Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

What does it take to lead a company through transformation while keeping people motivated, curious, and focused on the future? In this episode of Shift and Thrive, Natalie sits down with Matt Waxman, Chief Product Officer at Arctera, a data management company reimagining how enterprises handle compliance, resilience, and lifecycle governance. From making people “comfortably uncomfortable” to creating a culture that embraces experimentation, Matt explores how leaders can align teams around a shared strategy, harness AI as an accelerator (not a replacement), and keep transformation human-centered.

Takeaways:
  • Culture drives transformation. Change only sticks when people feel safe to take risks and fail forward, creating an environment where learning and experimentation are rewarded.
  • Make people uncomfortably comfortable. Growth requires disruption; leaders must push teams to think differently while maintaining psychological safety and trust.
  • Lead with clarity, not chaos. Aligning on strategy first, why and what success looks like, sets the foundation before diving into structure, goals, or execution.
  • Focus is your growth engine. Narrowing your go-to-market efforts, customer touchpoints, and messaging allows for deeper impact and more meaningful relationships.
  • AI should eliminate “soul-crushing work.” Use AI to remove repetitive tasks, accelerate creativity, and empower teams to focus on strategic thinking.
  • Adapt your leadership to the moment. Situational leadership, balancing consistency in values with flexibility in approach, is key to thriving through any transformation.

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This show is sponsored by Magnetude Consulting, bringing you the thinking-Power of a Growth Consultancy and the Getting-It-Done Power of a full-service B2B Marketing Agency. 
Learn more at: https://www.magnetudeconsulting.com 

Creators and Guests

Host
Natalie Nathanson
Guest
Matt Waxman
Producer
Rebecca Leberman

What is Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change?

In today’s business world change is the only constant, and mastering transformation is the ultimate key to success. Welcome to Shift & Thrive!

Each week, Host Natalie Nathanson will bring you conversations with CEOs, who delve into how they successfully drove critical change in their organization.

This show is sponsored by Magnetude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a Growth Consultancy and the Getting-It-Done Power of a full-service B2B Marketing Agency.

Natalie Nathanson: Today's guest is a transformative technology leader who spent his career helping tech companies evolve their products and services through periods of major change in reinvention. He's held pivotal roles leading product and strategy teams at companies, including Veritas, Cohesity, puppet, and Dell, EMC. He is known for evolving technical complex solutions into clear customer ready offerings, and brings both technical depth and strategic clarity to his work today.

He's the Chief Product Officer at Arc Tera, a data management company that helps enterprises streamline compliance, resilience, and data lifecycle governance. Matt Waxman, welcome to the show.

Matt Waxman: Hey

Natalie. Thanks for having me.

Natalie Nathanson: I am very glad to have you. And to kick things off today, I know you've been, uh, part of some pretty major transformations, both kinda smaller and larger companies.

Uh, so when you think back on those experiences, what would you say is kind of the biggest leadership lesson that you've learned that shapes, like how you lead through change?

Matt Waxman: Yeah, that, that's a big question, so I'll try to give a fairly simple answer to it. I, you know, I've seen transformations of all kind, um, tra. Transforming products, transforming strategy, transforming go to market, um, you know, so on and so forth. I think there's one underlying theme that I've found in all of them that sort of makes or breaks how successful they are.

And this is the big lesson learned I've had. It's your culture, it's, it's your people. Um, if your culture supports, uh, the ability to take risk, experiment. It's okay to fail, you know, those types of things, then I think you'll be far more successful in it. So, um, and then the second piece that I've always found as part of that is that generally people, I think it's human nature, uh, get pretty comfortable doing what they're doing.

They've been doing it for a long time. Maybe they've been doing it a certain way, uh, during that time. And so as a leader. Navigating a transformation. Um, it may sound a little bit funny, but I think our role is actually, uh, making people feel uncomfortable in a very, you know, politically correct way, HR safe way.

But you know, that uncomfortableness is, can you push people to think differently, to move at a different speed or a different rate to, uh, you know, think more deeply about problems, uh, so on, so forth.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, I love that. And I think we are in times of, uh, lots of change. And so I think everyone, uh, should be feeling a little less comfortable than maybe we were a number of years ago.

Um,

can you, uh, talk about, you know, how you do that, uh, any kind of strategies, tips? How do you get people to kind of move in that direction?

