Summary

Fernando Paz shares his inspiring journey leading global engineering teams, revealing how aligning teams with a shared mission can turn failing projects into triumphs. Discover his top leadership hacks for boosting innovation, embracing diversity, and mastering time zones in this must-hear episode!

Chapters

00:00 The Journey into Engineering and Leadership
06:54 Transforming Project Failures into Success
13:02 Leading Global Teams: Cultural and Time Zone Challenges
17:51 Balancing Tradition with Innovation: The Role of AI
24:08 Continuous Learning and Growth in Engineering
32:01 The Importance of Diversity in Engineering Teams
36:55 Authenticity and Leadership: Final Thoughts

Transcript

Melissa Aarskaug (00:02.9)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we have Fernando Paz here to talk about his story and his journey leading global engineering teams for over 20 years, mentoring top tech talent and advocating for diversity. Fernando, what sparked you to get into engineering and your passion for leadership?

Fernando Paz (00:28.638)
Well, hey, Melissa, thanks for having me on. super happy to be here. Love the first question. Yeah, you know, started, I always liked, you know, math and science is a pretty typical story. But I always found that the classes that I enjoyed most were the ones that moved maybe, guess, away from some of the theory and moved towards more the practical application of the theory and of the science.

And so that’s what I knew kind of early on that I, what I loved about engineering is where the theoretical concepts, how things work, the laws of physics, the laws of electro, electromechanics and all the physical laws, how they get applied to bring value to, people and to make a better place. so

I love that idea of on the engineering side of like bringing that it’s with this intersection of theory and reality and bringing value in that space. And then just before that fundamentally, I just love to build things. My hobbies are all around building. We were talking earlier about my love of DJing and building musical sets is kind of very similar to that. So engineering is this cross section of math and science.

with art, bringing that to bring valuable solutions to humans. And I love doing that.

Melissa Aarskaug (01:59.724)
Yeah, and as a fellow engineer, I know that 70 % of projects fail due to poor leadership. It’s unbelievable, 70 % costing companies billions of dollars. And I want to get your perspective from a leadership standpoint, how can we turn these failing projects into successful projects? There’s something you can…

point your finger to and share with us on A, why so many of these projects fail and B, is there something that could be done to make them more successful?

Fernando Paz (02:37.606)
Yeah, so I love the question. And there’s several things that came to mind immediately. I remember early on, I was looking for the answer to this question. I was a young first time frontline manager.

And I had a software schedule that I wanted to make sure we made it on time and we were falling behind schedule. And I was looking for some magic on how to make it happen. And I remember thinking to myself, know, how do you so much of engineering is requires innovation and invention. And I was like, how do you invent faster or how do you predict your ability to invent something? And I was struggling with this question and I took a tour.

of an animation studio. I grew up in Florida. There was an animation studio in Disney and it had just opened up. And I noticed they were hand animating a movie. And I thought to myself, okay, animation is art. They have a schedule. How do they create art faster or on schedule? How do you do that? How do you combine this need to create

with this need to meet a deadline. Surely the animators at Disney are gonna have some insight. So I asked them this very same question. How do we do this? What do you guys do to predict your schedule for your delivery date? And the guy’s answer was very unfulfilling. So I’ll start there. His answer was, well, Fernando, today’s a Saturday and you’re taking a tour of our facility. And as you can see, people are drawing.

They are here drawing not for the benefit of the tour. They are here drawing because we are behind schedule and we are working overtime. And I thought to myself, okay, that’s not the answer that I was looking for. And so I’ve struggled with this question throughout my career. And the closest that I’ve come to an answer is starts really at a very basic human principle.

