The Failure Gap | A Conversation With Emily Cates, VP Sales Transformation & Revenue Ops, Zebra Technologies Corporation

Emily Cates, Head of Go-to-Market Transformation and Operations at Zebra Technologies, has built a career by saying yes to opportunities before having every detail figured out. Starting in HR and talent development, she moved into the business through chief of staff, services operations, P&L leadership, and eventually enterprise transformation. Along the way, she experienced startups, hypergrowth, acquisitions, and a successful business turnaround. Her journey has given her a unique perspective on what it takes to move people from agreeing that change is necessary to aligning around HOW to make it happen together.

Episode Takeaways:

• Treat transformation like value selling. Enterprise leaders need a compelling reason to participate in change. Emily emphasizes understanding what matters to each stakeholder, investing in those relationships over time, and connecting transformation to the value they need to see.
• Build it together. Bringing leaders a fully baked solution can invite resistance. Emily prefers giving stakeholders something they can shape together, creating shared ownership instead of hoping everyone enthusiastically embraces someone else’s brilliant PowerPoint.
• Put the truth on the wall. During a professional services turnaround, Emily gathered candid feedback from customers, partners, and colleagues and created a literal “wall of truth.” Seeing the challenges together allowed the leadership team to identify themes, confront root causes, and align around what needed to change.
• Anchor transformation in shared meaning. Whether the goal is becoming more customer-first or changing a go-to-market model, leaders need clarity about what those ideas actually mean in behaviors and decisions. Connecting transformation to existing values and cultural expectations can make that alignment stronger.
• Use radical thinking to break groupthink. When teams get stuck, Emily deliberately introduces an idea far outside the current thinking. The team may never adopt the radical option, but exploring it can move everyone beyond the comfortable circle of familiar answers.

Emily leaves us with a timely challenge around AI. Its speed makes traditional, sequential approaches to alignment difficult. The opportunity is to figure out how to move far and fast without leaving alignment behind. That means treating alignment as iterative work, continuously learning, shaping, and adjusting together rather than waiting for the perfect answer before moving.

To connect with Emily Cates outside of this episode, connect with him on LinkedIn here.

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Dr. Julie Williamson wrote the book on how to Make HOW Matter. After working with hundreds of executives and leadership teams at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, she created the Make HOW Matter Accelerator™ to bring the power of leadership alignment to more leaders at every level.

Grounded in both real-world business experience and social science, this virtual, self-paced program helps you turn the principles of Make HOW Matter into practical leadership skills you can use every day. Whether you’re a small business owner, leading a division, or simply looking to increase your influence and drive better results, you’ll learn how to close the gap between agreement and true alignment, and turn priorities into action. Ready to make HOW matter? Explore the Make HOW Matter Accelerator™.

Learn more about Julie and Karrikins Group:

• Connect with Julie on LinkedIn
• Follow Karrikins Group on LinkedIn 
• Check out Julie's book, 'Make HOW Matter: Key Conversations for Leaders to Build Alignment and Accelerate Growth'
• Learn more about how Karrikins Group helps enterprise teams drive better results

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

Emily Cates

I am a transformation‑driven revenue and commercial operations leader with experience across early‑stage technology companies and global enterprises. My background spans HR, Services, and Sales Operations, giving me a multi‑functional perspective on how organizations grow, scale, and execute. My work focuses on simplifying complexity, aligning organizations around the highest‑value priorities, and building scalable systems that enable predictable, profitable growth.   I lead global Revenue Operations for Zebra Technologies, integrating commercial processes, data, technology, and operating rhythms into a unified model that strengthens forecast accuracy, enhances pipeline quality, and embeds AI‑driven insights into daily execution. My goal is to ensure our commercial engine scales with precision across markets and business lines.

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.

speaker-0 (00:00.576)
Welcome to the Failure Gap, the podcast where leaders get real about what it takes to move from agreement to alignment and turn strategy into action. I'm Julie Williamson, CEO of Karrikins Group and author of the best-selling book Make HOW Matter. I started this podcast because I've seen the same pattern in boardrooms, leadership teams, and organizations of every size. Smart people agree on the strategy, the priorities, and the goals, but progress still stalls.

The space between knowing what to do and aligning your team around how to do it together is what I call the failure gap. At Karrikins Group, our work is focused on helping leaders close the failure gap by making how matter. So alignment becomes more than agreement in the room. It becomes shared action across the organization. In each episode, I sit down with leaders from all sorts of organizations.

To talk about the real stories behind transformation, the tough lessons, the hard decisions, and the breakthroughs that helped them to move forward. Thank you for joining me today. Now let's close the failure gap. We love talking with interesting people, and today we're joined by Emily Cates. She is the head of Go to Go-to-Marketformation and Operations for Zebra Corporation, which is a company I got to know a little bit about when we had the opportunity to work together a few years ago.

