How visualization, storytelling, and belief can drive disruptive innovation.
How do you identify and seize opportunities for disruption? In this episode, Rich sits down with Jed Ayres, CEO of ControlUp, a company that helps IT resolve issues faster, prevent tickets, and reduce spending. Jed is widely recognized for the transformational impact he is making on the end user computing industry. He and Rich discuss innovation, creative thinking and the importance of storytelling in leadership.
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“I'm a firm believer that story is the root to all greatness in the world. And I think about some of the greatest tech companies, they had leaders that were great storytellers.”
“If you can visualize something in your mind's eye and you can put the right plan underneath it, nothing is impossible.”
“What I've found in my career is that the real disruptive innovation typically comes from within really creative people that are able to have the wingspan to get into a dark room and think differently. And they feel like they're in a safe place to come up with new ideas that are radical.”
“Your network is your net worth.”
Practice Makes Profit segment: How to use a threat matrix.
The League of Strategic Minds segment [listener question]: What is competitive advantage?
Winsight: Idea for Advantage segment: Winston Churchill said, “To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment, when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” Are you continuing to develop your expertise and skills to be your best so you too can realize your finest hour?
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(00:40) Deep Dive Interview with Jed Ayres
(43:53) Practice Makes Profit
(46:06) League of Strategic Minds
(47:26) Winsights, Ideas for Advantage
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Links:
Submit a question for Rich to the League of Strategic Minds
Jed Ayres on LinkedIn
Rich Horwath on LinkedIn
Rich Horwath on YouTube
Rich Horwath on Instagram
Strategic Thinking Institute Website
Inc. Magazine’s Top 4 book for 2024: STRATEGIC Book
New executive development platform: Strategic Fitness System
Sign up for Rich’s free Strategic Thinker Newsletter
[Subscribe to the Podcast]
On Apple Podcasts
Rich: [00:00:00] Are you strategic? The answer can make or break your business. Welcome to Strategic Minds, the podcast where we'll do a deep dive in conversations with extraordinary leaders to learn how they think, plan, and act strategically. I'm your host, Rich Horwath, founder of the Strategic Thinking Institute and author of the book Strategic, and my vision is to teach the world to think strategically.
Now let's explore strategic minds.
Mash up: They're stuck. What do we do? I have no idea. You need a new strategy. We need a more dynamic strategy. The strategy, you have to strategize, but you won't strategize. Let's talk a little strategy.
Rich: Welcome to Strategic Minds. Today on the show, I'm excited to speak with Jed Ayer, CEO of ControlUp, a company that helps IT resolve issues faster, prevent tickets, and reduce spending.
Jed is widely recognized for the transformational impact he's making on the end user computing industry. He has more than 20 years of technology experience and has a wide [00:01:00] range of industry expertise across workspace management, virtualization, and mobility. Prior to joining Control Up, he was the CEO at iGel, where he drove the company's successful pivot from a hardware centric to a software first company and was instrumental in its acquisition by TA Associates.
Jed, thank you very much for being on the show today.
Jed: Rich, really wonderful to see you and thanks for having me.
Rich: Excellent. So, if we could, let's begin with your origin story. We'd love to hear a little bit about where you grew up and how that environment has really shaped who you are today.
Jed: Uh, well, I, I love that you asked this question because I love origin stories and as a marketer, always understanding origin is, is a very rich context.
So great first question. I grew up in a small town in Northern California called Mendocino. I was raised by two school teachers and in a very small artistic community, Mendocino on the, on the North coast. And so pretty humble middle class upbringing and, uh, kind of put myself through school, went to school at a state school in, uh, Sonoma, beautiful, small little school.
And, uh, [00:02:00] that was in the early nineties and very luckily got sort of connected with technology. I did my MBA at SF State and, uh, kind of put myself through school and the hospitality. Yeah. But got introduced to tech and kind of the beginning of the internet. And it's been a huge gift to me as I basically stayed in that tech world for the last 30 years.
Rich: Wonderful. And I'd be interested, Jed, just as a follow up, you talked about having two school teachers. Raise you, you talked about putting yourself through school. So it sounds like education has really been a, an important aspect of, of your, your background. Maybe you could share a little bit about the values that that instilled in you as you've developed in, in, in grown into a very successful career in technology.
Jed: Yeah, well, I think my entire family was in education. I was like the black sheep that didn't go into education. My grandfather was actually the superintendent of schools in San Francisco, and my whole upbringing was surrounded by teachers. My grandfather told me something very early on in my life that stuck with me, and it was sort of the idea of education.
It's something that no one [00:03:00] can ever take away from you, and this sort of idea of lifelong learning. And sort of humility that comes along with, you don't know everything and you're not the smartest guy in the room and you can learn a lot by being a listener. And so, yeah, that was something I grew up with.
My dad was also a music teacher. So kind of the more artistic side of the, uh, the left brain, if you will. And so, yeah, very, uh, lucky to, to grow up in this small, special community surrounded by a lot of artistic people. Excellent.
Rich: And just out of curiosity from a, an artistic background and having that influence in your formative years, do you, are there any lessons or takeaways from a creativity perspective?
I mean, obviously you've got a lot of expertise in the, in the marketing aspect of things as well. Did you notice that any of that creative background has helped shape who you are from a creativity innovation perspective?
Jed: Absolutely. I mean, I think one thing I realized early on in tech is that most of the marketing is very boring and very low risk.