Matt Waxman: Yeah. For me, I'm a, I'm a big believer in form follows function. So what I mean by that is you, you have to have alignment on your strategy. Um, so like I said, there's all different strategies. There's no right or wrong, you know, are you transforming to growth, so on and so forth. Uh, it takes time, I think, to get people to really align on what the strategic intent is. You're not done at that point. You have to then, uh, get people on board with that, uh, get them rallied, excited about the outcome, the possibility, uh, to, to counter the risk of being uncomfortable in those situations. Uh, so that's the. Uh, you, you know, uh, function, if you will. And then the form to that is okay, now you get your teams together, you get them organized, you put goals together.

Um, you, you know, you start measuring those things. You start executing. But, uh, without that foundation, it's very hard for people to just execute, right? They don't know why.

Natalie Nathanson: Right. Well, and I think, like you just mentioned it, the discomfort plus excitement, like that combination I think is, uh, it sounds like the healthy, the healthy driver for the, for that change. Curious to hear, uh, how you've applied this in your current role. Um, and maybe talk a little bit about spinning out Arc Terra and, uh, would love to talk about, you know, what that transformation has looked like.

Matt Waxman: Yeah. Uh, so let me share just a little bit about, uh, arc Terra. So we are, we like to think of ourselves as a turbocharged startup.

We are, uh, founded in 2024, um, and we were founded on legendary products as we like to think of them. So they're existing products with existing customers, uh, great, loyal customer base, um, you know, world renowned capabilities as part of those.

But with new energy, with new intent, with a new strategy, uh, as part of that and a focused team that's building it. So, you know, we, we oftentimes talk about it as these were, uh, products, if you will, businesses that sort of lived in the shadows in the past. They were part of a larger, uh, company. Some people may know, uh, Veritas, which has been around for a long time as a software company, and, uh, sort of lived in the shadows there and Arter, and this whole transformation has been.

Taking them out of the shadows, into the sunlight,

uh,

applying a little fertilizer, you know, watering them and uh, you know, helping them grow. And so that, uh, comes to bear, and I know we'll talk more about this, but you know, in, in obviously product and how we think about innovation and, um, drive the experience for the customers in a new, fresh way, uh, leveraging AI and how we work.

Internally so that we're modernizing our practices and also, uh, completely redoing the go to market, uh, motion and re-imagining what that could be with new, new focus. So it's really touched every part of the company. That's why we talk about it as a turbocharge startup because it's coming with existing products and customers, and it's now got this focus that's really gonna, you know, push more air through the engine, if you will, in the, in the turbocharge analogy.

Natalie Nathanson: Yep. Yep. Well, and I do think, you know, anytime it's kind of a spinoff type of situation, you have something that exists to, to build from, and you have the opportunity to re. I think about some of the, uh, client engagements that, uh, my team has led and like each one looks a little bit different, but whether you have a big customer base and you're kind of bringing them through the journey, or if you have kind of product market fit in such a way that you wouldn't normally have at a startup and, uh, right.

Just looking at. What do you have as assets at your disposal? Uh, what do you need to keep, uh, moving? Um, and then where's the, the room to kinda reimagine and rebuild, uh, as a, as a startup one.

Matt Waxman: Yeah, I think the pattern exists honestly at every stage of

a company,

right? Even. Early stage startups typically go through a pivot. What's a pivot? It's, it's some sort of transformation. Uh, you may have a set of people who built, you know, the first stage and were really tied to those ideas and that way of working and that pivot means transforming to something different.

So I think every stage of company, a maturity of company, size of company, have very similar patterns, uh, in that.

Natalie Nathanson: Can you talk a little bit about the sequencing? You were talking about the product re-imagining the go-to market. What were kinda some of those early, uh, kinda earliest components and, uh, how did that, uh, kinda roll out over time?

Matt Waxman: Yeah.

the, the, um. The starting point was basically what is the objective for the company? What's the business, uh, metric that we're going to use? Uh, growth. Growth rate oftentimes is the one that most companies will look at, but growth can be measured in many ways, right? Sometimes that's, uh, user growth.

Sometimes that's revenue. Oftentimes it's revenue growth. Uh, it can be retention, you know, those, those sorts of things. So it was really nailing down first. Um, what are those key metrics? And by the way, it may seem like it's a very simple thing to do. Sometimes it's very difficult to really understand, you know?

Um, okay. Is it about, uh, growth within an existing install base or is it about growth and net new?

With

new logos, two very different investment, um, profiles. Two very different go to market motions that you need to create. So, uh, growth is an easy word to spell it. It, it's a little bit harder to figure out like, what do you really mean by growth, what's most important?

Because they all have different cost profiles. So it really started with that, you know, what is the hypothesis, if you will. What are the founding measures? Um, and then it, it, it's really about, uh, building the rest of the scaffolding, uh, around that. So, um, you know, every company is, is slightly different.