Zebra is probably in your everyday life and you might not even know it, which is one of the things that's been really fun for me about getting to know the company is starting to spot zebra in the wild. Emily, we're so glad to have you here today and welcome to the Failure Gap.

speaker-1 (01:40.972)
Yeah, thank you, Julie. I'm really honored to be here and you know excited to contribute to this series.

speaker-0 (01:47.63)
Great. Thank you so much. Well, I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about your journey to becoming an executive at Zebra. How did you find your way into this really interesting organization? And also specifically in this area of go-to-market and transformation.

speaker-1 (02:04.918)
Yeah, yeah. My career started in a number of early stage startup companies. I actually began my career as a human resources professional with every aspiration in the world to become a chief human resource officer one day. And in working in these, you know, early stage startups, you wear so many different hats, right? You really just do the function that you think that you're doing. And so it gave me really great exposure to a variety of different functional areas. And I had always been told every

Career mentor had always said, Emily, one of the best things that you can do at some point if you want to be a chief human resource officer is to go and work in the business. So I always had it in my mind that one day I was going to go and work in the business and then maybe return back into HR. But from those early stage startup companies, one of them was acquired by Motorola. So I know what it's like to go from really small

you know, a a privately owned company into at the time, Motorola was an absolute, you know, mega enterprise global company to kind of go and have the opportunity to work inside of their Motorola University structure. So moving from HR into learning. And I realized there how much of a passion I have for talent development, early career, you know, career growth. And really had the fortune of working with the sales and service and marketing organizations to design and develop their learning.

over over the years, the as Motorola started to downsize, our university structure was part of that that restructure that they had. And so I also know what it's like to to leave a business. I had left and moved from North Carolina up to Canada and spent a number of years in Canada helping to stand up the first one of the early stage telco companies, which is now the fourth largest in Canada. So really excited about the journey. But I was there in an effort to help us

on board and ramp. So kind of a hyperscale situation before we had any any sales opened, any customer success folks on the phone. so really kind of on the ground from the very beginning. And and again that sort of teaches you a a pace of operations, gives you this fascination of really delivering value time to value right becomes really really important in those types of scenarios

speaker-1 (04:19.166)
but as I worked in that company a couple of years later, Motorola reached out and said, Hey, we're building the the learning infrastructure back inside the company. Would you like to join us? So I went back into Motorola and then a few years later, Zebra acquired Motorola's enterprise business. And at the time, Zebra was about a billion dollar company and now we're we're we're inching closer and closer to six billion. So that's been also kind of its own hyperscale, if you will.

and as I was moving over into to zebra, I was still in a learning capacity. And I remember getting invited by who was gonna be the head of services for Zebra. we sat down at the Motorola Cafeteria. I remember like it was yesterday, and he said, Emily, I'm getting ready to lead a 2000-person organization and I'm gonna need a chief of staff. Would you be interested in in doing that role? And I remember thinking in my head,

This is my moment, right? I'm getting ready to go into the business. Right here, I'm kind of leaving the HR talent space and moving into something that really, you know, will hopefully set me up for some future, future career success. so I said yes on the spot. I would love to be chief of staff. And as I walked out of the room that day, I remember thinking, I'm not actually sure I know what a chief of staff does. So I called all of my chief of staff friends, which is why your network is so important, and asked for best practices and guidance and all that kind of stuff.

So I moved into Zebra with this chief of staff role. And I tell you, Julie, it was a hot minute before I started running services operations. And I'm like, could you run services portfolio management? I started kind of collecting more and more service responsibilities. And at one point in our company history, we decided to pull the professional services organization out and have that run on its own. And I had the great fortune of being asked to lead that whole services business. So I had full PL responsibility and

that actually was a a turnaround strategy. We talked about some hyperscale points. This one was a turnaround, and we should probably talk more about this at later on in in the podcast. I could I got some good stories on on that one. but moving from so I did professional services for a number of years, and then at the time zebra was doing an a number we are had we had had a number of different acquisitions, and our chief revenue officer was kind of standing back saying, you know what, we've we've acquired so many, we have so many different flavors of go to market.

speaker-1 (06:32.416)
we really need to put together a true go-to-market vision for the organization because we look very different now than how we did when Zebra acquired the Motorola Enterprise part of the business. And so he reached out and asked if I would take this journey on, kind of go define the vision, help bring the company along on signing up for that vision, helping us figure out what the path of execution is gonna look like.

