Jen Hartsock - Being Resilient, and 3 Major Tenants of Leadership

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Jen, the CIO of Baker Hughes, and we discuss how being resilient and able to pivot quickly will take you far in your career, Jen's three major tenets of leadership, and why it's important to let your voice be heard within the leadership team. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) It's Jen.

(Jen at 00:00:37) Hey, Joel. How's it going?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) Oh, life is good. Living the dream. How about you?

(Jen at 00:00:42) Same. Can't complain at all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:44) Where are you calling in from?

(Jen at 00:00:46) I am in Houston. Where are you at? You're in Florida, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) I'm in Florida. We're launching rockets. Not as many as you guys, I don't think.

(Jen at 00:00:53) We can live vicariously through those that are launching rockets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:57) Have you gotten to see a rocket launch in person?

(Jen at 00:01:00) I have not. Have you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:01) No. We tried. We took the camper with the family. We went over to the Space Coast, which is three hours across the state, and this launch got scrubbed four days in a row. Then we left and it launched the next day.

(Jen at 00:01:13) Yeah. You were very close.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:16) I was using it as a leadership lesson with my team because I got up—you have to, for the rocket launches, you have to get up early, right? You have to go be prepared because they don't get scrubbed until the final second. So every morning, get up, get prepared. And I was like, you know what? This difficulty means it's going to be sweeter when it does happen.

(Jen at 00:01:35) It is certainly a testament to resiliency, which I think is a huge and important leadership trait.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:40) And so tell me about you. I want to know, what's the story of Jen?

(Jen at 00:01:44) Okay. So the story of Jen, I think, is an interesting one, I would say, because I've lived it, so I feel like it's an interesting life. I was born in the Midwest of the United States, so very much in rural, blue-collar, agriculture-based communities, raised predominantly by a single mom, and I moved around a fair amount. I was in eight schools between kindergarten and ninth grade, twelve houses in lots of different places, became almost an expert on arrivals, on how to become the new kid at school. And that positioned me pretty well, and it certainly instilled in me from my mom a huge appreciation for education.

(Jen at 00:02:24) She was a single mom and a public school teacher in the US, which by itself also meant that there was a bit of humility and appreciation for hard work and the power of what that hard work and education can get for you. So after her incredibly awesome parenting, I went off to university as a double major in math and music, took my first programming course my sophomore year of university, and figured that, holy cow, this problem-solving thing that I loved about math, I could do that with technology. And it changed everything. It was the game-changer moment to sit there and say, it was really about that in math that I felt so in love with that part of it, and then to figure out that I could go out and solve real-world problems using technology was the pivot point that I needed.

(Jen at 00:03:13) So I went into an applied computer science program, very focused on the application of computer science into business context. And then fast forward, spent about seventeen years at Caterpillar. I am the product of a great internship program. So Caterpillar, which is large equipment manufacturing based in the Midwest, took the opportunity to bring me in as an intern, transitioned into part-time so I could continue to support myself through school, hired me out of that, and gave me fantastic opportunities to experience IT at scale in a large global company.

(Jen at 00:03:46) So from there, let's see. Where would I fast forward to, Joel? I guess I would take you then—I made a really tough decision, and I transitioned away from Caterpillar. I joined as the CIO of an equipment manufacturer for oil and gas, which was Cameron International. Moved down to Houston, brought us down here, had the great opportunity to be a CIO for the first time at a public company. And this is where resiliency comes in, Joel. So this is where the linkage comes. Six months after joining the company, we announced that we would be acquired by another company. I was like, okay. Relocated my family, had this great opportunity. It's not what I thought it was going to be, and worked with the team to get them landed very comfortably as part of that acquisition. Before we even closed it, I had some friends at what was General Electric reach out and say, hey, we got this really great opportunity. Would you like to join the GE family?

(Jen at 00:04:39) Said, depends. Got to know the leadership team, and ultimately, now my leader, my CEO, Lorenzo Simonelli, he recruited me to come join what was GE Oil and Gas. Six months later, there's a little bit of a repetition here. We announced this massive merger with what was Baker Hughes, and we created this new company. So that's where I'm at now, Joel. That's how I got here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:00) That's crazy. What a story. You're an excellent speaker, by the way. You're a fantastic speaker.

(Jen at 00:05:05) Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:07) We could say whatever we want. We cut stuff out. We do whatever we need.

(Jen at 00:05:10) So much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:11) We just hang out, like if we're having lunch or something, and then the production team, they make us sound way better than we are. But I'm curious. Alright. So you're a product of this great internship program from Caterpillar, right? Well, how involved are you, or what's going on at Baker Hughes? Are you guys doing a great internship program?

(Jen at 00:05:29) Yeah. So at Baker Hughes, we've definitely got a multifaceted approach to both early career talent. So, yes, we have a great internship program and leadership development program. We call it Aspire. We have a track for digital technology, which is what we call ourselves. There's also tracks for engineering, finance, supply chain. You can get lots of different experiences through that early career talent program in Aspire. We hire into that globally. So I hire here in the US. I hire in India. I hire in Italy. We've got talent in Kuala Lumpur. Baker Hughes operates in 120 countries, and while I don't have talent in all of them, I certainly have talent in a lot of them. So we have opportunities to inject, really, that university-caliber talent in lots of different ways.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:17) That's pretty cool. I like the name of it, Aspire. That's a good name. Alright. So help me understand this. Where are you at right now, as far as what you're excited about at work?

(Jen at 00:06:28) So, Joel, where we are at Baker Hughes is we've spent the last two or three years really focusing on incredibly aggressive internal digital transformation. And part of that's dealing with this big transaction. So we've created this new company, Baker Hughes. We used to have a majority shareholder that was General Electric. They decided to sell down their position. That's fine. But it did mean that from a systems perspective, we had to fundamentally transform and change a whole lot of our back-end processes. So over the last two-plus years, we have invested—candidly, we've communicated externally between $200 and $300 million to spin out of what was GE as their majority shareholder, which meant that we ripped and replaced and transformed most of our key enterprise processes. So accounts payable, accounts receivable, HR, treasury, most of the finance consolidation space. So it's been a really extraordinarily intense journey, which we did during COVID, where our teams couldn't travel. They couldn't be part of the normal kind of workouts or change management or hypercare post-go-live in the same physical space. We had to figure out how to do that all remotely.

