Sheila Jordan - CIO at Symantec

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. It can be difficult to be a technology leader. That is exactly why I spend my time talking with these great leaders in hopes of making it easier for you. As humans, we have this ability to mimic other humans. Visit leaderbits.io where you can watch short videos that you can copy the actions and behaviors of great leaders to become a better leader for your team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:23) I recommend that you watch a few of the testimonial videos on the site and then try it for three months so that you can see and experience the same results. Now get excited because today we are talking to Sheila Jordan, the CIO of Symantec, and we discuss their recent transformation by insourcing their IT department, locking in on strategic and critical decisions, and creating an environment where people feel aligned to the mission that the organization is working on. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:09) There she is. It's Sheila.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:12) Oh, hi.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:12) Hey, how are you? Good. I'm so excited. Are you excited?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:17) I'm excited. We're going to make a podcast.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:20) Why are you excited?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:21) Oh, because it's today. I love it. I'm one of those crazy people. I run at 5:30 in the morning, and I just am so pumped up before the day even starts.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:30) Yeah, and your coffee.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:32) What? This is water. Okay. Do you do coffee or tea?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:38) Coffee. Coffee.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:40) Oh man. Tell me about your day. What's your day look like? Do you start with a 5:30 run?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:46) Well actually, no. I'm into Orangetheory, so I try to do my five to six Orangetheory, not every day, but at least three days a week.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:53) So do they still do that thing where they charge you if you don't show up?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:01:58) Yeah. Well, I do the monthly one, so whatever. I just pay the flat fee.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:02) Somebody was telling me that one of the cool benefits of it is you, it forces you to go because you get to commit yourself to it, and then they charge you if you don't show up.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:02:12) Yeah. Well, my 23-year-old daughter forces me. She comes with me, so that's my motivation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:19) Is she in school or?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:02:20) No. Done school, graduating. She's working at Deloitte now. So all good, all good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:25) Lots of great people coming out of Deloitte.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:02:27) Yeah, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:29) So I'm really curious to know if you split your day into a pie chart, where are your big three areas that you focus on?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:02:37) Yeah. So I'd say there's three things. One is overall helping to decide the IT strategy and also how that connects to the company strategy. Then it's around execution, because if you can't execute and execute almost flawlessly, and I mean run and operate and do all the things that you just assume all get done. And I'd say the other third is I really spend a lot of time thinking about and planning and participating in customer EBCs and what we're doing internally and what's the security landscape and what does that look like, and we share that with our customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:10) Oh wow. So I have a good idea in my head. So I'm in my early thirties. So to me, Symantec is like Norton Antivirus, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:19) So that's from the past. What is it today?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:03:23) Yeah. So I think that's a very old way of thinking, which is fine. But so a couple of things. I would say that the security industry has historically been very fragmented, meaning you've got point solutions for everything. You got a point solution for the endpoint. You got point solutions for the security of the network layer. Every layer of the architecture, historically, you've had a different solution to solve for security. And so one of our reports we did, which is our Internet Security Threat Report, which is available to the public, suggested in our survey is that in any large enterprise, anywhere from 65 to 85 security products could exist because it's been so point solution.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:04:07) So we think this is a huge opportunity at Symantec and we're creating our vision on that. We have two business units, one for enterprise and one for consumer, which is where Norton is, and I'll explain that in a second. But on the enterprise side, we're delivering our integrated cyber defense platform, which is really a platform that ties all those security products together. So everything from endpoint all the way down to our Internet layer, the Internet traffic coming in, we have products that not only work at solving the security at each of those devices or gateways, it really is how they tie together and work better together. So we're super excited about that.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:04:43) And then on the consumer side, we really do believe it's all about consumer digital safety. So tying together what Norton was around protecting your PC and laptops, but moving to securing the devices, people, homes. So we made the acquisition of LifeLock, which is where I'm at right now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:01) Access. Yeah. So on the consumer side, it really is a whole new category around consumer digital safety where we're protecting the individuals, the devices, your homes, and who knows what else later.