Summary

In this episode, CTO Talila Millman shares her Triumph Framework—a 7-step guide to successful organizational change. She talks about navigating digital transformation, embracing next-gen tech, and why transparency is crucial during mergers. Plus, Talila offers advice for women in tech and aspiring female leaders. Don’t miss these insights!

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Talila Millman
01:21 Trends in SaaS and Digital Transformation
04:05 Challenges in Digital Transformation
04:46 The Triumph Framework Explained
09:39 Success Stories Using the Triumph Framework
17:02 Next-Gen Technologies Impacting Business
21:24 Managing Mergers and Acquisitions
27:19 Integrating Teams Post-Merger
30:25 Opportunities for Women in Tech
34:40 Advice for Aspiring Women Leaders
36:15 Final Thoughts on Collaboration

Transcript

Executive Connect Host (00:01.42)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we have an exceptional guest, Talila Millman, an experienced CTO and transformative leader known for her impact with B2B SaaS companies and mid-market corporations. Talila has driven innovation and growth across organizations, leading cross-functional teams and implementing large-scale digital transformation strategies.

She brings a wealth of knowledge from roles at Motorola, Stanley, Black & Decker, and Millman Tech, where she helped companies scale and optimize their product portfolios. Talila is also a published author and influential speaker and the creator of the Triumph Framework for Organizational Transformation. Thank you so much for being here today, Talila.

Talila Millman (00:54.617)
I’m so happy to be here, thank you.

Executive Connect Host (00:58.284)
want to just jump right in and talk a little bit about you as a leader and how digital transformation has changed over the last few years. You’ve been at the forefront of it. And I want to just get your perspective on some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing in the SaaS industry today.

Talila Millman (01:21.209)
That’s a great question, Melissa. Thank you for asking me this. So I think the pandemic had a lot of influence on the SaaS industry because one of the things that companies realize is the importance of having things on the cloud where it’s accessible, whether people are in the office or outside the office, they could see the flexibility and the scalability of SaaS and how

easy it is to use it. So we are seeing more SaaS growth. We’re seeing flexibility. We’re seeing scalability. One of the biggest trends that we see in the last few years, of course, is AI and machine learning. And that’s not just SaaS, that’s across all industries. But I think SaaS is one of the industries that’s is impacted strongly by AI.

Executive Connect Host (02:18.033)
Yeah, I agree. think I’ve seen a lot of changes myself in SaaS. And I know you’ve helped clients streamline their operations to really increase growth and drive revenue. I want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you’re seeing when companies try to pursue digital transformation and scale.

Talila Millman (02:40.557)
there are many challenges. would say that one of the biggest challenges is resistance to change.

Change is not easy. And even when customers, even when people want to change, they just tend to naturally revert to what they’ve done before. So there is resistance to change because people don’t want change and there is just the natural going back to what they used to do before. So that’s a big, big portion of the challenges that.

that leaders have to to face. Another big challenges is fragmented systems where you have to change many things because companies have so many different systems and putting a one plan that works across the board is so big and complicated. And then there is another challenge that has to do with the fact that there is a lot of data, but when you try to automate, it’s not that easy because

The data is there, but it’s not always accessible and there’s not always a plan on how to access and so forth. So it’s very important to put in place a strategy on how to reach this data, what you want to do with it and how to best utilize it to increase the business value.

Executive Connect Host (04:05.822)
Yeah, I think I would absolutely agree. Change is hard. when you’re developing products and being an engineer myself, I know we’re very black and white people. And when we’re moving through change, there’s a lot of gray that is not really super clear. So I think I would absolutely agree. I want to talk a little bit about you created a really unique system called the Triumph Framework that helps organizations really

pivot and make change. And so can you share a little bit about the seven steps of the Triumph framework and maybe some key takeaways for our listeners?

