The Failure Gap | A Conversation With Chris Baird, President & CEO OptConnect

Chris Baird is the President and CEO of OptConnect, and his leadership story starts far from the corner office. He joined the company in 2009 as an ATM repair specialist, kept volunteering for the “extra mile” work (where, as he put it, there’s no traffic), and stepped into a bigger responsibility when ownership transitioned and a leadership gap opened. Along the way, he learned his path is hard to copy, but the behaviors behind it are simple: say yes, stay curious, and be humble enough to take feedback without treating it like a personal attack.

Julie and Chris dig into the Failure Gap, that familiar space where everyone agrees something is a good idea, but nothing changes. Chris shares a real example from his leadership team: “false alignment,” when people nod in the meeting and then operate their own plan afterward. Naming it helped them stop “going along to get along” and start getting honest about how they would actually execute together. They also explore how misalignment shows up with customers, like teams optimizing for the lowest price instead of the true cost, then being surprised when “cheap” comes with a side of missing features.

Chris also connects leadership to endurance events, sharing lessons from training for (and surviving) a 70.3 race: grit matters, but systems matter more. Preparation, structure, and team support beat willpower alone, especially when conditions get hot, and your assumptions start melting.

Episode Takeaways

• Curiosity and saying yes create leadership momentum, even when the path is unplanned
• “False alignment” is agreement with unchanged behavior, and it quietly wrecks execution
• If teams optimize for the wrong problem (price vs. total cost), misalignment multiplies
• Grit helps, but disciplined systems, feedback, and preparation carry you farther
• Humility and vulnerability make alignment easier because teams solve problems together

Alignment to big goals often starts with a small moment: raising a hand and asking, “Are we actually aligned, or just being polite?” Bonus: it’s cheaper than another reorg.

Episode Resources

• Ken Thompson, AlignOrg: “Death by a Thousand Good Ideas: The Power of Strategic Clarity”

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Creators and Guests

Host

Julie Williamson, PhD

Julie Williamson, PhD is the CEO and a Managing Partner at Karrikins Group, a Denver-based, global-serving business consultancy. Author, Keynote Speaker, and Host of The Failure Gap Podcast, Julie is a leading voice in how alignment can transform leaders and organizations.

Guest

Chris Baird

Chris Baird is the President and CEO of OptConnect, a global managed wireless and IoT connectivity company headquartered in Kaysville, Utah. Under his leadership, OptConnect has grown organically and expanded through the acquisition and integration of Premier Wireless Solutions (PWS), M2M DataGlobal in Santiago, Chile, Capestone in Leiden, Netherlands, and DPL Wireless in New Brunswick, Canada. Chris leads the teams responsible for growth strategy, acquisitions, and post- acquisition integration, with a consistent focus on operational discipline and long-term value creation. With nearly two decades of experience in the cellular wireless and IoT sectors, Chris brings a deep understanding of both the technical and human dimensions of building durable companies. His leadership philosophy centers on clarity, trust, and accountability, with a strong belief that sustained performance follows when people are supported, challenged, and aligned around a shared purpose. This approach has guided OptConnect’s evolution from an early-stage startup into a scaled, profitable, and internationally operating enterprise. Chris is known for his ability to lead through complexity and change, particularly in high-growth and acquisition-driven environments. He has a proven track record of developing and executing strategy while maintaining cultural cohesion across geographies and teams. In recognition of his leadership, he was named CEO of the Year by Utah Business Magazine in 2021. During Chris’s tenure, OptConnect has earned repeated industry recognition, including eight consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies and numerous “Best Companies to Work For” honors from Inc. Magazine, the Salt Lake Tribune, and Utah Business Magazine. The company has also been recognized by the Mountain West Capital Network as one of Utah’s fastest-growing companies nine times in the last ten years. Additionally, Chris also serves on the Board of Directors at Ogden, UT-based Becklar, where he contributes to governance, strategy, and growth initiatives within the connected safety, security, and technology sector. Chris studied Business Management and Spanish at Weber State University. He lives in Kaysville, Utah, with his wife, Ally, and their four children. Outside of work, he values time with family, travel, and coaching his children’s sports teams, experiences that continue to shape his perspective on spirituality, leadership, resilience, and growth.

What is The Failure Gap ?

The Failure Gap podcast is hosted by Julie Williamson, Ph.D., the CEO and a Managing Partner at Karrikins Group, a Denver-based, global-serving business consultancy. Julie delves into the critical space between agreement and alignment - where even the best ideas falter without decisive action. Through candid conversations with a diverse mix of leaders, this podcast explores both the successes and failures that shape the journey of leadership. Featuring visionary leaders from companies of all sizes, from billion-dollar giants to mid-market innovators, to scrappy start-ups, The Failure Gap uncovers the real-life challenges of transforming ideas into impactful outcomes. Tune in to learn how top leaders bridge the gap and drive meaningful progress in their organizations.

