Culture is often ambiguous, but it can be a powerful enabler of business transformation. In this episode, our experts explore the role culture plays in business transformation and discuss how companies move forward with the fast-paced technological change required to be successful.
Our world has seen massive change in the past few years, and businesses have been forced to rethink their priorities to become digital-first, or risk being left behind. As leaders prioritize, they must consider both their dependency on technology to move the business forward and the company culture required to create productive change.
Culture is often ambiguous, but it can be a powerful enabler of business transformation. In this episode, our experts explore the role culture plays in business transformation and discuss how companies move forward with the fast-paced technological change required to be successful.
Hear from our guests Brad Pawlak, Sr. Partner Development Manager, Advisory GSI, Microsoft; Dave Gendron, National Microsoft Alliance Lead, Kyndryl.
Nel Akoth 0:03
Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. On today's episode, we will be discussing a topic that is so dear and near to my heart. And that is the role of culture in business transformation. Our world has seen a lot of change in the past few years, and businesses have been forced to rethink their priorities to become digital first, or they risk being left behind. Culture is often ambiguous, but is a very powerful enabler of business transformation. Today, I am so fortunate to be joined by experts from world's leading companies whose own culture transformation has fueled years of successful business results. First, Brad Pawlak, Senior Partner, Development Manager Advisory GSI, Microsoft. I'm also joined by a fellow Kyndryl, Dave Gendron, our national Microsoft Alliance Lead for Kyndryl. Brad and Dave, thank you so much for joining me today. Really glad to have you here.
Dave Gendron1:19
Thank you for having us.
Brad Pawlak 1:21
Thank you, Nel.
Nel Akoth 1:22
So I want to start by talking a little bit about Microsoft's culture transformation since it's one of the most revered case studies on this topic. When I took up the role of Culture Transformation Officer at Kyndryl, your transformation at Microsoft was also something I dug into as a context for how to look at a company with such strong heritage in a completely new light when change is needed. Under Satya Nadella's leadership, Microsoft truly underwent a drastic shift in culture. Brad, can you share with our listeners a bit more on that culture transformation and how you see it come to life each day at Microsoft?
Brad Pawlak 2:03
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I've been at Microsoft for 15 years so I've been able to kind of live through that transition. And you're very much correct. When Satya Nadella came in, he had a very strong vision around what that culture should look like. And then how do you get that culture ingrained in people? Because it's one thing to say we want to have a different culture, but how do you take an organization who has, at that point, 25-30 years of history, and actually change that culture. It's not just a digital transformation, it's a whole cultural change. And he did a number of things that really helped drive that cultural change within the organization. Breaking down barriers, getting people excited again about how you engage with our partners, with our industry, with our customers, and have a different view of how we're going against the old culture to develop this new culture. One of the things that I've noticed as part of the cultural change is we've moved from outputs to outcomes. So in the prior organizational culture, we were very focused on are we just doing the right things? Versus, what are the outputs? How are we actually driving change for our customers? How are we driving change internally? Are we doing the right things that drive those outputs that we're looking for and not just the outcomes that would go along with that? So it's been very much a change that we've had internally is to say, "How do we do the right things in the right culture that drive our transformation, both internally and with our customers?"
Dave Gendron3:32
Yeah, actually, Brad, if I can pick up on that a little bit. I guess, having worked with Microsoft for many, many years, I've noticed the change is really a little bit of going from "need to be number one in all markets", to really more of a sense of "let's work with the best in all markets". And let's really try to build and grow and develop to be more of that partnership model, rather than have to be the number one in every one of the product lines.
Brad Pawlak 3:57
Absolutely. I mean, in the prior model, it was very much on what are we doing? Versus now, it's very much on what are we doing together with other organizations? What does that look like? Prior it was very much focused on how we had to be the ones leading all of this and doing all of it and it had to be our kind of vision. Now, it's very much on how do we both partner with organizations? How do we compete against some of those same organizations? And then getting very focused on what is that outcome that we're trying to drive together in that partnership? So it was a very long time coming in terms of that change. But you look at now where we've gone as an organization, we're able to come along and offer things like Linux open source on our cloud. We're able to partner with organizations and compete with them at the same time. That's really focused on the customer outcomes in terms of what they're looking to drive.
Nel Akoth 4:47
You know, you touched on something Brad that I want to take a step back on. An important first step in activating a culture transformation is the acknowledgement of a leadership team that there is a need for change. Without a clear view on "why change?", I believe no transformation will be successful. So Brad, if we could just take a little bit and get your thoughts and perspective on that leadership alignment on "why change?"
