The Way of the Wolf: How Technology and People Drive Business Success: Insights from a CEO

Kristen Sage:

Historically, I think technology has discussed a lot about how the system works, how we code it, how we do that, and it's like we need to change those conversations into like, what is the value your business is getting out of that?

Sean Barnes:

How is it going, ladies and gentlemen? This is Sean Barnes. I want to welcome you back to The Way of the Wolf. Our guest today, Kristen Sage, has an incredible journey that she has been on and I cannot wait to dive into it. She started out early on consulting at Deloitte, then transitioned into a management role at a transportation and logistics company, then to a director level role at a veterinary organization and is now the CEO of Western Computer. They specialize in Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platforms. And then recently were nominated by Microsoft as a top business central partner. Kristen, welcome to The Way of the Wolf.

Kristen Sage:

Thank you so much. Could not be more excited to be here.

Sean Barnes:

So here's the thing that's just really perked my curiosity is, how did you make that jump from consulting into management? Let's start there. You started at Deloitte doing a lot of consulting work and then went into management at an organization. Can you talk me through that?

Kristen Sage:

Yeah, sure. So perhaps even to take a step further back, I did my undergrad in accounting and finance, and at the time was advised, "Hey, accounting and finance applies to anything, so you should do that." Who knows what they want to do at the age of 22? Jumped out of that into Deloitte Consulting. And I think a mantra through the beginning parts of my career was it was really common to be told no, that there are certain things that you don't have access to. So when I first joined Deloitte, I joined their advisory side of the business focusing on insurance risk consulting, as odd as that is, and had wanted to make the transition into their consulting side of the business, they're quite similar, but due to my undergrad, they had said, "Hey, we don't recruit out of that undergrad into our consulting firm." I was like, "Okay. All right." So we've got a ceiling here, we're going to have to get through this somehow. It's going to keep coming up.

So I did well there, figured out that to get to the consulting side, if you got on a project and proved yourself, that's how you get buy-in. Proving yourself over and over again is how you get buy-in. Ended up on one of those projects and successfully was able to make the transition over to the consulting side. At which point, I started to look around and say, "Wait, I want to stay. There are incredible changes that this company could do. We're peeling off the onion and we're only getting to play with one piece of it because that's our scope of work," and I said, "But I want to do the whole onion."

And so at that time, going back to the ceiling that I was running into, I said, "Well, I'm going to have to get a different degree on my resume or this is always going to come up." And so I started applying for graduate schools at that point in time, happened to get into the University of Chicago, was getting my MBA there, met someone, proved myself, transitioned over into a company that that person was currently working at, which was the distribution company, and that's where I started really getting into general management rather than niche management focusing across everything from the people side to the process side, to the technology side. We were in charge of all of it for the specific area that we oversaw.

Sean Barnes:

There's a lot that I actually want to unpack there. So jumping from accounting and finance into all these other different areas and then now in technology, whenever I look at people that have jumped across functional domains, usually I will see people bouncing between accounting and technology because there's a lot of overlap and similarities, accuracy data, numbers, information, all of that. And so that is one thing that I find interesting, and you've actually jumped in through a lot of different domains, but more importantly, the thing that resonated, and I wrote a note here, proving yourself is how you get buy-in.

I see a lot of times people early on in their career or, let's be honest, throughout their career, they struggle. They grapple with, "Why won't people listen to me? Why won't people listen to me?" I think it's important that we build confidence through execution at a high level and that comes with time. And when you build that competence, it turns into confidence and it allows you to walk into any room, showcase you know what you're talking about and you can provide value, you can solve their problems, that gets buy-in very quickly. What has been your experience in that space?

Kristen Sage:

I mean, gosh, I'm going to unpack so much of what you just said too. I think there's a key element of that, which is understanding what the problem you're solving for is and what the people around you care about. So on the consulting side, even in our current business, we have a lot of customers on one project. We have the end user who's like, "Just make my job more efficient. Get this easier." We have a CFO who's like, "Do this on budget." We have the head of it who's, "Do it on time. I don't want to go through another audit on this old ERP. Just get it done on time."

All of those priorities are different and can impact things differently. And I think from a young age, those that are most successful are able to look around and say, "What are all of these other people's priorities and how do I help them get to their priorities? Because if they can raise, I can raise and they will pull me along with them because I am making their wheels spin faster. I'm not stopping it with self-interest."

Sean Barnes:

You said something that I also made a note of here. It's understanding the problem that you are solving for. I think a lot of times we have this myopic focus on what's right in front of us and we lose sight of the bigger, broader picture. Very unfortunate when that occurs, but a lot of people don't truly understand all of the interdependencies and different connection points. And when you're in technology, it is vitally important if you're implementing an ERP system, which we might get into here in a little bit, when you are implementing an ERP system, it's not just, "Okay. We're going to plug this new platform in." You have to understand the sales cycle. You have to understand pipeline, supply chain and how that feeds into inventory and then how everything moves through the system.