Talila Millman (04:46.403)
Yeah, thank you for the question. So triumph is actually an acronym, right? Triumph have seven letters and these are seven letters for the seven steps in the system. So T is for think and get to the root cause. And that really addresses the fact that in a lot of transformations, leaders look at the symptoms.

And sometimes they rush to handle the systems without fully understanding the root cause. So it’s really important to dig deep and understand where the problem is coming from. You know, it’s like, I want to give you a very stark statement. Dealing with the symptoms without dealing with the root cause is like giving cough drops to a lung cancer patient.

It results in an immediate relief, but it does not solve the problem that continues to fester. So the first step has to be understanding the root cause of the challenge. That’s the T. Then you go to the R. R is recognize the stakeholders. And we talked about the fact that one of the biggest challenges in a transformation is getting

people to change, the resistance to change. So once you recognize who the stakeholders are and you work with them, you bring them in, you form alliances with them, that kind of thing, you make them part of the transformation. That kind of helps a lot with the resistance because now they’re part of it. They work with you. They don’t resist. They just help you along. They push things forward. So that’s the R.

Executive Connect Host (06:25.482)
.

Talila Millman (06:34.733)
The next thing is I, ideate a plan. And I call it ideate because the first step is not to get into the details, but get the strategy in place. And ideate is really looking at where you are now and forming a path from the present to the future without repeating the mistakes of the present, right? So that’s the ideating plan.

Executive Connect Host (06:55.786)
.

Talila Millman (07:03.295)
You is unwavering communication because if you don’t communicate, again, we need to deal with resistance to change. We need to deal with the fact that people want to know where they are. People are concerned. People have. And the important thing about this step is that it’s not a one-time communication. You have, that’s why I call it unwavering communication, because you have to continuously communicate. Otherwise people.

Forget people don’t always understand fully, you have to continuously communicate. After the unwavering communication, the next is mobilized grassroots support. And that again, deals with the fact that change is hard and you as a leader cannot be always everywhere and talk with everyone. So you want the champions within the organizations, ambassadors.

Executive Connect Host (07:49.558)
you

Talila Millman (08:02.627)
to help you drive the message and drive the execution. And that makes it so much more effective because again, this is the power of everyone working together towards a goal. After we have P that’s put the plan to action, that’s the execution, and we can spend like hours just talking about this phase. And then H is hone your plan because no plan.

can go through execution and remain unchanged. There’s always things that happen, right? Things never go, you have to plan, but there’s always things that come from left field from all directions. So you have to do something about it and that’s home the plan. You have to continuously work it, so to deal with what you’re dealing with.

Executive Connect Host (08:48.378)
Okay.

Executive Connect Host (08:55.182)
I love that you, those are amazing steps because I was thinking as you were saying how many times I’ve been part of change or process changes or technology changes where there were so many cooks in the kitchen. Nobody was communicating with the doers and the doers were looking to the leaders and they were all fighting and so we kept trying to hone the plan, hone the plan, hone the plan and

Two years later, haven’t even executed where we started. So I want to hear a little bit about some of your success stories with this framework and just from your customers and clients.

Talila Millman (09:39.993)
So let me tell you, I have a lot of stories. I want to tell you one story where I came to an engineering organization as the VP of engineering and I was told, the president of the division told me that the engineer organization was in terrible shape. They weren’t meeting deadlines. They had terrible quality.

organization was really suffering because in that organization, if there were missing deadlines or if there were quality issues, they had to actually pay penalties to customers. And they suffered reputation losses, reputation losses, penalties, everything. And it was all because the engineer organization was terrible. But he said, you don’t have to worry about it.

understand what needs to be done. I already got you the budget. I already started moving towards the right way to do things. All you need to do is come and execute. So I’m coming in and I did something kind of radical. I actually talked to my staff, talked to the people, talked to my peers. And I found out that things were not what they seem, right? This is the first steps. Understand the root cause.