Brad Pawlak 5:14
If you look at organizations, we talk a lot about the digital transformation side of things and needing to transform digitally. But the culture aspect of that is absolutely critical. And the leadership. The leadership vision of what that means, the decisions that they make, and how they disseminate that back down to their teams is absolutely important. And it can't be someone just at the top saying, "Here's what this is going to look like." There needs to be hard decisions that are made all along the way to be able to do that. And I think our leadership team really took that to heart. You just look at, for example, Brad Smith, who's come along and set a model of Microsoft runs on trust. That has become a model that we as an organization very much tried to put out in the marketplace. And along with that, we have to make some very hard decisions around what that means in order to build that trust with partners like Kyndryl and with our customers every day. And so your point about the culture and the leadership that it takes, it very much is not only them seeing and setting that vision of the strategy of where we want to go, but living that into action, being able to empower employees to have conversations with customers that might be difficult, and backing them up in order to be able to have those conversations.
Dave Gendron6:27
Brad, I couldn't agree more, but if I can just add a little bit to where you're going. I think that some of the key elements though, when we talk about the culture inside of an organization, we look at the fact that the culture has to be always looking forward, always looking at what needs to happen, what's the catalyst to change and making sure that they can become better than they were yesterday. And it's the situation where we get companies and organizations that believe that they've already achieved a level of excellence and they stop there. It's an opportunity where people have to always look at where they are, how they can pivot, how they can grow, and how they can actually become better than what they once were.
Nel Akoth 7:07
You know, once we've shared the understanding of why change and we know that. Getting people to work together within the organization in creating that transformative change is a journey. And I think Brad you also mentioned that when you've transformed, you really haven't. You've reached but you still need to be continuous, it's a continuous journey. So what role, Brad, do you see culture playing as a catalyst for the business in the organizational change? Again, thinking about how do I excite the people? How do I move the people together on this journey?
Brad Pawlak 7:42
Yeah, I think, you know, the setting of a vision and disseminating that vision is obviously very important. But then empowering employees to make that change. Being able to enable them to embrace that change, and not just say, "Well, that's someone else's vision. That's someone else's strategy". But ingraining that and enabling the employees in a culture to be able to make that change is really important. We, as Microsoft, did a number of things to be able to help our teams embrace this change. Part of that was, you know, encouraging them to read books, certain transformation books. The Challenger Sale, for example, was a very important one. The challenge of mindset, going through those different programs within Microsoft, we have this thing that we now call the three circles. Which are, you know, what am I doing as an individual within Microsoft to get those outcomes to do the right thing for the business? But how am I taking things from others and bringing those things in so that we're making those even better? Right? Because I have my unique perspective, I have my ability to be able to add to that, and then how am I giving back to others? What am I doing to help others enable that change? So how am I taking the things that I've done, my knowledge, and my skills and giving that back to others so that they can do the same there? When we're measured at the end of the year, it's not just my outcomes that are important. We talk about, what are those three circles? How have you enabled others? How have you taken things from others? How have you done that? And I think the fourth circle that, you know, there's some conversation about adding is diversity. When we think about the diversity of people within an organization, I come from a certain perspective, people from other parts of the world come from a different perspective, and if we're really coming along and saying, "we want to change as an organization and be the best that we can be", we need to be able to bring in a diverse set of ideas, not just the same viewpoint that we've always had as an organization. And so I think that's an important fourth circle that, at some point, we may add as Microsoft as well.
Nel Akoth 9:42
Dave, what're your thoughts there? As you know, living this with us every day, what role do leaders of the company play as role models for culture change?
Dave Gendron9:51
Well Nel, I've got to tell you, I think that the leaders of the company have to not only walk the walk and talk the talk. They have to be the ones who demonstrate how the culture is evolving, how the culture is changing, and really be able to adapt it in every day life inside the company, to be able to say that we're going to be starting to work with partnerships, and we're going to have trust. Trust is not something that can be legislated, trust is something that has to be earned. We have to be able to respect, we have to be honest, and we have to have difficult conversations sometimes. But that's okay. It's okay to have a difficult conversation where the conversation might be a case that we're going to be competing in certain deals. There are certain situations where things aren't going as smoothly as I guess we'd all hoped and we optimistically looked at initially. This is an opportunity for us to be able to say, "How can we certainly grow and develop as a company and as a culture, and be able to accept open communication and be able to accept that negative communication is still okay?" It's very much building on a relationship on how people can and should work together. And it's that development of that relationship that's going to make success. When you look at within the company or look within any organization, having one common set of goals and focus areas, everybody can align. So within Kyndryl, our focus is very clearly around the desired business outcomes for our customers. But I would also say that that same goal is embodied within the entire Microsoft staff. So when Microsoft and Kyndryl are both trying to focus on the end customer, focused on the desired outcomes and focused on how we can help achieve or over achieve those goals for that customer, this really helps build the partnership and builds an opportunity where we can respect, work together, trust each other, because we are working, pulling the rope in the same direction if you will, to achieve the same common goal.