I've certainly been in product companies in the past, and so it tends to start with product because. If you don't have the right product, it doesn't matter how, how much you do in terms of downstream things. So you have to get your product strategy to basically support and align your, your company, uh, strategy in that way.

And then, and I think everything you wrap around that, you know, you sort of build the rest of the plan, uh, that way. So that's the way we approached it.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. What about, uh, I guess within kind of the sales and marketing functions, did any, uh, kind of, uh, team or approaches carry through from, uh, kind of pre spinoff or was it kind of all, uh, built kind of from the ground up?

Matt Waxman: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't believe necessarily that clean slate is always the best way to do stuff. I think you wanna take the best of what you've got and then figure out how to tweak and, and build upon it. So. Um, you know, our heritage was, uh, very customer oriented and being really close with, uh, with our customers and we certainly didn't wanna lose that, you know, in, in building a new go-to market model.

Um, so we really looked at it as how do we accelerate what, what we were doing? And, um, the key thesis there that, that, uh, has brought us growth has

been focus. It's

very simple. But you know, the more that you can narrow down the things that you're doing, the ways that you interact with customers, how many touch points you have with a customer, um, all those types of things, the, the more you can make those conversations stick and really focus on the value and the outcome that a customer's trying to achieve, as opposed to, you know, just going to tell them, here's the latest feature.

You know, let me demo the technical aspects of, of a product, uh, those sorts of things.

Natalie Nathanson: What

was the, um, uh, kind of communication plan with, with existing customers, and how did you bring them through that journey?

Matt Waxman: Yeah, it, it's, uh, again, going back to like high touch model, like we, we've always been close with our customers, so we stayed close through the transformation sharing with them, you know, how we were thinking about it. We were just very transparent about it. And I think customers, uh, in a lot of ways you gotta think about as being your partners.

Um, they're making a big investment in you, especially if you're a startup. You know, there's, they're, they're taking some risk. Around that. And so they wanna know who they're working with, who's the team behind that and how they're thinking. So, uh, our approach has been very transparent. You know, we tell our customers, here's how we're investing.

Um, here's the things that we're focused on doing. By the way, there's some things that we may not be doing that we used to do before. And, and that builds a lot of trust. I think with customers. And so they've, they've ridden through the transformation with us quite well and, you know, and grown nicely as part of that.

So, um, I, you know, I'm a big believer in just be transparent. I worked in, uh, an open source company, uh, for a few years and you know, a big part of that is, uh, it's all about your community and you can't have a community unless there's open, transparent communication. And I just think that's a great way to work, uh, these days.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I totally agree with you there. Uh, I'd love to talk, Matt, a bit about, you know, where you are today and shift gears a little bit, um, into something that I think is, uh, impacting every business. You alluded to this earlier, uh, and that's ai. And I know we were at a, uh, a round table dinner, uh, together last night.

There was some very lively and heated dialogue on a range of AI topics. Um, wanna hear, uh, kind of your views on AI and how that's impacting the areas of the business that you're involved in?

Matt Waxman: I've been, uh, fortunate to have lived through several large, um, periods, waves, however you wanna think about them. In, in this business for a couple of decades. You know, cloud was a big transformative shift. Um, uh, going to containers, you know, was

another one client server back in the day. You know, there's been big, big transformational shifts.

What's different to me with AI is it's not a technology shift. Um, those things all sort of work their way through it into impacting how companies, you know, built their, their platforms and their technology stacks and so on and so forth. AI is, um, is touching every part of. Every industry at every level in every function in every way.

And so in a lot of ways, I think about it more like the, um, you, you know, the revolution that happened around electricity.

Because

electricity was that ubiquitous thing that just enabled so many things that no one could have imagined initially. And, and AI is the same way. So we, we have, um, really been leaning in, in embracing, um, a bunch of different AI technologies, but more importantly trying to get the thinking to expand to how can you leverage, um, tools.

These are tools in the end, um, you know, to improve productivity. To be an assistant to accelerate some of the work that you did. One of my favorite phrases that I, I learned a while back, uh, was, you know, how do you eliminate the soul crushing work? Right? Every, I think every job has some element of work that's mundane, repetitive, uh, so forth.

You know, can you eliminate some of that using AI and spend your time on the deep thinking that you need to do, right? To build a business, to grow a business, uh, so on and so forth. So. Um, yeah, we can start there and then we can go much, much deeper into, you know, AI thoughts.

Natalie Nathanson: I was gonna ask, I like the, the soul removing, the soul crushing, uh, components. Curious if you have any example uses, uh, use cases in the organization that, that have, uh, supported, uh, you know, that sentiment.