They were telling me, my staff was telling me, of course we didn’t meet deadlines. We told them that we cannot meet the deadlines, but nobody listened to us. Apparently what was happening, and this is kind of a common, this is why I chose this story because it’s very common in technology organization where sales go, talk with customers, promise features without coordinating with engineering and product and engineering just cannot.

meet those deadlines, cannot meet those standards. And so they’re set up for failure, but it’s not really an engineering issue. So just solving engineering, improving engineering team wouldn’t have helped. have to change the entire process. And I just want to say, it’s not that I blame sales, by the way, they had, they had reasons why they were in this situation. Part of it was because engineering never gave them dates.

Talila Millman (11:57.281)
Never committed to anything. So it wasn’t just sales. It wasn’t just engineering. It was a problem of the entire organization. And so basically once I realized what the root cause is, we had to put a plan in place. I, basically I teamed with sales. I teamed with product. I teamed with the testing. I teamed with all other organizations.

And the reason why it was kind of easy in that case to team with everyone was because the organization as a whole, the division as a whole was suffering and everybody wanted to correct it. There was a little bit of resistance, right, from the sales team because they had to change the way they did things. There was resistance from my team as well because they had to change things. But overall, we formed a

a great partnership with all my peers. All of them were on board. The president of the division was on board and we formed a plan and the plan dealt with the process, the breakage in the process between sales and engineering. It also dealt with problems and challenges within the engineering teams that led to less efficiencies that

Executive Connect Host (13:10.25)
.

Talila Millman (13:23.641)
caused them not to be able to tell sales what would be the date. And it was a big plan. We had like, just for engineering, we had like 12 items that we were working on. And when it came to communication, I didn’t want to just say we’re solving this issue or that issue. I called it the…

campaign for greatness, the drive for greatness, because I said, we are going to be a great engineer organization. We’re going to be a great company. This is not solving this small issue or that small issue. This is us getting to be great. so that was the kickoff. And we kicked it off with engineering, with sales, with product, with support, with all the division, with all the organization.

within the division. And then we continue to communicate across time. So every month I would have a monthly all hands engineering meeting. I would go to the sales and product and all the other organizations within the division to tell them how we were doing. Every success that we had, we celebrated.

People had questioned, said, hey, look, it’s three months and things are the same. And I said, yes, until we have the next release, things are not going to get better. And this is, I gave them expectation. said, this what you should expect. And we met all the expectations, all the milestones that we set to ourselves. And that’s why, that’s how we build the trust and the confidence and the success. And it kind of.

Once you build confidence and success, it’s like a snowball, right? It keeps growing and growing. So that was the communication. For Mobilize Grassroots Support, I had ambassadors who were within my team that really drove this. So for instance, we had an initiative as part of this initiative for innovation. So I had an innovation council with people that were known to be innovators driving this. I had an agile.

Talila Millman (15:44.073)
methodology initiatives. So I had a group within my, I had a 600 people group within the 600 people. We had the one small team of 20 people that were already agile. So they were the one leading that specific initiative. So we had ambassadors for each one of the initiatives. And then when we talk about put the plan to action,

We had a lot of, we had regular, as I said, regular milestones we followed. had very strict project management processes to make sure that everything was running the way it should. And we kept honing the plan. We kept adding goals, we kept changing goals. And this was so successful. to look at the outcome, we improved quality by 88%. We got to meet.

95 % of all the deadlines on time and some even ahead of time. And that was so successful that we were able to focus on innovation and we came out with a product that was a market leader and resulted in 20 % more sales.

Executive Connect Host (17:02.896)
That’s amazing. I love that you said that because I was going to take us down that road with innovation. And you mentioned it a little bit at the beginning when you were talking about AI and

Technology is moving quick these days and I think a lot of businesses are trying to find a way to stay ahead of technology, but really making sure they also have operational stability, right? So if you’re constantly pushing towards innovation, it’s going to be sometimes like you’re mentioning with sales, they’re going to be selling one thing and they’re going to be getting a different product. So I want to talk about some next gen technologies that you believe are

going to have the greatest impact on businesses in the next five years, kind of looking five years ahead. What is your perspective on that?