And yeah, and so of course and in my sort of style of saying yes to things that I don't quite know what I'm getting into, I I said yes and has started to lead not only the go-to-market transformation elements, but also our underlying go to market operations, which I I lead today. And so much of that journey, you know, has been about leaning in and saying yes and and you know, kind of trusting the skills that you've built along the way. But one of the other things I think that's been really important for me is

kind of the early foundational skills that I got from the business school that I I attended at North Carolina State University. Now I'm proud to be able to say I'm on the I chair the board. I was on the board and now I I chair it starting this year for the advisory board for that business school. So it's almost like a full circle moment for me to be able to give back now to university students and future leaders who will hopefully you know get a great foundation and have similar career success.

speaker-0 (07:50.85)
Yeah, and what a great opportunity to stay involved in learning and development and nurturing that next generation of leaders in a different way. Yeah, that's awesome. Emily, I've known you a long time and I didn't know that whole story. I love hearing that. Thank you for sharing. I think it's so great for our listeners to know that you don't have to have it all figured out at the beginning of your career. It can be about finding your passion and following it, but also saying yes to opportunities that you don't really know what they are, but you know in the moment, like this is this is opportunity knocking.

Right. Exactly. So don't say no. When you feel that when you feel that, trust that instinct, right?

speaker-1 (08:28.01)
exactly right. And it it's, you know, as I look back, I wouldn't have done it any differently, right? And it's also given me a really interesting opportunity to see the breadth of how full enterprise operation works, right? And of course you make great relationships and but I have a better appreciation for how companies run, having moved around in in different departments and had a chance to sort impact things at an enterprise level.

speaker-0 (08:51.522)
Yeah, I think that's so valuable. And you got very wise advice early in your career to say, get out in the business. Even if a functional area, whether it's finance or accounting or HR or marketing, whatever it might be, if you can spend some time in the business, it is so valuable in terms of what you can contribute in those functional worlds.

speaker-1 (09:09.902)
So true.

speaker-0 (09:11.564)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great to know. And I'm curious now about the turnaround. I'm gonna come to that in just a second. Yeah. But before before we get there, I'm just curious. I always ask people if there's anything in your own life where you feel like, gosh, I really was able to move from agreeing that that sounded like a good idea to getting it done. or where maybe you've struggled to to do that either way. But is there a story you could share for our listeners just to help them get to know you a little bit about a time when, let's call it in recent history, you've

thought, I would like to do that, but you've had to really work to get aligned and get it done and get over the failure gap.

speaker-1 (09:46.55)
No, I maybe we'll just touch on the you know larger vision that the CRO asked me to put it to put together, right? The transformational go to market vision. And again, I reached out to my network to see who else has has taken on such a such a journey. And I got another piece of advice that I'll share. one of the the folks and was at the time it was really hard to find folks who had go to market transformation. Their title, I will say. Now now it's very hot on LinkedIn. There's tons of folks that are in this space.

but at the time when I was searching around, yeah, I finally got connected again through through the network to and one of the transformation leaders that I was speaking with, she said, Emily, do not underestimate how much personal investment you're gonna need to make with each of the stakeholders that need to sign off on what whatever the transformation is gonna be. she said it it is almost like a, you know, a bit of a sales type of a role, but it's a constant, you can't just

Bring it to them once and then it then we're good, right? You gotta constantly nurture that relationship, nurture that change management individually. And so I realized, you know, especially with all the time that I've spent in kind of the go-to-market sales space, effectively, you know, what what we're doing on these large transformations, it's a it's a bit of a value selling methodology. It's a bit of a

making sure that we really understand the compelling reason, right? The kind of the compelling reason to buy in a sales capacity or a compelling reason to buy in in a transformation capacity. if we don't understand and are not spending the time with each individual stakeholder to really understand what's the compelling reason for them to make such a shift, for their organization to participate, for them to allocate the resources, what whatever the the ask is, right?

then we're not gonna move forward. Right. And so I was spent a lot of time really trying to make sure as we began to figure out what this journey was gonna look like, that we spent time individually understanding the what what's in it for them, what what's their compelling reason, so that we had all all of that out and could start to kind of shape shape the journey together. You know, I I think another thing that oftentimes stands in our way of of moving people forward together,

speaker-1 (11:58.516)
is a is certainly around you know helping folks understand that if we bring an idea that's too too far baked right up front, kind of at the first instance that our stakeholders get a chance to see the presentation or see the recommendation, if it's too far baked, it almost invites a ton of feedback. it can almost sort of feel defensive in some cases where if you

put inside your mind that you're bringing something that needs to be shaped right from the very beginning. and that the whole point of it is to shape it together, right? If we understand from each of the stakeholders what's in it for them and their kind of compelling reason, then if we invite them to shape it, and this is kind of one of the things that's really now in my philosophy of transformation is that we're gonna shape the thing together. It's not mine, it's not yours, it's not my team's, it's not this function's idea versus that function.

