Tim Dickson - VP, Digital Business Platform at Laureate Universities

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Tim Dixon, the VP of Digital Business Platform at Laureate International Universities, and we discuss the three lenses of innovation, the four quadrants of leadership, and the exact skills necessary to make a digital transformation successful. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:37) Joel. Tim, how you doing, buddy?

(Tim Dixon at 00:00:40) I'm doing great, man. Back from vacation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:43) You're looking like you got a little sun. What'd you do on vacation?

(Tim Dixon at 00:00:47) Took the family to Maui. Our second or third time there. It's just a complete blast, family vacation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:55) Nice. How many kids do you have again?

(Tim Dixon at 00:00:57) Two girls. We started doing these family vacations with just my wife and our two kids last year. And, you know, everybody's busy throughout the year traveling and this and that. And just a week dedicated to your family, just being, you know, involving yourself with your family directly and just doing some fun stuff, was really needed and was a blast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:22) It's like when you reset your computer for a hard reset.

(Tim Dixon at 00:01:29) Something like that, I guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) Back a little bit faster, a little bit sharper.

(Tim Dixon at 00:01:33) Yeah. Reconnects you with your family. And we took, we do every year, we do a little bit of a different adventure. So this year, we did this, and we've done snorkeling and sailing and all that before. But this time, we did one of the outrigger canoes. So if you remember the TV show Hawaii Five-O.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:53) Mhmm.

(Tim Dixon at 00:01:53) You have all those guys rowing in one of those outrigger canoes, and we took one of those up the whole west coast of Maui. And not only was it a lot of work, but it was very, it's beautiful. We got to see turtles and fish and clear blue water and learn a lot about the island, so it was great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:13) Yeah. There's like volcanoes and some observatories. You could geek out up there.

(Tim Dixon at 00:02:20) I was sore the next day, I'll admit. I work out, but I was still sore after rowing. You have to row in unison. There's four of us, and then there was a tour guide. So between the six of us, it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:32) You could take that and use it in some future leadership parable, right?

(Tim Dixon at 00:02:37) Six people rowing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:39) Yeah. Rowing in sync, outrigger. There you go. There's some team leadership.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:43) So you ended up completing that, getting sore, recovering, getting back into the office, rocking and rolling. And now you're working on some big projects. I remember you shared one project that you guys, I'm not sure if you divested it or if it just was a product that you opened up to customers. Did you divest it or no?

(Tim Dixon at 00:03:01) Yeah. So I think what you're talking about is our new digital go-to-market initiative called Sumari. And actually, I was so, I was on vacation two weeks ago in Maui. And then last week, I was actually, my team and I were speaking and attending the BB World conference down in Austin, Texas, which I used to live for seventeen years. So it was a great event, and we basically showcased our new go-to-market product, had many presentations, spoke with customers. And so I can kind of bring you up to speed on all that. And that's really kind of the beauty of, you know, really what I want to share about today on this podcast is one, you know, the great work that, you know, I believe my team and I are doing in a company that is, you know, going through some change in the higher education space. We not only manage the internal, you know, digital business platform or digital technology for all of our students within the company, we are the digital go-to-market team as a source of revenue generation for the company as well, which has never really been heard of before. I like to motivate my team through, you know, company-first, industry-first types of initiatives, and this is definitely, you know, two of those. And, you know, second thing I'd like to showcase is that, you know, in this day and age, you know, IT has a huge potential and a huge opportunity to show up differently for their customers and for their business partners through this, you know, this advent of new digital business models and go-to-market opportunities. And so we've leveraged this program called Building Digital Leaders of the Future. I've assessed and upskilled my digital team. I've showed them what great looks like out there, and I've given training, you know, curriculum, and things of that nature to do wonderful things, like build products that could be sold on the outside for revenue generation. So they've embodied it. We've had a lot of fun, and we've basically taken an internal IT organization and converted it into a digital go-to-market function. And so we play both roles. We wear both hats, and the team is just having a huge, you know, huge amount of excitement and energy around that dual mission.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:10) When are you going to take the teachings outside of the company so other people can replicate them?

(Tim Dixon at 00:05:15) Yeah. So what's probably coming up is, you've seen I've written a couple of blogs on this topic. Hugely passionate about, you know, growing talent and team and individuals. I'm a coach outside of work. And so I kind of take that mentoring coaching approach inside of work. So the couple blogs that we've written already was about this digital leadership of the future curriculum, this assessment, and then the challenges of positions that we would put the team in to take on these challenges and grow as leaders. Now that we've done a couple of these, in the works of writing the next blog that will actually talk about how we did it and then what we've seen, individuals, what we've seen in individuals change and really what was the impetus for that change and how they've embraced the change and now are leading digital transformation initiatives themselves. So that's the next blog coming your way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:11) I'm very excited about that personally because I'm a huge fan of growing people and developing. And so I'd love to see what you guys are learning, how it's going. So please keep blogging and sharing. Now, you know CIO pretty well. You know the people over there. IDG just got, like, over the weekend or last week, they just got a new CEO.