Talila Millman (17:54.521)
There are so many great technologies out there. Of course, AI, I mean, you have to talk about AI now as something that’s already making significant change. And I believe that the AI revolution is like the internet revolution. know, internet really changed our life. And I don’t think that when it was first introduced, we understood everything or all the changes, but now

How can you do anything without internet? Right? So I believe that AI is the same. I call it, the one thing that I want to say about AI, it’s like AI wasn’t invented with chat GPT. I’m in this industry for more than 25 years. two years ago, I want to say two years before

Executive Connect Host (18:39.982)
you

Talila Millman (18:52.531)
chat GPT was introduced. I was working in in a corporation when we were improving an AI algorithm that was invented seven years before. So AI has always been there, but what’s happening now is that open AI kind of democratized the concept of AI brought it to the forefront and the capabilities today are so much more than they used to be in the past.

So I believe that this is one of the trends, one of the biggest things that will change our world for the better. So that’s of course is one thing 5G and beyond. So this is about connectivity, right? And this is the incremental growth that we see with more bandwidth, being able to do everything on the go from everywhere.

It’s already impacting us and I think it will continue to impact us. The other thing, blockchain. So usually people, when they think about blockchain, they think about Bitcoin. And I think crypto is important, but I think beyond crypto, blockchain has a potential to impact so many industries because it brings transparency, it brings security.

I can see more and more uses in finance, in technology, in, well, of course, technology, but in finance, in security, in supply chain and so forth. It’s been there and there has been a promise for a while. I believe at some point it will fulfill the promise that everybody’s talking about. I would say, you know, AR and VR.

This is something that I don’t see that continuing to evolve and having a big impact. I know that Google Glasses failed initially, but maybe in the future we will see a better version of it that all of us could use. And of course, there’s quantum computing that can solve complex

Talila Millman (21:19.321)
problems that we cannot solve with the tools that we have now.

Executive Connect Host (21:24.585)
Yeah, I love that. think that’s a great perspective. I want to pivot a little bit. I know in the tech sector, we’ve seen a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the last few years. And I want to talk a little bit about, you you’ve led successful mergers, successful change within organizations.

I want to talk a little bit about your perspective and some critical steps to managing a merger and acquisition, which is significant change. We talked a little bit about change and just kind of get your perspective on how it’s going and the tech sector and just things to look for when you’re going through a merger.

Talila Millman (22:06.179)
So I would say that a merger, just like you said, is a change. so I would, the Triumph framework is a great way to approach it, right? First of all, you have to figure out why you did that. And there are different reasons for mergers. Sometimes it’s about synergy. Sometimes it’s about getting market share. It’s not one size fits all. There are different.

reasons for why the merger occurs. First of all, you have to define what is the main goal with the merger, what you want to accomplish. Then you want the entire organization aligned around it. This is about stakeholders. First of all, you have to talk with your customers, make sure that they understand what’s happening. You want to talk with

other industry players with your suppliers, and you want to talk with people within the organization and make sure that they’re all aligned and are supporting you. I remember when we were, I was a part of,

a Motorola division that was acquired by Infinite. And one of the things that the first thing that we did was we had a, after the merger, after the acquisition happened, not merger, the acquisition happened, was that we went and spoke with all our customers. They had a lot of concern. I remember one of them saying, part of your, the way they put it was that

part of our strength was our great people. What are we going to do to keep them? How do we know that in a few months they won’t all go away and it will not work? So we had to answer questions. They had real concerns. So we had to answer these questions. answers, of course, are not enough. Talks are not enough. You have to prove. But we had good answers. So it gave us the time to show them and prove them that it’s not

Talila Millman (24:23.167)
only that the merger is going to work and we’re going to keep our people, but it’s actually going to work better for them. They’re going to benefit from this. talking is the, and that leads to communication, of course. So ideating a plan is how you’re going to execute on it. What are the steps that you need to take? Communication. So not only communication to customers, internal communication and transparency is one.

of the most important things, being transparent, being accessible to employees. Employees are going through turmoil. They don’t know what’s going to happen. And you can lose your best employees in this type of situation unless you talk with them and you explain exactly what’s going to happen, what’s expected of them, what are the steps that are going to be taken in the future and where we want to go.