And [00:04:00] so this has been something that I've always thought like, Hey, let's take some risks, right? Like no one is, this is an open heart surgery, right? No one's dying here. And so like, how do you stand out? How can you be a little different? And so, yeah, I certainly try to apply that, um, in terms of just the sort of echo chamber that can be tech marketing, where everything looks the same and how do you stand out?
And so trying to apply some of that creativity to, uh, to messaging. And also just sort of the creative brand there has been something that I think has helped me.
Rich: Yes, you mentioned just a moment ago the lifelong learning, and that's something I've seen as I've done research on, on really extraordinary leaders that there seems to be a higher level of desire to continue to learn, to continue to gain new knowledge and skills, even when people reach a high level.
of, uh, responsibility like yourself, any, any thoughts that you have around your approach to, to lifelong learning, any, any things that you look to do or to, to bring [00:05:00] into your world from a learning perspective, as you continue to grow through your career.
Jed: I think probably the most important thing as being a CEO is like really being a great listener and to have your sort of channels of listening equally weighted, right.
Between employees and partners and customers, right. And sort of like really calibrating your insights. That you can gain from rich conversations across each one of those segments. And that's kind of been my philosophy. I learned early on in my career, sort of the management by walking around back when we all used to be in offices and cubicles and one of my great mentors, he would come out of this corner office and sort of just walk around and strike up conversation, and I think he would learn more in that sort of 15 minute ritual than he would all day staring at spreadsheets in his corner office.
Right. And so. That's something I've carried with me my whole life is that if you really want to know what's going on, get down and have these conversations and that you're better for.
Rich: Excellent. That's a great technique that you shared there. And it is, I think about a [00:06:00] CEO's role. A lot of it is being able to adapt to the environment and not just have an approach that's etched in stone, but be able to, to read the situation, to understand what's happening.
And you just. gave us some great insights around the power of listening to customers, to suppliers, to employees, to other folks. Are there any, any techniques or things that you do to really stay on top of your business situation, how the market's evolving, trends that are happening? Because obviously in your world, it's, it's important to stay relevant, to stay current and really ahead of the curve on, on what customers want.
So any tips or techniques you can share with our listeners On how you stand on top of the business situation.
Jed: Yeah, I think you got to formalize it in a way where you have sort of muscle memory to do this. And so, and, and all my former last three or four companies I've been at getting on a quarterly cadence where you have sort of a formal, uh, capacity to organize and have a, [00:07:00] uh, a logical dialogue where you're asking a lot of questions and you're listening, uh, to all three of those populations.
Um, we call them think tanks here, uh, uh, control operators. I think we call them councils, uh, at IGEL, uh, my previous company, but yeah, you're really leaning in. Um, and these can be, you know, pretty extensive conversations, especially once you build the relationships. Uh, you know, they can be sort of three, three hour, four hour, really well structured conversations where you're asking the hard questions about how their businesses are transitioning and what are the priorities inside those organizations and how we can be a better partner to them.
And so yeah, that, that has served me very well, listening, calibrating, trying to prioritize across those sort of three populations.
Rich: Excellent. I love, I love that idea of the councils and, and, and, and that what you just talked about, those three to four hour conversations. I think that's something that is a great secret that a lot of people, because they're so busy today, feel like, well, we don't, we don't have three to four hours or that's going to be taking [00:08:00] too much time.
But I think. The way that you frame that, that that's an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the situation, the context, and then understand what the opportunities are. I think that makes a lot of, a lot of good sense.
Jed: I also would just add to that, like, I think one of the important things from a software CEO perspective is really zeroing in on giving your, giving yourself access to your customers that you actually win.
So as you're winning customers, you're really opening a door up and say, Hey, thanks for For buying our product and want to have a relationship with you. And then also doing the hard work, which is sometimes forgotten is when you lose customers, also understanding why did you lose them? Obviously in the world of ARR, you know, uh, annual recurring revenue, uh, the, the enemy is churn, right?
And so really dissecting where you're losing customers, why they're, why they're churning and, uh, the sort of. You know, you celebrate a wind wire, but almost equally important, if not more important, is why are you losing customers and how can you get in front of those [00:09:00] challenges?
Rich: Excellent. And Jed, I'd be interested, from a CEO perspective, as you work with your people out in the field, how do you get them, or how do you build a culture?
Where they feel comfortable letting you know that, Hey Jed, we did lose this customer or we did have churn here because obviously they, they want to share good news. Like you said, they want to share the wins and people feel good about the wins. But like you said, sometimes you can learn more from the losses.
How do you build a culture internally where people are comfortable talking about the losses, especially to the CEO?
Jed: Well, it comes back to sort of core values, I think. And it takes time, right, in any organization to earn trust. But I actually think it starts with a very important core value that I've introduced at the last couple of companies I've worked at, which is integrity, right?
If you have this concept of sort of integrity and a door that's open to anyone who wants to come share with you how they see the world and how they can make the company better. And I wake up with the philosophy that every, every person that got out of [00:10:00] bed today and went to work at Control Up wants to make this a great company and wants to do a great job.
And therefore their opinion is valued. My door is open. And so the idea there is that if you have integrity, you can build trust. And if you have trust, you can have a partnership. And in technology partnerships, whether it's internal with your employees or with your, your actual partners or with your customers, you can unleash like life changing innovation.
And that's sort of like something that I've, you know, Just a huge believer in, and yeah, it starts with kind of this idea of pretty flat, non hierarchical capacity for good ideas to come from anywhere, feedback to come from all corners of, of the organization and yeah, for people to feel comfortable and that it takes.