Matt Waxman: Yeah, one, one of my. Favorites. Um, you know, I think like anything, oftentimes these, these sort of movements happen with, um, a few people like you, little, little beachhead that starts of people trying to experiment and, uh, and then it grows from there. So, uh, we've been fortunate to have someone in our design, uh, team who really has.

Uh, embraced, like all in on ai. And one of the things that we learned through that, which was really mind blowing and shifting, sort of this. Long, arduous project work that you do as, uh, around design, uh, into something that literally can be done in hours. So, you know, the thumbnail on this is if, uh, if you talk to designers, um, you know, they, they will build out a hypothesis.

They will do user research. Um, they will take that to inform building. Some prototype level, you know, that could be a mock up, a wire frame, that sort of thing. They'll work with an engineering team to build it. They'll go take that to some customers and get some feedback. They'll tweak it and uh, you know, hopefully they'll ship it.

Then after you ship it, you find out typically months, quarters, sometimes a year later. Did that actually work? Did it solve a customer's problem? Right? So you take something that could be a year, 18 months in lifecycle and we've been able to really run that entire process through ai. Um, and so from generating the personas.

Of your customers, um, so that it reflects their needs and their wants and and so on and so forth to generating, uh, design.

To

then round tripping it back in to validate whether that design met the needs of the persona. And it has just completely changed the, the speed. I mean, this is one of those, it's not even 10 x faster, it's a hundred x faster.

Um, to, to do it this way. So I found that very exciting. Um, and, uh, a lot of good lessons learned along the way. You know, if, um, if you were to talk to this individual, they would tell you, you know, the number of prompts that they've had to enter to get to that stage is, uh, is close to 2000. Um, you know, so it, it takes work, but there's a lot of learning in there that at least can be applied, you know, going forward.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, as you said, like it takes work to get it right. The impact and value is, is there once you do. And you can do that for so many small kind of components of anyone's role that really like around prioritizing kind of where do you make that investment? Where are you gonna get the biggest lift?

And um, I think that's part of why organizations need, uh, so many different people within the company working and thinking in this way, Um, because there isn't kind of one person or one team that can really drive that throughout the business.

Matt Waxman: Yeah. I think one of the challenges, We all face with AI is one, obviously there's many different types of ai, but if we just talked about, gen AI and what most people are using today as sort of end users in any of our roles, it's the blank screen problem. one of the beauties of pick your favorite Gen AI tool out there is they appear to be so simple.

You go to the website and you're presented with a box, you know, a text box to enter a prompt into. so it appears very simple, but if you don't know where to start, you don't know the things that you could actually accomplish using, that particular tool. So that's what I mean by the blank screen.

It's like there's a tool there. To use, but if you don't know what you wanna do or what you could possibly do with it, then you're not harnessing the power of it. So there's a bit of a learning curve I think people all have to go through and, just asking, how can you help me today, you know?

Natalie Nathanson: So

talk more about that, like, how have you know, you and the organization kind of brought the, the team along? Like, how have you encouraged, uh, kind of playing around with the tools, driving new ideas? What does that look like?

Matt Waxman: Yeah, well, the, the, um. Uh, culture back to, you know, what I said earlier, when it comes to transformation, I think is the biggest part of this. We, we basically focused on building a culture around a core set of values. Um, they, they actually spell out the word focus, um, in, in our values. And the f um, stands for fail forward as, as one of our core values and what we mean by fail forward.

'cause some people. Think about it as fail back or, um, you know, so forth is that uh, you wanna experiment and in order to experiment you have to be able to embrace failure. Um, and, uh, you need to be able to celebrate that. And if you do that, you will start iterating much, much faster. And you'll start moving much, much faster as a, as a company, as a team, uh, so forth.

So, uh, the, the cultural values there are critical, I think, to get people to,

um,

believe it's okay to put an hour on your calendar to experiment with ai. Um, I think sometimes feel, people feel like that's, well, I'm not doing my job then, you know, I, I, should I be doing that on my own time? You know, is that my learning, so on and so forth.

I view it as that's part of how, uh, you are gonna get better at doing the thing that you do. So you need to invest in that. Like you would invest in a meeting or reading a document, uh, or so forth. So, um, I think all those things have to be supported by your cultural values and you need to celebrate those values.

We, um, I send out a weekly email to the entire company. Um, in that email I highlight, you know, things that the team's doing. Cool new AI tools that, that we discovered, someone discovered, or someone pointed me to, we do, uh, company town halls, uh, once a month and we celebrate the company values there with a shoutout, uh, to people.

And the shoutout includes which value, you know, they, they upheld. Um, so I think it's like, like any of these, these are people businesses, right? And so it's all about the culture that you, you establish. I.