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:05:01) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:13) Maybe my thermostat, right? All that information. The Nest protection. So I'm curious to know. I'm going to get a little nerdy for a second. So you sparked my interest when you said that you had this sort of single cyber defense system. Did you make an analytic play? Did you do a bunch of analytics on device, or was it an all-encompassing solution? How did you combine all that?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:05:34) The interesting part is we actually have the largest database. So when you have one of our products is called SEP, which is our Security Endpoint, and so when we have that out on hundreds of thousands of devices, we get all the telemetry. It's anonymized, but we get the telemetry from all these different devices. So we have this organization that's around STAR. It's called our Symantec Telemetry Group.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:05:55) It's the largest database. Think of it as the largest database in the world that we can actually see and pinpoint bad behavior and bad security viruses before anyone else can. So when you see that, we use a lot of AI and machine learning in that analysis because what security becomes is these logs and logs and logs of data. So how do you find the needle in the haystack? So we have a lot of AI machine learning that is able to us to detect these really bad things that are happening and be able to inform our customers and agencies and everyone that we work with that there's something, there's a virus, there's a breach happening or there's a virus coming. So we have an ability to see that kind of before anyone else does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:39) So I'm a little bit biased to you. I enjoy you because I'm a native to Florida, right? And I saw your progression of your career. I saw that you're at Disney. Was that Disney in Florida though?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:06:50) Yes. Well, Disney World in Florida, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) Because I saw UCF, and my wife graduated from there.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:06:55) Oh wow.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:55) And so I was like, UCF Disney, yeah. And so we're big fans. And so when I saw you, I was like, oh, this is, I'm so pumped to talk to her. And then I wondered, you got this amazing career, Disney, Cisco, Symantec. What brand of coffee is it?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:07:17) Well, I would just say that I've been very fortunate to work with some really, really cool companies. I really do believe that, and it's, you know, some of it is luck, but some of it is by choice. I really would encourage the listeners and everyone else is that you can work really anywhere you want to work, but you have a choice of those companies that you want to work for. And I think it's super important that you consider that. Consider the culture of the company, consider the leadership team, consider their mission.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:07:40) And, again, I've always been super fortunate to work with companies that I love the product or mission and what the company is trying to do. The management team has always been one that set the right tone and the culture enabled me to let me be who I am, but also afforded me some opportunities that helped my career progress. And I think the third thing is that as I get older, it is super fun to be able to develop and pass that, you know, play that forward to really help people and really participate in their careers and growth and really pay forward what's been given to me. So that's also really, and when you're in an environment to be able to do that, it's super rewarding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:18) Yeah. So you've collected all this amazing experience, have gotten to work with these great teams, have been very fortunate to improve and grow, and there's definitely a time to lend your hand down to the next generation and help pull them up.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:08:30) Yes, yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:31) What are a couple of the leadership themes, things that you would pass on to the audience or other young leaders that are just coming into the corporate world?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:08:40) Yeah. So I have a lot. So one is I have a pretty significant intern group. At Cisco, I created one, and then also I have it here at Symantec. So I spend a lot of the summers working with young interns trying to figure out what they want to do when they grow up in life, which, by the way, I still want to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:59) Me too.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:09:00) I love my current role. But I would say a couple of things. One is, when you walk into a job, you are being evaluated and scored and just evaluated on your current job. So do your job really, really, really well. I mean, excel at it.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:09:16) Do it better than anyone else. Look for ways that you can make it better, improve it, either productivity play, or you learn that there's something that's missing. So don't be afraid to, you know, one, do your job really well. The second part of that is, we really do want new fresh ideas and fresh thinking and young thinking, and we also completely recognize and understand that the millennial generation just works differently. So don't be afraid to give the older people in the organization those ideas, those suggestions, all those kinds of things that can help make you more productive, or if you see an opportunity in the company that we're just missing.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:09:41) Sometimes when you've worked in corporate for a long time, you get so used to policies and rules and procedures that we forget sometimes that it might not be smart. So raise questions, ask questions. In my opinion, there are really no dumb or inaccurate questions. Ask, raise, why do we do the things that we do? Really be participatory and engaged would be my second point. And the third point then is, don't be afraid of being ambitious. I think some people get labeled that they're too aggressive or they're too ambitious, and I would say, don't be afraid of being ambitious.