The Failure Gap | A Conversation With Kristin Russell, CEO and Board Member, CBTS

Kristen Russell’s leadership journey is anything but linear. From managing engineers at Sun Microsystems to leading global operations at Oracle, serving as Colorado’s first Secretary of Technology, and now guiding CBTS as CEO, her career has been shaped by two questions: Can I learn? and Can I contribute? That curiosity has helped her lead large-scale transformations across industries and navigate the often-messy space between agreement and alignment.

Episode Takeaways

• Transformation is emotional, not just strategic. Leaders often focus on the intellectual side of strategy while overlooking the emotions people experience during change. As Kristen puts it, “strategy is intellectual, transformation is emotional.” 
• Communication is never one-and-done. Alignment requires ongoing dialogue, listening, and clarification. If you're tired of repeating yourself, your team may just be starting to absorb the message. 
• Focus on advocates, not just skeptics. Early in her career, Kristen spent too much energy trying to convert the loudest detractors. She learned that investing in champions creates momentum that helps bring the broader organization along. 
• Clarity is a leader’s primary job. In the absence of clarity, people fill in the blanks themselves. Transparency about what is working, what is not, and what remains uncertain builds trust and keeps teams moving forward. 
• Work on the team before the strategy. At CBTS, Kristen prioritized leadership team alignment, role clarity, and shared ways of working before tackling ambitious transformation efforts. Sometimes the fastest path forward starts with slowing down long enough to get aligned. 

One of the most memorable ideas from this conversation is that leaders cannot simply sponsor change for others. They must change how they lead. Alignment is not a presentation, a project plan, or a motivational poster collecting dust in the break room. It is the daily work of creating clarity, building trust, having the hard conversations, and keeping your hands on the wheel as the road changes.

To connect with Kristin Russell outside of this episode, connect with her on LinkedIn here.
--------------------
Is misalignment holding your organization back?
Aligned teams deliver better results more consistently, and they have deeper connections to each other and their organizations. 

Download our free Leadership Alignment Evaluation Tool and take the first step toward transforming how your team works together.

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

Kristin Russell

As CEO of CBTS and a member of its Board of Directors, Kristin shapes and drives the strategic direction of the organization. A dynamic visionary, she is guiding the evolution of CBTS from a traditional infrastructure and managed services firm into a market leader in AI-enabled digital transformation solutions. Kristin is a seasoned industry veteran with over 20 years of experience driving transformative growth at top companies in the technology sector. Prior to joining CBTS, she served as the President of Arrow Electronics’ Global Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) division. Before joining Arrow, Kristin held key leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. She also served as the Secretary of Technology and Chief Information Officer for the State of Colorado. Kristin’s leadership has earned her numerous industry accolades, including recognition on CRN’s ‘Top 100 Channel Leaders’, the GTDC Innovator Award, Women We Admire’s ‘100 Women in Technology’, and CIO of the Year by the Denver Business Journal.

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 (00:00.056)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap, where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people, and today we're joined by Kristin Russell. She's the CEO of CBTS and a member of its board of directors. She shapes and drives the strategic direction of the organization. A dynamic visionary, she is guiding the evolution of CBTS from a traditional infrastructure and managed services firm into a market leader in AI-enabled digital transformation solutions.

Kristin, welcome to the failure gap.

speaker-1 (00:31.042)
Thanks Julie so much. I'm so excited for this conversation.

speaker-0 (00:34.722)
Yeah, I'm just delighted to be able to talk with you today. And I'm looking forward to hearing a lot about your experiences with moving teams through the failure gap, because I know you have a lot of background in that space. But before we get there, I would love it if you would share with our audience a little bit about your journey to becoming the CEO.

speaker-1 (00:50.892)
Yeah, so I I've always I always described my journey as being circuitous. And that's basically code for I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was you know, landing into different opportunities at different stages in my life. And I started in tech at Sun Microsystems. In fact, I was one of the first people to be hired to s to do the build out of the of the campus in Colorado. And I didn't know this at the time.

But Sun was doing a test to see if non-technical managers could manage highly technical engineers, like tier three kernel engineers. And obvious I didn't know it was a test. And obviously I passed because I ended up spending 13 years at Sun and taking different jobs about every 2.3 years. after Sun, I went to Oracle, where I ran Oracle's global data centers and computing operations worldwide. And then

I got this crazy call from the transition team for the then governor of the state of Colorado talking to me about the first ever chief information officer and secretary of technology for the state of Colorado. And I have to tell you, Julie, I was like, why are you calling me? Like, I'm not qualified for this. I don't know what government does. Like, and they're like, well, we've looked at 500 resumes, Kristin. And, you know, we really believe that like, you know, you should be the one to take this job.