Fernando Paz (04:41.288)
And that is as human beings, we are incredibly powerful when we decide to do something. When we set ourselves to do something, we are incredibly powerful. And we are super powerful when two or more agree to do the same thing. So when two or more people are in agreement, miracles happen. And so I thought, huh,

Maybe there’s something there because in technology, we are working as a team of thought workers and thought workers love to think. So the question is not whether or not they’re going to think. The question is, how do we as thought workers all align to choose to think about the problems that I want to have solved? So it’s not whether or not they think, it’s what are they going to think about? And so as a leader,

to help make our dates, I view it very, a very top priority of mine. And I just share it with anybody else who might want to, you know, explore this, explore it for themselves, be super intentional about capturing your team’s mind share. And this is so powerful because then once you capture their mind share, couple of things happen. One,

actually the agency is with them. Once they choose what to think about, they choose what problems to solve. My job as a leader is to lay the case for, these are the problems I want you guys to be thinking about. And thought workers are thinking about problems all the time. It’s not a nine to five thought process. It is a, we’re thinking about problems all the time. So.

how to make projects more successful greater than 70 % of the time, I go back to give your technical teams the agency to decide for themselves, yeah, I’m behind this mission. Yes, I’m behind this vision. Yes, I choose to think about that more than other things that I’m thinking about.

Fernando Paz (06:54.302)
And if you get two people on the team to think about it, that’s like an order of magnitude more powerful. And imagine if you get everybody on the team aligned and everybody on the team in agreement saying, yeah, you know what? This is a worthwhile mission. We’re going to be missional about it. We’re going to think about this all the time so that we all pull together to bring the schedule to fruition on time, on scope, on cost, on quality.

Melissa Aarskaug (07:19.618)
I love that. That’s such a good, a good insight. What made me think about being an engineer or being running technical teams. A lot of times you have to have a certain mindset when you’re solving a problem, like you said. And a lot of times we’re, you know, not to generalize. A lot of us are introverted people. We’re mission focused, solving problems.

In your experience, what is the number one leadership skill or principle? You know, if you had to pick one, that’s most important for engineering teams that you’ve worked on.

Fernando Paz (07:56.808)
So I laugh, I remember very early on a general manager of mine in a company he used to work for and one of the best GMs I ever worked for. And he was telling me this story. We had this mission critical project and was going back to the headquarters to ask for more time and more money. And they made him guarantee you will absolutely finish the product on this date or else, right?

And he’s like, yes, 100 % we’re gonna meet the schedule. And he relates the story as he was flying back from headquarters, he’s thinking, I’ve never made a schedule in my life, I’ve never done it. What am I gonna do different? Because I’ve never met a schedule yet in my career. And his solution is very insightful. And he shared with me, know, Fernando, that’s when I decided to put a salesperson.

in charge of engineering. So what he was really saying was, I need to put some value. It wasn’t just a salesperson, right? It was a very smart person, but this person was very inspirational. And so he did not underestimate this power of having an inspired team that is missional, that is aligned, and that is focused.

because unknown unknowns happen all the time and this is why schedules break. So the question is not whether or not an unknown unknown is gonna happen. The question is how do we respond to that? And if you have an inspirational leader that yes knows technology, that yes understands the business, all of that stuff, yes, but that is intentionally an inspirational leader, what happens is they define

how the team responds when the difficult moments present themselves. Do they respond in defeat? Do they respond in, you know, I’ll just think about it tomorrow when I check in at, you know, 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. or whatever? Or do they respond of, my goodness, this is getting in the way of our mission. We are aligned with a mission. We’re gonna figure this out and we’re gonna do so in a quick way.

Melissa Aarskaug (10:16.834)
love that you said that as you were saying that. made me think, you know, in early days in my career, I was an engineer on one of the largest concrete bridges built in the United States. And one of the things I found early in my career is engineering people are doers. We all have a task that we’re doing. But one of the things that teams I’ve worked on in the past struggled with was communication. So everybody was doing their own task.

When we were building a bridge, we had the painters that showed up before the bridge was even built to paint the bridge that was not even built yet. And I think back to those days, and maybe this was the start, you’re making me think that maybe this was the start of my sales career. It was more costly for them to take all their equipment back across the United States.

I talked these painters into painting something else in the meantime and found them another project so they would wait until the concrete was poor so they can paint. And so maybe that’s it, Fernando. I think you’ve helped me figure out how I ended up in sales. I was a motivational, creative person. So I think…

Fernando Paz (11:30.176)
you

Thanks.