Nel Akoth 11:58
There's a topic I'm gonna pivot on to especially as you've been talking about how we work together and partner in this journey. And that is on collaboration. Brad, Microsoft has created a strong culture of collaboration. What are some of the barriers that the company and the people had to overcome to really make this strong and focused on moving forward to where the company wants to go?
Brad Pawlak12:25
Yeah, internally in Microsoft, if I go back several years, we had walls within Microsoft where different leaders and different groups had very clear ownership of certain product lines and business lines within Microsoft. And there were these walls and these barriers around that where, you know, they felt like they knew and understood what those products and what that environment needed to look like. And we didn't cross those walls or barriers very often, it was very difficult to be able to do that. And so it was very tough for us to then say, "How are we actually creating not just products, but platforms, and driving the business outcomes that customers are looking for when we have silos of leadership within the organization?" So one of the things that we were able to do was identify that we had those barriers, so just the simple acknowledgement of that. And then being able to put policies in place and put practices in place and leadership in place that could then look across those different barriers and say, "How can we help transition people within the organization and the products to a more customer business focused outcome that we're looking to drive as an organization?"
Nel Akoth 13:36
Great. So Dave let me get to you a little bit, because I'd like you to answer it in this way. You know, one of the tenets for us at Kyndryl, is of course devoted to shared success. Now, what role do you think collaboration plays there? And what might we learn from Microsoft here as we're just geting started on this journey?
Dave Gendron 13:55
I think that when we look at what the culture is within the Kyndryl environment, focused on the customer and focused on being able to achieve or over-achieve the customer's desired outcome, we can very much work very effectively with our partners that share that same vision. We're all looking at trying to accomplish the same goal and we're trying to help our customers. If we look internally and if we say, "I'm going to partner with somebody, but my goals are exclusively internal." Whether it's to Kyndryl or any other organization, then that's going to be a failure. That's going to cause a complete rift, it's going to mean that there's no trust, and it's a case that we're not working on common goal, common focus. If I look internally, and just focus on what I care about and my goal sheet. But rather, if we turn it to what we have as a common goal, that just helps the whole collaboration environment. The focus on something external, the customer value, what we do for a customer, solving customers problems, helping the customer over achieve, and making the happy customer for both organizations, Microsoft and Kyndryl. This is an opportunity for us to be able to exceed together, have repeatable successes, and be able to even do more with that same customer.
Nel Akoth 15:13
And Brad, as you've been working with us, and I know, again, we are on a journey here, where do you see the intersection of the two cultures? You know, Dave just shared on having that common goal together. But as you engage and work with us, where do you see that intersection making both of us really strong and productive partners?
Brad Pawlak15:31
Well, I think one of the things is an acknowledgement of where we're both trying to go as an organization, right. And a lot of that's around the customer and the business outcomes that we're looking to drive. And if we get focused on what we are trying to help our customers succeed at and understanding that's really our mentality, the area that we're trying to grow together, I think that gets us a long ways. Also communication, talking about, "What are your business goals? Where are you guys trying to go? Where are our business goals?" And there's always an intersection there. So how do we figure out where those intersect together? How we can help make you successful? How can you help us be successful, right? But if we understand clearly what that's going to look like, we can get better focused on what those outcomes are going to look like. We're going through a transformation right now and that transformation is around industry. We've talked about industry for a number of years, but now we're really pivoting towards that with our industry clouds. Kyndryl and Microsoft play really well together in that transformation, where we come along and say that Kyndryl has very strong industry skills, knowledge, and expertise. They have an input from the customer in terms of where you're trying to go. We as Microsoft create a platform and we have goals that we're looking to drive through there. But if we share and understand together and work together, we're going to go through that transformation together as both organizations helping our customers transition as well. So you know, there's a certain amount of transition that's still going on every day within Microsoft. Not only Kyndryl now as a new company, and with our customers, but all three of us are transforming in a culture. So how do those business outcomes align? How do we work together? How do we communicate that and then set those directions together?
Dave Gendron17:16
The communication, keeping the doors open, and making sure that we're effectively delivering messages focused on common goals, those, I think, are the cornerstones of a successful partnership. Now, as you mentioned, Microsoft is now transitioning to be focused more so on industry, which very much aligns with what the Kyndryl model is focused on around our industries. So now we have the opportunity, even more so, to get our teams to align around specific industry focus, industry solutions, and how we can go together and help a customer in a specific industry meet and exceed their goals given some of the other industry challenges that they might have. Whether it's a government requirement or whether it's specific challenges that occur in a specific vertical, it's an opportunity for us to partner even closer because our companies are kind of aligned in the sense of our vertical focus as well.