And I was like, I'm not, no, this is just not working that that's like not a good idea. And and he and I remember a good friend of mine said, but Kristin, you'll forever be known as Madam's secretary and you'll be able to sit on the governor's c cabinet. And I'm like, I don't want to be called madam. I don't, I don't want to sit on a on a cabinet. Like those are all bad things for me. And so I ended up just interviewing with the governor and

He asked me this question and said, Well, you know, why do you want this job? And I had just told my husband, we're not taking this job. I'm just gonna, you know, take a selfie, show my daughters that I almost worked for the governor. and so when he asked me this question, I was like, Wow, I I don't know really how to, you know, answer this, but I switched around. I said, Why would you why would I take why would be I consider this job? And he said, well, it's about meaningful work.

speaker-1 (03:13.132)
And it just really struck me that, you know, that is something that's so critical that I think so many people are searching for in their careers today. And so I end up, long story short, I ended up taking the job and served under him for three years. And then I went to Deloitte because we were doing some really radical things at the state of Colorado around cloud AI.

Analytics, digital transformation. And Deloitte had said, hey, we want you to come and run the digital government practice for the firm nationally. So working with state, local clients as well as higher education around you know, all things digital, which was pretty broad, broadly defined. Then I went to or Aero, where I ran both their intelligence solutions business as well as their I their IT, their enterprise computing solutions business.

and then I kind of sat there and you know, what had navigated, what had helped me navigate Julie through all these transitions was two things. Can I teach and can I learn? You know, is there something that I don't know? I'm a super curious person. So I was always like, what is that? I don't understand that. I want to learn that. And then secondarily, do I have something that I can help that company or that organization with? So I was at Oracle and I had this moment in my career where I said, you know, am I really where I need to be? You know, especially I.

Things had just kind of fallen into my lap. And so it wasn't necessarily as purposeful as maybe it should be. And I just said, you know, I really want to be a CEO. I really want to get back to B2B tech, where we're selling solutions to customers. And I'd like to go actually downmarket into a PE back company. And so I took some time to really be thoughtful about what it is that I wanted to do. And through that journey, I found CBTS. And I have to tell you, I feel like I hit the lottery.

Like I I started about a year ago and I just love the people. I love our clients. I love what the company stands for, what we're trying to do. And so it's just really in many ways I feel like I've come home in being CEO of CBTS. So I feel very privileged and grateful for the opportunity.

speaker-0 (05:24.098)
You know, I really love so many things about that story, but the one that I want to really call out is that you started at the very beginning saying, I didn't know where I was gonna go. Like I didn't know what that journey was gonna be. And I think that's so helpful, especially for some of our younger listeners, that you don't have to have it all figured out day one, job one. Right. I always tell people it's about taking your next step, not your last step. Keep exploring, right? And that sounds like exactly what you did as opportunities came up, even if they felt like

speaker-1 (05:46.668)
That's exactly right.

speaker-0 (05:54.06)
Maybe a strange turn like going to work for state government. You know, who who dreams of that as a child, right? But you you took that opportunity.

speaker-1 (06:02.572)
That's exactly right. I mean, my first job out of college was working for the railroad. Nobody works for the railroad. Like, you know, I I, you know, and and to your point though, it's about this exploration. And I think it comes into a lot of probably what we'll talk about too, is that as leaders, I think we have this false burden on us that we have to have complete, you know, certainty of what's gonna happen in change, especially. And the reality is that's just not true.

You need to have conviction, you need to have curiosity, you need to have courage. There's a lot of other things that you need to have, but you don't always know where things are gonna land and how it's gonna work out. And certainly that's been the case for my career, for sure.

speaker-0 (06:45.57)
Yeah. And I think that's actually a great transition into the conversation about the failure gap because I do think when we talk about this idea of agreeing that something is a great idea, hope somebody does it, versus getting aligned and actually taking action, reprioritizing, changing resourcing models, doing all of the work that it takes to transform an organization. I do think that certainty holds people back. They can be certain about the outcomes, but not about how to get there.