This is something we're really gonna put our hands on and it's meant, it's meant to receive feedback, right? It's meant to be pushed and pulled in lots of different directions. You know, I think that alignment's a lot easier to to drive. And so that's, you know, some of the some of the things that we incorporated in making sure that, you know, that journey of go to market transformation was at least set up from the very beginning to have that right alignment and buy-in across the the different team members.

speaker-0 (13:17.73)
Yeah. I really appreciate your push around. It isn't a one and done. These are long term long term transformations require long term relationship investment, right? Like you've got to keep nurturing that relationship with all of the different stakeholders because they have other jobs and you know they're they're under a lot of pressure. So that's right. The degree to which they feel that connection and clarity from you really makes a big difference.

in getting them aligned around that. And I do think we often agree we need stakeholders to be invol involved, but we don't do the work from a relationship perspective to get them get them there. It sounds like

speaker-1 (13:50.638)
It is it is a often under underinvested in and one of the things that really probably is is if you look at sort of ratio of time, it's one of the most important.

speaker-0 (14:00.62)
Yeah, and a huge success factor too. The other thing I h I will tell you, we often say, you know, the field of dreams quote, if if if you build it, they will come. Mm-hmm. And I like to say if you build it together, they will already be there.

speaker-1 (14:14.188)
Yeah. It's exactly it's exactly the case, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well if if we build it and and maybe they'll come, provide you know, it's that that's that's the one where you you get not not everybody might may not be aligned on on coming to to whatever it is that you've built, right? And and that's they may not, right? Or they might push her scream all the way through. So yeah.

speaker-0 (14:32.694)
They might not like it when when they show

speaker-0 (14:38.496)
yeah. Yeah. So I think your your push around build it together is a really important one. And that is a lot. You at Carakin's group, we talk a lot about how you lead and that orientation towards how we lead around here as we do it together. I think that is a is a fundamental shift and it's a na a huge difference between just everybody, yeah, agreeing that sounds like a great idea. I really hope Emily goes and does it. Right. Versus getting aligned and actually rolling up your sleeves and doing it together and making sure that the transformation happens.

speaker-1 (15:07.52)
Exactly. You know, one of the other things in in kind of our work together that really stood out to me was we spent time talking about the barriers, right? What how why would this not work, right? What's gonna get in our way? And that's such a an opposite way of thinking, right? But to get all of those potential that negative energy out on the table, right? Like what how would this fail? What

what do we then all of a sudden we have this roadmap of what we've just got to clear out of the way. And it was such a a point of brilliance to be able to see what everybody was worried about, where the potential holes were gonna be. then, you know, then we can knock them down, right? Then we can put plans around them, then we can agree on how we're gonna overcome those barriers together. And so I think that's been a really phenomenal exercise that I keep in practice today is to right up front, like let's talk about what why we would fail here, which is a you know, just to kind of start start with the end

a negative end in mind, but it helps you get to the right level of success, you know, at the end.

speaker-0 (16:05.196)
Yeah, you know what to address. You know, we do an exercise often called give up and gain. What do you think you're going to give up and what do you think you're going to gain? And in a go-to-market transformation, by the way, when you're asked, you said, you know, we had a lot of different go-to-market ways of working or ways of doing things that you needed to bring together into a joined up approach, people are going to feel like they're giving some things up. True. And helping them to articulate that and put words to it rather than just feeling it and being negative about it can really go far in getting them aligned to.

delivering it together with you as you go forward. Although I have to say, Emily, it's amazing how much when you do that exercise, the give up list gets very big very fast. And you gave

speaker-1 (16:44.086)
The game list is always smaller. Yes, it is. but you know, at least at least you know what you're working with, right?

speaker-0 (16:51.394)
That's right. I you know what? Better to know. We talk about clarity, connection, commitment, and courage. And clarity and connection around those things is so important because it helps you then you can manage it. You can't manage what you don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about turnarounds because you piqued my interest in your introduction. And there are I can't tell you how many clients I've been with, how many people in my network I've heard this from, but the idea that, you know, we really need to turn this business around.

speaker-1 (17:04.589)
Exactly. Yep.

speaker-0 (17:20.128)
And everybody's nodding their head, yeah, we really need to turn this business around. There's so much agreement, but nobody knows how to get a line to get it done because usually some very hard decisions have to be made right in a turnaround situation. So talk me through what was on your mind when you when you kind of gave a laugh around that one and what you think it takes to lean into a turnaround situation for a a a leadership team or a group of enterprise leaders to really get aligned to making that happen.

speaker-1 (17:30.84)
Right?

speaker-1 (17:49.464)
Well, the headline here is that you have to rally around something that scares you. And I'll give you the story. here I was with my with my new professional services leadership team. We were meeting kind of for the first time. We've got everybody, you know, excited to come in and figure out what what this is gonna look like. Me, new leader, team together. We happened to have a new member of our executive team at the time, our chief financial officer, new to the company. And so I thought, well, let's let's invite him in to share.

some of his perspective and leadership insights and let's get inspired and have him meet my team and so and so we welcomed him in and he shared some of his leadership insights but then he said you know I'm not even sure why we have a professional services organization at this company. It is not accrued to the business. The contribution margin is upside down. I'm not sure how long we should continue the investment.