It takes some time for people to actually understand that because sometimes they come from organizations that are much bigger, where there's just sort of chain of command and they're not used to the CEO, you know, sending them an email or texting with them directly and it's something they have to get, you know, comfortable with.
That's my leadership style. I like to, uh, [00:11:00] To sort of make sure everybody feels able to connect with me at any given time. Wonderful, wonderful.
Rich: Well, Jed, you've got a very strong track record of successfully guiding organizations through transformation, and transformation can always be challenging, and you've proven in the past that you've been able to come in and help organizations.
Refocus. I'd be interested if you could share with our listeners a little bit about your approach as you think back to coming into Control Up. What do you think about when you're developing, initially developing the strategy and the vision for the group and where you're going to be heading in the future?
Any tips, any techniques that you think are important as people are considering developing strategy for a new product, a new service, a new company?
Jed: Yeah, well I guess this is my fourth company to come into where I've worked alongside of a founder. Um, and so that's also a delicate sort of special thing, right?
Cause you're coming in, uh, usually at the favor of a board who wants to see the company go to the next phase or wants to see [00:12:00] some sort of transformation and growth. And so I think the most important thing you got to do is be a great listener again, and not just come in and start changing things. It's, it's really the, the, the formula I've used very successfully the last couple of companies is really doing a rich intersection of the different populations and building a plan.
And that plan needs to go 12 months to 36 months, right? Where you're, and you're really clear on the milestones on a 90 day basis that you're chasing after, and you get that consensus, which allows for, uh, you to, to sort of visualize that to the whole organization, and then just sort of punch against that list.
Now, sometimes the, the priorities and the plan has to change a little bit, but, uh, what I found is, you know, having that, um, clarity For the whole organization, like it just, it allows for speed, especially when you're working across time zones with the international kind of, uh, you know, team having, having kind of laid out like, Hey, we have, these are the imperatives.
We have to get these things done. And if [00:13:00] we do this, we're going to get this result. That's been very helpful to me. I always talk about, obviously the first thing is getting the right people on the bus. And sometimes you do have to. Make some hard changes. You got to have a great product. So you got to look, especially in the world of tech, make sure that that product is fit for where you're going to take the company, but then having a plan and underpinning the whole thing with the right values and the right culture, which equates to the right passion.
I call it the four P's. People, product, plan, passion. Excellent.
Rich: Yeah, I love those four P's and I think that's something all of us can, can take a look at and go through those four P's for our business. And I think that'd be a great exercise for, for everybody listening out there to, to look at those four P's for your organization.
And as Jed talks about, do you have clarity on those things and is that clarity consistent? across the leadership team. You know, you talked, Jed, just a moment ago about being able to have the plan, underpin it with the values, and it gives everybody that momentum moving forward. If you could share with me a little bit about [00:14:00] some of the the challenges that you see as CEO.
I mean, sometimes When we're working with a team, we've got to reallocate resources. So let's say product X is underperforming, product Y is performing really well, we need to move resources. How do you and your team like to approach that process of reallocating resources? You talked earlier about looking at things quarterly.
How do you look at potentially moving resources, people, time, budget from one area to the next?
Jed: Yeah, well, I was very lucky to work for a, uh, an incredible operator and my last company, I learned a ton working with them. And a lot of the foundational things is you got to have a leadership team that's just locked arms around that plan and is inspecting the business every week, end to end, and I think that's very important.
And then we get together face to face at the end of every quarter as well. And we'll do a deep three day session, but what I would say is, uh, part of what tech is all about is it's so fast moving and that's part of the rich opportunity that you have in tech around disruption and speed, [00:15:00] especially in the size companies that I've been able to work in the sort of 100 million to 500 million size.
That you can actually move pretty quickly. Right. And so what I've found is that having a full inspection of the business from one end to the other, with all the different functional leadership in a, in a meeting once a week has been very helpful. Cause you can call those audibles on the plan. Everybody stays aligned.
And yeah, you, you do have to make tough choices at times. It's the innovator's dilemma. That's almost on display every, every week, every quarter in terms of how do you put the right people in the right places? Right. Um, and with AI, uh, bearing down on us. We're even seeing a bigger opportunity for disruption, right?
And so, yeah, you have to not be afraid, I think, uh, to make these tough decisions. And, uh, yeah, it's part, part of the challenge of a lot of sleepless nights. I think my partner, the founder, we, we, we commiserate that we now have, you know, a partner and being equally sleepless at night, right? Worried about these things, but.
It's, it's part of the, uh, joy of it all, [00:16:00] honestly.
Rich: Yes, yes. You, you mentioned, uh, innovation a couple times, and I'd love to get your perspective. You know, as we think about innovation, sometimes it's described as creating new value and, and oftentimes innovation at the core is an insight, and I define an insight as a learning that leads to new value.
You've obviously been at the forefront of, of innovation in, in the companies that you've worked with. What, what's your approach to innovation to, to generating insights? To being able to, to come up with new ideas that, that really do create new value. You talked in the opening about differentiation, creating unique value.
Well, what's your approach to innovation and the idea of coming up with insights?
Jed: So I kind of segment this into typically two different categories, Rich. I think what we talked about earlier around getting good input from partners and, and customers can really help you incrementally improve product typically, right, where you're sort of.
You're fixing the, uh, the, the little nits and gnats. And occasionally you're adding something that's functionally better. But what I found in my career is [00:17:00] that this sort of real disruptive inner innovation typically is, is really comes from within. It comes from really creative people that are able. To have the sort of wingspan to get into a dark room and think differently.