And that stops them from taking action. They agree it would be great if we got there, but that seems like a lot of work along the way and we don't exactly know how to do it. And your orientation of that learning mindset and being really curious about what is possible and what we could do, I think is probably one of the things that helps teams to navigate the space between agreement and alignment. When you think about your experiences in that space, helping companies to transform or

Teams to change, what really stands out to you? Is there an example you can give us of where you've done that and where you've seen teams either struggle or succeed in getting aligned and taking action?

speaker-1 (07:53.152)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of concepts here. I mean, one is I think that there is, you know, we we I mean, obviously at the core of this is communication. And just I can't overstate the importance of communication. And I think that there's a false narrative that we give ourselves that leaders that stand in front of a team and give a PowerPoint presentation of bullets of, you know, what's gonna happen is communication. It's like check the box. I've already been in the change curve for

You know, a month, two months, whatever. So I'm already through that as a leader, and I come out to the team and I say, okay, we're gonna make this change, and it's bullet points on a on a PowerPoint. And I think we lose the plot around some of the more fundamental things that we have to address to get people aligned, which is you know, obviously what's in it for them, but even more fundamental, why is the change happening? What is the problem getting centered on what problem we're trying to solve?

making sure that people understand the implication of not changing, right? Because remember, the door of do nothing looks really good for everybody. Like I just vote, we do nothing, right? And so if you don't take them through the process to say, here's the situation, here's the problem that we're trying to solve. If we don't change, this is kind of the negative unintended consequences that may happen. Here is my plan.

Then here's what I need from you. And then here's the benefits. And this framework I've used throughout my career to really talk through, you know, those change elements to get people aligned. and that's been effective. Like, but it's constant communication. And that really means at the at the at the core of that is to listen. It's not to, it's not to just talk and present the information. It's, you know, our feedback to me.

What does that sound like? What questions do you have? What does that look like after the change happens? You know, how do they feel about that? You know, you know, we always talk about the fact that strategy is intellectual transformation is emotional. And unless you start talking about the emotional side of change, you're not going to really get that alignment and therefore not the results.

speaker-0 (10:06.316)
I really love that idea that strategy is intellectual, transformation is emotional. And I think we forget that. We just assume the strategy is obvious and we should all be excited about it. And so now let's get there. And we forget all of the emotional work that it takes to bring people along that journey. You mentioned the the is it an archetype or is it a stereotype? I'm not sure, but of the leaders standing up at the front of the room with their slides and their bullet points and feeling like, I've communicated. And I think

That's also a bit of a fallacy, right? It's a that communication is a one and done. Well, I did it, I told them, and so now I can get on with my day. And I I really appreciate you coming back to the emphasis on it's a continuous thing. You have to keep telling people over and over again. I had one person say to me, if if you're getting bored of hearing yourself talk about it, people are just starting to listen. Has that been your experience too? Yeah.

speaker-1 (10:56.622)
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's the seven rule, like you have to hear something seven times before it makes sense. And in different, you know, modes and channels and things like that. I mean, you know, I always say it it's it's not a one and one and done. It's like stepping into a stream. It's never the same place, even if you're standing in the same place. Like the organization changes, things change around you.

So you have to be constantly talking about what's happening and how that's impacting the change and your approach and your strategy and things like that. And sometimes I think, you know, back to the I I don't I don't know exactly where this is gonna go in the future. That makes leaders hesitate to communicate because they're like, well, I don't know the answer to this question. I don't know where things are gonna go.

But I think that's where, you know, authentic leadership comes in. And you just have to say, like, here's what I don't know, but here's what I do know, and here's what I'm convicted on about the path that we're on. And that we're not going to lose sight of where we're trying to go. But the journey to get there, yes, we've got to be agile and we've got to realize that we don't, it doesn't stay, it's not a picture that gets shot that stays in one place. We're going to have to deal with lots of things that come along the way.

And that's where that communication, you know, has to be constant. needs to be two-way, not just one way. and really talking through what does this look like? What does this mean? Because again, in a bulleted presentation, one line could be interpreted a million different ways. So you've really just got to dig beyond that in terms of like what does this look like? What does this mean for you? what can you expect from me as a leader and help them to understand.

You know, that you're gonna be the person that's going to help shepherd this change, but you're gonna be constantly communicating with them throughout the process.

speaker-0 (12:59.148)
Yeah, you know, we have an expression at Carrickens group, we say talk, don't tell. Like how do you have that conversation instead of just telling people all the time? And that's what it's you're bringing to mind for me is that emphasis on have the conversation, don't just read the slide or forward the email.

speaker-1 (13:17.13)
Exactly. I mean, you know, we I think that we over, you know, again, and I talked about the fact that leaders are in the change curve kind of earlier in in the process. And so they have kind of resolved some of the things that are really obvious. And so you've got to just make sure you're slowing down to take people through that process. and you know, I I think the other thing that I would add is that especially early in my career when I was