(Tim Dixon at 00:06:33) Oh, really? Who was that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:34) Yeah. Mohammed, I believe his name is Mohammed Ali. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:39) Yeah. Like, on the twenty-seventh, Mohammed Ali. Yeah. He is now the CEO of IDG. But this individual was previously the CEO at, or C-something-O at Carbonite, the storage company.

(Tim Dixon at 00:06:56) Okay. Yep. Yeah. Very well. Yeah. I do quite a bit with CIO. In fact, my dear friend, Maryfran, who you probably know, she just asked me to come speak, one of the two keynotes at the CIO Perspectives in Chicago. We had such a good time with the Reston CIOP. I think you saw some of the work that we did there leveraging machine learning for, you know, growing and building our team internally. She liked that so much that she invited me back to the town I used to live in, which is Chicago, before I moved here to Maryland.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:30) I'm actually in Chicago, I believe, next week speaking at Impact Marketing.

(Tim Dixon at 00:07:35) Oh, okay. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:36) They actually have one of their signs on the, I was taking the train in from the airport, and I saw, I was like, oh, that's what I'm going to see, and I realized that they have their sign on one of the stadiums. I was like, oh, they're a bigger company than I thought.

(Tim Dixon at 00:07:48) Yeah. Yeah. They are. Good luck. What are you going to talk about?

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:52) Creating better leaders.

(Tim Dixon at 00:07:54) A topic that you and I have in common.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:57) Yeah. What we did was we took a spreadsheet and we took all the different habits and patterns of what leaders do with their teams and how they grow themselves and their, you know, themselves personally and their teams. And then we took the habits and the patterns that were most common, and we distilled them into a short fifteen-minute talk. And it's not like I'm a guru. I just take the analysis of the data and share what the leaders do that have the most success.

(Tim Dixon at 00:08:22) That's interesting. It's similar to what we did with the assessment that I described and ran a couple of different algorithms on the results and sort of grouped folks into those four quadrants that I mentioned. If you remember the bracers, the loose cannons, you know, the watchers, the leaders. So, well, can't wait to see what you come up with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:44) Yeah. We got to get together in person sometime and dive down into the details of what we actually have learned. Stuff that would be way too nerdy for right now.

(Tim Dixon at 00:08:52) Yeah. That's really what, though. There's a lot of, I mean, you need, the point of all this is that, you know, digital transformation in itself is very hard in all of the soft skills aspects of aligning and creating a strategy and selling, you know, business leaders and all that. That's extremely hard. But at the end of the day, you need talent to basically lead and perform these transformation efforts. And to me, there's no other better, you know, time spent, you know, investment spent or money spent than doing just that because the benefits that you'll reap as a result are huge. And most people focus, what I find is most people focus on the strategy side because it's so much work to gain alignment and articulate, but they spend very little time talking about the people that are going to do all the work. And so that's just where I live these days. It's, you know, Jeff Bezos had this quote that says, you know, hire the best talent and, you know, wind them up and let them go. And there's a little bit more to it than that, but there are creative juices flowing these days in the world of digital, and you just have to take advantage of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:00) Now do you know what we do outside of the podcast with Leaderbits?

(Tim Dixon at 00:10:04) Yeah. No. I don't. I've seen a little bit of you guys out there on social, but don't know exactly what you guys do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:11) Yeah. So we do pretty much what you did internally.

(Tim Dixon at 00:10:04) Okay. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:11) So companies will license us, will analyze their leaders, and that's why I'm so interested in your matrix and all of that because I think we're all on the team of, like, how do we make people better because there's such a huge market and such a gap and so few people are trying to really do this well. And so that's why I'm so amazed by how we've come to the same conclusions, but separately. It's like we're scientists on different parts of the world. We're like leadership scientists.

(Tim Dixon at 00:10:39) Yeah. You could say that. I mean, it's, yeah. The, you know, I'd say it's a little bit of a niche talent out there right now. One, it's a little bit of an unknown problem, but I think people realize that once they get into it, how big of a deal it is. And then two, like I've shared with you both here at Laureate as well as at Motorola, I mean, just the benefits that you gain as a result of investing in this space. And the other thing I would say is that as a recruiting tool, it's extremely powerful. You know, millennials obviously want to go someplace where their leader has a vision, you know, a voice, and is willing to invest time upskilling them for future career advancement and, you know, ready to lead these types of huge initiatives earlier in their career than they would have otherwise. So I also use it as a recruiting tool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:29) Yeah. Because there's so many cool projects to work on. Now it's like, okay. Everyone's got a cool project, right? Now it's like, who are the people I'm working with, and how will that help me grow? And that vision, that motivation, that drive, and being in that right culture, super important things. One of the things that I really like about you is you've got a lot more business experience than myself, personally. So from IT and M&A at Dell to emerging technologies, all these different things that you've done, especially at the transformation at Motorola, you have a significant depth of business knowledge. And then I like how you've applied that to your team. So you can say, not only are we building something cool, but we're going to have the skills to build something cool and take it to market.