(Jen at 00:07:28) And now we're really about this pivot at Baker Hughes, which is we're watching the acceleration of the energy transition and saying, we know we need to be a part of that. So how do we bring digital capabilities, advanced analytics, asset performance management, emissions management, that marriage of physical and digital to help change customer outcomes as our customers both adjust their business models to what is, let's just call it reducing demand. We don't see it going away, but a reducing demand on traditional oil and gas as an energy source, as well as the expansion of other energy from other parts of the sector. So how do we play our role in that from a highly engineered products and services as well as the digital augmentation of those services?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:26) Give me some context here if people are listening. What's the size of the company?

(Jen at 00:08:32) Yeah. So Baker Hughes, we are a little over $20 billion in 2020 from an annual revenue perspective. We have 55,000 employees, give or take, around the world in those 120 countries. So it is a large organization. We're organized into four main product groups, which means that they are focused on specific industry segments or specific types of products that range from complex services and then also highly engineered assets or products, so physical things that you can touch.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:01) Oh, that's pretty cool. So who are some of your customers?

(Jen at 00:09:05) So certainly in the oil and gas space, people would recognize our customers. We were talking about all your major oil and gas players around the world: Shell, BP, Saudi Aramco, you name it. Eni. If there is an oil company, it is likely that we have some kind of a relationship with them. Our teams do a fabulous job with their equipment and services, and those services and equipment are critical to our customer operations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:31) Okay. I'm like a three-year-old right now trying to wrap my mind around this.

(Jen at 00:09:34) Fair enough. Fair enough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:36) So just kid hands with me, please. And I actually saw you've got a little drawing behind you. Is that from one of your kids?

(Jen at 00:09:42) It is actually from my nephew who would be embarrassed now that I have his first-grade art up instead of his third-grade art up. So I'll probably have to get a note out to him and say, hey, let's turn over third-grade art.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:54) Yeah. Tell him you want something new and custom for your office. He's got some time.

(Jen at 00:09:58) He does. He does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:00) Okay. I love getting to know people and who they are, right? It's so fascinating. Okay. So you have other nephews and stuff too, or no?

(Jen at 00:10:08) Yeah. So we've got—if I'm counting both my own through our family as well as now, I've got a few that are getting married—I think we have thirteen nieces and nephews in the family ranging between going into kindergarten this fall, and then we have, at the high end, upper twenties. I won't divulge her age because I don't know if that's something she wants out in the public sphere. So, yeah. So it depends on the day. If I want to be talking about letter shapes and reading, I call the five-year-old. And if I want to talk about life, then I call the twenty-year-olds and ask how things are going for them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:45) They're usually good with sharing age before 30.

(Jen at 00:10:48) Fair enough. Fair enough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:50) After I turn 30, it's like, it might be a genetic thing, but you just stop counting. You're like, nope. We're just good here.

(Jen at 00:10:58) And sometimes I wonder if I forget because I think I had birthdays, but did I have birthdays? Okay. How old am I? I had to do the math. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:06) So let's take it back to this—I'm trying to create a mental image, okay? And I see these large oil and gas companies, and I know that with the company as large as Baker Hughes, you're doing so many services. But maybe, for conversation purposes, maybe one of the largest revenue-generating services. I'm trying to understand, where does Baker Hughes come in? Is it when you're doing the payment systems at the gas station? Are you doing logistics and transport of oil? Help me understand where you guys work in the ecosystem.

(Jen at 00:11:37) Yeah, Joel. So our largest product area, product and service area, is what we call oilfield services. This is before you and I as a consumer get involved at all. So this is when you're thinking about where should we explore for new oil and gas. So it could be everything from actually drilling the well itself. So where are we going to extract oil and gas? As well as how do we optimize the production of wells that are in service? So how do we help them get more from the reservoirs that are there and make better use out of the investments that our customers have made? We work on making it ultimately safer, cleaner, and more reliable for them to be able to produce oil and gas in their customer environment. So how they ultimately extract it.

(Jen at 00:12:22) And then, yes, there is the transportation. We would call that—we have kind of the upstream play, which is where you get the exploration and production. The midstream, which is how do we transport it to where it needs to be refined into the products and services we consume. So, and that is inclusive of—yeah. Absolutely. Most of us are still either producing energy or directly getting gas for our vehicles. So even if you're plugging in, somewhere along the way, there might be some oil and gas in the generation of the power that you're putting into that battery. There's also candidly the petrochemical market, which is plastics, other things that we need. You can't have your smartphone if you don't have oil and gas. That's just not how it works. So it's embedded into so many products that we use.

(Jen at 00:13:07) Now that's kind of our largest sector. We also have sensors and products that we feed into renewables. We work in other industrial sectors, but still very much part of the oil and gas world. And we're supporting both our current customer need as well as working with them on how do they decarbonize. How do we decarbonize their ultimate production processes. So how do we help them reduce methane, reduce the carbon footprint of what they're trying to do? We were among the—I think we were the first in our sector to come out with emissions targets for ourselves in 2030 and 2050. So by 2030, reduction of 50%. 2050, net neutral in our carbon. So we are absolutely part of the overall energy transition story, and we have this incredible commitment to making affordable, reliable, and clean energy available to everyone around the world, which is not a simple challenge. And so we believe that traditional oil and gas has a play for the foreseeable future, as well as alternative types of energy, renewables, other kind of the greener energies, as well as how do we then capture the hydrocarbons that are being produced. It's a bit of a circular conversation. So how do we address all of those facets?

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:22) Yeah. It's important too, right? Because that's what people want. So I'm curious to know if you guys have done anything interesting with space. Have you done anything with space?

(Jen at 00:14:31) So we're not really into the space exploration world. We're much more into the on-the-Earth kind of world. But that being said, I think that we have an interest in space because if you think about that marriage of physical and digital, that real-time access to data, candidly in places where maybe fiber Internet may not be as available as it might be at your house or at mine. Being able to reliably get that data real-time so we can do things like remote operations, where we can perform drilling and well production and well optimization services from anywhere in the world for anywhere in the world. Those types of things require incredibly robust network connectivity. So now where do I get really interested in space? Is will space provide us more near real-time data availability anywhere in the world? And that will be really exciting to watch.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:20) So you're watching Starlink?