Julie Williamson (00:00.598)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Chris Baird. Chris is the president and CEO of OptConnect. He joined OptConnect in 2009 as an ATM repair specialist and worked his way up through the ranks of leadership and management roles. After years of hard work and dedicated leadership, Chris was appointed CEO of OptConnect in 2018. Chris, welcome to the Failure Gap.

Chris Baird (00:30.062)
Hey Julie, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Julie Williamson (00:32.83)
Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation because I think you have such an interesting journey, but also because OpConnect is doing such interesting things. I really love your tagline, whatever your thing, we keep it connected. As someone who grew up in the cellular industry, that's near and dear to my heart. So looking forward to that. Yeah, before we get there though, I would love for you just to share with our listeners a little bit about your leadership journey. What brought you to being the president and CEO of OpConnect?

Chris Baird (00:48.453)
I love it.

Chris Baird (00:59.576)
Well, as you mentioned in that little brief bio, it certainly wasn't planned. This is kind of a happy little, glad to be here and glad to be in this particular situation. You know, I recently heard a story. I think it was, was scrolling Instagram or even LinkedIn and you notice on LinkedIn, they start to post videos now of kind of influencers and people posting comments. And it was this very big anti like, whatever you do, don't.

take an unpaid promotion. is corporations are becoming really popular and don't don't do it. Well, the reality is that was my leadership path and it's one that I was happy to do. I was happy to go put in some of the extra time, some of the extra hours, volunteer for some of the things that maybe people didn't want to do and that put me in a position where I stood out. So I'm going to be the counter argument for that methodology or that philosophy. I'd say go for it.

I like to try to tell my kids, it's a little saying that I heard once and it stuck, but there's no traffic in the extra mile. Go the extra mile, go do it. That's where opportunities come to you. And that's really where my journey started. So as that ATM repair technician, I started to realize that there were other opportunities if I kind of looked around or outside of my immediate sphere of responsibilities. And I recognized that there were needs that...

weren't being met, there was an opportunity to volunteer and step up and to offer my opinion. And the reality is I got a little bit lucky on timing too. And I'm willing to acknowledge that because I often get asked, hey, how do I follow your path? Don't try, because my path was very, very unique to me. But my leadership journey really, in many cases, showed up way before I felt like I was ready for it.

And those responsibilities came in a big way. And just real quick for context, I was fortunate enough to be part of a company with a good friend, family friend, and his brother. And they saw an opportunity to exit and that created a pretty decent gap from a leadership perspective. And they asked me if I would step into a leadership role as they stepped out and we transitioned into the hands of private equity and the rest is history. I've just been watching.

Chris Baird (03:24.278)
for those opportunities to continue to show up when maybe others would be more prone to clock out.

Julie Williamson (03:33.758)
Yeah, you I think you've touched on two things that I'm always encouraging, excuse me, young leaders around. One is say yes to things. When opportunities come up, yes, you sometimes get a little lucky with timing, but if you're not willing to say yes, then luck doesn't come to you. So trying different things. And I think it's also what I'm hearing in your journey is curiosity, like curiosity about the business, curiosity about your capabilities. Can I do that role even if it comes sooner than I expected?

And I think those two things are the path, right? So your path exactly, nobody can follow in your footsteps because your path is uniquely yours. But you can show up and say yes, and you can stay curious about how else you can contribute, what else you can do, what more you can learn. And when you do that, you make your own luck,

Chris Baird (04:25.11)
Absolutely. And as I think back on leadership, now that I'm on the other side of the spectrum, if you will, I'm learning it's so much easier to rein somebody's ambition in than it is to encourage and motivate somebody beyond their own will. Right. I there's so much more of a preference that I have. As we like to say, I can't want it for you more than you want it for yourself, but I can help rein you in.

Julie Williamson (04:41.008)
Yeah.

Julie Williamson (04:49.43)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Baird (04:50.924)
and I can help you focus your time and energy and power. And I would rather spend my time with open-minded, big thinkers, people that say yes, that are willing to explore, experiment. They're always curious. I'm always learning, Julie. In fact, it's a little bit of a running joke that I would be the kind of person you would want to have in that cash cab. I don't know if you remember the TV show, Cash Cab, where people jump in and...

Julie Williamson (05:15.9)
I love the cash cap. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Baird (05:17.694)
Is that great with Ben? forget Ben's last name, but anyway, where they jump in and, you know, all of a they're on a trivia show while they're, you know, commuting through New York City or through Manhattan. And it's because of that curiosity. You know, we'll be in a group and if you pay attention, you'll notice as you sit in a group of leaders or, you know, people, even friends, questions get...

Julie Williamson (05:27.851)
Yep.

Chris Baird (05:42.194)
asked all the time by people out of curiosity that nobody ever takes the time to answer. And I just got in this habit of pulling up my phone saying, what is the answer? Let's find out. Let's ask Google or nowadays let's go to AI, which I would argue is probably a better, cleaner answer and more prone for learning than a Google search. But you got to balance that. We can get into that later. But that's me. I was always curious.

Julie Williamson (06:06.004)
Yeah, I love that. And I love the expression, there's no traffic in the last mile. That's, I think, a really beautiful way to say if you keep pushing, you're going to find yourself out on a road by yourself that you're charting your own path forward.