(Tim Dixon at 00:12:20) Yeah. Yeah. I kind of call that a dual role. I think I've had that dual role for as long as I can remember. I'll give a little plug for my MBA school, University of Texas, Hook 'em Horns. When I was a first-year student there in 1998, and I regret to inform my age at one point, but that was their first year of starting a curriculum called the Center for Customer Insight as part of the MBA school. And it was the early days of design thinking where, obviously, you learn to put yourself in the place of the customer, a day in the life of the customer, see things from the customer perspective. And it really set my career path off, and I think in a different direction than maybe I would have gone otherwise just being a tech guy. And the professor that I had at that time at UT is the one that I wrote the article with for Harvard Business Review. And so we keep in touch, and we kind of do some of these things together because we also have a consistent passion in growing leaders and doing wonderful things through innovation. And so, you know, for me, it's kind of wearing this dual role for the last twenty years, which is, you know, chief technology officer, chief information officer in the world of IT and tech, but it's also having the second role where you're the chief digital officer, you know, driving new revenue streams for the company through innovation. And the way that I do that is through unlocking the potential of my team with, you know, bold new missions and vision and leadership skills. And so you kind of put those two things together and, you know, I really do see the face of the CIO or the CTO changing into one more of the modern era, you know, one that I call a digital-facing CIO or CIO in the digital age. If you don't have that second piece, you know, based on what I've seen, I just find it very hard to have the executive leadership team or the business view you, you know, in any other capacity. We all want to be viewed as business leaders no matter which role, you know, we're in, even as CIOs or CTOs. In this digital field, this customer facing, this innovative, this new revenue-generating component is certainly a great way to, you know, press upon your stakeholders.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:30) I want to dive a little bit deeper into that because I'm very curious. So are you actually teaching these leaders within the digital, within your part of the organization, how to build and construct sales teams and actually go through, are you doing that on that level?

(Tim Dixon at 00:14:46) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say that, you know, there's a transformation in the company that my team is leading, and then there's a transformation within my own team, you know, organizationally that I'm teaching, the leaders of my organization how to structure and how to build the right operational model to basically run a digital business. Now I'll give you an example. So I've talked to you before about Laureate's business.

(Tim Dixon at 00:15:12) We own—we're a for-profit education company, B Corporation, global organization. We own 60 international universities across the globe, and that's great. We support those universities from an IT corporate IT perspective and all things digital: mobile applications, chatbots, AI, etc. And the new mission that I've built, company-first, industry-first type of thing, is building new digital solutions that can be used internally within the company and our institutions, but also can be sold externally to institutions all over the globe outside of Laureate, which is exactly what we were doing last week at BB World's conference. And so think of that paradigm.

(Tim Dixon at 00:15:52) You're an IT team that is used to supporting a certain set of applications, you know, building a certain set of applications and platform that you support internally and are a cost center for the company. Take those same resources through some innovation, some leadership skilling, upskilling, through some cultural changing, you know, through some curriculum, some on-the-job role-playing, and put them in front of customers. Have them listen to customers, and then have them develop solutions that can be sold out on the open market and compete with, you know, other digital services solutions that are out there. That just bodes a different type of operational model, organizational structure, P&L management, financial capability, pipeline management, customer conversations, support organization, operational function, sales.

(Tim Dixon at 00:16:47) Sales. It takes on just a completely different shift than you would have before. And ideally, you would still try to be as efficient as possible with those resources. But look at the huge motivation now that you have, and the morale-boosting message that you have for the team. Come join my team. You can both work on internal and external type of offerings using all the latest and greatest tech that is out there to really truly drive efficiency for the company and revenue generation with new digital models.

(Tim Dixon at 00:17:22) It's a powerful, powerful message, and it applies globally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:27) I want to bring this down even a little bit deeper. So one of my neighbors, who is also the CTO at, like, the largest CPA—it's like a cost-per-action, like digital advertising company in the world—happened to be in our town. And so I see him at the gym and I talk with him, and he was talking about, like, what he does at the next level. Right? Like, because he's CTO, good-sized organization under him, and he's starting to notice that there are some products that could spin off, that could divest.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:57) And so he started talking to me about, like, how—what he would do, how he would go about that. And I said, well, I don't know. I would put together a business proposal, pitch it to your board about divesting this product that you see a lot of potential for that should be separated. But if you were to give him advice—like, because he's new, and a lot of these people, the companies are growing to such a capacity that these things are new. Like, they need to learn how to do these things. So would you tell—his name's Janis—would you tell Janis to go talk with, like, how would he handle the sales component? Because I know for a fact—I have knowledge of him—he knows how to understand customer needs. He knows how to set that up because he does that really well already internally. That's just information that I happen to know. But the part that he lacks is, like, putting together that business proposal, pitching it to a board, and then how is he going to handle that sales component? Like, does he go to the salesperson at his company and say, help me hire a great sales team, or what does he do?