Melissa Aarskaug (11:40.174)
All these years, I’ve been wondering how I’ve ended up in sales and there you go a motivational leader and, I think it’s so true that, you know, when everybody’s inspired and motivated to do their best work, people, know, five o’clock comes and people aren’t looking at five o’clock at four o’clock saying, Oh my gosh, I have 59 minutes to go. Everybody’s all in and ready to do a good job because they’re inspired.

and they believe in their leaders. So I love, think I would absolutely agree with that.

Fernando Paz (12:12.128)
And I think each listener, yourself, myself, everybody listening to this podcast could just have the data point of themselves. We’ve all had those moments of inspiration. We’ve had all these moments of breakthrough, of thought breakthrough. And we could probably remember a time where that happened. And it wasn’t necessarily in the office or in the virtual office between the work hours.

Those inspirational moments oftentimes happen. How many times people say, wow, I woke up with the idea or first thing in the morning or while I was in the shower or while I was off for a jog or while I was doing some exercise. So inspiration strikes 24 seven. It’s all dependent upon what am I?

kind of thinking about. Like I go back to what do I choose to think about and if I choose to think about my problems at hand then that’s when those moments of inspiration are going to strike and they’re going to help me solve those problems.

Melissa Aarskaug (13:19.65)
Yeah, I love that. I wanted to ask you, I know you’ve led global teams. I, at one point in my career led global teams and I’m curious how you lead global teams, not only from a cultural standpoint, cause there’s different, there’s different dynamics leading people across the globe, but also a time zone standpoint. They may be, you know, seven hours ahead and you need to get engineering projects done. So I want to talk a little bit about.

I’m gonna call it resilience and time zone leadership. How did you, how do you do that? And maybe you can shout a little bit about your experience or maybe some tips and tricks.

Fernando Paz (13:59.484)
Sure. I think the time zone problem specifically, it’s hard. And if you have East Coast, West Coast, Europe, and Asia, there’s never like the, it’s five o’clock somewhere comes to mind because yeah, it’s five o’clock somewhere. And so how do you work around that? And I think, I always liked going to

as a leader. And this, think applies this kind of little formula or model or framework applies, whether you’re talking cultural time zone, generational, or whatever kind of difference you might as a leader be, you know, have diversity in the team and be working through. And so to me, I’m like, okay, what do all these things kind of have in common?

Well, they all have in common that everybody is human being. That’s the common denominator. And so how do I respect as a leader, the human being? I talked a little bit earlier about the respect for agency. From a time zone perspective, well, how do I respect the human being from a time zone perspective? And so, you know, it’s not uncommon then for, I think, intentional leaders to say, you know what, we’re going to alternate.

Not every meeting is going to be convenient for one specific time zone. And so that one’s kind of like, lot of people do that. For me, the hardest part though, in dealing with teams and having lived abroad, I lived in Malaysia for three years and led teams there, was this translation of…

in America, right, for me, it’s super easy. And in a lot of parts, it’s super easy to come up with sports analogies and people understand them. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, people kind of understand sports analogies. And I remember when I was working and living in Malaysia, sports analogies didn’t really resonate, right? And so having to think about how am I, if I want to use a story and I want to use a metaphor as an example to get a point across,

Fernando Paz (16:14.688)
really being intentional about, okay, what kind of a cultural, what would resonate in this cultural setting versus what I was used to. I remember, I learned this lesson, I was in a town hall and I was telling a story about finishing strong and let’s finish strong. And I came up with a perfect football analogy of an example of where this happened. And I found that I’m like, my gosh, I have to spend 20 minutes explaining football first in order for this thing to even make sense. So it was not very successful.

But I found out that they were into, you know, badminton was an example. So they were into badminton. So I could stay with the sports. They were doing dragon racing at the dragon boat racing. So I’m like, let me learn about dragon boat racing, understand what that means, and then maybe learn a lesson from there. So the framework is I try to bring it down to the human quality, because that’s the one that we all share. And then

and then respecting the humanity, respecting the culture, and respecting the time zone is where I would build it out from there.