And they feel like they're in a safe place to, to, to kind of come up with new ideas that are radical. And that's been my experience. I mean, I think every organization may have different versions of this. We just came out with a security product that no one had seen before in our category around digital employee experience and adding that in.
And that came from one of our labs, right? Like that came from a. A guy who had the ability, he didn't even come into our own office in Israel on a regular basis. He was sort of almost detached, but he was able to sort of think differently and then figure out how to bring something to market in a very short period of time.
And I think I have to say, having been the CEO of an Israeli company for the last year, this is something that is part of their rich innovation history is the sort of speed. And I think that comes from the sort of [00:18:00] fearless Capacity to kind of iterate on concepts that probably aren't being thought about by customers.
Right. Per se, or if they are, they're almost like just total dreams from customers that they are able to like go try to figure out how to actually make a reality.
Rich: Yeah. That's a great description. I've I've read about Henry Ford saying, you know, if we asked people if they wanted what they wanted, they'd say faster horses.
They wouldn't think of cars and. Steve Jobs, the same thing, he's talked about that too. So it's, it's, it's interesting that I love that story that you just shared about being able to disrupt innovatively really is going to come internally versus, versus customers. You talked obviously about the importance of listening to customers to get ideas of trends and patterns, but, but really understanding that the true responsibility for disruptive innovation is going to come internally.
I'd be interested, Jet, how do you, as a CEO, look at these opportunities to innovate and and determine which one should we bet on because initially when we have new ideas they seem great but we can't follow all of [00:19:00] them and sometimes people get distracted and they're following too many ideas. Is there anything that is the CEO you use to help you determine which ideas we should potentially invest in and pursue and then which ideas we should decide not to pursue?
Jed: Honestly, this is, I think we're at probably one of the greatest like gifts of any CEO, right? And it comes down to a little bit of gut, right? I mean, obviously we're, we live in a data driven world where you can do a certain amount of research on what you think the actual outcome could be, right? And obviously there's a lot of different, uh, ways to, to derive that, the impact of.
Incredible innovation, right? And what it might be. It's, it's funny that you asked this question, Rich, because Control Up is in a new category that's framed by Gartner as digital employee experience, right? And it's like this sort of platform of tools. And when you look across it, it's like sort of almost everything you could ever imagine that has ever been built to manage, secure, and patch Windows and beyond, right?
Applications and devices. They go even into [00:20:00] MacBooks and Chromebooks and browser based applications and Windows based applications. So I'm faced with this on a daily basis, right? At the end of the day, the customer voice is pretty loud, right? And especially as you climb into these large enterprise customers and you see like, which things are going to give them the fastest ROI.
I do think that's, um, part, part of when you think about the truly disruptive companies are the ones like VMware that could walk in and say, Hey, you have a hundred servers. Let me show you how I can make it 10. And then that disorder is so financially accretive that it's like you go on like this sort of meteoric rise.
So I think from my perspective, when I think about adding innovation and the cost that it takes to launch a product and maintain it and do all the things from end to end around a product, you really want to make sure that you're That you, you have customers are actually going to be able to justify buying it.
Right. And that it kind of pays for itself. I think that's probably one of the most important things in today's day, day to age, right? Where you have a noisy market and [00:21:00] really good competitors. You want to be able to walk in and say, I have something different. And you, you're going to be able to purchase this and it's going to pay for itself.
In tech. I think that tends to be. One of the most, the easiest things, right? And when you have sort of squishy ROI, it's much harder to get a, uh, a team of people, which is what we're faced with today, uh, in terms of how big decisions are made, right? It's not one guy writing a check. It's a team of people.
And so, yeah, you, you gotta have great tech, but you need to make sure that the The actual return is there.
Rich: And Jed, you've got a really unique background with a lot of expertise in hospitality, in marketing, technology. And what you just said there, I'd love to dive a little deeper there. You talked about being able to explain the ROI, being able to paint that picture for folks.
If you wouldn't mind, share with us a little bit about your approach to, to being able to, as the CEO, communicate that vision in, in what role does storytelling in, in your mind play in, in being able to, [00:22:00] to, to win over a market with, with a good differentiated product?
Jed: I think it's almost the most important thing, honestly, Rich, right, when you think about, uh, humans and how they're wired for thousands of years, right, to sort of, uh, sit around a fire, look into the lights of each other's eyes, and tell stories, right, and pass those stories on through generations.
It's like, I think people will say there's two things that on your deathbed, you're, you're going to remember, right? It's stories and how people made you feel. Those are the two emotions that, that drive people, right? And that I think you have to think about as you are running a company also, right? It's really a very important thing.
And I was lucky in my, probably 15 years ago, I, uh, I was fortunate enough to have a mentor and a friend and a, and actually a vendor that I worked with that sort of just believe like, Hey, all this. PowerPoint, garbledy goop, throw it away. When you stand in front of your employees and your customers, get in front of them and just tell them stories.
And that's what they're going to remember. They're not going to remember some PowerPoint with a [00:23:00] thousand words on it, right? And so, I've very much adopted this as a leader, as a strategy, right? It's like, what are the stories you're going to tell? And, uh, you need to have a carousel, I think, as a leader. of stories that cross through values, culture, obviously the technology that you're selling.
You want to stand in front of a hospital and get them to buy your product? You better be able to tell them a story about another hospital that is using it and how they're gaining benefit from it, right? And so actually, it's something that I've done in all my past companies is sort of like, Dinner, dinner with the CEO kind of thing.