(Tim Dixon at 00:18:56) So the first thing is sort of the mindset that you have to be in to do this. And to me, the mindset is the way that I look at this is running my own digital business. This is the way that I would do it if I would create a startup or, you know, in this particular case, if we were to spin this out or if we're looking for investments. So you have to come at it as you're the CEO of this new digital business venture or digital business unit. That's number one.

(Tim Dixon at 00:19:22) And then if you start thinking about it that way, what are the roles that you need in your organization to play the chief financial officer, the chief head of sales, the chief digital officer, the chief technical officer? And you start nominating key talent in your team, whether they have that skill set today or not, whether you feel that they could grow into it. And so you sort of delegate all of the responsibility. You assume some, and then your key leaders in the organization that you're now putting into these bigger and better roles, you rely on them and you lean on them a little bit more heavily than you would have otherwise. And if they're interested and excited about the mission and are going with you and are enrolled in the mission and vision, they will learn how to do it. They will take their own personal time, time on the side, to upskill themselves in the area of tech or in the area of these other business processes and business expertises that are needed to really run as a true digital business. And the one thing that I've seen, you know, just on the sales side—because I feel like sometimes I'm the head of sales as well—there isn't really a sales organization in our company, so it's been a little bit easier for me because we own institutions. The sales sit at each of the institutions. They're trying to get students to enroll, so there's no corporate sales function.

(Tim Dixon at 00:20:39) So in the digital world, like I said, this gives a huge opportunity for IT to act a little bit differently. We're as good as any person to jump into that sales role and be the sales function or sales and operations function for our own digital business unit. We're not asking for help from anywhere on the outside to do that. You know, we've asked for help in the areas of marketing, communication, legal, and finance and things of that nature. But for sales, we know the product the best. We're stepping into that role, and we're playing that on behalf of this new business unit. So to me, it's a little bit of a mindset. You know, just putting yourself and assuming that you're in that position, and then growing leaders within your organization who also feel that same way, who could take on these new bigger and better roles.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:24) I love how clearly you articulated that. Because the thing I get the most often is, oh, I'm a CIO, I'm a CTO, these are my responsibilities. And what I've noticed people are doing, as I'm talking to a large number of people, is people have, like, a cap. They have, like, a mental cap. They're like, I'm the CEO or CTO, these are my responsibilities, and that's where I draw the line. I don't want to go up to that next stage. And so now I have better—now with help from you articulating that—I can say, oh, okay, then you don't need to worry about it. You don't even need to try. You're completely happy with where you're at. And that's, like, as far as you see yourself going. Stay there until you get bored. And when you get bored, you'll start asking better questions, and you'll figure out that you simply have to take another mindset and go to the next level.

(Tim Dixon at 00:22:06) That is why if you go back to that digital leadership assessment that we did, that's why you've got that quadrant. You have a certain set of people who are followers and leaders, and they're born leaders, and they just need a little bit of help and a little bit of positioning to get them in the right roles. But what I found is 50% of my organization is what I call embracers, where they aspire to be leaders. As we're talking about here, they just don't have the capability. So they're looking for their leadership to empower them and upskill them and give them training and curriculum to do so. And for me, between my leaders and my embracers, that's 75% of my organization. Three-fourths of my org could grow into bigger and better roles, not just for doing more for me and the company, but for their own careers if they embrace some of this new movement. And so there's a lot in the culture. There's a lot in leadership description, and then there's a lot about how we actually do the work. So you could teach somebody to be a great leader, and then you can fall on the wayside when it comes to design thinking and designing tech.