So unwavering communication, transparency, this is super, super, super important. Mobilized grassroots support, of course you want to get people within the organization to support and drive the main things that needs to be done in the program. And of course, execution and continuously honing the process.

Executive Connect Host (25:47.096)
And I love that you said transparency. think a lot of time, like you were saying, communicating with your staff.

Morale is not at its all time high when you’re going through a change or a merger. think people are worried, you know, if there’s multiple executives with the same title, they’re not going to have, you know, multiple of the same. They’re going to shift organizations. So morale tends to be really low. And like you said, communicating with your staff and telling them, here’s what I know, we’re going to work through it. And really going after those answers for your team is really key, I think, during

any organizational change. I wanted to get kind of a different perspective on when you’re integrating teams and you’re the acquired organization, you’re coming into a new organization, can you share some best practices in getting those teams integrated because they’re coming from different cultures, they’re coming from different experiences and everybody’s already on

You know, their spidey senses are up, they’re already on tilt, they’re not really collaborating, they’re not really being transparent. Can you share maybe some best practices with integrating teams so everybody’s pulling at the same end of the rope versus working against each other? And maybe some key metrics on how to measure success with that integration of teams.

Talila Millman (27:19.769)
Again, transparency is important, but I think the first thing that you do is is, is shared values, right? You think what should the values of the, of the new organization would be. And if you can unite everyone around these values, this, this can really help in creating the shared culture.

that you want to create because at the end of the day, what you want to do is you want to create a vibe of one organization. It’s not us versus them. It’s not us versus you. This is, we all work together for this goal. So you share the goal. You talk about the values and you bring the teams together. Maybe you bring the teams together to an offsite and you have some.

Executive Connect Host (27:59.778)
Okay.

Talila Millman (28:16.025)
team building exercises. I find that social events are important. We used to have social Sunday or we used to have once a week. Actually, I want to mention during the pandemic, I was working in Stanley Black & Decker and we had

We had a CTO, I was the CTO of two divisions that were the CTO of the entire company. And what he did was he had happy hour once a week where we talked a little bit about work, but it was mostly just getting to know each other and talking about things. And this has created such camaraderie.

such a feeling of friendship and working together. And I believe that that’s one of the ways that you unite people, right? You get them to know each other as people, not just as this role or that role, but we’re all people, we all want the same and we all need to work together.

Executive Connect Host (29:25.182)
Okay.

Executive Connect Host (29:38.445)
Yeah, I think that’s really a great nugget. Talila is taking people from a human perspective, right? Not just this is the job, this is what we got to do, but really understanding who they are, what their life looks like, and really being able to have that relationship with them before you have big asks and that could be staying late.

you know, taking a different role, but really understanding the person I think is a a really great piece of wisdom. I wanna pivot, I know you’re a big advocate for women in leadership, especially women in tech. I wanna talk a little bit about what you see are some of the biggest opportunities for women in tech next year.

Talila Millman (30:25.219)
There is a lot of growth happening, a lot of growth in a lot of areas. And I would say that some of the biggest obstacles that standing in women’s way are their own lack of confidence, sometimes lack of ambition, sometimes just going there. A few years ago when I was working in corporate,

I had a leadership position within my organization. I had the leader that left and I was looking to fill that role within the organization. I didn’t want to take somebody from the outside. And the best candidate, honestly, the best candidate was a woman that was, had a leadership role, but junior leadership. And I wanted to make her a director.