Right. Where I have the benefit of being able to sort of travel the world and listen to all these customer stories. And I like to synthesize them into kind of short little sound bites. Right. But it's like, Hey, if you're with a customer in retail, here's five stories that you can tell them that they'll probably remember much more than some elevator pitch and so, yeah, I'm a firm believer in story is the route to, uh, To all greatness [00:24:00] in the world, right?
You think about some of the greatest tech companies, they had leaders that were great storytellers.
Rich: Yeah, Jed, that is a really, really useful, um, technique you just shared with us, that idea of a carousel of stories and then, you know, transforming those into sound bites that you can share with other customers and other prospects that are in the same world.
So I think that's a really powerful point that you bring up the idea that it's not just strategy, but you have to have a story. Around that, that's going to help convey to implement the strategy in what folks are trying to do there. So I love that idea. What I
Jed: think as a leader, you need to humanize yourself and there's no faster way to humanize yourself than to actually tell stories.
And that's one thing that's always been an important part of like kickoffs that I've done as you form a leadership team and you get them in front of hundreds of employees is like, let's learn a little bit about your origin story, right? Like what you shared, where I started, right? Like what makes rich.
Rich.
Rich: Yeah. And that's a great idea too. I didn't even think about that. Not only [00:25:00] with customers externally, but internally getting your team to talk about their story, like you said, their origin story. And to have that as a, as a practice within the organization, I think definitely is why you've been able to build such great cultures at the places that well, I think
Jed: you also, when you talk about core values, right?
It's like, okay, it's one thing for it to be in an onboarding. Or on a wall somewhere, but it's also like, hey, are you celebrating it in your town halls? Are you talking about those values? Are you sharing, uh, where those values, uh, were drivers, right? And where they were lifted up and clear, clear to everybody and, and, you know, help, helped a good outcome.
So I think, yeah, you, uh, you have to find a way to, uh, kind of live, live, live that and through story is probably the richest way.
Rich: Yeah. And just to build on that, Jed, any other leadership principles? I mean, it sounds obviously like you've done a really nice job building the culture with creating those values you've talked about, using stories both internally and externally.
Any other leadership principles that [00:26:00] you found effective as you've gone from, you know, your organization to one to the next and successfully being a leader and helping people drive towards a vision? Any other principles that, that you found helpful there?
Jed: Well, just like my grandfather took me aside and, uh, put his arm around me and told me about education.
But when I graduated from high school, he gave me a, uh, a card and I think it had a 20 check in it. And it was on the front of it. It had a quote from Henry David Thoreau that said, if one advances confidently in the direction of which they imagine, they will need success in uncommon hours. And for me, I actually, it was like, wow, that was a profound statement for a.
You know, 18 year old kid. And I, uh, I put that in a frame and I still have it on my desk. And so part of my, one of my leadership principles is, yeah, you want to build a, a billion dollar value company. You got to be able to visualize that, right. That that is possible. And so when I took over as a CEO, I can remember.
Basically, standing up and telling the team, like, there's two [00:27:00] things, you know, that are going to drive me. One is this idea that, you know, if you can, if you can visualize something in your mind's eye, uh, and you can put the right plan underneath of it, nothing's impossible, right? Um, and so you need to open your mind.
To, uh, to this, right? Because this is a freeing kind of exercise. Uh, you either think you can do something or you, you think you can't. Either way, you're right. And so, I guess I've always been a believer that you need to start with visualize, visualizing it. Obviously, you need to do the right operational work to get there.
But having the ability to sort of, you know, Dream big and do the work. This is important. And then the other, the other side of that is that you have to be able to do it in a way that's selfless. It's a theory that I have that sort of is just this, maybe it's counterintuitive in a way, right? That you want to run everyone over on your way to glory.
But what I've found is that actually it's the opposite, right? If you sort of disadvantage yourself and you, you open the door and you kind of help people realize like, Hey, Even though this may not serve me [00:28:00] today or tomorrow, I'm going to, I'm here to help you, whether it's mentoring you or, or, or whatever it is in life.
If you, if you can do it, uh, in a selfless way, this idea of kind of almost being a servant heart, right? Where if you, if you're, if you're doing that with your own employees and colleagues and you're by extension, your partner. That's going to be very clear to your customers that this is like, you're dealing with sort of a different type of an organization that, um, you know, has a more longer term view of partnership.
And so that's, that's something that's also served me very well, right? Is this idea of, of just being selfless and like trying to, uh, have empathy for the other people in the world. that you're working with, whether it's your own employees, your partners, or your customers. And typically it's actually in that order, right?
Like to build a culture inside of your company, you have to exhibit that personality trait with your own colleagues and then your partners. And then, yeah, by extension, your, your customers are going to see that.
Rich: And to that point, Jed, I love that idea of the selfless leader. Is there [00:29:00] anything that you use to trigger that, trigger that reminder for yourself, you know, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
Or is that something that just is ingrained at this point?
Jed: Well, I have on my, on my, uh, thing, it's this heart and it says believe on it. So there's the believe part of it. And the heart is just this idea that you have a I serve at heart. So, but that's just a physical reminder, I guess, uh, that is on my desk.