And all of a sudden, you know, you're you're sitting there thinking, that was not that was not expected. And everybody around my ro around the room, around the table, right, is starting to kind of squirm and you could feel the tension rising. And I don't think any of us remembered what what we talked about, you know, the rest of that session while he was there. But the moment he left the room, we all looked at each other and we realized we were that fear of shutting down, right? Was the rallying point. And I kind of looked at everybody and said,

Is that what we're gonna let happen? Or we're gonna turn this thing around, right? And then from that moment on, right, everybody was hands in the table and the middle of the table, ready to go, ready to turn it around. And so we that that moment was so pivotal to to watch and see happen, right? There was no debate about whether we should do it or not. There was no, there was none of that. It was we're all in, what's it gonna take? Right. And so from that point forward,

everything we did was hard, right? We had to really get I did a an exercise that I'll just share that I think was also really impactful. I think some people call it a gallery walk. Some people I call it the wall of truth. I went around and and gathered feedback from all of our customers, our partners, all the internal folks that worked with the organization at the time because I wanted to understand, well what what is the perception of this business, right? why aren't we growing? What is the what do we need to turn around? And so I got all

speaker-1 (20:11.288)
Both you know some positives, but lots and lots of things that needed to get fixed. And I put us in a really large conference room, printed that feedback out verbatim, which was really important, right? We can't be sugar coating stuff, verbatim feedback, put it on huge pieces of paper, like ceiling to floor, and invited the team in. And all of a sudden, when you come into a conference room and there's thousands of points of feedback on a wall, and you kind of just like the whole thing's overwhelming in and of itself. But then you stand there. We we took about an hour and and

read them as many as we can and absorbed it all and it's right it's like right there in your face, right? It's hard to and you read it all and then you you kind of start to realize, okay, I could start to see the problems, right? I can start to see there's there are themes here, right? And then you do the exercise to start realizing what the themes are and and talk to the team about what are the priorities that we're going to go after. So finding that point that scares you.

getting real with the stuff that's that's really the challenge and then figuring out together how to confront it. So that's kind of my professional services story. But three years later, we were turned around, we were positive, we were growing and a really a success story for the company. And if you ever kind of read my background, I was nominated for Steve a Stevie Award and one female executive of the year specifically for that turnaround. So super proud of what we did together as a team. But

You know, had we not had that wake up call and I and I I my our previous CFO knows that I tell the story, because it was exactly what we needed, right? It was exactly the conversation that needed to be had and it gave us that the that fear of of turn that we needed.

speaker-0 (21:48.674)
Yeah, something to coalesce around, something to come together around is so important. And then the other thing that I really took from that story, Emily, is that you again, you did it together. And I think one of the things that I've observed in turnarounds that are struggling is individual leaders go off and try and fix their individual areas by themselves. And then they're like, well, my area is not that bad. So I must not be the problem, right? But it's the accretive value of all of you working together and

maybe everybody being fine but not great that requires the turnaround or whatever the situation might be. And so I I feel like one of the differentiators for you was making sure that everybody was in the room reading the wall of truth.

speaker-1 (22:29.698)
Right. Yeah. Like yeah. And and our HR partners, our finance partners, our e everybody that touched the business that had that could help us turn it was there. Yep. Yeah. Exactly.

speaker-0 (22:39.648)
Yeah, even even if it wasn't, let's call it their problem, right? Like it it was everyone's problem was the point I think you were trying to make, right? Like we all have to solve this. And I think that is a huge miss for people who are in transformation or turn in turnaround situations where everybody agrees they need to turn around, but they are not aligned to do it together as a team. They want to go just try and fix their own areas.

speaker-1 (23:02.146)
That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. You gotta see the full picture and there's nothing like nothing like having it right in front of your face in a very large way to to take on that emotion, right? Of yeah, we gotta we gotta act now.

speaker-0 (23:14.19)
I also think you another piece that I pulled out of that that is, I think, important for our listeners to be thinking about is you didn't step back from what was hard. And hearing, as you put it, the unbarnished truth from your customers, your partners. And yeah, there were some good things, but it was also became apparent that there were some very important themes to pay attention to about how to be better. And, you know, I think it's so easy, it's so easy to not want to.

absorb that right it feels like a body blow. You're like, come on, this is our business, right? Like, how do we do that? But if you don't listen to that, then you don't get better. And I always remember a coach years ago telling me you have to be vulnerable enough to respond to feedback and tough enough to take it. And there's like that I love fine line, you know? Yeah. And it sounds like you put yourself in a situation where as a group, again collectively,

you had to be tough enough to take it and and take action on it and really also be vulnerable enough to hear it.

speaker-1 (24:17.248)
It's exactly right. If you yeah, and I what we always talk about with the team, right? If we can't see it, we can't fix it. And and I don't wanna surface see it. I wanna really see it, yeah. So that we can really fix the root cause in the fur you know, in the first place. Like if we're gonna get after it, we're gonna get after it right. So let let's just cut down to to the real facts of the matter. Yeah.

speaker-0 (24:36.47)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, when I think about this idea of the failure gap in the space between agreement and alignment, something that can happen in big companies like a zebra or a Motorola or some of the other spaces you've been in is that it's easy to lose a particular group or maybe a geography or a product because they're kind of like, well, call me when it's ready, right?