So it's extremely important that we have a holistic understanding of how the organization operates. When you do, you can then solve specific problems that occur in a very targeted way without any or minimal adverse effect on other systems, processes or teams.

Kristen Sage:

It's so true. I mean, a big project we worked on when I was at the distribution company was automating a big part of our technology and bringing in the IT folks, bringing in the finance folks, bringing in HR because we were automating a part of a process that leads to efficiencies. HR needs to be aware of that, was such an important part of the project. And when you bring people along on the journey and they were a part of it, at the end, they're your advocate. They're the one who's sitting in the room and saying, "No, I've been along on this. Let's do this."

I think the worst thing to do is catch someone off guard at the very end and be like, "Oh, we're running with this. It's too late. We've already done it," and they're like, "Wait, I wasn't a part of this." So to your point of you have to know the people what all of their priorities, again, see the big picture, bring them along, and that's really, I think, how you continue to advance in your career because now you have advocates across the entire organization who know your name, who know your work rather than just your direct boss.

Sean Barnes:

I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this. Over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with CIOs and CISOs and business leaders and it's not as common to hear the phrase digital transformation now, but if you think five to eight years ago, it was all the buzz. And I came to realize that digital transformation, it's not about the technology. I mean, kind of it is, but it's more about the people and understanding the needs of the business and understanding how to inspire and motivate and manage change for the organization.

And you said something a moment ago that resonated with me as far as, "Well, why didn't I know about this?" When you're implementing something, you have to get all the stakeholders involved and solicit their feedback from all of them and factor that in. I think that is a big miss that a lot of technology leaders maybe they struggle with because the CFO's hammering, "Hey, I can't keep spending money on these consultants coming in. You've got to meet these deadlines," and so they will try to move things forward and try to rush the process without getting all the feedback that they need to really make sure that it hits hard and everything comes to fruition the way they planned it to. So they hit the target deadline, but they've missed out on all this other stuff and it creates this mountain of technological debt that is going to have to be paid at some point.

Kristen Sage:

Most definitely.

Sean Barnes:

Really quickly, when you guys come in and start doing some sort of an implementation, how do you account for that?

Kristen Sage:

So you first come in, and I think what we're really pushing for, we are on this transformational journey right now about customer excellence. We're really trying to coach our team up on getting to the why, why are you doing this project, what caused it. Some people are doing ERP because their company has a growth trajectory and their lenders won't give them the money if they're on QuickBooks because there's not enough auditing strength on it. Other people are doing I'd say the cybersecurity tack, and they're like, "We can't go through that again." Other people are doing it because they know it's the future and they're like, "This is the foundation. Without this, I can't build the house. I can't build it on the rocky foundation. It will never work and I'll get too far behind."

So understanding where they are in that changes how we should approach a project. If it's an urgent, we just need to get it in, "Great. Okay. Let's get a foundation, a very small foundation built and let's phase out specific additions to it. Let's think about your CRM, et cetera, and phase two, but let's get your finance function up and running on it. Let's get your warehouse up and running on it and let's optimize." It's really different for every customer as to what is your tolerance, where do you need to move, how quickly do you need to move there, and then let's help you draw out the plan to get there.

Sean Barnes:

Okay. This is the topic that I geek out on and so I have to apologize. We went down a little bit of a tangent. I want to hear more about your story in terms of growing through management to director and then now into the CEO role for Western. Can you talk me through what's the most significant part of your story that you would like to share?

Kristen Sage:

That's such a great question. I think the most significant part was in each role where I felt like I wasn't being challenged anymore or wasn't able to touch as much as I wanted to touch, I started looking. So I found myself at the distribution company that I worked for, fantastic growth experience management. It was incredible, but it's a private family-owned company, and so there's no exposure to financials.

People geek out on systems, I geek out on accounting and finance, and so I said, "Give me my P&L back. I want to see this. I want to drive that." Moved on into the veterinary space, had the chance to run an 18-hospital portfolio. Really enjoyed it, but felt that I was getting back into the consulting side where I had 18 hospitals and I'd hone in and I'd help them on one thing and then another fire would pop up, and so I'd leave them and I'd go work on that hospital. I always found myself bopping around. I'm like, "Wait a second. I just want to grow one. I really want to focus on one."