But yeah, I think it's just, it's, you have to kind of learn this behavior cause it's in a world of selfies and me, me, me, it's like, yeah, you have to sort of take a deep breath sometimes and realize that everyone in the world is going through something. And uh, yeah, you have to put in the, in the back of your, actually in the front of your mind that, Hey, this person is, is trying to do the right thing and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Right. And so that's been my strategy. And, uh, sometimes, uh, there are partnerships or customers that just not going to work out or employees, the same thing, but, you know, you try to, uh, to lead with this idea that, Hey, how can we [00:30:00] make this work? And yeah, everyone, everyone in the world is going through something and having high empathy, I think is important as a leader.
And I've found that you get a lot more out of people that way.
Rich: Yeah, and the research supports exactly what you just said. I think a couple years ago, it was the first time that more Fortune 500 CEOs were let go because of emotional intelligence reasons rather than financial performance. So, I think that physical heart, that token, that, that, uh, Symbol is a great way to, to remember that level of empathy, that servant heart.
So I think that's a really excellent technique and I would encourage people out there listening to find your physical reminder of, of your values and what you find is Jed has just shared with us some of his leadership principles. I think that's a really powerful thing to have a physical trigger in your environment that that's going to help you remember those things.
So I think that's great, Jed. Thank you for, for sharing that one. Um, one of the things I'd be interested, Jed, but you've got a background in hospitality as well. And when we think about organizations. We [00:31:00] typically think about an organization as really a vehicle for creating and delivering value. And I'd love for you to think back on your career and maybe it's in your personal life, maybe your professional life, but any moments that you can pick out where you say, wow, that was a truly extraordinary experience.
The value level was off the charts. And maybe it was something small, but anything come to mind either professionally or personally, any experiences that you've had where you said, wow, that was an extra level of value that I, that I hadn't seen before?
Jed: I mean, I guess I, I grew up in a world where I probably wasn't always the smartest guy in the room, but, um, you know, it's always been about hard work for me and showing up first to the office and putting in the hours.
Has always been the answer. I took a little bit of a detour at one point in my career at the dot com bust. I, I put myself through a school. My first job was actually growing up in this little town. I was a dishwasher was my first job. And so I, um, during the dot com [00:32:00] bust, I actually went back home and bought this hotel.
That was where I got my first job. And it was a total, uh, learning experience. The hotel had fallen into disarray and dysfunction physically and from a business perspective. And so, yeah, I spent four and a half years in a very different role than you would expect for here from a CEO of a tech company, but it was actually probably one of the healthiest kind of humbling experiences you could imagine, right?
Basically signing up for a huge loan and, uh, being thrown into kind of trying to fix up this, this old. Historic building and business. But I was always reminded by this idea that if it was easy, everyone would do it. And that's always been something that's has guided me in terms of creating value is that there are no shortcuts.
It's really is a lot of hard work. It's a lot of consensus building, team building, getting the right eyes eye on what the prize is. And then it's just a lot of grinding. And I have a, uh, another saying, which is you just sort of. In the depths of it, sometimes it just seems dark and hard and what am I doing [00:33:00] up at 3.
30 in the morning this morning, driving into San Francisco going, what, this is, this is on repeat, right? But it's really about finding the next right thing, Rich, is how, how I look at it. And I believe in the sort of the principle of Peter Drucker, the flywheel, where it's just like, okay, it's amazing when it actually hits, right?
You like get this sort of flywheel moment where all those little next things, next right things that you do. Add up and suddenly you're getting this exponential value out of the next right thing that you're doing. And if you can think, get everybody in the organization to think that way, and they truly believe it, like that, that is a powerful thing because you'll suddenly see it.
And yeah, I've, I've experienced it just even here at Control Up, right? Where simple things, just like our pipeline building, have gone like 10x, right, this year. And it's just like, okay, wow. That's a, that's a next right thing, right? We just started doing the right things, having the right conversations, putting the system, them into the system in the right way.
And suddenly we're, we're at a way best in class [00:34:00] coverage ratio on our pipeline. So yeah, that's kind of how I think about it. It's just a lot of hard work and do the next right thing.
Rich: Excellent. Yeah, that's a great reminder too, Jed, I think that you just shared there that sometimes, like you said, we're on repeat, we're up early, we're putting in the hard work, and we may not immediately see the return on that, but you've got to trust, like you said, that flywheel, that if you keep doing the right things, that next right thing, that after a while, that flywheel is going to turn just enough where you're going to get that momentum, and then you're going to start seeing that, like you said, that amazing 10x type of, type of return.
So I think that's a good reminder for everybody out there that Keep putting in the hard work, keep looking for the next right thing, keep building your flywheel, making adjustments, and you're going to start to see that extraordinary level of value that you can get. Jed, one of the things I love to do before we close the conversation with our strategic six questions is you've proven yourself to be a visionary, to be able to see what's next and then be able to help people execute that.
You talked before about getting [00:35:00] people to think about disruptive innovation, to come up with new ideas. I'd be interested, Jed, when you take time individually to think about the business, to think about the plan, to think about where you're going in the next couple years, what do you do in that individual think time as you're thinking about maybe the vision moving forward?
Are there any questions you use, any techniques, any tips that you could share with our listeners for what Jed's thinking strategically actually looks like? Any, any ways that they could get started doing some of the things that you do?
Jed: Well, I think it goes back to sort of visualizing what great looks like.
And I like, this goes back to our earlier conversation, right? I have another poster behind me here that was in a, in a restaurant I worked at. And I, I loved it so much because I would walk out the door and see it every day. I go, I'm not going to be a waiter for the rest of my life. Cause it says to be good is not enough when you dream to being great.