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:10:14) Do your job really well, get engaged and suggest other things to improve it, but then if you have aspirations and you want to go do something else or go shadow another department or you want to take on more responsibility if you think you can, there's nothing wrong with asking for that. Nothing wrong at all.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:10:46) So just make sure that you have that dialogue with your manager and just make sure that you're, don't be afraid of being ambitious, would be my third point.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:56) I love it. You know, when you were talking, you reminded me, about last week, I heard I think it was Netflix. They do this concept where they put you on missions, so you're not necessarily going to work that job forever and they'll move people around. Have you had any experience with that style?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:11:09) Well, I think that's the whole notion of work, and we call it agile development, but the whole notion is, one of the things that I really believe in, and I think it's been a huge element to the growth of the IT organization, is my job is to create a whole bunch of generalists. And in IT, you've got infrastructure people that know deep infrastructure or applications or endpoint. And I really want to move them around. So I have a pretty advanced program that we move talent or athletes around, because I want them to have that generalist view of another area and really expand your thinking. You know, there's a book that we've all read in college that is you walk in someone else's shoes.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:11:48) It's amazing when that happens when you truly do do someone else's job for a bit. You have such a deep appreciation for some of the things that you wouldn't have known and the nuances. So I would also say that in corporate America, again, I think it's going to be where you're going to be able to play in different places and projects, and we have a thing called ResourceNow in our organization where everyone has their day job, but if you have an ability and you want to go learn Python, for example, which is a new computer technology, if you want to go learn something else, there's jobs that are posted, short-term jobs that are posted, and you can go apply, and on top of your day job, you can go do those kinds of things. So I think it's going to be the way of the future, this marketplace of assignments that we're going to find ourselves in and being able to participate in way different ways than we have jobs structured today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:35) Okay. Now you got me really interested. So it's called ResourceNow at Symantec?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:12:40) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:41) And so you will actually have this board, these part-time jobs where people could, within the organization, expand their interest?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:12:47) Yes. Because what we're seeing is we're hiring these contractors, and nothing about contractors, but we're giving these opportunities to contractors when sometimes people have their project is winding down or they have some opportunities or they're just interested in another technology. Why should they look for somewhere else to go apply their knowledge and their expertise? And why shouldn't I create an environment that allows them to go explore all these different opportunities and build their skills, build their talents, build their muscles. So and it really is fun because you're getting different parts of the organization talking to each other, learning from each other, and it's just fun to see the movement.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:13:23) And, oh, by the way, this one new in career solved a problem in forty-eight hours, and it was done. So it's really fun to see the results as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:33) Are you a publicly traded company?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:13:34) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:35) I'm going to buy some of your stock. You want to know why? Because you're structuring it based on how humans work. So my history is engineer, turned into team lead, turned into C-level technology executive, turned into entrepreneur, right? So from that, what I saw was in my peers when I'm in technology, everybody has that need to do that little fun side project, whether it's you're coding with your friends or after. But what you're doing is you're somewhat allowing this concept to exist within your organizations so they can work on something else or shadow, all that stuff that you mentioned. You're satisfying that human need that's occurring, and you're reducing your exposure to losing people, retention-wise, because now if I could get that creativity with that security inside of my organization versus having to run off and start something, then now I'm going to stick around more.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:14:31) Yeah. And I'm so glad you see that because that's exactly what's happening and we actually even have an annual hackathon that we actually, you know, for forty-eight hours, we can go solve some other problems, which was all AI based. So I just think it's super important. I mean, everyone talks about the notion that innovation and innovation's tied to R&D, research and development, and innovation is a group inside a company or a team. And I just fundamentally don't agree with that.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:14:55) I think innovation can occur at every single level of the company. I think, you know, administrators, you know, executive assistants, all the way to the CEO can innovate in their current jobs if the management team has allowed a structure to innovate, and I just think that's super important to look for ways to do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:12) Yeah. I found recently in this business thing that I'm doing that I interviewed a bunch of people that were potential customers. Right? And I asked them about how they purchased and I wasn't trying to sell anybody anything. I'm just researching and gathering knowledge. Right? And what I found is my product could be 10% better. Right? But what really needed to change was their contract model that they all existed in their enterprise. It was really stale.