And at that time, had the opportunity at Western Computer popup, and really, I think what drew me there was the legacy that already existed while also having the immense opportunity in that it's a 35-year-old company. You talk about digital transformation. I mean, this company needs to go through a transformation in the best of ways. We have a great foundation. For us to get even bigger, we need to transform the way we approach business. I think that perhaps the most pivotal part is always listening to the inner voice and saying, "I think there's more I want to do," and following that.

Sean Barnes:

I love that. Okay. So I'm actually going to go way back now and ask, has that always been a part of who you are, constantly having this desire as like, "I want more, I want to learn more, I want to grow more"? Has that always been who you were from even a young girl?

Kristen Sage:

Oh, gosh. Probably I would say, I commonly say that your best characteristics are your worst characteristics. I am stubborn and I've been stubborn since I was a little kid. My parents would say that. They'd say I can be a dog with a bone with an idea, and they would say, "When you would cross the road, you wouldn't look left or right. You were just like point A, point B, cross the road," since I was a kid. And so these are the best parts about me, these are the worst parts about me. It's commonly something that I have to balance. But I think that, yeah, the laser focus on I need to get there and nothing's going to stop me, and if you tell me I can't, I'm going to prove to that I can, that's probably always been in there. I'm sure someone could tell me why, but-

Sean Barnes:

This is something that over the last we'll say year or so that I've been reflecting a lot on, specifically about myself and my own journey, just wondering what was that driver because like you, I've always been intrinsically driven, wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting to do more, more, more, and I just took it for granted. It was just, "Oh, well, this is just who I am and how I operate."

And only recently have I started to self-reflect and evaluate. And there's some stuff that goes all the way back to my childhood that were some drivers, but to your point of our weaknesses can also be our strengths or strengths or weaknesses, I can't remember how you worded it, but I think it's important for us to have enough self-awareness to acknowledge, "Hey, I have this thing inside of me, this fire that burns hotter than hot. I need to make sure that I channel it in a direction that's meaningful and impactful and can help inspire and lift as many other people up as possible," because for the first few decades of my professional career, it was all about Sean, what can Sean accomplish. I want that six-figure salary. I want that director title, that VP title. I want my own company, all this stuff.

And once I got into probably my mid 30s or so, I realized that all these things that I wanted were just focused on me and it doesn't really matter. It wasn't fulfilling. It was cool when I hit that target, and then whenever I shifted my focus on building my team, building the people around me and lifting them up, that's when the fulfillment came. So I still have this intrinsic drive, but now the focus has shifted outward into helping to lift other people up. I think it's important for us, especially those in leadership roles, to make sure they understand themselves enough and can channel that in a direction to positively impact their organization, the people around them and start driving transformations.

Kristen Sage:

Yeah, most definitely. I think there is an enjoyment that people come from achieving things. One thing we recently focused on for our team is we announced that we're doing OKRs this year. It was the first time that the company had done those. It's getting the team to be like, "I'm a part of something." We as humans naturally want to be a part of something. It's built into our DNA. We're a part of this. We are all rowing on this boat for all of us. You're doing it for the person next to you, you're doing it for yourself. I mean, these are jobs, right? You don't do it for free.

I think that that's been really cool to see is the team coming together and saying, "Wow, yeah, this is our goal and we're going towards it." Just this year, we announced to be one of Microsoft's inner circle partners, which is a big deal in the Microsoft world, especially for smaller guys like us, smaller women, men, whatever, and it was cool. I think the team's like, "Oh, wow." It's not just us feeling this way. The external world's noticing it too. I think the team is just like, "Wow, this is cool. We're building this. We're all a part of it."

Sean Barnes:

It's also exciting, and I appreciate your we'll say transparency. Western Computer was founded in, what, '87? Is that right? Something like that? Okay. So this is something that a lot of organizations, I mean, every business is going to have challenges and struggles. As organizations grow and scale, as they mature, there's almost this double-edged sword here in that as you grow in scale, you are able to further leverage your economies of scale, which is great. However, what you end up doing is also building systems and processes to make sure you are as efficient as possible at a given operational scale, we'll say.

And then over time, as time goes on and progresses, you come to realize, "Okay. Well, that worked for us in the '90s. We're hanging onto it in the 2000s. Now it's the 2010s, we got to do something with it. Now we're in 2020." And so my question for you is as you stepped into this role as a CEO of Western Computer and start sizing up, this is a tech-focused firm and I'm not eluding or saying that you guys have tech from the '90s. I'm not saying that at all, but there are things that were built many, many years ago that you're having to unravel and then build back new.

Whereas let's just say a competitor launches today with a lot of funding, they're able to build from the ground up with the latest technology, and so they have some advantages there. However, you have advantages in that tacit knowledge from your team that has been in it for years. How do you balance that? How do you make sure that you maintain all these great systems, processes and structures that have gotten you where you are and also stay agile enough to leverage the newest technologies?