Natalie Nathanson: Um, I think also depending on where a company is in their journey, like I'm thinking as, as you were talking, I was thinking back to our, my team's earlier days, uh, after, uh, kind

of chat

GPT and the other tools, uh, launched and we had like, every week we had a, an education session and for people on the team contributed based on areas of expertise.

We had 90 minutes a week of that experimentation time, and that was the same time for everybody. Um, we've evolved a lot since then because now a lot of that experimentation and kind of AI related initiatives are just. Part of, uh, kind of how we're operating. Uh, but I think figuring out what works for your organization and when do you, uh, you know, push something across the organization as a signal of yes, we we're not just saying, you know, we wanna experiment.

We're giving you the time to do that. And, and building it in.

Matt Waxman: Yeah.

You, you know, I, I know many companies 'cause I lock, I talk to a lot of customers and peers in the, in the industry. A lot of companies, um, have to balance the.

and

there are genuine risks around using ai, right? Compliance and governance, legal risks with, uh, the potential benefits, productivity, so forth that you can get out of it.

Um, and what we found was initially we had a pretty strict set of.

Rules in which we guided people to operate within. And that included not sharing, you know, uh, company intellectual property, sensitive information, you know, those, those types of things. Um, because we hadn't really standardized yet on a set of tools that we could use.

And we more recently, uh, decided on some core platforms that we're using. And part of those, it, they allow us to now put our own IP. Into those models in a protected way and that that was a step function difference in terms of the benefits you get because you're not getting this sort of very helpful, but sort of, um, you know, sanitized version of insights.

You're actually using your data. Um, to get insights, to analyze it, to manipulate it, to do all sorts of things. Um, and so that, that was a game changer for us was being able to actually use our company data, uh, in a, in a private way.

Natalie Nathanson: That's definitely made a big, a big impact for, for us as well, uh, in our

work.

Um, I'm curious, Matt, if there's, um, something that you're using like for your own, uh, day-to-day work or maybe even on the personal side, like any, any use cases that you're, uh, particularly excited or energized by these days?

Matt Waxman: Yeah. Uh, a friend of mine recently shared that, um, the CEO at his company. Ran a workshop where everyone had

to take

the day and build a startup using ai. Um, and, uh, which would sound crazy even two years ago, right? And, uh, I thought that was a fantastic idea. And so I, uh, I did the same myself. I, I treat it as an experiment, as a learning experiment.

And, uh, I was just blown away by what you can accomplish so quickly from ideating on, um, a, a potential problem articulating some customer pain points. Um, you know, thinking through that with a thought partner using chat GPT as a thought partner in that case. Um, being able to build a design. Based off of that, a business plan.

Feed that into a design engine like, uh, Figma, you know, has some great tools to be able to do this, uh, develop a, you know, sort

of clickable

prototype if you will. And then, uh, take that and feed it into a code generation, uh, tool to actually build real code behind it. Tools like lovable, uh, you know, great platform, uh, to be able to do that.

And so that was, uh, scary. You know, energizing, but mostly inspiring, uh, because it just gives you ideas of, okay, maybe you're not every day creating a new startup company, but in many ways you can apply those things to solving, uh, the problem of the day. 'cause we all have that. Right going on. So I, uh, I, I really just encourage everyone to kind of go through a similar experiment, uh, and try to learn it.

And I think you'll probably be blown away and it, it will influence the way you think going forward. So I, um, you know, I think I started this year where chat GPT was, uh, you know, a website I would open when I needed to in my browser. Two, it became, uh, a pin tab in the browser to now it's moved to my primary screen.

You know, it's not off on my secondary screen because I'm using it so frequently, uh, throughout the day. So, um, you know, I think it's just like all interwoven with your work. The more that, the more that people embrace these things.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Um,

well, and I think to your point, like once you're able to put in kind of more kind of data and more context in, and it's already built in, like the value just continues to multiply because you're not providing like all the context of a prompt each time and you have more of that kind of like already waiting there, uh, ready for you.

Matt Waxman: Yeah.

Yeah. We, we've been able to, um. I'll share a, a story around the go to market side of things because, you know, a big part of our transformation has been the go to market, as we mentioned earlier. And, um, we, we've had some folks who have built custom GPTs, trained on our competitors, on our products, on pricing, on, you know, a whole bunch of different data and, uh, created sales coaches out of that.

To

have our sellers be able to go through a very different experience when it comes to enablement and training and so forth, because they can sit and interact conversationally with, um, with a coach, right? That is trained on, on our actual sales plays and, and all the details behind them. So that, that's been pretty cool to see.