(Jen at 00:15:21) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:22) Oh, I'm so excited about it. I know. I know. I've been watching the reviews online, people doing the setup and unboxing of them. And right now, they're still quarantined, so it only lets you take it a certain distance from your address.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:37) But my family, we like to travel, do cross-country trips and camping and stuff. And, man, I was so surprised because we just got into this in the past year. I did not know it was a problem. I just figured I'd go to the store, buy some sort of satellite dish, and maybe pay two or three times as much as I pay for my home internet for that convenience. But no.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:57) Without Starlink, you get four megabits, and it's a thousand dollars a month.

(Jen at 00:16:04) It's...

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:04) It's a really weird...

(Jen at 00:16:05) Prepare yourself for latency, Joel. I hope you're not planning on doing the podcast that way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:11) No. No. We failed at that pretty quick. We tried to do one episode from a hotspot, and we just ended up renting a hotel room real quick and going in there. We learned a little bit.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:22) But, alright, I want to talk about what you're doing because you're at this really large company. You have different lines of business. But how does your day-to-day look? How do you wrangle that? I mean, 50-plus thousand employees, and technology's got to be the most important thing happening within the organization. How do you do it?

(Jen at 00:16:42) You know, it's interesting because I think technology is fundamentally critical to everything that we do. There's not a whole heck of a lot that goes on in any large multinational that doesn't have some element of digital attached to it. So you're right. We have to worry about our 55,000 employees. Are they productive? Are they able to work effectively? Do they have the tools they need? Are we enabling? In our products and services, are we helping drive improved customer outcomes so that we have the right service offerings for our customers in the right moment? How are we working on the exploration of new value for the company for the future?

(Jen at 00:17:16) So how do I spend my day across all three? I get to spend my day trying to wrangle all of those priorities simultaneously. How do I do it? I have an exceptionally awesome team. They take care of so much on behalf of this organization that allows me to spend my time on the things that are most strategic, on the things that have the most forward-leaning feel to it. It allows me to pick and choose how I'm going to spend my energy because they cover their place so well. They're great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:49) Yeah. A strong team is something that I painfully found out is the most important thing. Interviewing all these leaders, and I was at first, I did not have a strong team. And then after spending all of your money, you realize you have to get a strong team to make revenue. So you just get real comfortable really quick with life. But after I surrounded myself with a strong team, I realized that doing that makes your job just a thousand times easier. And it's cool when you get to come in and work with a bunch of experts every day. That's the dream now, right?

(Jen at 00:18:22) And, truthfully, I think that we, as leaders, have this responsibility of creating the work environment that allows them to thrive. And so half of my job is figuring out what they need in any given moment and showing up with that. I got... You know, people ask, "Jen, what's your leadership style?" which I find to be really fun, because if I only got to have one, wouldn't that be an interesting day? But instead, it's really my job to adapt. It's, "What do you need today? How can I help you today? How can I be more effective in helping you?" And, yeah, there's always give and take on both sides, but I've found that if I can remove those barriers, set up the scaffolding around the team to give them the best chance of success and then get out of the way, they move extraordinary mountains on behalf of Baker Hughes. I mean, the mission is clear, and they want to go get it as much as I do. So that's a lot of my energy, really, is enabling them to do their jobs well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:16) What type of leadership content do you consume? Do you read a lot of books? Do you watch video? How do you stay fresh with your leadership thoughts?

(Jen at 00:19:24) Yeah. And I think that's an interesting question because each of us have limited hours in the day, right? We can only do so much. I'm an avid podcast listener, including yours, so thank you for that. We can talk about that too. I listen to audiobooks, so I'm a runner. I'm not a fast runner, but I'm an incredibly persistent runner. If you're putting in 20 to 30 miles a week on the road, then that gives you some quality listening time to, whether it be books or podcasts or whatever. I find that, you know, I love to read books. I find listening right now is probably the most effective use of my time. So it's usually on weekends or if I actually get a vacation break with COVID, then I'll take some time to really dive into either a Kindle or a paper book. I can go either way. I'm not loyal. And then I talk to a lot of people. I have a huge network of great and knowledgeable people that help me grow, that make me see connections, that can give me feedback on how I'm showing up so that I can put that into play so that I can continue to grow on my own journey.

(Jen at 00:20:13) It's interesting, Joel. So I say this in a bit of a joking tone, and part of me hopes my boss never hears this, but it's like, I don't actually do anything at Baker Hughes. And when I say that, what I mean is I haven't put my fingers to a keyboard to produce code that the company is going to consume really the entire time I've been employed here, because that's not my role anymore. I started as a coder, loved being a coder. There are days I think it'd be fun to go back and code again, but really my job is less about doing and more about leading and visioning and then aligning the team to go achieve that vision. So when I say I don't do anything around here... So if I didn't show up and continue to drive myself to be the best leader I could be, then I would question if I was delivering the value the organization needs from me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:19) Yeah. And also, you seem like you're in love with this. And when you're in love with something, it doesn't really feel like working.

(Jen at 00:21:27) I have had a passion for people for as long as I can remember. It goes back to that problem solving, and then it was, "How do I problem-solve for real problems, real world problems that people would really benefit from?" I've chosen to work for industrial companies where they're out there making fundamental change in how the world operates, connects, gets energy, produces growth, brings economic prosperity. And then I figured out that I just get geeked out on the marriage of people and process and technology to make change.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:01) You said earlier that you listened to the podcast. Do you have any feedback for me?

(Jen at 00:22:05) I love the variety. Yes. I have feedback. So, Joel, one of my passion areas is, truthfully, the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. So I spend a lot of time making sure that we, Baker Hughes, look at our programs. Are we making sure that we're looking at bias in hiring, bias in promotions? And are we creating that right psychologically safe place for people to really grow and achieve their potential? And I've noticed, Joel, we need more women on your podcast, man. We need more. There are some fabulous women in tech.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:35) Do you send them my way, please?

(Jen at 00:22:38) I would be happy to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:39) Please. Introduce me. Because some of my favorite people ever, like Sheila Jordan, right, she was fantastic, she was amazing. And oddly enough, I have two podcasts today and they're both women. I was like, "This is so exciting."