Doing a lot of change. I've always done transformation and change management. But, you know, I noticed what would happen is when there is a major change, people would fall against the bell curve, right? So there'd be 20% of the team that would be excited, they get it, they're going to be advocating for the change. There's 50% that kind of sits back and says, I'm not sure. We'll wait and see how this game gets played out before I jump on the field. And then there's 10 to 20% that's

absolutely against it. And I think the mistake that I made early in my career is I try to get the 10 to 20% that were negative. And and because I'm like, if I can get them the negative Nelly, then I certainly am going to move that bell curve over, you know, to to be very positive towards the change. And that was absolutely the wrong thing to do. I I realized over time focus on the people that are going to help carry

speaker-0 (14:27.148)
If I can get

speaker-1 (14:42.902)
The advocacy of the change forward, because where we spend attention and time as leaders has a dramatic effect in terms of people's behavior. And so that 50%, if you're spending time with people that are super positive about it, that 50% starts to get on board and you celebrate the wins and you make sure you're convicted in the change and you're consistent with, you know, this is the path that we're going down. I think that was another key learning of things that maybe I

didn't approach maybe the best way initially early in my career.

speaker-0 (15:16.95)
Yeah, I think that's a really powerful learning because it's easy to focus on that bottom 30% and want to pull them along. But we know from a social science perspective that that optimism, that positivity is contagious, but it's not as contagious as the negativity. Negativity spreads very, very quickly throughout organizations. So if you're putting your time and energy into the negative space, it actually is a drain on the whole effort around transformation. So that idea of

speaker-1 (15:24.878)
So also.

speaker-0 (15:46.872)
How do you move some of those 50% into the more positive space and help spread, help that to be contagious? That's a really powerful way to think about where you put your limited time and resources as a leader in terms of what you're focusing on for transformation.

speaker-1 (16:01.696)
Yeah, I mean you talked about, you know, talk versus tell. And you know, there's something even more end element to this. It's like walk before you talk before you tell. Right. And so like as a leader, if you are you know, doing the things that you you want people to emulate and adopt in the organization, we're rolling out, you know, Claude across our enterprise and you know.

As CEO, I'm a part of the Claude Office Hours that my team is doing for the entire company to understand, kind of to ask questions and things like that. So people are seeing the fact that as CEO, this is important to me. And there's some really exciting things happening. And I am along the journey with them and, you know, being a part of the change and demonstrating.

kind of leading by example, right? What I want them to do. And I think that's so powerful because you're right, the negative can amplify and deafen any of the goodness that's coming out of the change really, really quickly.

speaker-0 (17:03.522)
And it seems like that idea of modeling the way, you know, Kuzas and Posners always talked about modeling the way for leaders is so important because it's so vis it's much more visible than leaders often even remember for themselves. Totally. What they do is is really visible and amplified through the organization. You also bring to mind for me, we talk a lot about grounded optimism being the space between being pragmatic and future focused. So as you think about pragmatically, really where are we today and what's the work we have to do versus where are we trying to get to.

And what's that strategy or that ambition that we're working towards? And being able to bring that grounded optimism as a leader in times of transformation can be hard. We talked earlier about it, you know, sometimes it feels very lonely as a leader to be the one who keeps trying to push forward even when things are hard and when it feels easier to keep things, you know, go back to the status quo or go back to what we used to know and where we used to be comfortable. And I think that idea of.

Threading the needle between being pragmatic and saying, Yeah, this is hard right now. Things aren't all dialed in. We don't know exactly how this is gonna work. And we need to keep moving forward is a key part of leadership in times of transformation. And then picking up on that a bit from what you're sharing in terms of staying focused on what's possible.

speaker-1 (18:23.234)
Yeah. You know, it's it's so true. And, you know, I think sometimes it it is exhausting as a leader to be totally candid, right? To continue to have to, you know, get people behind it and have the positive message. But I I love what you said about, you know, being pragmatic, that pragmatic optimism, because I think that that's really critical in terms of, you know, authenticity. There is that phrase the emperor has no clothes, and especially as CEO.

The thing I worry the most about is what do I not know that's going on in the organization. And so when you're leading change, you've got to be super open to getting that feedback in a lot of different ways. And then just responding to that in a very pragmatic, very authentic way and identifying what things are not working. You know, I always say it's interesting because leaders are sometimes afraid of s you know, pointing out the elephant in the room. but the reality is it is such a way to

let people have safety in the change because they go, okay, she she knows what's what's not working. I can relax. It's on, it's on the radar, we're gonna solve it. And I don't have to carry on this burden about this because she's named it and we're gonna go address it. And so I think that that is actually a really important tool.

speaker-0 (19:31.576)
Has

speaker-1 (19:47.234)
I think the other thing is in change and you know, maybe it's because I'm a a data nerd, but I really think that numbers are such an important way to communicate to to people in general. I mean, you know, I I kind of weird out on this, but it's like the purest form of communication we have on the planet, right? When I say, you know, I'm, you know, very something, you are trying to interpret what that very means. So it's like things are going very well with this change project. It's like