Kristen Sage:

I think what's been interesting for us is the way that we balance that is we listen to our people. We are fortunate. We have a very tenured expert team. I will joke with peers and coworkers. If I went up to my developers, business central, F&SCM, CE, any of them, Power Platform and I said, "Make a dance," they could do it. They are so good, so good. It's incredible. We do engagement surveys quarterly to discuss with them what do you want to see out of us. It's so interesting when you get those back because it is very much what we want to do with the business. So that's my weathervane. If there is something that I want to do with the business and I'm not hearing back from the team that we should do that, that's indicative to me that that's not something that we should break right now.

But if it's something that, for instance, right now, career development is a big thing we're getting asked for and I'm like, "Okay. Great. Let's go build it. Let's invest in it. Let's do this," versus there's probably other things that we haven't done. As a result, I have these ideas, dog with a bone and I'm like, "Okay. You know what? Maybe we're not getting a lot of buy-in on that one," so they're telling me what we should and shouldn't do.

Sean Barnes:

We listen to our people. My god, it's so simple, but why do you think so many businesses struggle with that concept? Because this is also something that I've been reflecting on recently is you can scour the internet. Every corner of the internet you go to, people are complaining, "I hate my boss. My company culture is toxic. They ignore me. They don't listen." And then we could assume or operate under some sort of assumption that at some point, those people make it into a management level, but it seems that a lot of companies don't listen to their employees.

And one of the biggest things that I always tell people at conferences and stuff is it is very simple. Two things, listen and act. Listen to the things that the people tell you and then act on it. Now, I will also say you can't always act on everything. If you cannot act on it, it is vitally important that you express why, "We can't do that now because of this, but we will put it on the list and we will get to it as soon as we can get to it." Why is that so difficult for so many leaders?

Kristen Sage:

It's so interesting to say that. We're about to publish our last engagement survey and we're including answers to everything people wrote, so that it's like, "We heard you, we read these, we listen, here's what's happening, here's where we're connecting that, and if that dot isn't connecting for you, reach out because I want to hear it and I want to know it." I really do think that most people mean well. I don't think processes, a lot of companies don't processes built to do that to listen and they get overwhelmed by, "I have 500, I have 1,000 employees. How would I do that?" I think we don't always give people enough credit to have the business acumen of why you're doing specific things that you're doing. So perhaps they hide behind just, "I don't want to explain it," or, "I don't want to be the bad guy."

I think that when we are blessed in these smaller companies, you know those people. I can get on a Teams chat with them and say, "Hey, let's talk about this. Where are we not aligning?" and then let's be able to have the respect to walk away, and if we don't agree, that's okay, we can both walk away and find common ground but not agree. I think what's most difficult specifically for us and for a lot of SMBs is we are fully remote. We are working from our living rooms. So it's a little harder to cross the river to actually meet and talk. We are constantly working on that in our organization to say, "Okay. Let's get on a call. Let's have the conversation and let's not hide behind the Teams and the emails."

Sean Barnes:

You know what's interesting about that is the entire world had this tectonic shift from in-person to remote work a few years ago for obvious reasons. And one of the things that I noticed at the macro is a lot of organizations, it would seem that they started getting googly eyed at the thought of, "Oh, well, hold on. We can save a lot of money by not having office space for all of these personnel." And for the first six months, year, 18 months, something like that, they were able to maintain a strong working culture because all of those people had already established and built trust with one another.

As natural attrition occurred and you started to rehydrate the organization with more new bodies, we quickly discovered that leading an entirely remote workforce requires different leadership skills to be able to assimilate them in to your culture and your organization, and think we started to see a lot of gaps there, and now there's this kind of push-pull tug of war of, "Well, I don't want to come back into the office. I can do my job entirely remote." "Well, it's actually more efficient if we can just walk down the hall and have a face-to-face conversation." "Well, we're a geographically dispersed organization." So you have to be intentional in terms of developing your leaders so that they understand how to lead an entirely remote workforce. But I love that you listen to the people, that you receive the quarterly surveys and actually respond to all of them. That is just phenomenal.

Kristen Sage:

I think another part of that is building into your leaders at EQ. It's pretty common for one of our leaders to say, "Hey, I just happened to notice that they took two weeks off. I hope everything's okay," or maybe even better, they're getting married, they went on a 10-year anniversary cruise. It's common for the leaders to ping and be like, "Have you heard anything? No? Okay, I'm going to check in," or hear that someone's mother is in the hospital and you send them an Uber Eats gift card because you're like, "You probably don't want to cook right now, so why don't you make some food?"