And I'm curious if you have any strategies or ideas for dealing with those people who they're just not as excited to co-create, maybe we could say. And how do you pull them in? It sounds like you do a lot of relationship work. and is that really what you lean on? Yeah.

speaker-1 (25:23.704)
Yeah. You know what one of the I mean the maybe one of the best things that comes to mind for me is it you know, we that in those situations, right, where the co-creation is the the energy around being a part of that may not be coming from certain individuals. that that might it could be okay, right? as long as they're if we've we're we've got to build a relationship, but as long as they're open and seeing that

Perhaps the vision or wherever we're trying to go it is if they've sort of if they're okay with a compelling reason of why do it in the first place, but but maybe aren't personally helping to shape, then a a delegate that they trust is like next best option. And sometimes ends up being the best option, right? Maybe there's a high potential on their team, or maybe there's some other talent in the organization that could use a development opportunity, or maybe there's

you know, someone else that that they trust, right, to come in and help co create and and then provide updates and bring them along on the journey. And sometimes I I find that's that's the best way. As long as we've got representation that they've sanctioned and support, love it. Like we'll we'll move that way and and keep keep them in the loop. So a lot of times that ends up working. And you know, I I find that

it's not too long after when they start to realize what we're doing, where we're headed, what's being created. if there's the right energy and momentum around it, that they will eventually get involved. Right. So you know, I I think that that's worked for for us in a variety of different ways. And but I think it all starts with are we bought into the reason why why do it in the first place? And

you know, f and if we're not right, that's that's where we we gotta spend the time to to get there first before we before we're gonna make any progress.

speaker-0 (27:13.132)
Yeah, for sure. For sure. One of the challenging things about go-to-market transformation is that it often impacts customers or account management or how you're how you're interfacing and coordinating customers across a business. When you think about the work that you've done, obviously getting a more holistic go-to-market strategy for a company like Zebra is very complex and nuanced, and it requires a lot of people to be aligned to.

How are we going to orient towards our customers? That can be an incredibly sensitive space to try and get people aligned to. I'm just curious if you have any reflections on that particular piece of it and how you've leaned into that and working with your business partners to both manage but also push forward the customer relationships or account management that they might be comfortable doing and now they need to do a little differently.

speaker-1 (28:09.218)
You know, one of the first things that comes to mind is at the time when we started our go-to-market transformation, we we've always been a customer first organization, but we didn't we didn't have it really in our vernacular to really talk about being a customer first organization. And one of the things that was happening right about the same time as we were working on our employment brand, we were working on updating our values as a company.

And so one of the first things that that I sort of helped insert myself into with were both of those projects to see if we could really begin to make sure that as a company, right, we were really starting to speak to how we deliver a customer-first experience and what that means to us. we also updated our our sort of sales skills, sales capabilities, sales methodology, all around how we want to.

be customer first. And so that was kind of the first rallying point is defining what that needed to look like in the first place. Right. If we start sort of going out and trying to transform customers and partner relationships and how we work without some clear understanding of what it means to the company to be a customer first organization, how that shows up in specific behaviors, how that shows up in our day to day, how every function contributes to that.

then, you know, we we might be doing things that would have a very short term duration, right? And not really have the longevity that it needs. Because these types of transformations, right? It's not just you roll out something and then you're done, right? You gotta continue to build on it and build on it as you get the feedback and start to think about, you know, how do we take that feedback and deliver something back that's customer first. we really wanted to make sure that, you know, everybody was aligned on on how we would do that. So, you know, I would just encourage folks, if you're

If you have the opportunity, no, it's not every day that people are updating their employment brand or or updating their values, but where you can link it back to something that's probably already resonant in your company, tie it back to some of those core philosophies or core value points, it really helps to anchor it in something that's meaningful and that already everybody has signed up to and joining the company, right? So it's just sort of extracting that level of accountability back to whatever transformation we're trying to drive. And then as long as

speaker-1 (30:28.02)
know the transformation and the efforts and it's something that you have to we we constantly check ourselves on, right? Is this a customer first decision? Is this a a customer first change that's gonna be beneficial? And if it's not, let's continue to iterate on it until it becomes something that everybody's gonna love, right? Or something that will benefit that customer first, you know, brand that we we really want to continue to to maintain. So

that linkage for me was one of the most important and that holds true for any transformation or turnaround or anything that we're trying to do, especially as it touches customers and partners.