Natalie Nathanson: I

love that. That's a great example. Thank you for sharing it.

Natalie Nathanson: Matt, I wanna, uh, zoom out a bit. We're talking about transformations and would love to hear about your customers, and what kinds of transformations are they going through right now, and then, you know, how does your organization work with them through that?

Matt Waxman: Yeah, so

our, our company focuses on, um, all things data management. Uh, and the way we think about that is there's a life cycle to your data.

Uh, and throughout that lifecycle, you need to be able to protect it. You need to be able to ensure that it's there. It's resilient to a variety of different things, whether they're natural disasters, cyber attacks, you know, so forth.

And how do you ensure that that data is compliant? Uh, you know, depending on what industry you're in, there's different regulatory requirements or just company requirements around that. So, um, you know, not to overplay the AI piece, but. All of that AI stuff that we're talking about, uh, plays directly into.

So how do you ensure that your new AI application is protected? How do you ensure that the data that you're sharing into, um, uh, an AI gen AI tool. Is not breaking some compliance, um, rule. It's not sharing sensitive information from your company or customer. Uh, PII information in there. So

our

conversations with our customers are much more now around, okay, now they're all building their AI infrastructure, um, their tools, their applications, so on and so forth.

And they're facing the same problems that have always existed with any application. It's just, you know, these new applications happen to be AI ones. So, um, that's, that's been a very active conversation with our customers is helping them to, um, you know, be able to scale their environment. Um, for all those apps.

You know, I oftentimes think about, um,

you

know, agentic ai, um, and while some people will talk about it as replacing people, um, you know, maybe it's not gonna go that far.

Still,

it will come a point for some companies where your agent becomes your subject matter expert,

right?

And so, uh, in the same way that if a person was out sick and you were trying to get something done and that person you weren't able to get in touch with, well, what happens if your agent is down?

Right? What happens if the system that's running your agent is, is not available? It's been attacked. Cyber attack, right? So on and so forth. How are you going to run your company at that point? So agents are actually becoming the next mission critical application, if you will. And I don't think anyone has really been thinking about that because they're still an incubation stage.

But that's a lot of what our customers are starting to think about because they're typically large organizations who, um, you know, minutes of downtime, seconds of downtime can cost hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. In, uh, in lost revenue or, or fees and penalties.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. And are you seeing any shifts in kind of where the interest is coming from, whether it's kind of earlier adopters, you know, smaller versus larger companies, different kind of, uh, roles within the organization that you're talking to?

Matt Waxman: I, I wouldn't say necessarily a shift because I think back to the,

Uh,

these patterns and waves have happened before. It's, it's followed a similar sort of pattern in that. Um, you know, you'll typically see, um, uh, parts of a large organization start to embrace, uh, you know, new things, new technologies, new platforms, new ways of working,

that,

uh, certainly repeating itself here.

You know, we see application development teams, you know, that are starting to embrace these things more. Um, I'd say that one of the big shifts with AI is that. Much of it is being driven actually top down as well. Um, because, you know, everyone in the C-suite has been to every conference, every round table, every discussion, every webinar over the past two years.

And it's ai, ai, ai, right? So they're all looking at how to drive AI through their organization. Um, in the past, like cloud, that would've been the CIO right? Was driving that in their organization, ai.

the

CFO, the Chief Risk Officer, the Chief Revenue Officer, they're all looking at how to leverage ai. So it, this is happening in a much more ubiquitous way, I think than than prior.

Uh, waves.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Uh, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you and your leadership. Um, you've kind of alluded to some areas just as we're in the conversation, but. Talk a little bit about, um, you know, what experiences, uh, have shaped you know, the way that you lead. Uh, and, um, you know, has that changed over time?

Matt Waxman: Yeah. Um, what. I think we've all take our lessons as we go through them. Some of them good, some of them bad, uh, but they're all lessons and learnings. So, um, I, I really believe in situational leadership. Um, and what I mean by that is it kind of goes back to where we started our conversation on a transformation.

If you don't know what the situation is you're trying to solve for a turnaround, a growth, a, you know, a pivot, so on and so forth. It's very hard to lead with any credibility, uh, in there. So I think you very much have to tailor your leadership style and approach

To,

um, the situation that you're trying to achieve.

So if it's a turnaround, for example, you're gonna have to lean in more on that, making people uncomfortable, right? If it's a growth, it's gonna be, you gotta lean in more on. Basically clearing the path for people as much as possible so that they can just move as fast as humanly possible. So I think it's really important as a leader to adapt.