I think that building that EQ takes time, and as we grow, it's something we're going to struggle with, but we're trying to build processes, build dashboards to see things such as, "Hey, this person's burning really hot. They did a lot of hours on a project this month." That should radar to me and then I'll just send them a Teams email, "Happened to see this. Want to make sure everything's okay. Let me know if not."

So we need to build processes to allow our leaders in a remote space to notice that, and I think once you do that and they're like, "Oh, they care about this," people are really smart, as soon as you give them the signal, green go, they go and they lean into that. So it's my job and it's my leader's job just to set that that's the tone, and then it's incredible what people do with it once you do that.

Sean Barnes:

I love that you touched on the importance of EQ, and I've come to realize that as you transition more and more into a leadership role, that we'll say, let's just say we've got IQ over here and EQ over here, I think EQ becomes increasingly important as you ascend into more senior leadership ranks. IQ, yes, important. EQ, probably arguably more important because when you are in that senior leadership role, it's no longer about what can Kristen do, how many numbers can Kristen look at, what is the P&L. While it's important for you to do it, your role is a force multiplier. And in order to do that, having a high level of EQ to understand people, what motivates them, what drives them, and how to inspire and extract the most out of them, that is the most important piece as a leader.

Kristen Sage:

Yeah, and I think that ... I speak on a lot of women in leadership panels, and anytime I'm heading into one, I'm always a little bit nervous because it's very common for us to put women and men into buckets and non-binary into a bucket and attach characteristics to that, and that always makes me nervous because I don't think that it is that black and white. However, there are inevitably forces of which we grew up around that shape the way in which we show up. And most women, commonly grew up in spaces where you were asked to act a certain way. There is an expectation or has been expectations in society historically of how you show up. As a result, women tend to be the higher ones to report cases of imposter syndrome, doubting themselves, et cetera.

What's been interesting is as I've risen in the ranks or had those moments, it's almost better for your EQ because you build this muscle of constantly reflecting inward. And if you can use that as a growth, it's incredible what you can do from there. And if you can use that as a awareness tactic to go to people and say, "Hey, I walked out of that meeting and I didn't feel good about it. Do you have feedback for me because I don't think I showed up well?" I just think that it's been interesting as I've progressed that that retrospective like, "Does it still get into my head? Do I constantly doubt myself all the time, every meeting?" but I walk out and I have a VP team that I'll go to and be like, "Hey, what do you think?" and they'll be like, "Yeah, maybe," or they'll be like, "No, I think you're crazy," and I'm like, "Okay. Great," but we have that very open communication.

So I would say as women are growing in leadership, this idea of imposter syndrome has been come up as something that's negative, looked down upon, stifle it. And I guess in my experience, I think it's been a good thing because it does drive that retrospection.

Sean Barnes:

It's funny, I was actually just responding to a post this morning on LinkedIn about imposter syndrome, and that is a very real thing. We've talked about it quite a bit on the show over the past few years, and I do think that when you step into some sort of a promotion or leadership role, that there is going to be some level of questioning, "Am I ready? Am I prepared for this?" I think that imposter syndrome, again, can be used to drive us in the right direction because when you've been in that role and you've been able to successfully execute at that level for a number of years, the imposter syndrome just fades away. And it's not like a switch that flips, it just fades away and you think, "Oh, actually, I'm pretty comfortable with this." So we could actually deduce that once you get the reps in, that starts to fade away, not always, but the lion's share of the time, I do think it does.

So I think that that's also something that's very important for us as leaders when we promote somebody into a role to encourage and motivate them and also provide candid feedback in a kind way of what they can do better, how they can move through this thing to coach them or coaching them through this thing.

And then the last thing that I want to touch on there was how much I appreciate your ability to walk out of a discussion and ask your team, "How did I do?" and them provide feedback, "You kind of stumped your toe on that one," or, "You did fantastic." And as a leader, one of my vice presidents at the company that I used to work for, he and I had an open ... There was a lot of trust in our relationship and I cannot express how much I appreciated him coming into my office and saying, "Hey, you might not have handled that the best way possible."

Interestingly enough, on those instances, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I felt it in the meeting, but I appreciated him being honest with me and sharing that feedback so much. I think it's important for leaders to build that type of a relationship with their employees where there's trust and an open door where like, "I can provide feedback to you, you can provide feedback to me," because we all want to be better. What is the best way to create that trust?

Kristen Sage:

It's interesting you say that. It reminds me of an analogy. Someone said one time, "Your spouse is your greatest mirror." They see you in all of your personal life. They're the ones who's going to hold the mirror up in front of you, and in work, who is that? In remote work, perhaps it's still your spouse. They might be sitting next to you and be like, "Maybe show up a little bit better," but you need to build that in your team, your immediate team, build that trust.