Melissa Aarskaug (17:21.816)
I love that. And it made me think, know one of the things I, I love the example. I think it’s so relevant. If you’ve never played football and you don’t understand football, you can’t understand what one’s talking about. I know in those situations, I’ve personally used AI to help me better understand culturals or regions of different parts of the country. Cause there are very unique differences. And you know, I might say something that’s not meant to be

you know, taken a different way and it’s misinterpreted. And so a lot of times I’ve used AI to help me, you know, understand where people are, what the cultures are, what’s popular. And so I want to get kind of your thoughts. There’s so much right now that’s new and exciting in the world of AI. And I know I personally use it a lot, like in that cultural example, give me a quote or give me a this or tell me about that.

Fernando Paz (18:20.244)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Aarskaug (18:21.056)
And how do you balance the old with the new? I just found this out the other day that semiconductors are in so much of vehicles that I had no idea through listening to different things on the internet. And so how do we keep the old but bring in things like AI and other new technologies?

Fernando Paz (18:46.4)
you

Yeah, well, and I think that kind of goes back to your first question for me of like why did I get into engineering and I think many people that get into engineering love technology and love staying up on technology, right? So for sure that’s kind of built into the DNA of the people that were that were talking to and talking about and that we that we personally are right for sure

Large language models, artificial intelligence is the most exciting aspect of our space. And quite frankly, it transcends everything going forward. And so when I think of AI from an engineering and or from a business perspective, and I love your cultural example, I had never done it for that, but I think that’s a pretty cool way to think about it. When I think about it from a business perspective, I think about, okay,

How could AI benefit our customers? So could it help me enhance a product or service that we’re offering them? How could AI help us internally get more productive? And how could it help me personally just be more efficient or more

Yeah, productive. so I think it’s important when we’re thinking about new technologies and then specifically to this question, when we’re thinking about artificial intelligence, is kind of get start getting very specific on how I want to use it. What problem do I want to solve? And I kind of touch upon these one at a time.

Fernando Paz (20:36.648)
So for personal use, I got to craft an email. got to come up with a presentation. I think it’s incredibly important to, at the end of the day, the person, the human, owns the content. And so AI is great for helping me think things through, helping me.

consider other avenues, maybe go from a blank sheet of paper to a sheet of paper that has something on it that I can then build on. But it’s really funny because it also happened with internet and with search. People can smell. This is a pure AI response. And so I think it’s very important that for personal use, it’s your content.

Start with your content or start with AI for an idea, go through a couple of iterations and you own the content at the end of the day. So I think that’s super important because people can see through it. For team, we’re using it, we’re building out models internally to help us do, for example, more mundane tasks around spec creation.

So we feed it all of our test cases. We feed it all of our product documentation. And now I can use our internal AI engine to help me generate a new specification. But the same rule applies. AI spits out a specification. OK, now if I’m a product person, let me take ownership of this specification, read through it. Does it make sense? Does it apply? Let me adjust from here. So it’s a great way to get started, but it’s not

I don’t think it’s the answer to like, okay, that’s the finished product. And then for our customers, we’re bringing AI solutions for them to help them solve their toughest problems around pricing. I do a lot of work around inventory management. So how can we help provide functionality to our customers that help them manage their inventory more efficiently? And pricing is one area because that’s, when I’m dealing with inventory and I want to sell product, which our customers do,

Fernando Paz (22:46.298)
what you price something at is the name of the game. And so can we use AI to help guide our customers with regard to that to the extent that we can? That’s a product or service that we can provide them. That’s just one example of many that we can do. But the same is true for all three, which is you have to own the content. the human being, has to own the deliverable, has to own the content.