speaker-0 (31:02.146)
Yeah, that idea of creating some shared meaning around what do we even mean by the term customer first or whatever, whatever it might be, so important. And also I really appreciated your call to action around leveraging assets that you already have. So if this is embedded in your values or in your culture or in your mission for the organization, link back to there, you don't always have to create something from scratch.

speaker-1 (31:26.328)
That's that that's exactly right. And you know, especially so many companies, all right, your values are part of your performance. And then the more you can tie together, the easier it starts to become. And then it's it's kind of hard not to be aligned if that's what you're anchoring on, right? 'Cause it's you you aligned there when you you joined on.

speaker-0 (31:44.418)
Yeah, for sure. Well, I have one more question for you about your background and some of the experiences that you have, and then we'll kind of bring it out to our last two questions. But before we go there, you did also mention you've had a couple of experiences of being in the hypergrowth space. And that is a little different than being in a turnaround or being in incubated in a larger organization, some of the different things that you have available to you in those kinds of spaces. And so I'm just curious as you think about.

This idea of the failure gap and moving from agreement to alignment about how we do things together. When you're in a hyper growth phase, what are some of the things for people to watch out for to make sure that they are doing the work to get aligned? Because I think in hypergrowth, it can be really tempting. Just everybody's running and gunning, they're doing their thing. You know, we're growing so fast, we can hardly, you know, keep our arms around it. And I think that's often a time when actually at a leadership level and enterprise level.

It's easy to get misaligned.

speaker-1 (32:46.134)
Yeah, I've got two two thoughts on this one. the first around, you know, how do you make sure that people are getting aligned in this this hyper because it is so easy just to cause because you are erasing the clock effectively, especially in some of these early stage companies, right? where you've got to prove shareholder value or prove you know, you've you've got you've got a a clock ticking. So in those scenarios, it is quickly figure out it it's just a more iterative approach. Like you've gotta just really make sure that.

instead of maybe taking it from a piece of white paper, you give you start with something, right? You got to give people something to react to and something to shape. And so what I found is if we can put forward you know, here's here's version one, here's version two, but you're you've got to get your low committee together that's gonna help help you rapidly iterate. And so I think it's just a faster version of what we do and the larger inner for done, right? Like it's just a faster version because you do want to make sure people are staying together. but the the the level of of

Iteration, I think, is just completely higher there. So you it's got to be there. Otherwise, you know, you're gonna and and in some cases, in some of these early stages, you fail fast, right? We all talk about that that concept, right? Get it out there, get something moving. It's 80%'s okay. Let let's that we're but as long as we've done the 80% together and then we realize that's not the right, let's back it up or let's let's pivot or do whatever we need to do, that's fine, but you're still doing it together, right? So it's a faster.

and it might not get to full perfection, but I that's okay in in many of those cases. The other thing that I learned from that scenario and something that I think has really been valuable in how I operate today is when you're in these early stage, you know, you get a lot of really big thinkers that are incredibly bold in their industry and ready to really you know put out something that no one's ever seen before and really just take your head out to, you know, a place you you've never contemplated.

A lot of times now when I see teams kind of getting stuck, right, or we get into groupthink, I sort of personify groupthink like a circle or a ball. And you know, everybody's kind of balling around in the same head space. And so what I like to do when I see that happening or getting stuck is I actually like to put something really radical out on the table, something that's so far out there that everybody's head has to kind of travel out with me. Like they kind of leave the ball for a minute and they go way out there.

speaker-1 (35:09.59)
And no one's ever comfortable with whatever we put on the table that's just so so far out. Right. I mean, and and I don't think it was ever realistic that we would get that far out in the first place, but it breaks you out of the circle, makes your head go out here. And then all of a sudden, what what happens is, and it's fascinating to watch. And I I love doing this. What's fascinating is nobody wants to go get back in the original circle, right? Because they've taken a minute to think about something really different, or and everybody kind of contemplates the far out in a different way.