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:39) And so, like, in consumer lives, we purchased in a certain way. And so I said, alright. The way I'll innovate and stand out will actually be like our contract and business model because our product can be 10% different, but everybody's claiming their product's 10% different. But they don't even realize that everyone hates the way their contracts are, but everyone's the same. So that's where I need to be different.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:59) And that's innovation, but not necessarily in the product or in R&D. It's innovation in the business model.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:16:04) Right. It's in and that's exact point I'm trying to make. Innovation can occur anywhere in the organization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:09) We're best friends now.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:16:12) Oh, I need more best friends.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:14) Right? Well, highly productive people. We this is how I get my social interaction is with other people. Alright. So massive transformation at Symantec. You're a part of it. You're in the middle of it. It's been going on for the past five years. What's been happening? What's involved? Like, what are you excited about?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:16:30) Well, I'm excited about it all. So let me just give you a little bit of history. I've been with the company now four and a half years, and I actually was hired to insource IT, which I think is when you go back to think about it, you know, the decision was made years ago to outsource IT. And, again, I'm not opposed to outsourcing, but when it isn't really well managed and well thought through and we had a lot of leadership changes and stuff, it becomes inefficient. And I would say that was the case in point when I joined. It was, you know, we were spending a lot of money in IT. The quality of work wasn't great. The quality of results wasn't great. So it was an opportunity to kind of stand up a whole new IT world-class organization, and I feel 4.5 years later, we've actually done that. I'm really, really excited. It's diverse. I'm 51% based in India, so with my own staff. And, you know, we're really diverse and I would say in a lot of ways, we're actually moving through the next series of challenges. Like, having insourced IT is one thing, but then the team was ready to take on all the other challenges, which was then halfway through insourcing, we split the company in half.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:17:38) With the Veritas separation, we literally split the company, and I'm talking WANs, LANs, buildings, laptops, ERPs, data, you name it. Split the company in half, which was, I think, one of the hardest things I've ever done professionally. Then, we added now six acquisitions on top of that. So, the whole notion is the strategy is we want to be the largest cybersecurity company in the world, and we are. Now to do that, we got rid of some things that we didn't think were part of our strategy, and also built up some new technologies that are part of our new technology. So that required six acquisitions, another divestiture, so we divested another part of the business. And now we're sitting here again in a position that really is selling this integrated cyber defense platform requires us to sell hardware, software, services, maintenance, support. I mean, we're selling the whole stack. So it's been an incredible journey. I've learned again, I was hired to insource thinking that was going to be pretty difficult, and then, you know, was able to help drive the transformation of six more acquisitions and two divestitures. So it's been fun.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:34) Success.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:18:36) Yeah. I would say it's been very successful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:38) I'm proud of you.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:18:41) And you know what? It's the team. It's, again, building this team and building a world-class organization and allowing them to work on new technology and explore. And, you know, what I've learned too is when you give a talented group of athletes a challenge, they're going to figure it out. And this team has just executed almost flawlessly, so it's been really fun to be a part of that journey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:00) I love that you call them athletes. That's something completely unique that I've never heard before, and I like it because it's a good visual.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:19:07) Yeah. And that's what they are. I mean, when you get these guys in and they're working as hard as the physical athletes are in their training and their it's about collaboration and the teams that win win together and, I mean, there's a whole I'm a big sports fan. My kids played sports their whole lives. I'm big on sports and the analogies of teamwork and winning together, and that's what IT is. Unfortunately or fortunately, the IT organization is set up. There's so many dependencies, like, you can't an infrastructure has to rely on applications. Applications has to rely on infrastructure. Data's threaded through it all. So we are so dependent on each other that the way to win is to work like a winning team. And I believe we have that culture in the IT organization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:47) When can I buy the book? Do you have plans for a book?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:19:52) Actually, I do. But it's not my first book is well. My first book is not necessarily about work. That one here, I'm actually close to publishing a book about the positive perspectives of a working mother. There are many books written about the guilt and how do you deal with guilt and all the things you're doing to ruin your children by working and choosing to work. So I'm taking a different angle, and now that my kids are out of school, out of college, and working, I actually see benefits to them because I worked. So that's a it's a different spin. But, yeah, it's coming out late in October, I hope.