Right. And so it's like this idea of really visualizing. What does great look like? And what are the steps that I need to take from where I am right now to, to get to great. Right. And, [00:36:00] and so, yeah, this is a, a thesis when I think about creating value, it's like, and you're never there, right? That's the, the beautiful thing is that you're, you're on a lifelong journey.
And so, yeah, I think you just have to kind of close your eyes and take some very deep breaths and think about what is that possible great outcome in the next 90 days. In the next 180 days. And you got, you got to sort of incrementally get yourself there. And yeah, you got to bring your team with you, right?
Cause nothing great is done by a single leader. You got to make sure that not only your leadership needs, knows it, your extended leadership team knows it. And operationally your, your whole organization understands how they can wake up every day and help make progress. And I think the sort of cascading OKRs and KPI so that, you know, um, you're not rooted in a, Hey, we just need to get to this point.
Big ARR target or, you know, profitability target. It's like, what can I do, um, in, in my job as a HR person or a developer or customer experience? What are, what are the metrics that I can push, [00:37:00] uh, you know, and how could I improve on those? So that, um, ultimately you're, you're, you're leveling up the overall, um, You know, metrics of the company.
So yeah, I think that's something that, uh, I haven't perfected it, but it's something that I'm, I'm really embarking on here at ControlUp is to build that sort of company wide matrix so that everybody understands their ability to build that value and it's not just some really, uh, kind of euphoria metric out there that they're not exactly sure how they connect with it.
I'm, I'm a new sales development rep that started last week. What can I do? To help create that value, right? So you need to be able to, at every function, be clear about that.
Rich: Yeah, I love that idea, Jed, because too often I've seen in organizations where leaders, they, they hand out, and you talked about earlier, they hand out a PowerPoint deck and slides and say, okay, well, go, go follow this.
Here's our plan. And you just hit on a really important point that As a good leader, you've got to walk your people through [00:38:00] why you're going where you're going and then how does it impact what they're doing so that they actually, to use your word early, so they can visualize their role in the organization and the creation of that value.
So I think that's a really powerful point to talk about the journey and what their role is in the journey. Because like you said, you know, a single leader is not going to be able to do anything on their own. So you've got to bring people with them. So I think that's a really, a powerful story to finish with on that analogy of the journey bringing people along and getting them to see their value.
So Jed, I'd be grateful if we could close our conversation today with your response to six questions that we call the strategic sex. So, uh, and you might know this one from our earlier conversation, but what was your first job?
Jed: Well, actually, before I had my first job that I was given a W 2 for, I was actually, uh, worked my summers with my grandfather, who was so influential for me in, uh, picking apples in his apple farm in Sonoma County.
So, ten cents a bucket and, uh, some long, Hard days, uh, clearing, uh, you know, [00:39:00] ripe fruit in Sonoma County. And yeah, that was, uh, probably my very first job that I can remember getting an actual check at the end of the day and a good meal.
Rich: Excellent. It sounds like that might've been the seed of the hard work ethic that you've developed as well.
For sure. Second question. What's your favorite vacation spot?
Jed: That's a good question. I would say anywhere I can go with my wife and spend some quality time with her and, uh, I love the, the, the planet Earth. I think there's so many beautiful places. I, I probably wouldn't just say one. I just got back, uh, from sharing some time with her in Mykonos, uh, which was beautiful.
We love Sydney, but yeah, I mean, I think for me, there's so much, uh, beauty to see in this town. Yeah, I want to continue to, to see more of it. So I tend to, um, not, not go back to the same place. Maybe that tells you something about me.
Rich: Great. Great. Number three, what's the one word that best describes you? Oh, that's a tough one.
Jed: Well, I'll give you my high school nickname that I had, it was Scrappy. I think that, that [00:40:00] is, uh, sort of find a way through any situation and tenacious. Sometimes, I don't know if your audience is international, but sometimes the word isn't totally understood. Um, I told a story about my nickname, uh, in our kickoff in Israel and they were kind of looking up.
The Hebrew, uh, uh, version of Scrappy. So, yeah. Right.
Rich: Excellent. Excellent. Number four, one, one book has had a significant impact on your development.
Jed: I would say, uh, I love the book. Um, it was the story of, um, Continental Airlines, right? When they went worst to first. That book, even though it's a very short and kind of a simple read, that book also, I would say has been a huge, for me, where you come into an industry where.
You're in the worst position and how do you get to first? Like, okay, that just kind of transcends a bunch of the things you and I just talked about, Rich. Yeah. And, and if you read that book, actually a bunch of the things we talked about are borne out in the CEO who, who led the, uh, sort of transformation of Continental Airlines, which of course now is United.
[00:41:00] Yeah, excellent, excellent, thank you.
Rich: Number five, what's the one piece of advice that you'd like to share with others that would fit on a bumper sticker? Huh, I'd probably just put my one word, believe. Yes, absolutely, that would capture it, great. And then number six, what's the most exhilarating moment you've experienced in your professional life?
Jed: Wow, that's a great question. Honestly, I have to say the, the, the success that we had at IGEL, this company that was sort of unheard of in the U. S. Yeah, it was this small, thin, quiet, German technology company, right? Building probably the most boring thing that you can think of in tech, a dumb terminal. Per se, but in, in hidden in this, this thin client, dumb terminal was a beautiful operating system that was super secure and really easy to manage.
And we were able to sort of pull that out of that plastic box and build a a hundred million dollar software business around it and bring it to the U. S. and build a very profitable company. And so, yeah, I think. The, the, and then the ability to sell that company to a tier one, one of the top five private [00:42:00] equity companies in the world in, uh, March of 2021, in the height of COVID, doing that all through, uh, the COVID Zoom world that we had to live in.