Melissa Aarskaug (23:13.132)
Yeah, I love that. think there’s so much there’s so many nuggets there. And it made me think, you know, back in the day, when I worked in engineering, I was designing footings for power plants. And it was like, every day was coffee, paste, coffee, paste, coffee, paste. And I got into this place where, you know, I don’t want to say that I wasn’t as smart as I used to be, but I wasn’t as smart as I used to be. And I had to really cultivate

and learn and teach myself new things. Cause every day was like Groundhog’s day. was designing the same thing. So I want to get, you know, your perspectives for engineers who are, you know, electrical engineer or civil engineer and everything’s kind of copy paste of last, than a previous day. Can you talk a little bit about what are some best practices for engineers to keep learning, challenging themselves and staying relevant to the field?

Fernando Paz (24:08.582)
Yeah, I like that. I had a couple of thoughts as you were talking. And let me know. Let’s see where goes. Let’s see where this answer goes. And if I didn’t hit it, then please let me know. But I always think about, we started with, hey, what did you love about becoming an engineer and getting into this career?

And even if we’ve pivoted along the way into sales or into other aspects, there’s reasons for that. we were passionate about it and there’s decisions that we made. But at the end of the day, it is spelled J-O-B, not vacation, right? Or it’s spelled W-O-R-K, not vacation, right? And so with anything,

There’s certainly aspects that we love about it and that we’re passionate about. That’s why we got into this business in the first place. And yeah, it’s life and it’s work and it’s job. And there’s aspects of it that are mundane or aspects of it that are boring or aspects of it that eventually lead to being uninspiring for us. Right. And so,

I always used to consider, like I had this metric in my head of in the given week, what percentage of my time was spent on the loving, the passionate stuff and what percentage of the time was spent on the not so fun stuff. And you know, if it was a great week is an 80-20 week. That’s a great week, right? 70-30 week is a good week.

60, 40 week probably was a hard week. If you’ve had a 40, 60 week or a 30, 70 week, that is a bad week. Right. And so, and so I always kept this metric around, okay, in this role with this company at this point in time, what’s my metric of stuff that’s energizing me and driving me versus aspects of the job that maybe aren’t. And

Fernando Paz (26:21.97)
And you you can have a bad week or a bad month, right? Or bad season. if you find, and this is a career kind of career advice question, if you find that you’re in a constant 50-50, 40-60, inspired to uninspiring time usage percentage, then maybe it’s time to explore a new role. Because here’s the funny thing.

what’s maybe 70, 30 good and 70 mundane for me, for one human, is probably 70, 30 for somebody else, right? And so, and so even as a leader, it’s important to say, okay, is everybody at least 60, 40 or better on my team? Am I at least 60, 40 better on for myself?

And so I think it applies to oneself in terms of let me identify those areas. And if I think about career changes that I’ve made in my life, of which there’s been several, they’ve mostly been prompted by this ratio being off. And those have been the most beneficial rotations versus higher salary.

higher position, know, more, more, more stripes on the proverbial sleeve of the uniform, right? Those career moves are to me have been less fulfilling and less successful than the career moves that have been more oriented around moving into a space where I’m going to be passionate about what I’m doing more often than not. the, other aspect of this that I’ll share with you and the same thing when I think about my team, Hey, it’s my team members passionate about what they’re doing.

Maybe this will like be super innovative and they’re doing more maintenance stuff. And maybe here’s somebody that’s really likes doing more maintenance stuff and they’re in the innovation side. Okay, let me flip these and then get more, everybody more energized. The other model I’ll just share with you really quickly. And I read this someone, I don’t remember where, so I can’t give it proper credit, but it’s an acronym and it’s LUTI, L-U-T-I. Learner, user, teacher, improver.

Fernando Paz (28:46.514)
And this applies to person and team. We focus a lot on user, on being super proficient at the task at hand. But I say that’s only part of the thing that we should be focused on. And quite frankly, if we focus solely on user proficiency for self and team, we’re going to get into this burnout stage of getting less and less inspired. I think it’s a question of what am I learning?

What am I proficient at? What am I improving? And what am I teaching others to do? And if I have a good balance of that, a certain percentage of my time learning, a certain percentage of my time proficient, a certain percentage of my time teaching, a certain percentage of my time improving, if I do this at scale, then it helps person and organization.

avoid getting stuck in a mundane rut of turning the crank over and over and over and pouring the footings and waiting for the cement to dry, right? That’s an important part, but that’s not the only part of the job. So how do I make sure that as a team we’re learning, using, teaching and improving?