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:26) So I'm curious to know, you mentioned this intern program, and you mentioned it both at Cisco and here at Symantec. This is like something this is like your signature. This is something you do. You put together an intern team. Tell me more about I think people would be interested to know how you form it and, like, what you do with it.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:20:43) Well, so that's a great question. So I'm super excited about it. I do think it's important that, one, we infiltrate our companies with new and fresh thinking, and I really do love the energy and the fresh thinking and what the, you know, what the schools are teaching the kids and their experience in college is way different than some of us have gone long ago, you know, a while ago. So it's really super important that we bring that level of thinking into the organization. Now, quite honestly, when you're in college, you don't know exactly what you want to do. You know what you're studying, but you really don't know what part of the world you want to participate in. So I think it's really important that when you create an internship program, it's not about hiring a bunch of kids and they're going to be here this summer or young adults that's going to be here this summer to make copies and coffee. That is just a waste of everyone's time. So instead, my management team and I, we create a whole list of projects that we want that can be started and almost finished or sort of finished in a twelve week time period. Now, it's not always going to be finished, but it will be enough to say, does this thing make sense or not?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:21:46) So that after the interns leave, we can put it into production or not. But it's going to be a real problem to go work on and a real thing to work on. So I'm super excited because the interns come in and then we place them with a buddy, so they have a buddy that they know. Because usually they'll come in and they don't know anyone else that's working in the organization. We recruit from various schools across the entire United States, and we actually have a similar program that's a little bit different, but a similar internship program in India, which just runs a little bit differently. It's more of a year or two year stint, and then they convert to full-time employees. But we bring them in for the summer here in the United States. We give them assignments. We have a buddy that they work with. We do a lot of social activities or allow them to have the social activities for them to see San Francisco, explore it, so they have the weekends to go kind of have some fun.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:22:31) But then we also do, like, a showcase. They have to present to me and my staff at the end of it, so we give them lots of visibility to the executives. We have words of wisdom that we'll walk in and tell them some key things that we learned early in our career. My leadership team spends some time with them. And then, of course, we give them some really, really fun assignments to work on. Now, it came together this year, which is great, is they were doing these assignments, and I'll give you some examples in a second, but some of them actually wanted which I think is a little crazy because we keep them pretty busy, but they wanted additional assignments. So they found ResourceNow and participated in the ResourceNow work. So not only were they working on their assignment, they actually found some other things that they wanted to get introduced to. So the thing I would say is that for them, it's real practical experience of working in corporate America, and even if they come out of it like one individual worked in our data services group. And at the end of the summer, he goes, I never want to work with data services again in analytics. That's not for me.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:23:28) And I actually think that's as important as finding this other young woman. She came in undecided major and loved the UI, UX experience so much, user experience, that she now wants to go major and double major in user experience and analytics associated with it. So I think this opportunity, not only they're getting some real work done for us, but they get to decide early in career in kind of a safe environment what their interest is, what they're good at, what they want to pursue without it being a, you know, lifelong career decision. So it's super I just think it's a win-win for everyone.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:00) I love it. I love how the world's moving towards how we want to work. It's like we all came into the world, like, with this there's this predefined, like, template of how it should be, and then we slowly push it into our direction. I wanted to use the word manipulate, but it didn't sound right. We're, like, slowly manipulate it into the thing that we want, and you can see you can see the big ships turning, and it's and it's beautiful. And I love that you're and the senior leadership there turning this big ship that is Symantec that everybody knows, a household name, and that's leadership 101. Like, I love it. You're leading the way. You're making this possible, like, these intern programs, this concept of ResourceNow. You're just another one that's saying this works and I like it, so thank you for that.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:24:43) You're welcome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:44) If you have let's say that you have an engineer, they're interested in moving into team from individual contributor into team leader. They've got some, like, they don't really know how to do that, how to focus it. What sort of advice would you give to that individual?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:25:00) So I think one of the actually hardest jumps to make is being an individual contributor moving into management, whatever level that management is. Because a couple things. One is you got to let go of like, when you're an individual contributor, you take super pride in the actual results of your project or Excel spreadsheet or code or whatever that you're doing. And then as you move into management, you have to become less controlling of what the exact output is. You have to say to the teams, here's the guardrails, here's the expectation. I'm going to set the frame and let you guys figure out your style, your way, however you decide to do it. I mean, I'd like it to my husband and I, I don't load the dishwasher the way he does, and he thinks it's all wrong. And then my view is the dishwasher's loaded, the dishes get cleaned, and they're easily loaded. But that's the difference, and I use that example because that's the difference in management. You got to let go of the exact way to load the dishwasher, but you got to focus on the guardrails of what's the output, which is, you know, clean dishes.