Agile Businesses: Betsy Kauffman Of Cross Impact Coaching On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Value learning — learning keeps us relevant, curious, and creative.
As part of my series about the “How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Betsy Kauffman.
Betsy Kauffman is a globally recognized Organizational Agility Coach with more than 20 years of experience working in Fortune 500 companies. Her company, Cross Impact Coaching, is an Organizational Design Firm focused on working with companies to help them solve the big problems impeding them from achieving agility, collaboration, alignment, and innovation. She is a published author providing thought leadership to the agile and project management communities and speaks internationally on leadership, corporate culture, and organizational agility. She also completed her first TED Talk: “4 Tips to Kickstart Honest Conversations at Work’’ in conjunction with the TED@PMI partnership and was selected by the TED editors to have her talk brought to the main stage. Check it out at TED.com!
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started my professional career as a technical project manager on a whim because the director of a division I was interviewing with believed in my abilities to support his organization. I didn’t have any real training in software or project management, just the attitude to want to learn with no fear or preconceived notions. This work took me down the path of working in several organizations as a project manager, program manager, and eventually portfolio manager. I was then tapped on the shoulder and asked if I was interested in learning agile and began getting acclimated to that mindset and various delivery frameworks. I have spent the last 15 years working as a scrum master, sr. scrum master, agile coach, leadership coach and now it has turned my focus into organizational design with a strong focus on creating agile organizations.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
As I was just getting started in the technology world, I was responsible for purchasing millions of dollars of software licenses for a large scale implementation. What I didn’t understand was these licenses were not actual, physical licenses like a driver’s license and I started arguing with the vendor that I wanted the physical licenses sent to us. Being a vendor, they created something crazy to appease me and sent it to our offices. As I learned more about the tech world, I was embarrassed by my actions. I think the biggest lesson or take away for me from that mistake is you don’t know everything, and you need to trust and lean on your vendor partners and peers to learn and grow in your knowledge and interactions.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I believe there are two individuals who created pivotal moments in my career. The first one was the gentleman who hired me into my first project manager role. As I mentioned above, I had no previous experience in this occupation or in the tech sector. I was just a couple of years out of college and really trying to figure out where I wanted to take my career. He believed I had the right attitude and soft skills to take on this role and they could teach me the “technical” skills to be competent. This truly launched me into a new direction and profession I have very much enjoyed.
The second person was a peer of mine in the agile community. I just finished speaking at a local meetup about how to create successful global teams in scaling your agile initiatives. After the talk, there were several people waiting to speak with me. He patiently waited to be the last person to speak with me and strongly encouraged me to “take my show on the road”. So, I did. I quit my day job at a large financial institution and started my own agile coaching and training firm over eight years ago.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
When we first started, my main purpose was to work for myself with no real vision. Not very inspiring and it lacked direction as well as focus. However, over time, we started to get a real understanding of the impact we were having on our clients, and we began to get really aligned on our mission. Our mission is to help create workplaces where people wake up each morning feeling motivated and inspired by their work and end their days feeling fulfilled and valued. Our core values are collaboration, transparency, simplicity, trust, and balance. We use our values to guide and ground us in the work we do with our clients and as a team.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell our readers a bit about what your business does? How do you help people?
We are an organizational design firm, focused on working with leaders and their teams who are serious about wanting to make change happen. We focus on helping to solve the big problems impeding companies from achieving agility, collaboration, alignment, and innovation. We get pulled in to support large scale organizational transformations (people, processes, systems, tools), leadership coaching, culture, change and mindset shifts, and creating high performing teams.
Which technological innovation has encroached or disrupted your industry? Can you explain why this has been disruptive?
We are a consulting firm, and we work with organizations to achieve organizational agility. However, we are in such an age of radical disruption with startups in almost every sector — (Finance, Insurance, Retail) that our larger and more established customers are having to reimagine everything about their organization to stay competitive with these new disruptors. These startups have been disruptive because it is really pushing our clients to quickly innovate and provide customer centric products and services.
What did you do to pivot as a result of this disruption?
We really focus on bringing best practices and challenging our customers to act and think differently. I have added a few new services to our firm to support the need — HR and Change Management strategists and consultants, technical coaches to help our clients create innovative solutions, and a focus on working with clients to reimagine new ways of working.
Was there a specific “Aha moment” that gave you the idea to start this new path? If yes, we’d love to hear the story.
I am not sure there was an “aha moment” but more of a natural progression where we just kept getting called back into to help with the bigger picture of helping organizations redesign to stay competitive and relevant. Due to our high quality work and desire to really dig in with our clients, we are trusted partners and end up working across these same organizations year after year as they mature and grow.
So, how are things going with this new direction?
Fantastic! We are working on solving some amazing problems with our customers. Our work is exciting, challenging, and keeps us on our toes to bring new ways of working in this virtual world where in the past we would have been onsite working side by side. Therefore, we have had to get very proficient with virtual facilitation, collaborative online tools, and of course, various web conferencing platforms.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this pivot?
We are currently working with a client and rolling up our sleeves to help create a Next Gen Product Delivery organization. The challenge we have been given is to help turn this part of the organization on its head by reimaging everything including people, processes, systems, and technologies leveraging automation and data driven decision making.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during a disruptive period?
Clarity and transparency with their teams and peers.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
Trust your people and allow them to do their best work. It also involves providing clarity, clear decision making, consistency, and transparency in everything you do. A good leader creates an environment where employees feel psychologically safe, heard, challenged, and able to connect their work to the bigger picture, even in uncertain times.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Relentless focus on building talented, high-performing, diverse teams. People stay with a company, even during turbulent times, when they are part of a team which is supported and set up for success.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make when faced with a disruptive technology? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Often, I see companies not taking disruptive technologies seriously or even not realizing they are at risk of being disrupted because they think they are too large to fail. Also, I see companies not investing enough time or money in being innovative and creative, thinking differently, or anticipating what problems they can solve for their customers. Companies need to understand customers are choosing value, convenience, options, affordability, and innovation over brand loyalty. Just because they are your customer today, does not mean they will continue to stay your customer in the future
Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to pivot and stay relevant in the face of disruptive technologies? Please share a story or an example for each.
- Allow teams to experiment and innovate — some of the best ideas come from people who are closest to the work and/or the customers.
- Fail fast — failure isn’t a bad thing; it allows us to learn and quickly pivot but also don’t be afraid to cut your losses.
- Value learning — learning keeps us relevant, curious, and creative.
- Bring transparency and clarity in everything you do — Employees and teams are much mor likely to support a leader and an organization when they are confused or fearful of the future.
- Look outside of the corporate walls — sometimes we get so myopic in our work and focused on solving for the internal problems we don’t realize when our companies are no longer relevant.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Life is not about finding yourself but about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
I have had a magnet of this on my refrigerator for at least 15+ years. I think at some point in our early years we are fed the myth that our true calling will magically appear and find us. Most of us walk around looking and hoping for that vision to find us. I truly believe you must envision the life you want and work like mad to create that life — both personally and professionally. That mindset has helped me to really grow my consulting firm and build a life which I love.
How can our readers further follow your work?
https://www.crossimpactcoaching.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsykauffman
Watch my TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/betsy_kauffman_4_tips_to_kickstart_honest_conversations_at_work
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Agile Businesses: Betsy Kauffman Of Cross Impact Coaching On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