(Jen at 00:22:52) That is super exciting. I'm thrilled to hear it. And I think you're right, that referral thing is something that we can commit to help you with, because there is a strong network of senior executive women in technology. There's a lot of CDOs, CIOs, CTOs, CDIOs, you decide the title, and we hang together. I mean, there's a large enough group of us that we think it's important to help each other find those connections. So, yeah, absolutely. Joel, we can help you with that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:22) Thank you. One of my biggest mentors, her name is Debbie Summers, and she grew up... She lived in the apartment next to my parents when they were all in their twenties. And she was my mom's best friend and she would come to our house and stay with us for two weeks every year. So we just called her our aunt or whatever. She owns the largest furniture rental business in Las Vegas. So all those events come in and then they have to rent furniture. And she built that from scratch by herself, was the sole founder, and she was one of my biggest inspirations growing up. And she gave me some of my first projects and taught me around business. I got to be honest, the first thing I thought of right when you answered the question and came into the room, I was like, "Jen reminds me of Debbie," because you're just... You're articulate, you're intelligent, you're strong, you're awesome.

(Jen at 00:24:09) I feel like I should meet Debbie. We should arrange this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:11) Oh, you should. She is... She is awesome. She would be... Personality-wise, you two are right on point. But, yeah. And when the whole COVID thing happened, you know, that hurt that industry.

(Jen at 00:24:25) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:25) They pivoted real quick and started doing partnerships with the pool companies, right? Because everyone started building up their pools, and so they got the furniture financing with the pool, and so they pivoted real quick. And we were on the phone every couple days talking, and she was like, "What do the kids do these days? Can I make money with YouTube?" I'm like, "I don't know, but the pool thing sounds really good."

(Jen at 00:24:45) That's the key to anyone who's managed to successfully navigate a career is being able to be even more resilient than you thought you could be and look at the changing circumstances and figure out... Okay. And what I love about that is that you guys talked about, "Okay, try this. Does it work? No. Pivot quick. Try this. Does it work?" So I think that when people... I coach a lot of young professionals, and when they talk to me, they're like, "Jen, how can I be a more innovative leader?" And I chuckle because I'm like, if you had asked me for a vast majority of my career, "Jen, do you think you're innovative?" I would have thought, "No, not me. That's not what I do." Because I would have said I was a relatively lazy coder in the sense that if I had to write unique and interesting code, it meant I hadn't looked for somebody else's example long enough, right? And so I was like, "Is that really innovative?" And then I realized that we may be judging ourselves on, call it, you know, big capital I innovation rather than that continuous reinvention process of saying, "Try this. Does it help improve something? No. Score it. Did it help? Yes. Okay. Accept." And we hold ourselves to this unrealistic expectation of earth-shattering change when true innovation to me is this whole repetitive experimentation and being willing to dust yourself off, pick yourself back up, and get back in the game.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:06) It's hard because the motivation we experience is... It's ephemeral and it's intense, right? And we can get ourselves all excited, but the reality is success is... It's a long process. So is failure. And both are kind of boring.

(Jen at 00:26:21) So true. Because it's like people recognize when you've actually hit it, and you're like, "Yeah, but you didn't notice that 72 times I tried before and didn't."

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:31) Oh, 100%. Yeah. I was talking with my wife the other day. I was like, "We're finally having some real serious success with the podcast and growing the business." And I told her, I was like, "It's almost... It's surreal. It's weird because it's like you try for 20 years." And then I realized I started this stuff, trying really hard, 20 years ago. I was like, "All right. So that's how long it takes. It takes 20 years to figure it out." I'm okay with that. I'm here now.

(Jen at 00:26:58) Yeah. I suspect if we fast forward 12 months, you'll have adjusted something in those 12 months too. You'll learn something new. You'll adjust your style. You'll make new connections. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't... Hopefully, most of us didn't choose this overall path into technology, into digital because we were into status quo. I feel like most of us chose this path because we're a bit of a change junkie inside, and we were looking for an excuse to use that change junkie to make a living. And that's absolutely where I think that I land is in... And my change is both technology now and leadership, so I get to experiment on both sides.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:37) Yeah. It's my favorite thing. All right. I want to talk a little bit more about the DEI, diversity and inclusion stuff. So I saw that you were doing something in Saudi Arabia. Can you tell me about that?

(Jen at 00:27:48) Yeah. So not shockingly, we have a very large customer based in Saudi Arabia, which is Saudi Aramco. They're a very large and important customer for us. And a few years ago, maybe two and a half, three years ago, they came to Baker Hughes and like most large customers said, "Hey. We don't just want to buy your products. We want you to invest in the kingdom. We want you to localize jobs. We want you to localize manufacturing. We want to bring economic prosperity to our country." And we, Baker Hughes, are like, "Yeah, that seems totally reasonable. Why wouldn't you want to do that?" So when they came to us, we started to look at what we could do reasonably, what we could do cost-effectively and still serve that market. And one of the questions that came to me is, "Jen, would you be willing to hire some local Saudi talent into the digital technology organization?" And I said, "Sure. That's cool." My early career programs, we target hiring at gender parity. It doesn't always happen, but we target looking at gender parity, so 50-50. That can be a little tough just because graduation numbers don't always support it. And when they first came to me, they said, "Jen, we have this really great program. We're going to train the men through this university in the kingdom, but we haven't identified where the women are going to come in through." And I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I can't sign up for that if I can't at least commit to hiring gender diversity into this." And so they came back and they said, "Would you be open to hiring all women?" And I said, "Sure. Why not?" I would never have asked for that, but sure.

(Jen at 00:29:17) Because in the kingdom, they were also very focused on a phenomenon that they were seeing happen, which is while more than 50% of the university graduates were women in the kingdom, similar to the United States, less than 20% of them were gainfully employed. So they would go through university, and then they weren't actually successfully navigating into a professional context. So they were looking... They had these two things: "We'd really like you to localize talent. Cool." And then, "We also would love to see more of our women be employed into growth areas," which technology certainly is. So we signed up for it. So now I've got this fantastic hub, we call it a digital hub, in Saudi Arabia, where we hired 34 women out of the university, went through kind of a boot camp type of training so they could work on making more robust their English skills, their business communications, and then we specialized into things like cloud computing, data and analytics, cybersecurity. And we brought them in and they're core members of the team, and they're phenomenal. They're impressive women.

(Jen at 00:30:23) They can hold their own anywhere in the world. And it was just through this request from our largest customer and then us turning around and saying, we're also committed to diversity and inclusion. Can we work together to find a path forward? And lo and behold, a phenomenal example of where those two things can come together to really create massive change.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:45) That's really exciting. And as you're talking about this, I was thinking, not intentionally, but we have about twelve employees. I think eight of them are women.