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:26:00) So I think as a manager, it's the hardest thing to let go of, but to guide and put those guardrails in, but to be very serious about what the expected outcome is. So raise your level of awareness, raise the communication, be clear about the end state, not about the mechanics of how to get there. That's the biggest distinction.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) And then being there for when you buy some new dish and they don't know how to put it in, so they come and ask you.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:26:22) Yes. Of course. Of course. If it doesn't fit the right standard, of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:26) My wife and I actually had that conversation last week, so that's why I was laughing so hard. That's a good one. I think everybody, like, will resonate with that. I can bet. Decision making. Right? So I get a lot of outreach from the show. People I always try to, you know, listen with an open mind, figure out they always have the details of their problem, then I'm always trying to figure out what's the core value of what they're looking for. Right? Because it's not always in the details. They really they come to me with A, B, or C, and it's really like they need decision-making skills. That's what they're really struggling with is deciding between A and B. And so my response will be some decision-making stuff. I'm curious, do you have any favorite decision-making skills or any advice that you would give to people asking about, like, how you make decisions?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:27:13) Yeah. So I would say I'll give you the Veritas separation as an example. So, again, I was asked to separate the company and with the divestiture, divestitures are harder than acquisitions for this reason. As a divestiture, everything gets done when you've actually separated. When the work is done, the money gets exchanged, the deal gets done, and, you know, you actually separate. With an acquisition, the deal is done, you know, we're purchasing this company and kind of internally, you have all the time in the world. You have your own ability to decide how fast you want to integrate, how slow you want to integrate, and all those decisions when the business and IT side are done, you know, from an internal perspective, you have time to figure that out or as much time as you want. So when I was divesting the company, again, I was in this mode of actually just standing up our public cloud. So the two things I had to decide really fast, really fast was what did I want to do around infrastructure and the network, and then what did I want to do around ERP? Those are the two really big decisions because those are the crux of do the orders get booked? Can we talk to customers? Does the business work? Does the business flow? And so everything else, and I don't want to say it was noise, but everything else was secondary, like endpoints. So what version of the laptops do they want?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:28:25) And what is their email going to look like? Is it dot com or something else? I mean, all these millions and millions of other decisions are important, but they're not necessarily critical. So anytime I've had to make some really big decisions, you know, which is daily, those when you have to kind of carve out between what's really strategic and critical and lock in on those decisions. And what I would say is that there'll be 10 people that come at you.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:28:51) Now you can change that decision if you have new data that's really defined to change the decision. And I make that distinction because when you make these really strategic decisions, sometimes people will come at you with a bunch of opinions. Opinions should not alter a strategic decision. Everybody with their opinion. Okay. Great. It's wonderful and fantastic, but that is a game changer. That's like, you know, that's like a huge turning the ship, you know, 180 degrees. So I would say be really clear about what the two or three or four strategic decisions are you have to make. You're going to make it with as much data as you have today, so make them.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:29:28) Don't worry about it's the right or wrong decision. Make it. Stay the course unless there's new data that changes the decision. And new data is data, it's not opinions. And then I would say that all the other stuff is important but not critical.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:29:43) So you have to address it, you have to get at it, but I wouldn't get so overwhelmed that every decision you have to make is the same weight.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:51) I love it. You've got so much good advice. We need the book. The positive book is good, and then we need the technology leadership book as well.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:30:02) Okay. I'll work on that next. I'll work on that next, just based upon what you said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:07) So what was the last time—you're around all these great people all the time, great teams, and so they do different things that stand out to you. And so what catches your eye about a great leader? Someone that you see has a tremendous amount of potential and you'd say, I'm going to keep my eye on that person. Like, what stands out to you about those types of people?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:30:25) Well, I'm going to answer the question two ways. I'm going to talk about who are the people I love to work with and why do I work for them and what's interesting to me, and then I'll talk to you about how I look for leaders in the organization. But to me, and they're not necessarily so different, but they are in one degree. So as a leader and as a leadership team, I just look for authenticity. First and foremost, if you don't have trust inside an organization, then it's hard to get the team to work like a team, like a real team.