Executive Connect Host (31:18.625)
you

Talila Millman (31:22.955)
I thought she was the best candidate, whether she was a woman or not. She was appreciated by everyone. The teams loved her. She was great technically. She had great insights and she worked with all her peers fantastically. So there was no doubt in my mind that she should be the first candidate. And the leader that left, he told me, well, she is the best candidate, but I don’t think she would want it. And I talked with her. spent…

I don’t know how many hours I spent talking with her and trying to convince her to take this role. And she didn’t want to take it. She was afraid. She said, well, I’m working so hard the way it is. I want to see my family more. I’m this, I’m that. And I think she was, and I said, you know, you’re not going to work anymore. And I said, I’m here to help you. I’m here to support you. I’m here to mentor you.

We will end. And I said, I think you’re a hundred percent ready. And she.

We had at least three calls and the leader that left had calls with her as well. And it didn’t matter. It was at the end, it was her decision, right? And she decided not to take it. So a lot of the time we talk about obstacles, that was a major eye-opener for me because I think that one of the things that we need to do

Executive Connect Host (32:48.002)
Yeah.

Talila Millman (33:00.979)
is to help women find their confidence and help them get to the, they say, okay, an important statistics. They say that when men and women look at the job position, men would apply if they have 50 % of the qualification. Women would need at least 80 % to even think about applying. So I think.

Executive Connect Host (33:25.282)
And you’re right, you’re right. I think confidence is one and I think life like you were saying at the beginning change happens. So if you’re taking a leadership role,

things are gonna change. Your home life may change, your intimate life may change, but you make space for other things to come in. really, I always say, try it on. If it doesn’t fit, you can make another decision or you could step backwards. And sometimes taking a leap of faith really makes all the difference in our life. And I know

She’s lucky to have you as a mentor and a peer to share those stories because I know a lot of times it was my mentors and my peers that believed in me, that really helped me take a leap of faith and pivot my careers many times and take different roles that I had no experience in. And I really figured it out to Leela as I went. And had it not been for mentors like you, I would have not made those jumps. And so I wanna…

hear a little bit from you about what advice would you give to young women aspiring to move into tech and take leadership roles?

Talila Millman (34:40.963)
So you said it, finding a mentor, finding somebody that would believe in you and would help you because you would run into challenges. You would run into things that you would not exactly know. So having a mentor and also the other thing is having a supportive peer group. That can also helps a lot.

Executive Connect Host (35:04.02)
Yes, and I want to unpack that a little bit. A mentor is not somebody necessarily that is your boss at your job. So they have a certain interest and their interest is more about their role and their company, not necessarily what’s best for you. So I always say when you get a mentor, find somebody that’s not in your organization that is doing some of the similar things that you are looking to do.

And that doesn’t mean that people’s bosses aren’t mentors. They just have a separate lens and say somebody that’s not part of an organization you work for. So I think that’s fantastic advice. And I also say, you know, don’t let people tell you you can’t like what you were saying. If you have 50 % of a job, apply for it and try to gain skills while you’re, you know, moving through your career.

I wanna just kind of enclosing, we’ve talked about a lot of different things to Leela. I wanna get any kind of things you feel that we may have mixed or leaving our audience with any final thoughts that you might.

Talila Millman (36:15.167)
The biggest message in my book, The Triumph Framework, is about partnering and collaborative work. And I believe that that applies everywhere. We’re not an island. If we want to be successful, if we want to drive change, if we want to drive an initiative, if we want to be successful for ourselves, we need to team up.

Executive Connect Host (36:41.582)
Yeah, I agree. I think it’s such an important nugget of wisdom.

Talila Millman (36:45.815)
with others and work together in a way that would benefit everyone for.

to forward these goals. And I believe that’s the most important thing.

Executive Connect Host (37:08.366)
Thank you so much to Leela for being here. I appreciate you sharing all that you shared with our listeners. That’s the Executive Connect podcast.