(Tim Dixon at 00:23:10) And so I have these three lenses of—we call it innovation. We try to pitch a little bit of a different story when it comes to our approach to innovation. So I think these three lenses of innovation really redefine the role of the CIO in the digital era. And just like all my other acronyms, there's three I's. So number one is integration, and approach these new digital models with new digital tech, if you will, that is really more integration than building from scratch. And you've heard me say the future of innovation is integration. I firmly believe that is the case. That's being aware of common technology components all out there that you don't have to build, but you stitch together that forms some sort of new end-to-end business process that will make your platform certainly much more scalable, much more operational. The second piece is incubation. That's using new technologies, trying out new things, whether it's open source or other common technology to sort of enable this new platform that's inherently always going to be involved in any new business digital model. And then last one is really around inspiration. And this is how things get done. This is unlocking the potential and talent of your team to perform at a higher level. If you can do that piece wrapped in with the other two, you really have something special. And so I'm a little biased. I do believe I have something a little bit special here, and just love seeing the team perform at this different level.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:39) You've got to get that analysis tool, the grid that you—you've got to get that in an API or let the world—let people use it, because that's so much better than just, like, saying, okay, we need to work on communication, we need to work on soft skills in general, or whatever it may be. Right? That's—having this dataset of who these embracers are and who these, you know, natural-born leaders are, that gives you a whole added value. That's just a way better value to give someone if you're going to analyze their team. And I have yet to see that happen. Everyone says skills gap analysis, but to take that perspective of how does my organization look as far as people that could have potential and people that do have potential—that I like that perspective. It's a small subtle difference, but I think it's a very important one.

(Tim Dixon at 00:25:29) Yeah, that's really what the whole blog was about. It was about—and you know this, talking to people in technology—everybody wants to see what good is or what great looks like. And so the first thing that we did is obviously develop this digital leadership profile, which we call the Digital Talent Print. And this shows people, based on what we've seen out there in industry at our previous companies, what we've experienced—here's the five or six things that all great digital transformation leaders do or behave or have skill sets in. You know, maniacal focus on the customer, connecting dots of disparate trends, speed over perfection, platform, being an incubator of talent, having courage, fearlessness, things of that nature. I mean, developing the talent profile was key, and then obviously the assessment portion of having them compare themselves to that. And then really kind of the—getting under what I call the sentiment piece, which is then how do you compare yourself personally, you know, subjectively, to what we believe good or great is. So asking them questions like, how customer-centric are you? How curious and creative are you? Are you insightful and innovative? Are you a change agent? Can you glean insights from data? These are all kind of personal questions. You're kind of grading yourself up against the best. And you know, to be able to be put in some sort of a quadrant and have ML run on the results, you have to sort of take a step and look at yourself personally and examine yourself whether you are those things that we've talked about. And I give my team credit. They did that very openly and transparently. And that's the only way that you can then afford to help them, is if they're honest with themselves. And so you can get them the right training that they need to really excel. And so it was a whole process, and I think it reaps benefits. There's no doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:26) So when is your talk in Chicago? Are there dates for it yet?

(Tim Dixon at 00:27:31) September-ish. September-ish, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:33) We'll put it in the show notes.

(Tim Dixon at 00:27:37) Yeah, it's on the 11th. September 11th.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:39) September 11th in Chicago. And you're giving—

(Tim Dixon at 00:27:42) The keynote.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:42) A talk—yeah, a keynote—yep, at the CIO Perspectives event?

(Tim Dixon at 00:27:47) Yep. And my dear friend, Mary Fran, she's been so good to me over the years. She's really been kind of a partner throughout the last 10 years that I've met her. I don't know if I ever told you this story, but when she gave my team and I the first CIO 100 award that had ever been awarded when I was at Dell, you know, I walk up on stage and she has this hand out, you know, for me to shake. And I said, get rid of that hand. I gave her a big old hug up on stage at the CIO 100 awards. And ever since then, we've been pretty close friends, and we do stuff like this together all the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) And have you ever come across Dan Ouellette, like Ouellette and Associates? They do a lot of leadership training.

(Tim Dixon at 00:28:30) So he is the moderator of this keynote session with two—myself and another person—kind of like a fireside chat type of thing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:40) Nice. Have you hung out with him before, though?

(Tim Dixon at 00:28:43) I hadn't. No, I haven't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:44) Me either. I haven't—

(Tim Dixon at 00:28:45) Met him before. I think he's actually based somewhere here in the DC area, if I'm not mistaken.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:51) He's around that area. I had a call with him last week about, you know, what—actually, well, I'll just be completely transparent. Forget the fact that we're on a show. So when I saw him—he works with a lot of premier events and they go around, and they're awesome people too if you've ever met Nina and their family.

(Tim Dixon at 00:29:10) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:10) So I saw how passionate he was because he posts on LinkedIn and everything. He's seen all those pictures. And I was like, hey, we should get together and talk about what we're learning training leaders in different parts of the world and compare notes. And then I had the idea of—like, I went to Forbes, Forbes Tech Council, and I said, hey, guys, we should take what we're doing at LeaderBits and, you know, brand it as Forbes and push that out. And that would be very useful because you guys have a huge following, and I know you have a leadership section on your blog. And they said, we're actually doing that right now. We're, like, in the middle of making something almost identical to what you described. And I said, oh, dang. Right? So then I thought, all right, well, who else is out there in the media space? And then I find CIO and IDG. Right? And I said, okay, this is what we need to do. I see Dan. He's posting. He knows Mary Fran and all of them. And I said, I'm going to call Dan and say, hey, Dan, what we should do is you and I should get together and go license this to CIO because they—their competitor they don't even know is coming out with something like this right now, like, that's going to be out in six months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:11) And he said, "Well, they kind of already have something called Pathways, but it's not doing awesome. They're going to revamp it or something like that." But he said it's a little bit corporate. Their culture's a little bit corporate over there in the sense that they're not extremely hungry in innovation. And he goes, "It's kind of hard to get moved. He tried to do some stuff before." I said, "Alright, that's okay."