Chris Baird (06:20.814)
Absolutely.

Julie Williamson (06:21.824)
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I think for our listeners, also a takeaway that I'm getting from that last part of the conversation is that if you feel like the person that you're working for or the organization that you're in is trying to rein you in a little bit, that actually might be a great sign that you're on the right track and you're in the right place because they're trying to help you to grow and to hone your abilities and to point them in the most productive direction. So,

If you feel like you're pushing against something like that, look also for some useful constraints that might help you to sharpen your leadership skills. Is that a fair takeaway from what you were sharing about what you look for in leaders?

Chris Baird (07:04.898)
Yeah, absolutely. maybe to add to that, be willing to have a little bit of humility in the process. The times when I've learned the most are probably the time when I've had a little bit of reproach, when somebody has come in and said, hey, you're going to critique this point. I don't love being critiqued. However, what I've learned is that it

Have you heard the term API assume positive intent? If you can take that feedback with the assumption that somebody's there trying to actually help you, especially if you're in a position of leadership, maybe they're trying to help get alignment. Maybe they're trying to help refine you as a person. And that is never a comfortable process, but you can be comfortable knowing

Julie Williamson (07:37.514)
Yes.

Chris Baird (08:02.178)
that maybe somebody is actually there to help you, not to be a roadblock, not to hinder you, not to knock you down a notch for sake of, you know, rising themselves up, but especially if it's a good mentor or a good friend, you know, that maybe they're being really honest with you. And I've always admired at least the very little at the surface that I've studied. And admittedly, I'm not a historian, but Abraham Lincoln always surrounded himself by his strongest critics. He leaned into him. He wasn't afraid to hear from them.

because he knew that that would produce the best result. so I think with a little bit of humility, that can actually be a really great learning moment in leadership, in a new journey.

Julie Williamson (08:41.899)
Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely spot on on that. And I actually think it leads us really nicely into this conversation of the failure gap, because I think we often find ourselves in agreement that something is a good idea, but we struggle to get aligned and get it done in part because it can be hard.

to take that step and to be in the unknown and to need help from other people and to need that level of support to be able to surround yourself with people who might know more than you. And I think that is a struggle that I see leaders set up for themselves sometimes where they stay in agreement that yeah, should, that would definitely be a good idea for the business. But that looks like a space that I don't wanna be in because I'm not confident in that technology or I'm not an expert in that discipline or.

whatever it might be that holds them back just a little bit. So think that's a really interesting way to think about leadership and kind of getting through the failure gap. Let's talk a little bit about your business and your journey and maybe some of the clients that you work with and what you see from a leadership perspective where you see this gap open up, where people think, yeah, this is a really good idea, but they really struggle as an individual or as a team to get it done. Any examples or stories that you can share where you've seen that in action?

Chris Baird (10:00.098)
I love that. And yeah, I think there's plenty. A good friend of mine, Ken Thompson, recently wrote an article called Death by a Thousand Good Ideas. And if you research that article, you'll see that there is a danger to taking on too much and saying yes to too many things. At the same time, the better approach is to give up the good, give up the better, and only focus on

the best things that matter most that are going to drive, you know, whatever the outcome is that you're trying to get alignment around. Not necessarily proud of it, but we recently had an experience at a leadership team level where after going through an offsite with my leadership team, we realized that there was some unvocalized disagreement that was really undermining the entire team.

And what we eventually ended up defining this as is when we would get into a group and everybody would essentially go along to get along, but then walk out of a meeting saying, yeah, but that's not for me. I don't need to necessarily do that. So we said unvocalized disagreement that when we still have the same operational outcome that we own together is when we have what we then defined false alignment.

And what we learned is that without really calling it what it was and trying to get to the root of it, we were never going to be able to achieve the certain goal that we had set, this outcome that we had false alignment around. Because the root cause of it was we had so many good ideas on how we should do that. And everybody thought that their idea was the best way to do that. We eventually got to a point where we had to get it all out on the table. I actually brought in a moderator and we tried to work through this particular

matter that we were that was a worthy it was a worthy goal. It was all growth related and you could easily argue these were growing pains. But it wasn't until we got it out on the table and we realized that we would have agreement on what we wanted the outcome to look like, but not how we were getting there. And so everybody was operationally executing a slightly different plan that they thought would lead to the same outcome. It didn't. And it wasn't. And it wouldn't if we didn't get a line. And so

Chris Baird (12:19.458)
We spent some time to diagnose that and say, OK, let's be honest with ourselves. We have false alignment. We think we're aligned, or we say we're aligned, and in all reality, we're not. And we may even know it. We may even recognize that. But operationally, together, collectively, we own the outcome. So it's in our best interest to get this fixed as quickly as possible. So false alignment. When you think you're in agreement, operationally, you own the outcome, but you're not.

working and rowing in that same direction.