Melissa Aarskaug (30:06.848)
Ooh, I love that. There was so many good things in that. And I think one thing you mentioned that I love that you said is, you know, several years ago, I had somebody report to me that was an introverted person and I was leading a customer facing sales team. And this person did not like doing sales. was a non-technic or a non-sales personality. And I think I love what you said is if someone is

Fernando Paz (30:30.72)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Aarskaug (30:36.024)
technical, they should be in technical roles. If someone’s in sales, they should be in sales roles. if you’re in a role where you don’t like to sell or you don’t like to do the technical responsibilities, it’s up to you to share with your manager that, I’d like to do more of this and communicate that because not all leaders are like you and myself, where we’re aware of where people’s roles should be. And so I hear that a lot.

with people that they’re in the wrong role or their role’s been switched to something that they have no experience in. And so what happens is a lot of times people either find their way out of that company into another company and it could be a great employee. And so I guess step one is finding someone to talk to, whether it’s HR, your direct manager to say, hey, I’ve been put in this new role. It’s a reorg, I’m non-technical and I’m doing a technical role. And then…

you know, kind of step two to continue to learn. Like you were saying, it’s so important. Are we growing and learning and working together? And so I love, I love all of that. think it’s really great, which leads me to my next question. I wanted to ask you about, I’m a huge believer, Fernando in diverse teams, diverse perspectives, age, culture, all the things. I think it, brings a more well-rounded team. So I want to get your thoughts on.

why diversity matters and how it looks for you leading diverse engineering teams.

Fernando Paz (32:11.1)
Okay, awesome. And I’m actually gonna bridge back. And I like that you’re a bridge engineer. So I’m gonna bridge back to the statement that you just made, because I think it actually rolls right into this question, which is the importance of authenticity. And oftentimes, and this happened to me in a technical career,

that’s challenging, high, paced, high charging industry. It’s a pressure cooker and can be a pressure cooker. And and everybody’s feeling the pressure, everybody from the leadership on down. And oftentimes people aren’t at their best behavior when they’re under pressure. We actually there’s actually, you know, I think saying right, that says

a person’s true character is revealed when things aren’t going well. And so my first point is in terms of having the conversation, I found that the first person that I had to have the conversation with was myself. And here’s what the conversation needs to be. When I’m in the world that’s very pressure, what people tend to hear and say is, Fernando or Melissa,

You need to be more of this or Fernando Melissa, you need to be less of that or Fernando Melissa, you’re not enough of this or Fernando Melissa, you’re too much of that. Right? And if you hear that often enough, a person can start internalizing and thinking, I’m too much of this. I’m not enough of that. I’m overwhelming here. I’m underwhelming there. I need to be different.

So the first conversation is no, you are authentically, wonderfully, miraculously, uniquely made diversity. You are uniquely made and wonderful on purpose for a purpose. So don’t change that. If the environment is, or you’re interpreting the environment to be saying, you need to be different.

Fernando Paz (34:34.484)
then what needs to be different is the environment that you operate in. That’s what needs to be different. And there was this great experiment that was done by a very accomplished violinist. He was a virtuoso and he was playing his violin in the subway. And at the end of the day, this virtuoso violinist, nobody knew, anonymous, just playing this violin on the subway, collected

$30 in tips. The next day, this person had sold out Madison Square Garden for $1,000 a seat. Same virtuoso. Same virtuoso. In the subway, people gave them $30 worth of appreciation. And maybe that’s pretty good for a subway, right? But the subway, people are trying to get on the train and they’re going places. In Madison Square Garden,

people were paying a thousand dollars a seat to listen to the Virtuoso. You are Virtuoso. That’s my point. Play your violin where it’s appreciated, where that’s the value that you bring. So that would be lesson number, my kind of just response to that. In terms of leading diverse teams, as a leader, I really challenge myself to understand what…

instrument, let’s play with this analogy, what unique, what virtuosos do I have? And not prejudge what is a good role versus a bad role based on my filter or my lens, which oftentimes happen. As a leader, we can find myself and say, this is a low value role, or this is a high value role, and this is a super sexy job, and this is a boring job, and I’m going to assign based on that.

