam.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

So and as we start to wrap up, we're running fairly close to time here. Um, would you be so kind as to give us your three key takeaways for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Oh, absolutely, Sam. First one, always treat people fairly. Number two, most of the people, regardless of their race, national origins, gender, all variables, they're very nice and have good intentions. And then thirdly, be humble regardless of what your accomplishments are. I'll uh I can elaborate on each one of them, you know, when I say always treat people fairly. Being the people first leader, it takes patience, it takes investment in time. Knowing them personally and talking to them frequently and not coming to quick judgments about that, it takes patience, it takes time. As leaders, we have to balance business needs and people needs. The higher we grow as leaders, the impact of our decisions they get amplified, they get super, super amplified. So we need to keep the human element at the top of our minds. That's why always treat your people right and fairly. And when I was talking about, you know, most of the people are nice and have good intentions. I came to this conclusion. I was uh uh talking to Vicky before you joined, uh Sam. I probably in my career, I traveled to 30 different countries and lived in three different countries, US, India, I grew up, and then I lived in uh Shanghai, China. I come back to this conclusion about you know people being nice and they have good intentions. The more people I meet, my uh that thought, that theme is reinforced even more so. And then, you know, coming to the third one, be humble. That, you know, I have been very, very fortunate uh to be surrounded by really accomplished people. I have had the good fortune to be working with people, you know, one of my friends invented USB, for example, right? I was working with someone, uh, he had at the time, uh, this was many years ago, he had 200 patents issued. And then now he's getting close to, after 12 years, he has he's getting close to uh 500 patents in his name. And my boss, I reported to many years ago, he was managing a business that was somewhere between 27 to 30 billion dollars, and then uh a CFO of a company with over 50 billion dollars, you see them, you see them, and they look like you know, just ordinary people or the simplicity of a school teacher. And when people, those brilliant minds and superb leaders, when they don't have any ego, what makes me, you know, well, why should I have show any ego that keeps me? Well said, well said very grounded.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

You're well said. I think that's perfect. Would you be so kind as to ask to ask your friend who invented USB why it's never the right way up? I would, I would it's what one of the one of the mysteries of the tech world, whichever way you put a USB, you've always got to do it three three three turns before it actually goes in. Yeah, no, I yeah, um so last question before we let you go and get on with your day. Uh as I appreciate it's it's near the beginning of your day, whereas for us over here in the UK, it's coming up for tea time. Um, we're asking our guests to recommend a book in this series. What would your recommendation be? Anything from Harry Potter to Simon Sinek.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

You know, um that's that's an easy one. Here is my book. Trillion Dollars College. Yeah, here is here is why I highly, highly recommend it. Anyone who wants to be a people first leader, they should read it. It shows why people are so important. The best quote I can give from the book is your title makes you a manager, but your people make you a leader. There is a lot of truth to that, right? It has many practical tips from how to do one-on-ones. This is obviously about you know Bill Campbell, who coached hundreds and hundreds of people in the in the Silicon Valley and what he did. But his approach was always treat people right, right? People first. Yeah, people first. So I highly recommend this book.

Vic 41:11

Yeah, so it was one of my recommendations last summer, and actually I listened to it in the summer, and he it absolutely validated what we're doing. Really inspirational. Great recommendation, thank you. Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

I like that. I should read that one myself, I think.

Vic 41:33

It's really good, it's really good, really good. Fascinating. Um, he used to go for a Sunday walk with with Steve Jobs, and he coached the guys, the the founders of Google. Um absolutely, absolutely fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

It's a it's a great book. It's a great book, and uh, I didn't know uh that he went to Colombia just a couple of decades decades before I did, but right and then Scott too. Scott Scott and you know, we were were from the same school.

Vic 42:06

Yeah, Scott, Scott posts on Columbia quite often, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Yeah, yeah, he went to the business school a few years before I did, but uh you know uh Bill Campbell, uh he went to Colombia. I think he graduated in 1960 or something before even when I was born. But there are a lot of great stories in there.

Vic 42:24

There's some really incredible stories in there. Yeah, absolutely fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Thank you. That that one sounds well worth checking out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, great stuff. Well, thank you for that. So stay stay humble, stay fair, and treat people as as if they're gonna be nice until they prove you otherwise.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Great stuff. On that note, it just remains for me to say thank you, Rennie. We really appreciate your time. That was an excellent podcast. And 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.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Ricky. It was wonderful stuff. Great talking to you.