Julie Williamson (12:52.704)
I love that you've named it because one of the things that we find is that naming things is such a powerful way of getting through the failure gap. We talk a lot of Kerikans group about making the invisible visible. And the first thing that you need to do is notice what's happening and name it. And when you can do that, you can access it so much more quickly the next time it happens because it always comes back, right? So I'm sure that even after you worked through this one situation where there's false alignment,

It's now something that you can more readily access as a leadership team, right? Like you can ask the question, are we in false alignment here?

Chris Baird (13:30.924)
Yeah, and that has been the result. You'll see a hand creep up in a meeting and somebody will say, can we pull on that thread a little bit more? I think or I'm afraid we might be going down this path of false alignment or I am hearing on a back channel, we're definitely not aligned. And it just has made it so much easier and more transparent for us to be able to say, let's not be ashamed that we weren't on the same page. Let's name it, let's call it, let's get it out in the open and shed some light on it and then we can move on quickly.

And that has been a big differentiator for us to be able to do that.

Julie Williamson (14:06.326)
Yeah, I can appreciate that because we often see that we see teams try to solve for misalignment by, know, sometimes what feels very confrontational, they'll say like, well, I don't believe you. Or, you know, last time you didn't do what you said you were gonna do. Or I don't think you can.

are capable of doing this, right? There's all of these, it becomes personal very quickly, right, in the room. But when you can say, I think we have false alignment, let's work on that. It takes that attack version, that attack mentality out and gives you something that as a team you can lean into in a really productive way. And I think it just takes the sting out a little bit.

Chris Baird (14:32.718)
Sure.

Chris Baird (14:52.738)
For sure. Yeah, you can address problems and issues without guile, without contentment, and just get right down to the core of the issue. And it goes back to the earlier thing we were talking about, right? Getting some of that feedback may be the most helpful thing, but it may be the most painful thing to go through in order to learn something about the process.

Julie Williamson (15:00.584)
you

Julie Williamson (15:16.295)
Yeah, it's hard. Well, I'm really proud of you and your team for doing that work and getting there around naming this. And I'm sure that you're seeing as a result some different outcomes.

Chris Baird (15:17.976)
That is hard.

Chris Baird (15:27.448)
We absolutely are. And it's helpful as a team to be able to reflect back to. So we'll take a minute as a team and ask ourselves, how did we get there? What do we need to do differently on a go-forward basis? anyway, I think it's a great process to try to go through. Any team should. In fact, think all it takes, it doesn't even take necessarily the

leader, could be anybody from an organization to raise their hand and say, Hey, I think we might want to talk through this just a little bit more with a bear with me. But is there a chance where we may actually be saying something different, but we're using similar words or we're expecting a different outcome, but we're all using the same words. And, that, that can really be an inviting moment for any team to, try to, to, again, even just w what do we say? The very first step is to realize that and acknowledge that maybe there is actually a problem.

I think that's a great, easy way to do it. That would be my advice.

Julie Williamson (16:28.566)
Excuse me.

Chris Baird (16:31.862)
No worries.

Julie Williamson (16:36.33)
We're going to have to do some editing here.

Chris Baird (16:37.972)
I know, I know, and I actually noticed too, in the background, that my camera was doing the thing again, so, and I don't know why.

Julie Williamson (16:47.493)
I'm sorry for this.

Chris Baird (16:49.164)
It's okay. This will all come out in post.

Julie Williamson (16:52.667)
Yeah, well, we rarely do much editing.

Chris Baird (16:56.526)
And I probably should not have moved my camera, no, because that's going to make for not a very cohesive video, but.

Julie Williamson (17:03.647)
You don't look like you're in a different place,

Chris Baird (17:05.686)
Okay, Good.

Julie Williamson (17:08.573)
I'm so sorry. I really thought I could get through it.

Chris Baird (17:09.804)
No, whenever you're ready, we can jump. Well, let me mute for a sec, because I got to do the same.

Julie Williamson (17:28.521)
The crazy thing is that I feel great. Yeah.

Chris Baird (17:31.118)
Do you, I caught this influenza A or whatever was going around, but I'm certain that that's what it was. And it is, it has been over a month and I still have almost all the same symptoms and they're very slowly going away. So it's, it's going to linger for some time, or at least it has for me and just about everybody I've talked to.

Julie Williamson (17:36.691)
Mmm.

Julie Williamson (17:42.292)
Hello.

Julie Williamson (17:53.301)
Luckily, it wasn't the flu for me, so I got lucky. Yeah, a pretty good cold. All right, let's pick it back up again. I think I'm good. Yeah. So we were talking, just so we kind of come back in where we think we are, about your team and being able to name things, which by the way is super powerful. So I'm glad that you were able to do that. Let's switch gears and talk a little bit about maybe...

Chris Baird (17:59.874)
Yeah.

Julie Williamson (18:20.595)
when you think about the business and some of the things that your clients are trying to do as they think about enabling IoT or if you want to, we can kind of pivot and talk about that. Does that work for you? Okay, cool. Chris, think as we think about leadership teams, it sounds like your own team has done some really great work in the space of alignment and that must be awesome to see the outcomes for that. I'm curious when you think about the business,

Chris Baird (18:30.798)
Sure, yeah, that'd be great.