How do you build it? I think the leader has to show up with it first. It is a lot easier for my VPs to come to me and ask for feedback when they know that I too am asking for it, and there isn't this facade of, "Be perfect. Don't ever make mistakes." We break that down a lot in our company. I mean, I wear a hoodie to work most days. We are who we are. We are working in our homes, let's show up that way, but I'd also say that I think that one person who opens the vulnerability is essential.

Very commonly looking back, did I always have that with my boss? Did they always come to me and show that vulnerability? Not always, and it's difficult to build, but I think showing who your true self, talk about what's really going on in your life, show compassion for that on both sides, remember about the kid's soccer game, ask about it. I think just building out the processes that I mentioned, the engagement surveys, the telling your people team like, "Hey, if someone's out on bereavement, we have a process. You show up for them," flagging that to their leaders so that they can show up for them. I think all of those things go together to build this culture of we are real people, we have real things happening, and we all want to get better.

Perhaps to build on that also, one thing that we're putting into place is we're having career development conversations, and they're going to happen at a consistent cadence. We're tracking it in performance management, and perhaps that feels very top down to some people, but the intention is to give the space. And if people don't want to grab the space, they don't have to. They can show up and say, "I'm very happy where I am. I do a good job. To your point, I've figured this out. I know what I'm doing and I want to stay here," and it's like, "Great. Let's just stay aligned that that's where you're staying and the impact of that and wonderful." I think there's a lot of other people who need that space to be like, "Well, maybe I do want to be more. What does that look like? Can we talk about that?"

I'm opening the door for you to have that conversation, and it is much harder to open the door than to have the door opened for you. And that's our hope with what we're rolling out is to have that conversation, time, space and step in or don't step in. We're not forcing you either way, but we're giving the time.

Sean Barnes:

At what point in your journey did you start to recognize the importance of being intentional about creating opportunities for career development within your organization?

Kristen Sage:

That's a great question. I think for me, what has driven it is I don't enjoy the comfort of knowing everything. Personally, I like to change things, break things, make things better. So I think that's just what's been built into me. It was very common in consulting. I can remember there's this tracker, Excel tracker, and I was like, "Now that we've been operating in it for weeks, I hate it. It's terrible. It could be so much better." And my manager was like, "No, Kristen, we have a scope, we have hours. We're not rebuilding this." And I said, "What if I just do it on my own, then can I do it?" He's like, "Sure. If that's how you want to spend your night tonight, go for it." And so I sat in Marriott Hotel redoing this whole tracker.

I think that that's just been innate for me, and people just need to have that reflection moment to say, "If that's what you want to be, go chase that. Enjoy that, lean into that." And if you're more of, "Hey, I like to know what I'm doing every day and that's where I want to live," that's awesome too. I think that we as professionals, we flex between that. I think driven by your personal life, maybe you're in a moment, a stage of your personal life where you're like, "I'm in stability right now work," or you're in a place where you're like, "I need to break stuff. I want to be busy. I want to be staying up at night thinking about ideas and having that communication," and having an organization where you can tell people that is my dream come true.

I would love for that to be Western in the future saying like, "Where are you in your stage of life and how can I meet you on that journey?" So not quite answering the question of exactly when I decided that, but I think that, yeah, I don't know if I had that pivotal moment as much as it was just a let's break and make things better.

Sean Barnes:

I think it's an evolution over time, and I think for me, it was probably we'll say seven to nine years ago that I started to go through this evolution of understanding all of the things that you just said. And truthfully, that was whenever I started leading larger and larger and more diverse teams. But I also have come to realize how building a team, building a business, it's much like putting together pieces of a puzzle, but the problem is all the puzzle pieces are constantly evolving and morphing and melding into something different. So what's important to Jason in his early 20s chasing that cash and closing those customers, when Jason turns 30, gets married, has kids, he might want to just get a little bit more time with his family, and that's completely okay and perfect.

But we as leaders have to keep a constant pulse on everybody in the organization to understand what season of their life that they are in and how we can create a structure to support them in the best way possible. Now, that is not always possible because as long as the needs of the organization aligns with the needs of the employees, great, but inevitably at some point, the employee is going to outgrow the organization or the organization is going to outgrow the employee. And where you start to see friction is if they try to force it to stick when one is trying to go off in the other direction and it creates unnecessary friction.

So I've always, well, no, I have recently come to espouse this philosophy of we're going to pour everything we can into building and developing you and creating alignment, and if you find something better, that is amazing. Go chase your dream. Go do that thing. Now, some leaders with a scarcity mindset will say, "Well, I invested all this time and energy and now they're just going to go somewhere else." Yes, you invested all that time and energy and you changed their life. You should be building a bench beneath them to create more opportunities for their successor to come in. And that is, I think, what is the most important piece.