Nel Akoth 18:09
So let's talk a little bit about measuring success. You know, we all always use the statement that culture is the bridge between strategy and execution when we are helping our teams understand the importance of the culture transformation. But that does not always hold true unless the culture transformation truly takes hold and becomes pervasive. Now we've wrestled with this for a while at Kyndryl, and again, we are new and we are, you know, really on that journey starting to build a culture. And I'm curious to hear your perspective, Brad. Talk a little bit more how companies can know if the culture is working. How do you measure the success of your culture transformation?
Brad Pawlak18:50
Oh, that's kind of an interesting one. I don't know if I, just off the top of my head, have a clear kind of answer on that. Because I think as organizations are going through a cultural change, it is hard to come up with just a easy to measure KPI that comes along and says, "Here's the measurement of what we have." We at Microsoft have these surveys where we survey randomly different people within the organization on a regular basis to get some feel on how people are doing with this cultural change that we're going through on the messaging that our leadership has gone down. And then they provide the feedback to us to be able to say, "When we've held the surveys, this is what you as employees have said to us about our culture, about our change, and about how we've given you opportunities within Microsoft to advance. And this is how we're going to take that feedback, and then actually make changes to be able to get better in these areas where you have pointed out that we, as a leadership or our vision, wasn't in alignment with where our teams have thought we were gonna go." Sometimes that's just clarification around the change that we need to do. Other times it is hard action that needs to happen in order to be able to adapt that change for the organization.
Nel Akoth 20:06
And Dave, what do you think? Do you think it's maybe easier to see it when it isn't working?
Dave Gendron20:12
I guess it's an opportunity for when leadership is willing to listen to the feedback from the teams and the honest feedback from teams in the field. You start realizing you're hearing consistent issues and consistent challenges, you know to make some changes and you know to pivot and be able to make some adjustments as the company moves forward. The whole approach within Kyndryl is very much that open communication, that open culture of listening, and the opportunity to grow. And it's important that people communicate openly, share that information, and recognize that there is that opportunity to get better and become a better organization, become better partners, better organizations, better within a sales team, a particular finance team, or whatever the team may be, if they listen to the voices of the people within the community, whether it's local or global.
Brad Pawlak 21:08
Recently, I was talking to a customer, and they were expressing frustration over the lack of cultural change within their organization. Because you asked about, you know, how do you know when it's not working? And there's a certain amount of frustration your culture and your organization will go through when that's not the case. What they were seeing in their organization was a lot of top-down leadership of, "This is the change that we're going to go through. This is what it's going to look like." But they weren't looking for that input back. They had a ton of engineers in your organization and they had a ton of resources and people in their organization who, as they go through this change in their industry that is going through a lot of change, had some really good ideas, but they gave absolutely no opportunity for the organization and the employees to be a part of that change. And so, you know, I was sitting there talking to this person, and they were very frustrated over that. And an organization starts to lose employees. They start to lack the ideas. They start to not go in the direction that, you know, 1000 people can actually provide the insight for versus only two people, five people, or 10 people at the leadership level that would be providing, right. So having that culture of change within the organization is not top-down. And if it is, it'll lead to frustration. If it's coming along and actually bringing people along for the ride and the journey and getting the inputs and the ideas, that's true cultural change.
Nel Akoth 22:29
And I couldn't agree more, because that's exactly what we're endeavoring to do here at Kyndryl. As we got started becoming an independent company, we very clearly were on the path that this is a journey for all of us, this change is going to be one that each and every one of us is going to live every day. So, you know, it's an exciting journey ahead of us and a lot of hard work as we go through this. And, you know, Dave, you touched on it very well, in terms of that openness and that communication is key in helping ensuring that all diverse thoughts and minds are brought together as we are building a culture that's going to create a thriving business environment with ourselves and with our partners and customers together. Brad and Dave, thank you so much for this amazing dialogue on a topic that I know all three of us are truly passionate about. It makes me excited and hopeful for our joint partnership and moreso the impact I know that we will have on the society together. It is clearly a partnership built upon mutual values rooted in our strong cultures, a lesson that hopefully resonates with all our listeners. Again, Brad and Dave, thank you so much for joining me. I think all of us agree this is a topic we could go on and on and on. Because not only is it passionate, but it's also a key foundation to success that we all endeavor to do. So again, thank you. And to all our listeners, thank you for listening and until next time, I'm Nel Akoth on the Progress Report.