Julie Williamson (18:46.069)
and some of the clients that you work with, your business really focuses on enabling connected things. Like I said, think whatever your thing, we keep it connected, is such a great tagline. When you think about what your clients have to deal with to get aligned and think maybe differently about their products and what they're putting out in the market, anything that you can share that kind of shows this space between agreeing that we should do that, this is a good idea, and being able to get aligned and get it done.

Chris Baird (19:16.811)
Yeah, I think there's several examples. So first and for context, we're in an industry where we see a lot of solutions. Being an IoT cellular internet provider, whatever it is that needs to connect to the internet, which nowadays is increasing and growing more and more things. We have so many unique

views into different industries. We operate in about 50 different end markets with almost over 10,000 logoed customers that buy our products and goods and services from us. So we get to see a little bit of everything. And one of the biggest things that we see is oftentimes we see our customers focus on the wrong issue. Specifically, they're focused on trying to solve for price.

Julie Williamson (20:06.829)
Hmm.

Chris Baird (20:14.36)
We see a lot of price constraint and that leads to misalignment within their own teams. I'll give you an example specifically. We had a customer here just very recently that approached us and said, look, I've found a cheaper solution from one of your competitors and I'm gonna go that route. Well, a few days later they called and they said, okay, I bought this solution from your competitor and it didn't come with this or this or this or this and I need you to do all that for me.

In your quote, you were going to provide that for free, but you were more expensive. So I need you to continue to do that thing for me. And I said, I can't, I can't. You buy the solution from me. It's not, can't go in and control it, but I will do our very best to set you up for success. And what we learned is that they were solving for a different pain. They weren't solving for operational alignment. They weren't solving for execution. They were solving for price when I thought that they should have been solving for costs, right?

And what we try to tell our customers is if you're solving, at least in our scenario, for the total cost of connectivity, we win every single time. And I can punch it into a spreadsheet and I can actually show that. But if you start to look for just a solution that's going to be cheap and easy, you're going to find a better price in the marketplace. But you've got to factor in all of the costs. And I think leadership is sometimes the same way. We end up in a situation where we're trying to solve for something at the surface.

And there's a lot of ways of doing that. And there's a lot of strategies and frameworks that can get you surface level answers fast. But sometimes you need to go a little deeper and you need to look at the total solution and the total situation. And we certainly see that a lot with our customers where, or just even in leadership in general. And I have a lot of friends in different industries and I get to see, know, dysfunction.

Julie Williamson (21:59.984)
Hmm.

Chris Baird (22:07.55)
in a lot of areas and I get to see what success looks like in a lot of areas too. We certainly try to mirror one of those two behaviors by the way. But I think that again getting to the root of a problem actually is it takes a lot more work but it produces a much better longer term outcome at the same time.

Julie Williamson (22:28.069)
Yeah, I mean, we see that so often with leaders. I love how you're clarifying this idea of solving for different things, right? So across the leadership team, there might be agreement on a particular goal or, you know, a worthy contribution to the client experience, but different factions on the leadership team are trying to solve for different goals.

that can be in conflict with each other. And then you have inherent misalignment around how to move forward together. So they might agree on what needs to get done, but they're not really aligned on how to get there as a leadership team and what matters most to the team. So you might be solving for price and another person is trying to solve for functionality and another person is trying to solve for client satisfaction or whatever it might be. Then you wind up with this mishmash of agreement about the goal, but misalignment around how to get there.

Chris Baird (23:19.852)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I see it all the time with alignment. Everybody agrees, but the behavior doesn't change. That's not true alignment. Agree. Agreement isn't alignment. And that's another big one, too, right? I think, you know, people have different incentives that lead them to be agreeable. But that doesn't necessarily drive alignment. People have different fears and and

Julie Williamson (23:21.461)
Yeah.

Julie Williamson (23:30.419)
Yeah, exactly.

Chris Baird (23:47.49)
that doesn't necessarily drive alignment. People have good slogans. You've mentioned ours a couple of times, and that doesn't necessarily drive alignment. think when everybody agrees but behavior doesn't change, that's surface level alignment. That's probably fault alignment.

Julie Williamson (24:03.017)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably false alignment. If you don't, we always like to say, if you don't need to change how you lead, you are not transforming your organization. And so it really starts with that leadership level and changing how you're leading the organization. Because like really, if you want to effect transformation, it starts there. It doesn't start with a big what, like, what are we doing? What's the strategy? What's the goal? It starts with how are you changing your behavior as a leader?

Chris Baird (24:13.922)
Yeah, that's a good point.

Chris Baird (24:33.954)
Yeah, absolutely.

Julie Williamson (24:34.399)
Let's talk a little bit about success stories. You mentioned, you you do see this happen and you see either clients or internally, you kind of work through it. You've given us an example with your team of being able to name false alignment and now being able to work differently as a result, as a leadership team. Any other success stories that you could share around how this has played out and you've seen a team really do the work to get aligned and maybe because they found out they were misaligned and they had to work through that.

in order to come out on the other side.