I would say that was probably one of the most exhilarating moments that I ever had, right? Basically taking this company that was losing money that no one had ever heard of. That was really in Northern Germany and going through this incredible transformation, hardware to software, perpetual to subscription, building out a US team.
And then the community that came along with that, Rich, we built a huge user base. We built like an event that we would do every year that had attracted thousands of people. Right. And so being able to sort of be in the center of that universe was very special. And obviously it's led me to where I am now at Controla.
But yeah, that was a, an exhilarating journey for sure.
Rich: Wonderful. Well, Jed, thank you very much for, for, for the time that you spent with us today. You've shared a lot of great tools and techniques. I've jotted a lot of notes down. Um, there's a lot of things that you shared with us, I think, especially around values, around vision, around the ability to [00:43:00] be creative, to tell stories.
And I think when we start to bring all of those things together, you've given us a really nice toolkit. So, thank you very much for being on the show with us today.
Jed: Well, Rich, I think the best thing we can do as we, uh, age is to try to give something back. And hopefully I've touched someone in your audience today.
And, uh, the only last parting word I would have for everybody that's listening is about your network. I would just tell you, like, I love to connect with people. from all walks of life. You never know where those connections will go. So hopefully out of this conversation, I'll build some new friendships and connect with some people.
LinkedIn is my tool, favorite tool. So yeah, I'd love to connect with you. And I think your network is your net worth. Absolutely.
Rich: Absolutely. And we'll, and then for all the folks listening out there, we'll, we'll certainly put Jed's LinkedIn profile link in the show notes. So please go to the show notes and you can find those there as well.
And, uh, again, Jed, really appreciate you being on the show today. Thanks so much.
Mash up: What are we talking about? Practice. Practice makes perfect. Practice makes profit. [00:44:00]
Rich: I review three to 400 strategic plans a year from CEOs, vice presidents, leaders of marketing, sales, finance, IT, and other areas. The majority of strategies in most plans are offensive in nature, focusing on using their strengths to take advantage of positive opportunities.
These offensive strategies are an important part of planning, but the best leaders also develop strategies to neutralize the threats or potentially damaging situations or trends That can impact their business. To practice assessing your threats, you can use a tool I developed called the Threat Matrix.
The Threat Matrix evaluates potentially negative external factors such as competitor activities, market trends, etc. using two criteria, probability of occurrence and impact on the business. So if we think about a graph. Probability of occurrence is going to be on our vertical or y axis, and typically we label it 1 to 10.
1 is low, 10 is high. So we want to think about the threats, the negative [00:45:00] external events. We want to think about what's the probability that that event's going to occur, 1 being low, 10 being high. Then on the X axis or the horizontal axis, we're going to have impact to our business. Again, 1 being low, 10 being high.
So typically what we do is we take, let's say, competitor contracts creating access barriers to customer. We would first then plot that based on probability of occurrence. So let's say that's a 7, it's fairly high. And the impact on the business, let's say would be medium, around a five. So we would plot that almost right in the middle.
What's interesting with the threat matrix then, is it gives us a way to plot our threats relative to other threats. So if we've got something obviously in the top right corner, high probability of occurrence, high impact on the business, then we're going to potentially want to set strategy to neutralize that threat.
So again, as you look at your plan, it's fine to have a lot of options. Offensive strategies that focus on opportunities and strengths, but we also want to think about the threats, the [00:46:00] negative situations or trends that could hurt our business and come up with strategies to do that as well. In this segment, the League of Strategic Minds, I answer questions submitted by one of our listeners.
Mash up: I appreciate your strategic mind. Must have a strategic brain. Great strategic minds of tomorrow right here.
Rich: Today's question, what is competitive advantage? Competitive advantage is providing superior value to customers. It's comprised of three factors, capabilities, activities, and offerings. Capabilities are the assets, skills, and resources you possess, what you have.
Activities are the basic units of competitive advantage because there were capabilities merge, with resource allocation into the actions you take. So, activities are what you do, and offerings are the products and services that customers interact with, what you provide. It's helpful to regularly analyze your business and key [00:47:00] competitors on these three areas.
Capabilities, what you have, activities, what you do, and offerings, what you provide. That helps you then determine who has competitive advantage and why. If you have a question you'd like answered, visit the Strategic Minds page on the website, www. strategicminds. com. StrategySkills. com and complete the brief submission form.
If your question's selected, you'll receive some strategic mind swag for your contribution. Any insights?
Mash up: You play to win the game. Any further insights? You don't play to just play it. Insightful. I want winners. I played the game to win. I want people that want to win. It's very insightful.
Rich: Our wind site, or idea for advantage today, comes from Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He said, To each there comes their lifetime a special moment, when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents.
What a tragedy if that moment finds them [00:48:00] unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour. The question I'll leave you with today, are you continuing to develop your expertise and skills to be your best, so you too can realize your finest hour? If your team needs a new process and tools for strategic thinking, lacks a common language for strategy, is too reactive and tactical, or would like to increase innovation to grow profits and create competitive advantage, Visit strategyskills.
com where you can learn more about strategy workshops, online certificate courses, the Strategic Thinker newsletter, and hundreds of other resources. Pick up a copy of my newly released book, Strategic, and take your leadership development to the next level by subscribing to the Strategic Fitness System, an innovative, state of the art, executive development platform.
Remember, be strategic to be your best.