And I love that you guys are focusing so much on career development. This is something that more organizations need to be focused on. And bonus when you do that, the employees are going to be happier. Bonus, those happy employees are going to encourage their friends to come into this great culture and organization, and that solves, not entirely, but can help solve your challenges around attracting and retaining the best talent.

Kristen Sage:

I mean, clear is kind on both sides. Having the time to have the conversation of, "This is where I am," and the organization say, "Great. Here's what we can do to meet you now, in six months, in a year from now, let's talk through it." I mean, very commonly, I have a lot of friends who've had children and they're like, "I just wish the organization would've sat me down, but when I went on that leave and been like, 'Let's talk about it. How do you envision this going? Great. Okay. When you're coming back, how are you feeling? Are you in a comfort mode? Are you in a growth mode? Let's talk about it,'" because a lot of them would've said, "Hey, I would've actually been fine if they would've said, 'Okay, you're in a comfort mode. Here's the role that we have for you. It may not be the same pay as what you left, but it's going to give you that comfort,' and they're like, 'Great. That's all I want right now.'"

People are scared to have those conversations, and a lot of that is due to legalities and all of those things. So it's how do you build a culture such that that's really common and those are the conversations you're having. I think that's the world we would love to get to.

Sean Barnes:

I have taken you down a journey, all things leadership and culture. I would like to actually transition more into where you are headed with Western. We've talked about the business development, I'm sorry, the career development side of things. Can you talk me through some of the future plans for Western and what you and your team are going to be doing in the future?

Kristen Sage:

Yeah. Well, we all know the two letter word or the two letter acronym that's coming here, right? So obviously, AI is a big thing right now, but I would say that perhaps to connect it back to the conversation we were just having about like we as a systems operator need to morph into having the conversation about what do you need out of your tech, why, and let's talk about that because the reality is every organization needs to move to the cloud at this point. I very commonly when people are like, "What's the cloud? I don't understand," I'm like in a way, it is the Tesla of the cars, right? Tesla gets better every few weeks. They shoot an update to the car, car's better. That's how it works. That is how these cloud systems are working. Microsoft is updating them constantly.

Microsoft just announced that they put AI into their sales function, on their sales software for free. You just have to enable it. That's it. And that is the world that we are headed into. So companies that don't make that transition are naturally going to get left behind because all these companies are going to be innovating at this fast rate by the virtue of their licensing that they're paying for because Microsoft's doing it or whatever other ERP, Sage, Acumatica, all of those ERPs are doing this.

So that's the first transition that we're trying to push with our customers. You want to base this decision in value, not in fear, but there is also a very real aspect, which is being on-prem. You should be nervous if you are on-prem. That is concerning. Cyber attacks are always at a high rate, and the impact that we've seen on our customers when one of those takes place is just, it's heartbreaking. All of a sudden they're worried about making payroll and all of these things and continuing to function and they have to ... ERP implementations are tough. Now they're doing it under a period of this high alert. That's just not where you want to go.

So I would say we are really trying to explain to our customers the value that they're going to get making this move and the doors it's going to open for their organization. So I can even put a mirror in front of myself. We are on-prem right now. We are moving onto the cloud currently. We are in the process of doing it, and I keep having conversations with my execs of like, "Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do once it's on? I'm going to do this and I'm going to automate that and I'm going to do this and it's going to be amazing. This is incredible." I think that's where we're trying to get our customers to understand and upskill our talent to have those conversations.

Historically, I think technology has discussed a lot about how the system works, how we code it, how we do that, and it's like we need to change those conversations into what is the value your business is getting out of that. So if you automate your bank recs, what is the value you're getting out of that? I mean, the future system would say immediately notice a fraudulent transaction because everything else checks out, and your finance people are talking more about proactive forecasting and that instead of, "Okay. Did this check clear? Yes. Okay. Great. Next one, next one, next one." It's like that is time, that is energy that is spent on not moving the business forward.

Tech-enabled companies, their mantra is going to shift that 90% of their energy is focused on moving the business forward versus I think historically, 90% was just on keeping the wheels on, every day making sure things were happening, and that's not the future. So that's where we're drawing our customers to.

Sean Barnes:

I don't know if it was intentional, but you beautifully tied that right back to the first point of our conversation of understanding the problem that the business is trying to solve. So if it was intentional, well done, but here's the thing. The technology, the tools, those are always going to evolve. And you're right, AI is an absolute game changer and we're still relatively in its infancy in terms of generally available AI, and so we're still learning how to fully leverage it, and that we're learning how to tweak and morph this tool that is infinitely powerful to move our business forward.