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:34) And then I saw that I was looking for who is responsible for revenue over there.

(Tim Dixon at 00:30:40) Yeah, exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:40) Because that's who I could call up and be like, "Hey, your competitor's coming out with this. Your program's kind of on ice. Let's revamp it and get you some revenue." And then that's when I found this weekend when I was searching for that person, this new CEO. So what we should do is we should take me, you, and Dan. We should all get our learnings, and we should go to CIO and we should say, "We should do this collaborative leadership program and put it out to all the technology leaders in the world."

(Tim Dixon at 00:31:03) Yeah, let's do it. I've talked to them about that before. The challenge with all this stuff is you've got to find time to do this outside of your normal work stuff. But all the speaking engagements I do are about this topic, and so you're not going to find anyone that's more passionate about this stuff than I do.

(Tim Dixon at 00:31:25) And that's the great thing about my job, at least, is that I believe that I'm actually passionate about the same thing that I'm actually good at. When I coach team members and those two things are a passion and developing talent to try to thrive and transform in this digital era, and then my drive is for positive disruption or innovation and to push company-first and industry-first initiatives. So those two things are what I want to leave my mark on whenever I leave. And what I coach folks on is trying to get to what that thing is that you're ultimately passionate about.

(Tim Dixon at 00:32:08) And if you're also good at that same thing, then it just makes work so much more fun. And you'd find it hard to believe how many people have trouble finding and describing what they're actually passionate about and then asking them what impression you'd like to leave on people once you're said and done in that particular role. But you have to think about those two things because that's what drives you every day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:34) Yeah. I've read a lot about passion. I got, I think, some of the best advice from this book called "Grit," where they study people who have done very, very well over time. And the pattern that they picked up on that was central to the book is that you start with an interest, and then you develop some skill. You don't like it. You love it. You hate it. But if you keep pushing through, you develop enough skills to where you're good at it. You're good at it publicly. There's some people and you're okay at it. And then you develop that passion. It's not like you're just walking down the street and you magically find some passion thing.

(Tim Dixon at 00:33:12) Well, you're going to be passionate about where you spend your time. That's for sure. So if you're focused on spending the time and upscaling yourself and making you a better worker and person, you're obviously going to fall in love and be passionate about it. But coaching people on that is actually difficult. And I don't know if other organizations might be easier than IT, but an IT person who for years, like I said, has been typically viewed as an internal cost center, may have been doing the same job for eight or ten years. It's very difficult for them to kind of see that perspective and open up and start to look at themselves in that way. And the ones that you can click with, it makes a huge difference. And the ones that you can't, it just requires a little bit more effort.

(Tim Dixon at 00:33:44) Like I was telling you, the group that I'm really trying to figure out right now are what I call the capable doubters. So the people that have huge capacity or capability, but they haven't really been aspired to do more than they're already doing. I'm trying to crack that nut and try to make more. And for us, that's about 20% of the organization. So we're trying to figure out how to motivate them a little bit more to take advantage of their capability.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:29) Yeah. And it's always an interesting struggle, right? Where to spend your time. Do you spend it cracking that nut, convincing the capable doubters?

(Tim Dixon at 00:34:40) Doubters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:40) Now, when you say capable, let's help me understand. Is that capable in change or capable technically?

(Tim Dixon at 00:34:46) Technically.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:47) Okay. So they're capable technically, but they're doubters.

(Tim Dixon at 00:34:50) Yeah, capable technically. And this obviously goes back to when the survey was originally created. They're deep in technical skills, but they don't aspire or they hadn't traditionally aspired to do more than what they already do. So one, how do you aspire them? How do you paint a vision that they can be excited about and enrolled in? And then how can you aspire them to leverage their skill sets and apply that to this new problem and this new strategy? And so, thankfully, it's not the majority, but it is a group. 20% is you can really move them in a unique way if that's the case.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:28) The best thing that pops into my mind is one time I had a sales lead come through right when I was first selling last year. I'd never done a sale before, or at least I thought I'd never done a sale before. Then I realized just because I'm so excited about the things I'm doing, I'm actually selling. But what happened was this person came through, and they were talking about signing up for our leadership program at Leaderbits, and they essentially gave a contrarian style attitude, right? And then I just shared a short story and just said, "Yeah, if you do that, you're going to run in circles, and you're capable technically. But if you keep obtaining possibilities, thinking about new possibilities and then letting doubt kill them, you're going to end up just running in circles and you're not going to go anywhere. And it ultimately doesn't affect me because you're not my target customer anyways. What it does is it just keeps you in the same spot."