You keep your values the same, your core values. You have your tool bag of things that you use, right to lead teams and lead, lead, uh, you know, planning and so forth. Uh, but you pick up the tools and you use them sometimes in a different order,

uh,

or you apply them with a different waiting. You know, in one situation versus another.

So for me, that's been, uh, an, an important part of my style that's evolved over time is, um, you know, really understanding the situation and, and being open to adapting to it. Not just bringing my playbook in and apply the playbook just because I, I did it before that way.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. I like too, how you said, uh, kinda keeping the values consistent and then Right.

Uh, like updating based on the situation. Uh, curious to hear, um, and if you can share any of your core values and like also how did you come to define your own, uh, leadership values and have you noticed those changing at all or really have they kind of stood, stood firm through time?

Matt Waxman: Um, I don't know if I have great wisdom and insight into this, so I'll just share my personal experience on it. Um, you know, certainly some values I think are instilled in us from a very early age, uh, based on, you know, whoever your mentor teacher, so forth was along the way. Um, but I found that also some values I had maybe were not as apparent to me initially.

Until I felt that they were crossed in some way. And then it heightened the awareness of, yeah, you know what I actually believe very deeply in that. I just didn't realize it before. So, um, I think my values were sort of formed in that way. Uh, sort of got stronger over time as I experienced different things.

But, you know, for me it's, it's, um, as you can probably tell very much about people. Knowing that this is a people business, I believe in transparency. I believe in having fun because everyone is working hard enough doing these things. If you're not enjoying yourself, then you shouldn't be doing it. Fun comes in many ways.

Fun comes in, uh, new projects that you get to try out experimenting and learning like we talked about before, growing into new roles and, you know, doing some fun things as well, uh, outside the office or just the banter in a meeting.

Uh,

so I think that's very important. That's, that's been a core part of me.

And then integrity, I just think is the, the highest one, uh, overall. Um, if you can't trust people to do the right thing and, and, um.

Uh,

you know, you compromise on, on those. I, I just, I've seen too many things go wrong when that happens. It's best to just stick with high integrity decisions, um, and, um, and, and just follow through on them.

Accountability is really important when it comes to that.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. I think as a lot of us go through our career, you realize that maybe there's values that you had from the beginning, but until something is, uh, kinda standing in the way of that, um.

You know, you haven't really had the chance to really, have to make the hard choices of like, do you still live by this value? Do you kind of work through whatever the, the, the challenge is, uh, to go through that? Like, I know for myself, uh, like difficult conversations, like candor over comfort, um, is one that, I mean we always, uh, believed in, but until I was faced with a number of situations, uh, like that, uh, you really see how you, how you show up in those moments.

Matt Waxman: Yeah. Yep. Totally agree. Yeah.

Natalie Nathanson: Uh, so I wanna get a little deeper on the, the go to market side of things. Um,

and I know from prior conversations we've talked about kind of product first mindset versus customer problem, uh, focus. Um, can you talk about where you, uh, see organizations maybe, uh. Can get stuck and kinda how do that, how,

uh,

should they be looking at developing that kind of customer problem orientation?

Matt Waxman: Yeah.

Um, you know, again, like I think so many of these companies, startups, um. And large companies, uh, start from a product, you know, without, unless you're a services company, right? Or an operations company. You're a product company. And so, uh, typically that product gets formed through thinking about how you could solve a problem differently, and then you start applying, you know, technologies and so forth, uh, to, to solve that problem.

So

you're sort of ingrained with this thinking of, I can explain how this thing works really well because we built it right. We were part of, you know, seeding the idea, building it, and all the iterations that it took to get there. And so you're proud of that work and you wanna explain to people, uh, how what you've built is different, is unique, is better, is faster, you know, so on and so forth.

And then you're gonna explain it through the how, through the technical details. But the thing that you miss is your customers in that case weren't part of that journey, and honestly, they care very little about that. What they care about is they've got a problem they're trying to solve for.

How are you gonna help solve that problem for them?

So I think oftentimes in technology companies, product companies, software, you name it, um, you, you tend to start with a very, uh, how oriented conversation, uh, technical conversation. Um, a bottoms up conversation, however you wanna think about it. And, um, you know, that, that, uh, can be a real impediment, I think, to driving growth because, um, the value that you create for a customer comes from the problems that you're solving from them.

And the bigger that that problem is for them, the stickier your solution will be, and that will lead to good things for your house, stuff later. Um, but get there when you need to get there. I think leading with it is, is, uh, is problematic. Kind of comes back to the why, what, how. Right? Just lead, lead with the why.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah. Um, I know in the marketing side, um, you know, obviously voice of the customer is, is so important. Um, and I'm such a big proponent of sending marketers kinda out there into the world, go to conferences, interview your customers, shadow sales, you know, all those different, uh, touch points to kinda hear directly and not.

