Episode 3 Transcript:

Scott Billows (00:05.349)
Okay, Matt, here we are, episode number three. How's your day going?

Matt Hui (00:08.846)
Excited to be back. So far so good. Scott, looks like you're sitting in a beautiful looking office today with a brick wall. You've got all of the virtual backgrounds.

Scott Billows (00:17.295)
There we go. Yeah. Hi.

Yeah, well, this is a virtual background that Riverside prompted me with. So I went for it. yeah, it's good to be doing this. It's exciting to be on episode three and lots of things we can talk about, lots going on in the industry. we're seeing a lot of fun stuff happen within the organization as well. why don't we kick it off with just

Matt Hui (00:30.284)
Love it.

Scott Billows (00:52.345)
start with an idea. We're in this mode right now as an organization where we're getting back to some of the basics in terms of addressing challenges we're seeing in the market, sort of working to just optimize our team and our organization and really just be a really lean and high performing organization. And one of those is

just even in a format like this, doing podcasts and really just getting our ideas out there to the community and sharing what we're thinking about. And hopefully those that listen, there's some value that they can take from that. But it's been a fun journey here over the last couple of months as we've been starting to build and prepare for this and then launching a few weeks ago.

So with that, let's jump into some of the ideas that we had talked about in preparation. So why don't you kick us off? What's bouncing through your head these days in terms of sort of this strategy we've got?

Matt Hui (02:06.136)
Well, you spoke about something that I think is important to capture. You mentioned we're building a high-performing team. I'd love to just expand on that and would love to hear from your perspective too, because in the industry, you may hear every single possible buzzword, and I've certainly heard high-performing team before, but maybe I'll go first in terms of what I think is a high-performing team. I'd love for you to chime in on what actually makes high-performing team.

I think it goes back, we'll go down a bit of story lane here, I think it goes back to what we're doing, what we're trying to build as well. And certainly high performing team in my mind is a team that is ambitious in the pursuit of knowledge in delivering high quality excellence to our customers. And I know that may sound cliche, but it's really just that, it's almost that maniacal pursuit of excellence. It's.

spending time to stay on top of the latest trends, technology trends, staying on top of industry trends. But it's also that passion, that passion for learning, passion for recognizing the job's not done. It's just, I mean, you and I kind of share that, and we read a lot. We watch a lot of content. We watch a lot of articles, every single possible place. But that's in my mind what a high-performing team is, is just that contagious.

pursuit of knowledge and being able to translate that to high quality, high value for our customers to, and then ultimately keeps them coming back for more. But what do you, when you think of high performing, what do you think of?

Scott Billows (03:46.669)
Yeah, I mean, a lot of ideas on that. You know, if you think about just customer success and delivering customer success, doing that in a way that we're delivering for the customer at the time they need it. And, you know, I'll use an example, something that you and I talk about and certainly you and other leaders in the organization talk about, it's being ready to deliver a project when a customer needs it.

capture a bunch of different inputs through our sales cycle that will influence when that customer is going to make a commitment and when our resources are going to need to be needed to deliver those projects. know, that's a landscape that we don't control every variable and it's constantly shifting and moving. so, you know, when I think about high performing from the point of view of delivering excellence to our customers, it's

Managing clear expectations with them. It is also managing expectations with our team because at times, you know, we do see ebbs and flows in our business and, you know, in that work cycle. So it's managing expectations of our team, but it's all being aligned around this objective of, you know, we're being hired to perform a service for our customer and it's a partnership between them as an organization, their

Matt Hui (05:12.302)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (05:14.368)
their employees, their stakeholders, us as their partner, our employees, our partners that we're working with, and also, I guess to some degree, it's Salesforce. so, I guess that's the first thing that comes to mind. I think high performing too, from just purely from a business point of view is we are able to deliver efficiently. We're able to create an environment where

all of our employees are engaged and we're delivering interesting projects to them to work on. the type of work that we're doing is rewarding to them. so, I think that you can go and accomplish that in different ways. I guess a way that we've chosen to go after that is to specialize in a couple of verticals, get really

Kind of intimate, if you will, with understanding the knowledge and the workflow and the process that's required within each of these industries and then just build specialization on that. yeah, it's a fun topic to talk about.

Matt Hui (06:30.322)
I'll throw in something that I forgot to mention as well and I strongly believe this as well. It's almost, it's building a winning culture as well. A team of winners. Now, I mean it may not be as binary as you win or you lose, but in a lot of senses too, it's this ongoing pursuit of winning. I I think of winning a client's or customer's trust, winning the team's trust. It's also recognizing too that there is so much choice. You need to always stay sharp, be sharp.

and further your knowledge so that you can continue to win that trust as well. So I'd like to say that we're a team of high performing individuals that ultimately we win together, we may lose together, but we win together more than we lose as well. So I guess on that note, something that we've shared at some of our retreats, our team planning sessions has been owners mentality or founders mentality. Now I know this is a very popular mantra to share.

I'm curious from your perspective, when you think of founder's mentality, help me unpack that. What does that mean to you when you talk about founder's mentality and why is it one of our core values?