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:15) And the response I got from that was they became a customer. They were just like, "Actually, that makes sense." They're like, "That keeps happening to me all the time. I have these ideas. I'm capable. I want to do more. And then that voice in my head kicks up, and then I end up spending all of this energy going up and down, and I never actually break through and actually take the action because that doubt sets in."

(Tim Dixon at 00:36:36) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:36) And I'm like, "Yeah, all that stuff I used to think was stupid, like the Tony Robbins or the Les Brown. You've got to go over there and listen to some of that audio to figure out how to get that voice in your head to be a little bit different."

(Tim Dixon at 00:36:48) That is the courage piece, the fearlessness piece. That's really where that comes into play. Pushing it. You're going to hear adversity. You're going to hear doubters. You're going to hear people, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard even folks in this most recent role talk about how they didn't think we would be able to create a brand new product that generates revenue for the company. Well, we're doing it. We've done it, and we're growing a digital business. And you're always going to have those doubters, and then those doubters, quite frankly, convert into wanting to join your organization and then follow once they see some success. But having courage, being fearless, the ability to put to the side that negativity that you may think or hear and just being able to drive it forward across the finish line is a huge component of digital transformation leadership skills.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:42) I love it. I'm excited. I want to see if I can get on. I'm going to talk to Chloe after the call. I'm going to see if I can get on my schedule to come out there and listen to you talk because I like the way you sound. What you're saying is very rarely do you find people who are so aligned with you and what you're trying to do in life. And so to come across you and Dan and Nina and all these different people that are pushing that forward, it's like, "Alright, I feel like I'm slowly collecting a tribe, and I'll push it forward with CIO." You know, I'll just call up their new CEO and say, "Hey." Oh, you know what? We need Mary Fran on board. That's the end.

(Tim Dixon at 00:38:13) Mary Fran's the key.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:15) Yeah. Let's get Mary Fran on board.

(Tim Dixon at 00:38:18) She's bought in. I mean, she wouldn't ask me to come speak at all these events if she didn't like this message because CIO needs to be about both this movement, this redefining of the CIO being redefined in this digital age. And this is exactly how CIOs can redefine themselves. So it's a hot topic. It's a very relevant topic. And my personal opinion is that whether the role continues to be called CIO or not, this really is the transformation within the senior leadership of technology role that has to take place.

(Tim Dixon at 00:38:54) And I like to think I'm a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of pitching this. But the idea of this technology leader being a very business-digital-facing executive. One, you get one person as opposed to multiple people competing against similar initiatives. And then two, you really get to get the most out of that team, that person, and that org blending both of those skills. And then for me, quite frankly, giving a new fresh face like digital to a technology exec just motivates them and brings much more energy and more of them for the company than they would have in the past.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:34) And it's got an incredible cost justification too to spend time training that up, right?

(Tim Dixon at 00:39:39) Yeah. I mean, you could say that, but there is investment in every part. I mean, I think everybody knows digital is not cheap by any means. But think about the investment of, you know, I've been in the IT space now going on 25 years. I mean, you can't buy that expertise. And although I'm not getting any younger, this is just a great way to leverage that in a new and different way. And if you can have fun with it at the same time, I always tell my team and my vendor partners and any recruit that I interview, "Let's do great things together. Let's have a lot of fun." If you're doing great things, you're naturally going to have fun. And in order to have fun, you think you'd have to do some great things. And so at the end of the day, that's at the root of what we're trying to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:28) And that's how you're building that momentum and that energy ball and keeping it up. And that's why you're a great leader, and that's why I'm having you on the show to share your advice.

(Tim Dixon at 00:40:36) Holy cow. Jeez.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:37) Woo. Alright. Sorry. I get excited.

(Tim Dixon at 00:40:40) Well, I gave a talk to our summer interns and new hires a couple weeks ago, and they really liked what I had to say. And I'll share with you at the end of the show if you can do an hour at the end my words of wisdom and my life lessons. I can't tell you how many people came up to me after that session, took screenshots of the slide, said that really hit home, because there's a personal side to technology and the work that we do that is as impactful, if not more impactful than the tech stuff. I think people are starting to finally realize that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:23) Yes. You just said it so beautifully.

(Tim Dixon at 00:41:27) So here are my life lessons, and you can see how these resonate with—

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:30) Well, hold on one second. Let me set it up real quick.