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:30:51) So I would say authenticity. And again, leaders have a really hard job to do. They can share with you some information. They know what's going on, and they can share with you some. Some is there is this cycle that we can't talk about right now because it's strategic and it's quiet, we can't. And others are, you know, we just haven't quite thought about, you know, we just haven't quite thought about the future of the vision.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:31:10) And so they're always dancing, and I mean it, like, in a positive way, but dancing between the clarity of how they can communicate to the organization, but also recognizing there's some things they can't communicate. And so I think it's super important to work for leaders that are really clear about that. Like, this is what I can tell you right now. This is where we are. We are thinking about this black cloud thing over here, we just can't talk about it right now, but just know there's a lot of energy happening and thinking about it, and when I can talk about it, I will, but I just can't talk about it right now.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:31:40) So I think that level of communication, authenticity, and sharing their view, because, again, leaders have such a different broad view of the company and people love to hear the breadth of it versus the specific thing that they're working on. The other final thing I'd say from a leader is their job is to create an environment, I think, and a structure in which people feel aligned to the overall mission. So the mission of the company is one thing, the strategies are really going to be clear in the vision, but I want to know that everyone in my organization understands what they're working on, the specific project that they're working on, and how that aligns and ties to the mission and the vision. Because while we all love our jobs, we all want to feel really important, and we want to feel great about it, we also want to know that what we're working on is bigger than us as an individual, and we are participating in a bigger mission. And that's why I think Symantec is at such a great spot because we have such an incredible mission, which is to protect the world.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:32:34) I mean, it's pretty big and important, and so we want to make sure everyone in the company can tie to that mission, which is what we're working through right now. As far as leaders I look for, I think, again, I go back to I look for people that do their job really well. Flawlessly, they see it, they connect the dots, they understand what they're working on, but how it connects to others. They have an empathy towards the connection and the ability to connect and make sure that what they're doing isn't going to negatively affect someone else. And if they do, they at least have that conversation about it, and they just aren't in it for their own growth and their own agenda.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:33:13) I have no kind of tolerance for that. But then I also will look for people that have a positive attitude, can do, ambitious, and really can think of not why not, but why. You know, why? We should be able to do this. We should have the opportunity to go explore stuff. Technology exists.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:33:33) So, you know what? What I love is, not that the glass is half full, but let's always explore opportunities and ways we can do something versus it being no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:43) I love it. I think we've got, like, the first four chapters of your book done.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:33:48) I'm going to have to keep this recording then.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:50) Well, yes. I will send you a copy.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:33:51) Okay. Good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:52) I am curious. So I've met with CTOs and CIOs across the board. There is, regardless of what blog post somebody reads or whatever, whatever, there is no consistency to the differences in the title and everything like that. It's all really unique for each company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:07) So I'm curious to know what does the CIO versus CTO do at your company?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:34:15) So I would say my job is primarily delivering technology and services and capabilities for the internal workforce that connects to our customers and partners. So I'm all about the customer journey, the partners, employees, all about employee productivity, all about the tools and the technology that makes Symantec operate and work. The CTO is all about, let's take our products that we're creating and let's create the integrated cyber defense platform. Let's look four years out and what's happening with new technology and AI machine learning built in. Should we be thinking about different ways of eliminating passwords?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:34:52) They're thinking about the technology and the future of the Symantec technology, whereas I'm more about delivering the services for our employees, partners, and customers.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:02) I love it. There's no wrong answer to that.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:35:04) I know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:05) That was perfect. We did it. We made a podcast.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:35:10) Oh, awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:11) I'm so excited. You excited? Was it good?

(Sheila Jordan at 00:35:13) Yes. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:15) Was it fun for you? Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Alright.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:35:20) Well, it's so wonderful to meet you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:22) It was so wonderful to talk to you. Have a fantastic day.

(Sheila Jordan at 00:35:24) You too. Bye.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:31) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:37) I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.