(Jen at 00:30:54) Nice. Predominantly women.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:55) Yeah. We just hired the first people that come that are qualified. And it just happens to be there's a lot of qualified women. And we look for great people, too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:08) I try to be—I'm a small company, right? But my personal philosophy, which is always changing, is to hire the people who are the most qualified for the job in a first-come, first-serve way. How they think. I care about their mind.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:27) I care about their brain. Imagine we're all brains inside of vats in a lab, right? I'd care about the style in which they think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:34) Because regardless of gender or skin color, people have different thinking styles. And when I organize the team, I would say sometimes the gender definitely matters for structuring the team. And then sometimes it's just all about the thoughts. But it's really a hard thing for me to talk about because people are fired up on both sides about it. And so, I guess what I'm doing right now is just sort of feeling it out and maybe getting some of your thoughts on it.

(Jen at 00:32:02) It's interesting because you're right. It is that diversity of experience, diversity of thought that actually creates the catalyst for really innovative thinking and really great outcomes. And I think that because it's easier to identify gender, ethnicity, other types of—call it visible diversity—that's where we tend to go because it's a way to measure progress. Now, that being said, to your point, if you're not getting diversity of thought, diversity, but then not creating an inclusive environment where you can leverage that diversity to create that differentiated outcome, then you just have the revolving door of talent. And nobody can afford that.

(Jen at 00:32:40) Nobody can afford to hire, to recruit, to hire, to train, and then watch them walk away over and over again. So a few years ago when we started this journey, we were asking ourselves, were we representing—and I'm not saying you have to go all the way anywhere—but were we representing our talent pool? So here in the U.S., you can go find different studies that'll tell you how many women are in technology fields, how many people of color are in technology fields.

(Jen at 00:33:11) And then you look at your own organization, and especially if it's not a small organization—so mine's well over a thousand people worldwide—if I look at that and I say, do I represent that? Do I represent what's available in the pool? And if the answer is no, I have to look at us and say, well, what are we not doing? Or what are we doing too much of that isn't creating the right attraction?

(Jen at 00:33:33) So it could be where we look. So you're right, Joel. Sometimes we have to go look in different places. Sometimes we have to examine our practices. So one of the things we did last couple of years, maybe eighteen months ago, we started to debias job descriptions.

(Jen at 00:33:47) So we started to look at the research that said that there were certain words and certain things that would make it more or less likely to attract diverse talent. And lo and behold, we ended up with not only more diverse applicants, but just more applicants. So it was a double win for us. We started to recruit—when I say we went to different places, we went to HBCUs, so historically black colleges and universities that we had not previously developed relationships with, which helped us find more diverse talent. It also helped us find first-generation university talent, which is a really great way to change the economic trajectory of a whole lot of really important people.

(Jen at 00:34:30) So figuring out one thing, going back to experimentation, try it. Does it help? Great, keep it. If it doesn't, try something else.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:38) Yeah. We learned it in middle school: the scientific method. It's my favorite thing. So true. And I love it because I saw this TED talk once about making laundry detergent.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:51) Have you seen this one?

(Jen at 00:34:52) I have not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:53) Okay. So it turns out that the nozzle to make powdered laundry detergent—what happens is you take a liquid and you spray it against this wall. It dries. You scrape it down into these big bins, and then you have powdered laundry detergent. Well, it turns out a very important part of that process is this nozzle.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:09) Right? And the quality of the laundry detergent is directly related to the style of the nozzle that's spraying it, like the spray pattern and everything. And so this company, enterprise company, they wanted to make the best one. So they had two teams split up, and one used all the laws of physics and fluidity and everything to design the single perfect nozzle. Another one just sketched up ten ideas, built them all out real quick, and then took the top three performing ones, created variance, and just went through that process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:39) And at the end, the best performing nozzle was the one that was done with the scientific method in that testing process, and they have no explanation as to why. And the other one that was designed perfectly according to laws of physics and fluidity was just an average nozzle.

(Jen at 00:35:55) Probably very predictable, but not necessarily very differentiating. Yeah. Absolutely. It's so true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:00) Yes. So I like problem solving because I really feel like that's just what we do all day.

(Jen at 00:36:06) It's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:06) Just that the context and the problem changes, which is actually—we ask the audience and try to get questions. And so one of the questions that we had relates to a past guest I was talking with. His name is Tapan. He's the CTO of Trexel. They do enterprise networks for large companies like AT&T. So I figured, all right, you have a large company, you have enterprise networks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:27) I'm sure one of your direct reports is directly responsible. But I was curious from your level—not to ask you a super detailed question about deploying enterprise networks—from your level, how do you look at that? How do you make a project? If you were going—you did this merger or divestiture, you came off of GE, correct, this transition.

(Jen at 00:36:46) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:46) And then how do you empower your people to deploy an enterprise network successfully?

(Jen at 00:36:54) You know, so the question on enterprise network, I think it'll apply in any of the domains that we operate. And I think it really comes down to your point on the problem solving: frame it up. What are we trying to solve for? So if what we're trying to solve for is reliable global network connectivity, there's probably, in our context or in any large multinational, probably more than one way to do that. And really, it's about setting it up, understanding what problem we're trying to solve, what's our mission, and then understanding how to get the right people together.

(Jen at 00:37:25) So one of the things we're really passionate about is that people collaborate horizontally across the organization. So it doesn't matter who your boss is, doesn't matter where you roll up. It matters if you've got information or an expertise that we need on this project—we want to be able to pull you in. And so these mission-based teams, especially if you have a large, complex problem. So as part of our transition to pull all of this business out of the General Electric shared services, which did include network management, not shockingly, for part of our organization, we said, okay.

(Jen at 00:37:57) So guys, what is the right partner structure? Who's our right ecosystem? What kind of architecture should we look at? Should we go into more traditional types of network, or should we use this opportunity to kind of leapfrog into SD-WAN type of capabilities? And we really found that the team got jazzed up. So we could not only, through the transition on network, do it less expensively than we were doing it before, which in today's market, super important.

(Jen at 00:38:26) Our margins just can't support wasting cash anywhere. We could actually improve bandwidth, which during COVID you could debate is not really necessary as we sent most of our knowledge workers into random houses and apartments around the world. But it does mean that as we've gotten incredibly accustomed to high-fidelity video interactions with people, as people transition back to the office, depending on where they are in the world, that we can absolutely support really great service. If we talk about the demands of our applications, the demands of data and analytics, we actually have a network that we think we can scale to support that increasing demand. And that is all really in just setting the mission up for the team, giving them the right resources, giving them the right structure and scaffolding, and then letting them go.