Chris Baird (25:06.186)
Yeah, if I can do so humbly without necessarily making this about me, maybe I'll tell you a little different experience and then tie it back into business because it worked out. But I recently had a milestone birthday and wanted to do something a little bit crazy. And so about nine months in advance, I found an Ironman race that

Julie Williamson (25:09.141)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Baird (25:31.394)
happened to coincide with my birthday. A 70.3. They get really upset when you're an imposter. So 70.3, which is technically a half, which is still a lot. And I decided to sign up for it. And I knew that at the time that I signed up, I was not in any condition to go run a race of three disciplines over 70 miles. But I decided to do it anyway. And

Julie Williamson (25:35.183)
Okay, well, okay, right Still a big day

Chris Baird (25:59.922)
I, what I really was signing up for was the experience, the learning experience. I was really signing up for trying to get into, a behavior that I was uncomfortable with, trying to stay committed in that and, and then trying to stay and actually get it done. And what I learned, and in fact, I'd say this was a big, big success for me. I learned a lot about Chris Baird in the process. I was trying to learn.

Julie Williamson (26:22.197)
Hmm. Hmm.

Chris Baird (26:29.058)
how to pay attention to my body. I was trying to learn how to become a little bit more educated on what those inputs were in order to get the output that I needed. I was surprised several times at what I thought would be a good input and it led to a bad result and I had to make a change. What ended up actually working for me may not work for anybody else, but I ended up spending a lot of time on the treadmill. In fact, I had to train during

months. And so I did a lot of that indoor, lots of indoor swimming, and I found out along the way that really forced me to learn how my body and my mind respond over time in different environments. Sometimes they were pretty low stress environments and I was cycling on a path with wind at my back and other times I was in inclement weather, running uphill.

Julie Williamson (27:22.313)
Okay. Okay.

Chris Baird (27:27.414)
and there were other times I, you know, where I just completely failed and my body wasn't ready. And, and I had to put all of those systems in place, to try to carry me through and push me through when my motivation was waning. And, I, what I learned through that entire process was there was some incredible parallels between going through that and putting myself in this very uncomfortable, process, which by the way,

Lots of people do. There's great athletes that focus on this and they have the luxury of time to be able to just focus on that. And some people do several of these every season and they're crazy in my mind and I admire all of them. And I can't wait to do it again, frankly. But what I really learned is that a disciplined system was better than just trying to stay motivated.

And I'll tell you when race day came, and in fact, if I now transition to the time when I felt like I was succeeding to a time when I felt like I failed, I felt like race day, nothing came together like I needed it to. You know, what didn't work was assuming that I could just tough it out and that that would cover up some of the other mistakes I made in preparation and in training. So, for example, nutrition, it's really hard to nail nutrition.

Julie Williamson (28:51.785)
Yep.

Chris Baird (28:51.79)
And I'm not by any claim some distance or endurance athlete. I just wanted this experience to go through it. I didn't prepare for the heat. In fact, my race was in Kona, Hawaii. I thought the sea level would be in a huge advantage coming from the mountains. I was training at elevation and then going down to sea level. I thought that would be a huge advantage.

Julie Williamson (29:08.809)
Hmm.

Chris Baird (29:18.954)
But I didn't plan on the heat. didn't plan on some of the excess weight I ended up having to carry. I did not anticipate the absolute brainwashing that I had convinced myself of during the event. My mind was giving up long before my body. But what I learned is effort wasn't the issue. My assumptions were the issue and not being aligned.

Julie Williamson (29:37.183)
Yeah.

Julie Williamson (29:43.381)
Mm.

Chris Baird (29:48.014)
I took a couple of days leading up to the race and a couple of days after. I had a good period of time where I essentially had stepped out of business. As I was wrapping up some of that, I was finding all of these parallels to business and to leadership through this experience. Sometimes assumptions don't hold. Sometimes situations change. Sometimes the rules change mid run. Sometimes you lose key talent.

that you needed to have. And I learned a lot about myself in the process, but I was able to bring a lot of those lessons back and share them with my leadership team. And it helped us all be a different organization. In fact, we ended up as a result, we ended up not a direct result, I should say, but we ended up doing a fitness challenge company-wide globally.

And it was so fun to have other people jump in and get excited and sign up for their own races and see different things that they could do. And I saw, I saw engagement skyrocket. I saw, you know, endorphins obviously were getting carried over into the workplace. And I just saw people being their very best and just genuinely trying to work hard and do good. And so I felt like there was some direct correlation there, even though it is a complete outside of the box example for you.

Julie Williamson (30:43.242)
Nice.

Julie Williamson (30:52.021)
Yeah.

Well, I think it's a great example. And I think there is something about endurance events that I oftentimes, work is an project or transformation is an endurance event for the organization for the leadership team. And there's a lot of gain that comes from it. And there's also a lot of sometimes suffering like you got to get through things and power through and stick with it and find that fortitude to know that what you're doing

has an outcome that you're gonna be proud of, but it might not look exactly the way that you thought when you started on that journey. So I really appreciate those parallels. We always ask leaders for three or four key lessons learned or pieces of advice for people who are trying to find alignment for themselves or for their teams. I'm curious, coming out of your Ironman 7030 experience, what would be the...

two or three, four takeaways or key lessons that you would share that you think would help a leader who's struggling to be in alignment with a big goal.