But nobody ever goes back to the exact same place in that same circle. They may have just been in an hour ago. And so what happens is that ball moves itself forward, doesn't go all the way out there, but it takes a couple steps forward and it tends to unlock something, right? And that sort of wild radical thinking breaks breaks something loose. So I love doing that. And that's something I took from those early stage days, watching tons of amazing entrepreneurs whiteboard, draw stuff that's just crazy, right? Until we land down into what we're actually going to go do.

so you know, there's there's something to be said about how to operate in those hyperscale environments and the iterative and fast pacedness that you gotta be. but there's lots of goodness that applies into how we drive enterprise alignment today.

speaker-0 (36:20.834)
Yeah, for sure. I like that. And I think that's a great push for our listeners to be thinking about if we're stuck in our same old thinking, how do we push ourselves out of that? And it can be by proposing a really radical idea, knowing that it's not where you're going to land, but it might stretch you in important ways. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Cool. Well, Emily, there's two questions we like to ask everybody at the end of these. One is,

If you have any just hot tips for our listeners, if there were two or three things that you would recommend that they do if they are trying to get other enterprise leaders aligned to a shared goal or a priority or a vision, something that they're trying to accomplish. And I think as I reflect back on our conversation, you've touched on a lot of really great spaces for people to be thinking about how they're building their relationships, how they're connecting to a common cause.

And you know, some other things along the way. So just would love for you to give us the two or three that are top of mind for you to say, if you do nothing else, do these things.

speaker-1 (37:23.51)
Yeah, I might I might anchor us on one. I I would encourage everybody, if you are not familiar with the concepts of value clarity, value selling, out outcome alignment, right? I mean, that's that's what we do with our customers. you know, that that is the the way of of driving an alignment to to a purchase. And I don't see that any different than driving alignment to move forward in a

a change or a transformation, right? It's understanding the individual and what's important to them and the return on investment of whatever it is that you're proposing, helping folks understand what happens if we don't move, right? What's the benefit of moving, right? Have we seen this before? Have others gotten, you know, value out of it. So I would encourage you like there's tons of there's tons of models out there. They all tend to anchor on the same thing, which is understanding that the value and return for an individual, each individual

and that's sort of at the heart of helping to develop the relationship around getting to yes on whatever whatever topic you know you might have. So that those principles are kind of transferable is what I'm trying to say. So there's lots of free online materials, there's lots of folks who specialize in this space. I'm sure many of you already have sales organizations that train your sellers in in this type of you know go to market approach.

sit with them and learn how they do it and I guarantee you it will be an enterprise wide valuable skill to have.

speaker-0 (38:50.86)
I love that because it is truly if you are leading a transformation, you are a salesperson. Full stop. Like you are selling to your colleagues a way of doing things that they may not want to do today, but it will benefit the organization at the end of the day. So I think that's a really wonderful, wonderful push for everybody. Thank you. all right. Our last question is simply if you could dream along with me, this is a chance for your radical idea outside of the ball.

You could just dream along and say, I would love to get some community that I'm involved with, or the whole world, or you know, your family or any other kind of unit, a team, that you could get them aligned to do something. What would that something be? What would you love to get some folks aligned to do together?

speaker-1 (39:37.55)
It's such an interesting, it's such an interesting question. you know, I I think there's the the answer that came to mind for me was around, I mean, we're we're sort of in this hyperscale space right now, as it relates to AI, right? the the moment we think we've got folks aligned on capabilities that we might want to implement, your traditional methods of

driving that alignment, like they don't work because AI is evolving so quickly. we can't go through our normal let's let's put out what we think it's gonna be and let's test and let's get everybody aligned on the change management and let's understand that that's it it's already you know 10x by the time you get ready to roll it out that it's it's almost sort of goes back to this more of an an

iterative alignment and iterative change and sort of back to that sort of hypersc hyperscale scenario, but it's happening even faster than what I know, right? So if there were if there was an alignment that I'd love to have, maybe it's just more an invitation. If you all have if anybody here has figured that out or you know starting to see some best practices on how you kind of align on you know AI usage and AI adoption and you know new newer kind of AI capabilities, especially for internal

employees on how they can really start to harness the benefit and the value out of it, but not in a a way that's more waterfall where it might take six months to implement because we're already too late if that's what's happening. Right. So I'm trying to figure out how fast do we go, but how do we, you know, keep the same level of you know some some type of you know good good alignment and change management practices that you would always have. So that alignment is just something that the world's gonna see right as we

embark continue to watch how AI evolves and you know it's really just a a best practice invitation to start to figure out how we do this together.

speaker-0 (41:33.292)
Yeah. Paying attention, right? Like how is this going and moving quickly, I think is the other thing. Yeah. When it comes to AI. Yeah. Well, that is great. It's a great push, a great invitation to our listeners to be thinking about that and looking for those success practices. At Carakin's group, we like to say to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together, to go far fast, get aligned. And I think that we need to go far fast with AI. And so figuring out how to do it together is going to be really important for a lot of organizations as they go forward.

Emily, it's been wonderful talking with you and connecting with you. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your experiences and your thoughts with our audience. I really appreciate it. And we've loved having you on the failure gap. So thank you very much.

speaker-1 (42:15.148)
Yeah, thank you. My pleasure.

speaker-0 (42:17.004)
Yeah. When just a reminder to all of our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it, like it, and pass it along. And we will see you the next time on the failure gap.