Only be taking, let's say, as you're talking about like the product, uh, kind of features and capabilities and, and translating that. I'm curious on product teams that, that you've led, are there any kinda avenues or, or tactics that you find, uh, really helps, uh, bring that forth?

Matt Waxman: The, um, uh, I think any, uh, product or company. That has an opportunity or has been doing SaaS has a huge advantage because one of the things that SaaS provides is a far deeper intimacy with your customers. So if you're in a product team, uh, traditionally non SaaS, you, you build and ship a product that takes you a year and you don't get much in terms of feedback, how customers are actually using it unless you go ask.

Like you were saying, you know, so go ride along and, and so on and so forth. And that's, um, you know, low volume, um, maybe high fidelity in those conversations. Whereas SaaS, um, you have instant access to how customers are using your service, your product, your platform. Whether they like it or not, um, you know, whether they're, one of my favorite terms that I heard over the years was having rage clicks.

You know, they're clicking around in your product because they can't figure out how to do something, and that's a indicator that they're frustrated with it. Right? You wouldn't know

that.

If you were having to go get on a plane and visit, you know, five customers over the course of three days, um, and, and maybe they would've given you that input if you were, if you were lucky.

So I think SaaS is a huge advantage when it comes to getting real insights into what your users are doing.

Um,

and, and I think one of the important distinctions that sometimes gets overlooked is. Your user and your buyer persona are, uh, oftentimes different people

and

you need both inputs,

right?

So the ride along is great to get to the buyer, sometimes to the user.

The product usage is your user, uh, feedback. It's not really your buyer feedback at that point, unless you're doing product-led growth and, you know, other fancy things.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah.

Uh, I

like the, the rage click, uh, terminology. I think maybe another metric we can add in there. See how we can measure how hard somebody is banging on the keyboard when they're trying to get something done.

Matt Waxman: Yeah. There

could be the, the laptop slam, which is the, I think the worst case, you know, slam the, the screen closed in frustration.

Natalie Nathanson: Yep. Yep. I can say I'm definitely guilty of sometimes, uh, typing harder when I'm, uh, trying to get a point across, but it's, uh, falls on deaf ears surprisingly. Um, Matt, I know we're, uh, coming nearer to the end of our time.

Um, I've loved so much of what you've shared and wanna ask you. Uh, maybe a more introspective question. Thinking about, uh, everything you've, you've learned throughout your career. If you were sitting in a room with your younger self when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself?

Matt Waxman: Yeah. Um,

I,

I have learned over time.

Uh,

that I think it's hard work, uh, working hard

over

almost anything else. Have your core values. But what I would tell my younger self is don't, uh, don't sweat the, did you get the best grade? Did you go to the,

whatever

it is named school that you wanted to go to? Did you have, you know, this, were you most popular in school or whatever in sport?

Um, whatever your ambition is in terms of what you wanna accomplish, I really believe that, uh, nine times outta 10, you can accomplish that if you just work hard at it. That doesn't mean that it's gonna happen overnight, that working hard may take a long time to get there, but, um, I, I would tell my younger self, you know, it's, it's all about hard work.

And if you build that discipline early on, I think it carries you very, very well through your, through your life and your career.

Natalie Nathanson: And that is very well said. So thank you for sharing that. And, uh, can you let listeners know if they wanna get in touch, what's the best way to reach you?

Matt Waxman: Uh, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. Uh, love to connect up that way. Uh, that's, that's probably the best way. And if you're certainly, if you're interested in learning more about what we do at Arc Terra, uh, our website is arc terra.io and you can find us on various social platforms at that handle too.

Natalie Nathanson: Perfect. Perfect. Uh, well, thank you Matt.

Um, this has been a really great conversation. I especially appreciated hearing, uh, the perspectives around, you know, transformation, starting with making people, uh, just uncomfortable enough and, and how that factors into a transformation and how, uh, you and your other leaders have approached building a culture that supports that kind of shift.

Matt Waxman: Well, thanks so much for having me, Natalie. Great discussion. I enjoyed it as well, and, uh,

It was nice to see you in person too at our round table.

Natalie Nathanson: Yes, yes, for sure. Uh, thank you and thank you too to everyone listening. If today's conversation sparked something new for you, please pass it along to another leader.

We know that insights and experiences like this fuel fresh thinking and really help all of us drive real transformation, both in our companies and in ourselves. So thanks again, Matt, and this has been another amazing conversation on Shift and Thrive. I'll see you all next time.