Chris Baird (32:21.23)
Yeah, I think a couple of things, kind of trying to pull it all back together.

I think there's a place for willpower and just grit and determination. But what I've also learned is the more, the more that you use, the less you have to give later. It's like that slice of cake. If I just nibble at it a little at a time, before I know it, I've eaten the whole thing because I don't need it, but I'm going to do it. And then before I know it, it's gone. Right. I've used up almost all that willpower. And so

Julie Williamson (32:31.445)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Baird (33:00.654)
But I think it has a place. But what also helps is systems. I thought grit would carry me through. It didn't, not on its own. What I learned is that preparation and structure and feedback matter as much as just sheer toughness. And you have to have all of that. You know, when I was trying to prove something, and I found this to be the pattern, not just in this Ironman race, but even in business.

You know, when I'm trying to prove something, I can get a little bit vengeful. You know, if you really want to get something done, tell me that I cannot do it. Tell me that I'm not capable and I will move heaven and earth to do it. But what I've also learned is my individual progress slows when I am focused on proving somebody else wrong. But when I stay curious and I adjust,

That's when I feel like I'm starting to learn and move again. And that rarely happens inside the comfort zone. You have to be outside of that comfort zone to be in a high learning environment. I think they're mutually exclusive. So that would be, that would kind of be my second, you know, when, when ego takes over, it's often at the expense of something probably more precious, like, like progress. And then,

Julie Williamson (34:12.041)
Mm.

Julie Williamson (34:21.459)
Yeah.

Chris Baird (34:23.054)
I think maybe the other one, what felt like minor to me, like nutrition or pacing or working out in a hot environment, which I had the ability to do, I could have mimicked some of the environment I was going to be in. Those all compounded and then became major issues when the conditions got hard. And so I think learning can expose some of those weak assumptions pretty fast.

For me what I'm learning again across some of those lessons and this is true not just in in life or in friendships or marriage or in business or in athletics When you have some structure and when you have a little bit of humility and In you're willing to put those together. I think that's where learn the intersect of learning can start but it's gonna fail really really fast if you just

if you're just determined to just grit your way through. Because there is, everybody hits a different wall, the proverbial wall at some stage or another. And you won't, you'll need other things to help carry you through as well. And I think structure, discipline, a team, a vision, intent, well-stated objectives, and an acknowledgement that

Not everybody's going to be able to give 100 % all the time, but that's, think, where a cohesive team comes in. And I had a team, even on my race, and my team was my family. They had put themselves at different places throughout the course where somehow they knew that they would come in clutch right when I needed a little bit of extra motivation to see my kids holding a sign or to have my wife say, go do this. There's too many people that are counting on you.

You can't give up now. Or a leadership team that says, care more about what we want together than what we need individually. That's pretty powerful. And that's when gaps get short and close really, really fast. Or it get completely eliminated. And I've seen it time and time again. I think there's more room for that in leadership.

Julie Williamson (36:48.617)
I think that idea that when we want more together is so powerful, right? That's the moment when you know that you're going to be able to be successful on big goals as a leadership team or big goals as an individual, right? Understanding that it's not just you doing everything, but that in fact, you can pull energy and support and you can refuel that motivation by leaning on your team and letting them contribute to the experience and the process with you.

And I think that is such a powerful moment for a leader and it takes humility to do that, right? If your ego is so big that you think that you can do it all on your own, then you are not gonna be able to get people aligned to the big goal that you have. And I think that really shines through in the examples that you've shared with us is there's this process of saying, I wanna have clarity, I wanna know what that goal is and I want some structure to help me get there.

and I'm going to enter into that with some humility that allows me to be fueled by the people around me and allows all of us to get to that goal together. think that's a really, really beautiful example. So thank you for sharing that with our listeners. Yeah, yeah, of course. you

Chris Baird (37:58.754)
Yeah, I appreciate it. Can I be really vulnerable with you for a second? One of I suffer as probably do a lot of other leaders from the imposter syndrome. I'm just waiting to get discovered by somebody who says you don't really know what you're doing. And my my anecdote to that has been to acknowledge that vocally right up front and be really vulnerable with my team and with my mentors and with my peers guys.

I don't have all the answers. I'm going to tell you that right now, but I have enough framework and enough experience that I know how as a collective group, we can come to the right answer together. And that is a, I lived in fear. I operated in fear about getting found out for so long. And I realized that can actually become a strength when I call it right out and I lower my guard and someone call that weak leadership. And you know, there's probably a

There's probably a place where that would not work, but it happens to work in my industry. It happens to work in my company. It works really well with my leadership team when I say, and I suspect none of us have the perfect answer, but collectively, I think we can get pretty dang close. And we've been able to solve some really significant challenges that individually, know none of us would have worked collectively. We've been able to work together to do it. And I think that's powerful.

a powerful tool that should be deployed more, but it probably doesn't out of fear of being found out or being too vulnerable and not really being willing to own that. So again, back to the humility point, which was not really the intent of today's conversation, but that's come up a lot today, hasn't it?