(Jen at 00:39:19) You know, I haven't made a network candidate. I'm a coder. I am a software developer, so I appreciate people who do network, but I cannot do network for them. So in that situation, I get to ask the business questions, and I trust that they're making really great technology calls.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:34) Yeah. You trust that you have the right people in place.

(Jen at 00:39:36) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:36) Yes. Now when I saw that, I was like, guys, we're not asking her a detailed question about deploying enterprise networks. I was like, I don't think she's sitting there.

(Jen at 00:39:44) I just would—I would ask, Joel, can we call in to one of my guys and have them come in and talk to you about really complex network technology? Because I have people for that, and they are good at it. They're awesome. Because, again, we operate in a hundred and twenty countries, and we have to have network connectivity at the job site. That means that we've got to have some pretty awesome network engineers that figure out how to do that reliably.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:05) Oh, I know. I know. But no, we don't need to phone a friend right now. We'd lose half the audience. I saw that you got to do some work—I don't know if it was specifically your team, but I saw that Baker Hughes was doing some work with Tom Siebel of C3 AI.

(Jen at 00:40:23) It's interesting. Yeah. And I think Tom—I actually have listened to Tom's podcast with you. So as a previous guest, I was meeting with Tom today. We were actually in one of my very first face-to-face business meetings.

(Jen at 00:40:33) Tom and his team flew into Houston for a meeting. So we have a really great alliance partnership with C3.ai. We formed that almost two years ago where we recognized that C3 had a really great product from a data management, data curation, analytics, AI, ML, and we had incredible domain expertise in what happens in the energy sector. And we knew that together, we could create differentiated products as well as create some differentiation in how Baker Hughes operates. So we do.

(Jen at 00:41:06) We have this really great partnership. We go to market together and sell together in this alliance partnership, and we deploy C3.ai internally as well within Baker Hughes to drive our internal AI and ML journey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:20) What makes a great partnership like that?

(Jen at 00:41:24) You know, and I think it's both—again, it goes back to kind of that mission, passion for purpose. Are we all in this together? Are we willing to work together? I would also put on the table that you're willing to have tough conversations because any kind of a partnership—and I've been married twenty-one years, and Joel, I doubt you have been, but you've been married longer than five minutes—you figured out that sometimes conversations can get a little dicey, right? And if you're going to have a strong partnership that's going to withstand market pressures, candidly, COVID happened in the middle of this partnership. How do you sell enterprise-level software when you can't fly and meet with customers and do workouts?

(Jen at 00:42:01) Because you and I both know you're bringing a Scrum team together, it's a lot more effective if they can be physically together. And so that means that we've gotten really good at having tough conversations and managing conflict and being both open, transparent, and constructive, and that means both directions. Being prepared to go in with a point of view and then change that point of view. I have a total fangirl crush on Brené Brown.

(Jen at 00:42:30) So going back to leadership, she's someone I listen to a lot. And one of her quotes that I really try to—not only do I have it on sticky notes around my office, it's a bit of a mantra for me, which is: I am not here to be right. I am here to get it right. And so in any kind of a partnership, as long as you approach it with—you know, I'm not necessarily—I love to be right. It is in my heart and soul to be right.

(Jen at 00:42:59) I am voted most likely on the sofa at the Hartsock home to pull out my phone to prove a point with my spouse about who starred in that movie twenty-seven years ago. But in big partnerships and in big discussions, you have to be prepared to change your point of view and to expand your understanding. So it really is that mantra of I'm not here to be right, I'm here to get it right. And if getting it right means that I have to take a step back and compromise on what my team thinks is best in order for what we think collectively is best and really being motivated by that collective objective, then I think you have the right recipe to work through just about anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:35) I love that quote. I'm not here to be right. I'm here to get it right.

(Jen at 00:43:39) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:40) You know what makes that easier? So I was just—as you were talking—all right. So if I'm the smartest person in the room, then ego can build. But if—I mean, naturally, my progression of my career is I was the young software person selling it to the older board of directors, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:57) And people would look—I remember one of the first times I sold some software, the guy looked at me like I was his nephew, right? Or like his grandson or something. He was like, this is the guy that we're buying this from, and he looks like a kid. In all fairness, I was eighteen at the time, so I did look very young.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:13) But from there, I just always wanted more, so I just always ended up—I would go up as far as I possibly could and be the worst person in the room and just constantly try to figure out how to surround myself with experts. And when you do that, you just have—there is no ego. It's like, let's just get it right. Whenever somebody shares something, I'm in a room with smart people. They must be seeing something I don't see because they're disagreeing with me. What is it?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:43) What am I missing here? So it works really well when you're around smart people, but if you forget and you get around stupid people, they'll drive you crazy.

(Jen at 00:44:52) Well, I think that your point is, if you approach it with ego first, then you're always going to be a little bit frustrated, right? And it's a bit of the Simon Sinek infinite game versus finite game. So if you believe there's finite resources, you can get into a bit of a Hunger Games approach to knowledge. You can get into a bit of a Hunger Games approach to experience.

(Jen at 00:45:10) But the fact of the matter is I've yet to encounter a situation where there is that level of finite resource availability. Right? And I don't mean just money or time. I mean, if we're trying to solve a problem together, we are better together because we have different experiences. It's not like in order for us to get to a product, I have to win and you have to lose.

(Jen at 00:45:30) We can figure out how we could both get something out of this. And you're right, if you surround yourself by that diversity of thought that we talked about before, if you make sure that they have an experience set that will add to that collective mission, then heck yeah, get them in there. I remember I had this really great mentor early in my career, and I can distinctly remember the very first time—and I'm with you, when I was young, really early in my career, I always felt young and I felt like people were kind of okay treating me like I was young, and thus maybe you could discount my opinion a bit. And he was this guy that would have been my boss's boss or my boss's boss's boss or something like that.

(Jen at 00:46:12) And I was sitting in a conference room, and you know how conference rooms are organized. There's a table in the middle and then there's those chairs that are on the outside rim. And I immediately went in because I was relatively early in my career and sat on the outside, Joel. And he looked at me and he said, "Jen, we invited you to this meeting because we wanted your perspective. Get up here at the table so we can have this conversation." And I remember what a game changer that was for me, because it was one of those times where distinctly I remember someone just ignoring age or years of experience or preconceived notions and said, "We want you here."