And those, I think, learning how to leverage these AI tools to solve our business problems, that in and of itself is going to be an important skill for people and business leaders to truly understand because a lot of business executives like, "Yeah, AI, AI, ChatGPT, look, it answered this question for me." Okay. Yeah, let's start peeling back the layers of that onion and seeing just how many questions it can answer. Let's give it some more data sets to work with. Let's give it some more information to parse through, which is also extremely important that you put guardrails in place and you don't unintentionally give AI access to information that you don't want it to have.

I had a perfect example of this. I spoke at a CHRO conference a couple of months ago about leveraging AI, and one of the people in the audience said, "Well, we want to have this chatbot where it'll answer benefits questions for the employees." Yes, that's fantastic. However, work with your CIO, work with legal counsel, make sure that the datasets that it has access to because these chatbots can be tricked. You can give it access to information and an employee that might have malicious intent can figure out what is Christian's Social Security number. And if it is included in that, then the AI can be tricked and you could potentially unintentionally grant access or give this information out. So having controls in place, oh, extremely important. So I always try to encourage people, yes, very powerful, however, make sure that you're not setting yourself up for a disaster in the future.

Kristen Sage:

Yeah, no, very much agree, and I think that being intentional about which one you unfold first, how you unfold it, what are the questions you can ask, but on the sales side, constantly, I'll go in and I'll be doing analysis and I'm like, "How long has this customer been with us?" And for me, I got to go into Power BI, I got to pull down all the financials, pull it across, "Okay. Great." And I'm like, "Man, I should be able to just say in my CRM tool, my CE, "How long has this customer been with us?" and they're able to tell me and it's going to unlock efficiencies.

But I think to your point, we are in the infancy stages of Copilot, of AI. We are learning what it can do. Is it wonderful that ChatGPT writes a lot of my emails? Yes, it is fantastic. I am not one who has a strong written word. I'm a finance person, so it's incredibly helpful for that, and it does save a lot of efficiencies for our team. Do I love that it looks through resumes for me and helps me to figure that out? 100%. This is unlocking efficiency. But I think what the best CIOs, CISOs, CEOs, CFOs should be saying to themselves is, "I know this is coming. I don't know what it looks like, but I know it's coming. Let me just have the foundation so that when it does come, I am not ... Now I need to run a marathon to get to it. No, I already ran it and I only have a 5K in front of me, and so at least I'm on the cloud. I know I'm secure on the cloud. I'm using these ..." what we call ISVs. They're called independent software vendors. It's the apps on your phone, right?

Say you use an iPhone. My iPhone doesn't do everything for me. I have to download apps and they help me do the things that are specific to me that I want. Similarly, you're like, "I've got exposure to those. I know they exist. I use them. They're getting updated. Cool. Okay. Great." That is what you want to do. I think that's going to be the game changer in the next five to 10 years in the business world is who has taken those steps intentionally versus who has chosen to perhaps say, "I'll get there when it's mature," and I think that approach will be one that will be regrettable to some companies in the future. There's many examples of that in today's world, but I think that would be what I would encourage people is start the journey.

Sean Barnes:

Kristen, what is the biggest piece of advice that you would share to young women that are curious and hungry and aspiring to accomplish big things in their life?

Kristen Sage:

Gosh, it's cheesy. Don't give up. Find other women who are doing something similar. Find your cheerleaders. It doesn't have to be women, men, whoever, to encourage you. Put on your blinders a little bit. There's going to be people who are going to say no, and it's not just gender-based. Everyone is going to have people that say no. And if your internal is like, "No, I can, I can," do that. Have a healthy level of retrospection and reach out, "I'm happy to get to know you and help you." I think that's what I would say is don't give up and the world is changing, it's getting better, it's incredible and so enjoy the ride.

Sean Barnes:

I love it. How do people contact you?

Kristen Sage:

Contact me on LinkedIn, Kristen Sage. You'll find me. Probably if you type in CEO of Western Computer, I think you'll find me. So yeah, definitely reach out. Happy to always make connections. It's one of the greatest joys that I have is getting to know other people, talking to them about things like this. I mean, this is all you could ask for, right? I'm jealous of your day-to-day. You must walk out every day just so inspired.

Sean Barnes:

Most days, yes, some days beating my head against a wall, but that's part of the game.

Kristen Sage:

That's true. That's when you put the blinders on. You're like, "I got this. Keep going."

Sean Barnes:

That's exactly right. Kristen, thank you so much. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is all we have for the show today. We will have all of Kristen's contact information, all the information for Western Computer in the show notes. Please do not hesitate to reach out to her if you have any questions or connect with me, I'll get you connected with her. And I think that's it for the show. Thank you so much and y'all have a good one.