(Tim Dixon at 00:41:32) Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:33) Okay? So you're driving home from work today, and you stop at a red light, right? And then next to you pulls up this brand new Tesla 2020. It's not even out yet. It's not, you can't even buy. It's not even out. Window rolls down, and it's Elon Musk. Okay? He says, "Follow me. I'm going to show you something cool." So you follow him. He takes you to this mansion that he has conveniently located right there, right? You get out. You go hang out with him. In his living room, he pulls back a curtain, very Wizard of Oz style. And there is a time machine. And you get to go in that time machine and go back in the past and share some of your advice and your wisdom with your past self and an audience. What would that be?

(Tim Dixon at 00:42:15) Wow. Now that really frames it right there. That's for sure. So like I mentioned, I have seven of them. Life lessons, what I would share with anyone and actually already do was, which is the first one I mentioned before, is find your passion and excel at it. Be great at what you are great doing is number one.

(Tim Dixon at 00:42:31) Number two, three C's: be curious, be creative, and have courage. The curious piece goes back to the business or the customer curiosity, that whole design thinking thing, asking questions. Creativity is the Steve Jobs or the Jeff Bezos. You know, hire the great people and just let them wind up and let them go. And then courage is listening or not listening to adversity and being fearless and taking that thing across the finish line. So three C's: curious, creative, and have courage.

(Tim Dixon at 00:43:17) The third one is own it, act now. So speed over perfection. Get going on it right now. Right now after this call, in the next hour, and don't wait for direction. Own it, act now, don't wait for direction. Move with speed and hyperfocus. People always ask me, "What do you mean by, I get the moving fast, but what do you mean by hyperfocus?" That is waking up with a sense of urgency, allocating time, not letting anyone disrupt, and being focused at what it is that you're trying to do and solve. It will clear your mind, and you will work on that thing until it's actually solved or until you actually complete the task. So hyperfocus.

(Tim Dixon at 00:43:45) Fifth one is get comfortable at being uncomfortable, which means take risk. And this is a hard one for folks in traditional companies or large companies to actually partake in. Maybe within IT, there's been less of a risk-taker mentality. So if you feel that you're being uncomfortable or you feel like this is a challenging problem for you, that's probably pretty good. That means there's some risk involved. It's getting you to think and be more comfortable with being uncomfortable with taking risk.

(Tim Dixon at 00:44:15) And then ask yourself, number six, what do you want to be known for accomplishing when it's all said and done? And at the end of the day, the last one: be kind.

(Tim Dickson at 00:44:39) Nobody wants to work with a jerk. Be a team player, and at the end of the day, have integrity, which is obviously doing what you say you're going to do. And when you do it, do it right. Something that my father instilled in me that I think applies to many different business scenarios. So those are my life lessons for Elon Musk or anyone else who wants to listen to Tim Dickson.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:02) Those are amazing. When is the book coming out? You gotta write a book about this.

(Tim Dickson at 00:45:08) I've thought about it, actually. I certainly have thought about it. I've got a lot of material, but some things I'd like to do before then.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:17) Well, maybe we'll include some of those lessons in the, we're putting this book together called Tech Titans.

(Tim Dickson at 00:45:22) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:23) It's got like the best advice from all the interviews. And so maybe we'll include some of those and be like, Tim Dickson's awesome seven things. Right?

(Tim Dickson at 00:45:30) I'll send them to you. You can quote me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:32) Done. I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming and hanging out and doing this podcast. This was like one of the most valuable interviews that I've done this entire year. So I'm very grateful for you taking your time and coming on and sharing it.

(Tim Dickson at 00:45:45) So forever and ever, now I'm tied to Joel Beasley, and we're connected. We're officially connected.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:52) And I'll reach out to Mary Fran and say, hey, we got, we call him Dan Omelette because everyone mispronounces Ouellette. I was like, we got the omelette. We got Tim Dickson. We got Joel Beasley.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:05) We're gonna have Mary Fran. We've got all these people who are so passionate about leadership and technology. Let's do, and CIO is this amazing brand. I got so inspired by the small speech that Muhammad Ali gave in his press release about him accepting the job.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:24) And I was like, we could come together. I'll drive it forward so you don't have to do anything except for like take a look at what we're doing and say it's good. I'm backing you guys. And then we can push this thing forward and actually create a large global change with a brand and really impact the entire current and next generation of leaders.

(Tim Dickson at 00:46:43) Let's own it. Let's act now. Let's do it. Let's take it on. Let's move with hyperfocus because that's the only way something like this is gonna get done. But there's a huge, what I find in all the work that I do and the people that I talk to, there's such a huge opening for this right now, and I don't see it letting up anytime soon. So let's go do it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:02) Let's do it. I'm gonna send a message right now. We're gonna end this call. I'm gonna go send a message to Mary Fran. You send a message to her and say, hey, Joel's gonna reach out to you. He's a cool guy. And that way, she'll talk with me.

(Tim Dickson at 00:47:11) Hey, Joel. Let's do great things together. Let's have a lot of fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:14) I agree. Thanks, Tim.

(Tim Dickson at 00:47:15) Alright. Take care. Take care.