(Jen at 00:46:51) Sit at this table. Offer your opinion. Everybody's got something to offer, but your opinion isn't less interesting because you have less years of experience. If anything, your opinion is more needed because we might end up with, you know, just call it an experience bias, right?

(Jen at 00:47:06) We might just—we know how we do things, and we may not think about it in a different way because our experience hasn't educated us to do that. So I think the more times that we as leaders can kind of bust through those conscious or unconscious biases and bring that right thought process into the conversation, I think we are able to role model great inclusive behavior.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:29) Yeah, and most of the great leaders do that, right? And, you know, one thing, one perspective that I wanted to share was for my personal growth and the diversity and inclusion, because I've tried to figure out, you know, when a new topic comes up that everybody's discussing, you kind of have to figure it out and it doesn't happen overnight. One thing that I struggled with was because I grew up around strong, successful women, I didn't see it as a problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:53) Mhmm.

(Jen at 00:47:54) And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:54) So I was dismissive of it. I was like, "That doesn't happen." I was like, "What's—I've never been around somebody that's ever done that." And so for years and years and years, I just dismissed it and I was like, "I don't know, some people probably just complain about it." However, then I experienced it once.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:09) But for years, I was very dismissive of it, and that was just because I grew up in an environment where that wasn't something that existed. It wasn't even—it wouldn't be tolerated. It didn't exist. So, I don't know. Have you ever run into people that have shared that with you?

(Jen at 00:48:24) Yes, often. And whether—I don't care what your experience set is, whether it's gender or ethnicity. One of the things—and I'm a huge champion—so I'm the executive sponsor of our Pride at Work employee resource group, which is LGBTQ+. So I'm all in to help those colleagues be really successful at Baker Hughes. I've been involved in our women's network. I have joined every employee resource group that we've got with that express purpose, Joel. So I grew up in small, rural, agriculture, and blue collar communities.

(Jen at 00:48:56) My experience with urban life was completely nonexistent. So if you grew up in a large city, I had no idea what this whole public transportation thing was. It just didn't encounter my—I had so much that I didn't know. I didn't travel internationally, so I didn't understand different cultures. I didn't have a lot of friends that came from different ethnic backgrounds because my community didn't have that.

(Jen at 00:49:20) So I made it a mission. I made it a mission to go out and learn and to be that learner rather than that knower, to understand what perspectives I was just not exposed to. Because I think you're right—it's super easy to assume your life experience is the universe of experiences. It's not because you're not a good person.

(Jen at 00:49:41) It's because that's what you were exposed to.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:43) Yeah, yeah.

(Jen at 00:49:45) Ask me what it was like the first time I went to Saudi Arabia and I met with this group of women. They asked me a question. It was a roundtable. They said, "Hey, Jen, what did you—this is your first time in Saudi Arabia. What did you believe about the women of Saudi Arabia before you came here?" Now I don't know what you watch on television, but when I was growing up, we didn't have a great appreciation for culture or understanding of the Middle East, right? We just didn't. My family did not.

(Jen at 00:50:16) So if I had answered based on what I saw on television or the news or what I read in newspapers, I would never have created the right connection with this group of people. So instead, I said, "You know, I don't want you to believe about my life which you would see in international news coverage. I would want you to seek to understand my experience. So rather than me answer that, what would you like me to understand about your life experience? What would you want to demystify about what you think the rumors are or the preconceived notions?"

(Jen at 00:50:45) And so your experience would—when you saw it, you can't unsee it anymore. So if you create an environment where people can tell you about their experiences and "Does that really happen?" then you can't unknow that, and it'll change how you perceive the world. Because each of us have a story, and we can make generalities about genders, about ethnicities, but each of us have a story that has shaped who we are. So part of why I love my job is I get to hear everybody else's stories, and I'm sure it's part of the reason you do this podcast—you get to hear a whole bunch of stories, and that helps frame your perception and your understanding of the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:23) Yes. After doing this, it's like a small child learning how to walk. I recommend having deep conversations with hundreds of successful people because it'll—it's just unexplainable. I couldn't even go back to my past self and try to explain why. I would just say, "Look, trust me, the future is awesome if you do this," because you build this map of how the world operates.

(Jen at 00:51:47) And it is. Where you read, who you talk to, what you listen to—100% of it is not applicable to your life or your career journey. But there's snippets of goodness in everybody's story and everybody's book and everybody's podcast, and then we get to use our judgment to figure out, "I want that one, but not that one. I love that. I love that quote, putting that in my repertoire," right, and bringing it into how I lead. And that is the magic, I think, because that's why the beauty of having different points of view out into the world is—talk about reason for optimism. The people I get to interact with around the world, reason for optimism.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:33) Yeah, and it's a continuous process too, right? It's not something you do once because I'm always—you know, I go through seasons. So I'll typically be reading a lot of leadership content for two or three months and then I'll be taking a break, kind of digesting it and talking and working it out or maybe doing my own writing. I'll go back and forth. But one of my original favorite quotes was, "The most frustrating thing in the world is expecting above average results without being an above average person."

(Jen at 00:53:00) Oh. And I would add without above average effort.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:04) Yes, yep, yep. Because I was that person. I was wanting above average results, and I wasn't putting in the work to get them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:13) And then I was frustrated, right? And so that set me off on a journey. But those—Zig Ziglar, all the motivational type people that think deeply about life and make complex things simple, which by the way, I saw in your—I don't know if it was your bio or something, but I saw in some of your notes that one of the things you do is you make complex things simple. And I was like, "Oh, I love that she used that phrase." It was really cool.

(Jen at 00:53:39) Well, I think that in technology, we have a responsibility not only to make the complex simple, but also make it easy to do the right thing. And that by itself requires a bit of elegance, and that is going back to your above average effort. It takes effort to make complexity simple and to make it easy to do the right thing. And sometimes in my own haste as a software developer to get to code delivery, we forget that. And we have such a huge influence on how the world operates that if we don't take the time to make the complex simple and to make it easy to do the right thing, then we will end up with outcomes that we're not happy with.

(Jen at 00:54:21) And I think that as digital technology professionals, as technology professionals in general, we have a responsibility to take our craft very seriously.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:29) Yes, we do. Alright, as we wrap up, I've got last question for you. Let's say you're building the perfect leadership program for your direct reports. What's the most important thing you would want them to know?