Scott Billows (07:40.555)
Well, our organization today is different than it was two years ago, which is very different than it was two years before that. We have certainly going, kind of looking at maybe a five to six year time horizon, we saw a real scale up in the organization and many of our competitors, we saw the same thing.

The need to do more with less in the current environment that we're in is challenging. It's something that I know we've struggled with at times. know many of our competitors and slash colleagues out in the market have struggled with the same thing. so a strategy is this idea of everybody is

you know, think of it as an owner, you know, work within the organization as though you were an owner in that organization. And I heard a interesting way to think about this within what's happening right now within the US federal government and the impact that DOGE is having. And one particular organization that was being cited was NASA and how

just the layers of leadership that they had really got the organization to this point where just decisions couldn't be made in many cases. And if they could, it just took forever to have those decisions made. another way that I think about owners' mentality is like, just let's push decisions right down to the people that need to make the decisions and just remove obstacles for people to get high quality work completed.

enable them, equip them, empower them to just make decisions. I don't have a hundred percent success rate of making great decisions, nor do you, nor does anybody. So the expectation is like, make the best decision you possibly can and just, we will work through the consequences of that. So that's how I think about it. I'd be interested in your perspective on that same question.

Matt Hui (10:03.958)
It kind of reminds me of, so when I was growing up, my good parents would try to instill in me these values of personal responsibility, personal ownership. And one example I can think of is they would give me kind of a toy or whatnot to play with. And they made it very clear, if you break it, it's your toy. You got to take care of this. I mean, you can apply this to anything, the toy that I'm.

Talking about maybe many people might not have had that but it's it's just you've got to take care of this It's kind of like when you I don't know if you've ever had a dog before but Especially in the early years. It's okay. This is your dog. You take care of them. You you clean up clean up after them This is your responsibility and I kind of equate that to owners mentality Everybody's got this kind of vested interest in seeing the success But also when we when we win we all win when we lose we all lose and it hurts everybody just as much

and it makes everybody happy just as much as well. So I mean, that in my mind is a good analogy for owner's mentality and founder's mentality is that you're making decisions for the betterment or the sustainment of the overall organization, and it's not just for yourself. It's for the person on your left, the person on your right as well. And I think that's almost this, it kind of goes above just the words on the screen when you say it as well. And I've seen that. I've seen our team come meet that challenge of making

sometimes very difficult decisions in the betterment of making sure we're delivering the right solution for a customer as well. On the flip side, being able to apply a bit of tough love to the team as well, just in the nature of, I need to see you grow because this is gonna be better for all of us together. So I think it really just completely eliminates what I think is a real struggle in a lot of organizations, this oven mitts mentality where you're too scared to really touch the

the sensitive stuff, so you're touching it with other mitts, you don't wanna get burnt. When you do that, you can't give any feedback. And you can't give feedback, how are you supposed to grow? It's kinda like, again, nothing wrong with this. It's kinda like participation ribbons. I personally, I don't love participation ribbons. It's a pet peeve, and you might as well just not have a ribbon, honestly. But you're not able to get that kind of immediate acknowledgement, immediate feedback of am I doing something on the right track?

Scott Billows (12:01.939)
Right.

Scott Billows (12:17.468)
That's a pet peeve, Matt. No, you don't like this.

Matt Hui (12:29.612)
or the wrong track. I think that's culturally being kind of woven into the fabric is take the oven mitts off. We're all in this to get better, to get smarter together, to ultimately be better stewards of our customers' dollars, time, funds, and that's our responsibility. So that's my two cents.

Scott Billows (12:48.935)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I think those are those are good, good points. And the oven mid analogy is one I haven't heard for a while. It's going to probably be thinking about that tonight as I'm taking something out of the oven. And so, yeah, good, good example to use. All right, let's let's shift gears. Let's talk a bit about about culture. I heard in terms of I forget who it was, I should

I'll have to dust this off and come back on maybe a future one and cite exactly who it was. there was this idea of the value, one of the metrics of the value of a company is its culture. And I mean, if there was ever a cliche that we see today is just everybody talks about company culture and, but.

You know, that cliche is, it is what it is, but on the other side of that coin is like, culture is absolutely everything. so, we as an organization do things to influence and build our culture. If you think back over the last few years, what are some of the things that you feel?

we've done well. I think let's talk about some of the things that maybe we haven't done as well. Cause I think there's opportunity to learn from this. So give me some ideas in terms of what's been working.

Matt Hui (14:21.838)
Yeah, I think when you try to address culture, I mean, there's a lot of topics that are just tough to, there's no do A equals B. It's no perfect solution. It's really a, you gotta listen, you gotta learn. And I think the reality is our organization has evolved, like you said, the last two months, the last two years, the last 10 years. It's very different as we mentioned on previous episodes.

So I think it's number one, how do you drive a good culture? And I'll define what good means in a sec. How do you define a good culture? I think it starts with listening. I think it's listening more than you're talking. Second to that, I think it can't be one person driving the culture. Certainly you can have people that are champions within the organization. But I I look at it as, I'll make another analogy. I think of it like going to the gym as well.