No, all of them are super fun. All of them are super exciting. All of them are challenging. All of them are important. So find the right person who finds that. So to me, the diversity, really, I operate at that level. I operate at the what drives the individual human being level. And there’s people that like doing more maintenance work. There’s people that like pouring the concrete. There’s people that like tying the rebar.

Fernando Paz (36:55.914)
There’s people that like designing the circuit and there’s people that like making sure that the circuit when it’s laid out looks beautiful and all the lines are beautifully laid out. And so I do diversity that way more so than anything else. And in that way, give people freedom to express their opinions, express their thoughts and express their ideas.

Melissa Aarskaug (37:20.44)
That was great. I love that. That was just, I’m speechless. That was so great. Thank you for sharing that. I wanna kind of in closing get any final thoughts or anything you wanna share with our listeners that we may not have touched on or that you feel compelled to share.

Fernando Paz (37:26.112)
you

Fernando Paz (37:41.5)
Yeah, I mean, I think I think I’m very passionate about this authentic, authentic message because I fell into the trap of thinking I wasn’t good enough for one reason or another. Right. And and that is a travesty. And so if there’s anybody that’s listening to this podcast.

that is thinking that about themselves. I would just encourage you or encourage that person to know that that’s not true. That is a lie. Don’t let that lie fester in your head longer than it needs to. There’s a reason why you’re in the role that you’re in. There’s a reason why you’re in the career that you’re in. You’ve overcome adversity.

You’ve overcome tough problems. You’ve figured things out already. Maybe you’re playing your violin in the subway. Right? So go somewhere else or figure out how to add value in the subway. Right? Either one could be fulfilling. And so, so that’s what I would just say is be authentic. And then as a leader, as a leader,

view your teams through the lens of their authenticity. I’ll just share this real quick story. Change management is very important when you’re in an innovative space and doing things differently and learning how to do things differently and improving things is very important. as a leader, I have good ideas and I could see the big picture.

And I could see what needs to get done. And I could see these high value projects that need to get done. And so I had a lot of change management around initiatives that I was kind of starting and advocating for. And I was missing on the power of the organization. Because the power of the organization, I was actually not respecting the authenticity of the people on the team. And so one day I’m like, hey, are we focused on the right things when it comes to improvement? And they were like, you know.

Fernando Paz (40:06.24)
maybe not so much, maybe we should be focused on some other things. And I was inspired, I had just read the book Atomic Habits, I have it here on my shelf. I just read the book Atomic Habits, because I grew up in a world, an older world where it’s like any initiative worth doing has to be 20 % improvement or bigger. If it’s not that, you’re not focused on wrong thing. Well, Atomic Habit is like 1%, 1%, 1%. So I’m like, I think we’re missing out on the 1%.

And so I came up with a new metric, the push versus pull change management metric. The push metric was every innovation that came from me, any process improvement that got pushed by the leadership into the organization, in this case would be me pushing it into the organization versus the ones that were getting pulled from me into the organization by the practitioners. And I’ve mapped them on a scatterplot of effort, low to high,

and value low to high. And a fascinating trend emerged. I found that the push metrics were yes, high value, but high effort. The pull metrics were high value, low effort. The best initiatives came from the practitioners themselves. Why? Because they had authentic awesomeness.

creativity, ideas, insight and knowledge that I lacked as a leader. And so, that’s so cute. So.

So in closing, my final words would be your authenticity is extremely valuable. And as a leader, listen and keep an eye out for those pull ideas. And don’t just think that everything has to be a push initiative in your organization.

Melissa Aarskaug (42:22.05)
Thank you so much, Fernando, for being here. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your time with our listeners. That’s the Executive Connect podcast.