(Jen at 00:54:42) I feel like picking one thing, Joel, is not fair, but I will do my best.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:44) I have a couple. I just didn't want to say three because some people get tripped up and they're like, "I don't have three." But if you've got them, give them to us.

(Jen at 00:54:52) Okay. So when I think about leaders, I judge them on three basic categories of leadership. So the first one is vision or strategy, the second one is execution, and the third one is legacy. And I'll give a couple of words because I think when I talk about how do I want them to think about and how they want to behave and what do I think makes them most successful is being able to balance time and effort appropriately across all three. So the vision and strategy, going back to "I don't do anything around here"—my job is to set the mission, is to look out three, five years, and the decisions I make today, I won't know if they were great decisions potentially for multiple years in the future.

(Jen at 00:55:29) So are we creating the right mission, the right vision, the right direction, and then most importantly, inspiring and motivating the organization to go after it? I don't care if you're a team of five or a team of 500 or a team of 5,000 or 55,000—you've gotta make sure the mission is clear, set that direction, and inspire and motivate the team to go deliver that. Execution: you have to get things done. And, you know, Joel, you know this in your business—there is just hard work in putting on a podcast, and you have to have some discipline and some just focus of getting things done and being known as someone who gets things done, both the specified and all the implied tasks that go with whatever it is that that objective or goal might be.

(Jen at 00:56:17) And then the third way that I want my leaders to think about and behave is legacy. Are you leaving things better than what you found them? And that's in terms of organizational performance, talent. Are you creating talent capabilities that we need two years from now, five years from now? Are you positioning the future generation of all of us on a path to success? Because people invested in us early in our careers. People gave us, you know, their time and effort and experience as a gift, and I want to make sure that we're also paying that forward for the next generation of whatever is gonna come after us. So if you're asking me how I think about my leaders and how I want them to think about things and how I coach and develop them, it's across those three facets. And depending on the day, you're gonna spend more or less time on each one of them. And depending on your role, you're gonna spend more or less time on each one of those things.

(Jen at 00:57:09) But if you can think about your role and how you need to show up across those three, I think you can deliver.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:14) Man, I love talking to great people. Okay, I'm gonna ask you another question.

(Jen at 00:57:19) Go for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:19) Alright, so do you have any woman-specific advice for some of our female listeners?

(Jen at 00:57:24) Sure. So when I think about gender-specific advice, and actually what I would do is this could apply to both women and I would say underrepresented talent.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:34) Okay.

(Jen at 00:57:34) So this is just whenever you're kind of the only in the room or one of just a couple in the room, it does create a kind of a power dynamic. So I want to give a couple of points of advice for that group. So number one is use your voice. So one of the traits that I had to learn early in my career is—not just because I had a really great mentor that encouraged me to speak up, but another one that gave me a truth-telling reality that was a bit of a kick in the stomach. So I was in a brand new meeting, a brand new leadership meeting. I just joined the leadership team. They were really experienced. And my default behavior in new experiences is to come in quietly and observe things for a while before I start to interject my point of view or my experience or offer suggestions or ask questions. And this really great colleague of mine said, "Jen, I've known you for long enough. Are you not feeling well today because you didn't speak up at all in the meeting today?" I said, "Well, I took pages of notes. I've got all these questions I want to follow up on." And he said, "Yeah, but the people who don't know you now wonder, are you even interested in what we were talking about? And why were you here because you didn't contribute anything?" And so I realized that I needed to speak up sooner, and maybe in part because I was underrepresented.

(Jen at 00:58:49) I was the only. And everyone else felt very comfortable, and I could easily kind of fade into the background. So I would give some coaching for anyone who feels like they haven't earned the right to have a voice yet. Please use your voice, mostly because if you don't, you are allowing the narrative about you to be formed by others, not by yourself.

(Jen at 00:59:12) And that is not a good place to be in. So my really concrete advice is if you don't feel comfortable, ask a question. Just one. Just enjoy your—be professional at asking questions, but just ask the question. "Hey, could you clarify that for me? I wasn't sure if I understood that." Or "Could we follow up after the meeting? I'm really curious to learn more on that, but I don't want to derail us from the discussion," right? Which shows interest, it shows genuine enthusiasm, and you've at least spoken. So you can kind of bust through that—whether it's imposter syndrome or just "I don't feel like I know enough yet." Whatever the reason is, I'd say you gotta learn how to speak up sooner because at the pace of business today, if you don't, your opportunity may just pass you right by. And I suspect as an entrepreneur, you know that. If you're waiting for the invitation to speak, oh, good luck.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:04) No, you gotta fight for the food.

(Jen at 01:00:07) It's so true. Literally sometimes.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:10) Yeah. And if you—the hard thing I've noticed as I've grown older and I've seen my peers progress is some people, they lose their hunger. They reach a certain level and they're not—I've made peace with the fact that I'm gonna be hungry forever. It's just—I can feel it, you know?

(Jen at 01:00:29) And I think that now where you are, where I am, when you achieve a level of success that you maybe—I'll be honest, I had no way of even guessing this was ever gonna happen. If you'd asked me—I didn't even know what a CIO was, let alone how to get to be one. So arriving here, you're right, you could get a little casual about it, but you gotta stay hungry. And then you gotta use your power for good. You gotta use your power to lift up others. You've gotta look for those opportunities to make it easier for those that come after you. And if you think for a moment that you got there without a lot of support from both seen and unseen sponsors, mentors you choose, I would question if you're really self-aware. Because I know I got here through investment from a whole lot of people who saw in me things that I didn't see in myself.

(Jen at 01:01:20) So I encourage all of us to see in others what they don't yet see in themselves and help them bridge, because gosh, it has to be easier. For whoever is going to be looking up to Joel, and I'm sure there are many people that are doing that, the fact that you persevered through twenty years of experience to get to where you are today, that should inspire somebody. And hopefully, by your experience and you sharing your experience, you make it easier for the next person that wants to create a business, you make it easier for the next person that wants to create a business by connecting CTOs and digital leaders across multiple industries to help share experiences so we get better together. I mean, that's a pretty freaking compelling vision. And why wouldn't you, if you want to help lift up the next generation of talent that's looking to do something similar, to create an impact on the world?

(Joel Beasley at 01:02:06) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.