Would you rather be disciplined going to the gym or would you rather have motivation to go to the gym? Your motivation will win. Discipline will always beat motivation. So if you have it kind of baked into your, the recipe of your day to day in which everybody has a vested interest and stake in contributing to the culture, that is so much more sustainable than one person who kind of gets these bursts of energy, plans some big social. Your culture will, if it's only running through one person, it's inevitably gonna fail. So.

He said what things have worked well. I mean, I think a really challenging time, but really transformational time for our team was when during COVID, everybody moved virtual. How do you maintain ultimately a water cooler conversation, but in a virtual sense? I mean, this was brand new for everybody. And I think some great things that we did. We did some really fun things like building Lego challenges, cooking classes, and those are all kind of maybe the...

Scott Billows (16:06.917)
Yeah, for sure.

Matt Hui (16:17.774)
the one-off or more fun events, but I think it's on a daily basis. It's just checking in with people. It's having Slack channels, sharing your interests, sharing your, this is the view I'm waking up to this morning. And we've got some team members who have some pretty nice looking backyards and lakes that they overlook. I mean, I think it's just giving people a peek into who you are as a person as well. I think all of those contribute to positive culture, now things that we've not done as well.

Scott Billows (16:41.882)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hui (16:47.628)
I think it's being able to evolve and understand change as well. And if you beat the same kind of drum over and over again, inevitably you'll fall upon deaf ears. So I think there's been times where what's worked in the past hasn't worked now or hasn't worked at that time. And I think it's a learning process. So yeah, what are your thoughts? What do you think's gone well in terms of culture?

Scott Billows (17:04.548)
Right, yeah, for sure.

Scott Billows (17:12.058)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I agree with what you've shared. think.

Scott Billows (17:21.697)
We've used this term, winning team. People want to be part of something that they feel their contribution is resulting in the success of whatever that objective is. In the case of a corporate structure, case of a team structure, case of the work product that a team is delivering, people genuinely want to be part of.

building and creating something that they can be proud of, which is a theme that we talk about within our organization. I think that on this topic of culture and having the company having to respond to market conditions, the company having to respond to the seasonality of business, at times having to make

Matt Hui (18:16.91)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (18:18.277)
you know, really challenging decisions. think for me, the one thing I feel we've have done really well is we have been genuine in terms of communicating the reasons for certain decisions being made, whether those are decisions that are leading us in a direction that is perceived as positive or, you know, or the opposite. And so just being authentic and,

And creating a, I guess, an experience for everybody who is involved where they believe what the leaders in the organization are communicating and what the motivations of those are. I think further to that is just the idea of

Scott Billows (19:08.486)
creating an environment where there is a high pace and just a frequency that requires people to step up and deliver their best. again, that's using your gym analogy, it's sometimes tough to produce that and create that every single day within an organization. But

You know, being a team that today is, you maybe a little leaner and certainly more efficient than we've been in the past. I think there's just a cultural thing that comes with that where, you know, the people that want to be here are with us and the people that, you know, just have this capacity to go and work like crazy to deliver success for ultimately our customers.

along the way for their teammates and for the organization, I think is one that certainly has fostered a really positive work environment and ultimately a great culture. So that's one that comes to mind. I certainly find for myself, and this is very personal, in that I work better in that environment, where it's just you've kind of got this workload that's weighing on you.

It drives you to find ways to be more efficient. The pain of I've got all this stuff I gotta get done, just creates hyper-focus and I find just creates this work environment that's very dynamic and very rewarding. So for me, that's an important thing.

Matt Hui (20:54.51)
So if you were to categorize, because I think that's a good way to summarize and wrap up this episode, if you were to summarize your type of leadership style, Scott, what type of leader would you say you are?

That is about the most vague question I can ask, but what type of leader do you think you are?

Scott Billows (21:12.45)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, I'll take a shot at that. So I would say that my leadership style is one that I want to just enable people to go and execute. want them to be real. I want them to feel confident they can make a decision. hopefully it's a good decision, but they can just go and make a decision.

You know, so, you know, if we called that, you know, just a leadership style that is delegate the task out and just expect great results. that's, that's how I operate best. And, do I, am I consistent in executing that way? Not always that that really is a, is a muscle that you've just got to keep, keep conditioned, but it, it's, it's one that, is, is, you know, move, move as far away from micromanage as possible.

enable people to go and do what needs to be done and expect incredible results. And when the right people are on the team and everybody's doing what they need to do, that can happen. So that's the first thing that pops to mind.

Matt Hui (22:26.648)
Well, appreciate you taking a stab at answering that question. And you know what, I think that's way to wrap up this episode just about leadership and culture and building an organization. But this will be an awesome episode, Scott. We'll catch you in the next one.

Scott Billows (22:41.155)
Okay, there we go, number three and looking forward to the next one. So thanks, Matt. Talk to you soon, bye.

Matt Hui (22:47.182)
Amazing. Thank you.