Julie Williamson (39:45.139)
You know what, I excuse me, I think that humility plays a real role in alignment because it's when we have teams of really strong egos on leadership teams that it's very difficult to get to alignment because people, we hear things like people say, well, I'm willing to help anyone on this team. I'll help them with whatever they need. And you ask them, when was the last time that you asked somebody for help? And then you get the, well, I don't need help. I'm willing to help anybody.

Chris Baird (40:10.168)
Yeah,

Julie Williamson (40:11.593)
But I don't need help. You see it in the body language, you see it in the tone, you see it in the assumptions people are making, and you know that that team is gonna struggle with alignment. And so I really appreciate you being willing to dive into this and share your experiences and your perspective with it as well, because I think it's really important for leaders to understand that part of being in alignment is being willing to be on a team, being willing to be a part of a peer group in your organization.

not just the team that you lead and the people who report to you, but also your peers in the organization. That's where alignment needs to happen is across the enterprise, not vertically down. You can build alignment vertically in your organizations because you have positional power, but how you show up with your peers, that's where a lot of the things that I think you're sharing really come into play around how are you showing up curious and with some humility.

and a willingness to be a part of the team, not to be your own person, just doing your own thing and you're kind of clocking in and clocking out on the team.

Chris Baird (41:20.13)
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's an important element of alignment.

Julie Williamson (41:24.383)
Yeah.

Julie Williamson (41:29.033)
Yeah, well, I appreciate all of your thoughts on it and your being your willingness to be vulnerable and to share your experiences with it because I think a lot of people struggle with it and you have found your way through that process, which is really lovely.

Chris Baird (41:42.626)
I'm glad I have you fooled. I'm still struggling with it, but we're doing our very best.

Julie Williamson (41:46.169)
But it's in the struggle, as you say, it's in that struggle that growth happens, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, at Carrick and Scroop, we like to say, there's an old expression, to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together. And we like to say, to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together, to go far fast, get aligned. And I feel like you and your team are doing that work to make that happen. So thank you so much for sharing your experiences.

Chris Baird (41:50.314)
Absolutely.

Chris Baird (42:04.822)
I love it.

Julie Williamson (42:11.337)
I really appreciate it. This conversation has been great. I know a lot of our listeners are going to take away some really great ways to think about their own leadership and how they're showing up to build alignment across their organizations. I appreciate your time today and also learning a little bit more about OpConnect and the work that you're doing in that space. So thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

Chris Baird (42:33.422)
Appreciate It's been great being with you and sharing some of these experiences. I hope that at some point, something that I've said resonates with somebody and then that would be mission accomplished. But in the meantime, I appreciate you letting me vocalize some of my ramblings for a few minutes. They're not polished, but they're real life. And I think that's what a lot of us are going through. So thank you.

Julie Williamson (42:42.677)
All right.

Julie Williamson (42:49.717)
They're from the heart. And I think you'll either inspire somebody to do the work to get their teams aligned and to spot false alignment and being willing to speak to that. Or maybe somebody will sign up for a 70 30. Who knows, right? Either way. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Baird (43:05.89)
Who knows? Yeah, go do it. If you want to learn a lot, go do it. Absolutely.

Julie Williamson (43:11.125)
For our listeners, we'll put the link to the article that you referenced from Ken Thompson in our show notes as well. So you can go out there and check that out. You can check Chris out on LinkedIn and also we'll put a link to his company Opt-Connect in the show notes as well. So feel free to go out and check that. If you enjoyed this episode, remember to like, share and comment. If you have any thoughts to share with us, we'd love to hear it. And in the meantime, I hope that everybody has a great start to the year and we look forward to hearing more alignment stories as we go forward.

with the failure gap. Chris, thank you again and to our listeners, we'll see you soon.

Julie Williamson (43:47.442)
I Chris will just need to wait for a second while your upload happens. Do you see that? By the way, I've done a couple of Iron Man. Yeah.

Chris Baird (43:50.626)
Yeah, no worries. Showing 99. Have you really? Way to go. My hat off. I mean, you instantly just won my heart. If you hadn't already, did tell me about him. Where were you? And is it recent?

Julie Williamson (44:08.363)
No, not when my last half was a couple was 2022 probably be 2023 I'd have to look at the calendar was my last up and my last full was probably 10 years ago. Yeah, Yeah. No, you're not 7030 is very respectable.

Chris Baird (44:20.558)
Oh, really? Yeah, I'm trying to decide if I have it in me to go the full distance because I know that that's that's when you get legit. Right now, I'm just the imposter and I keep having all these these fun stories. But it was it was so hard, but it was so fun. I ended up what I didn't tell your listeners, but I ended up with almost like.

Julie Williamson (44:37.748)
Yeah, well, go ahead.

Chris Baird (44:47.162)
I had a really bad GI up and down issue and I had not factored for.