I don't know if I've communicated anything of worth to you, but if I say we're 60%, you know, into this change, into where the destination is, you automatically feel like there's trust. And you know, when when I think about the gap, the failure gap that you talk about, it's really because there is a there's a decline of trust between the leaders and the employees and and their people. And so

How do you build trust during change? And so some of the things that I communicate often, but also use data wherever you can so that people don't feel like there's, you know, you're whitewashing anything or, you know, this has to be this way. And it's fine. It's everything's fine. You know, they can actually understand exactly where the company's at in that change curve.

speaker-0 (21:06.764)
Yeah. And I would say the third thing that I picked up on there is transparency. And as a leader, not being afraid to acknowledge what isn't working so that people can trust that you've got it, that you know that you're not living in la la land, right? That everything is okay. and I think that's really important too. We actually just recently had a client that was really struggling during a tough transformation. And one of the disconnects between sort of this most senior leaders and one level down.

at one level down was saying they don't even know what's going on. They don't know the reality that we're dealing with. And the most senior leaders were like, we totally know what's going on. But they never talked about it. They didn't want to, you know, really be transparent about it. They wanted to just focus on the success stories. And in doing that, there wasn't that trust of, so they do understand and they are, they, they're, they're getting a plan to deal with it. So I think that transparency piece that you that you called out is also

Really important for getting across the failure gap and getting people really aligned and energized to go through the hard work of transformation because it's not easy.

speaker-1 (22:15.446)
It's not easy. Yeah. And you know, you you you talked about transparency. I I always talk to my team about clarity. I I say that, you know, the number one job of a leader is to provide clarity. and we should do a lot of other things. We should inspire and, you know, get things done and things like that. But the one number one job of a leader is to provide clarity because in the absence of clarity is where you see all this diffusion of understanding, trust, you know.

What am I working on? And people will kind of go in their own direction, not even for malintent, but just because organizations actually move. That's what they do. They evolve. And so I think, you know, it's it's transparent clarity. It's about, you know, this is what's happening and this is where we're going. And staying convicted on that, even when there's uncertainty at, you know, at at hand, right?

speaker-0 (23:07.96)
Yeah. Yeah. And doing that by focusing on the people who are gonna fuel the energy around it.

speaker-1 (23:13.762)
Yes, exactly. And like we talked about, you know, focusing on the people that can be advocates for that and evangelists into the organization and to have their stories being told because it's like, well, I know, I know Julie. So Julie's saying this, you know, I may not know Kristin, but I know Julie. And Julie's the one that I can anchor into about how she thinks about that. And that I just think that's so powerful for leaders to

To leverage that.

speaker-0 (23:44.236)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean the more that we can bolt on and connect people, the stronger the message.

speaker-1 (23:50.571)
Absolutely.

speaker-0 (23:52.46)
When you think about your career and you've been in a lot of different organizations and through a lot of different types of transformation, is there one that stands out to you, an experience that stands out to you that was particularly re rewarding where you feel like, yeah, that worked really well. And what are a couple of the things that made it go well?

speaker-1 (24:11.82)
Yeah, I mean, I I I've been so I I feel so grateful and blessed for for my career because I do feel like I've had this potpourri of different experiences and got to meet so many amazing, wonderful people. I I think, you know, we're we're still in the transformation at CBTS. So I don't think it's one of those ones that I can say, yes, completed and and done.

I have another story for you, you know, and maybe one that didn't go well that I I can speak to. But yeah, what I what I love about what we're doing at CBTS is we are transforming this, you know, 30-year-old company into an AI-enabled cloud security company. And what's so phenomenal about it is the people in this organization and the culture that we have.

And when I came in and I brought a new leadership team together, some people that had been in the company, some people from the outside, we really took the time to work on the leadership team itself. You know, I think sometimes leadership teams, when they come in together, are like, let's go work on the strategy, let's go work on this plan, this initiative, whatever. And I said, Hold on, we actually need to work on the team first. And so I had them do.

charters for every single function in the organization and you know starting at the basic level why does this why does this or or function exist? What is your commitment to the organization in terms of KPIs and output? What do you need from the rest of the or the executive team to be successful? And we really spent the time to get clear about the different functions. And then we started talking about okay, what's our social contract? What how are the ways that we want to go work together? What are our

Agreements and commitments to one another about how we're going to solve problems together, how we're going to communicate, how we're going to, you know, work through things. And then the and then the third thing was: okay, what's the strategy and the plan? And I think that that actually taking those steps has made us incredibly successful. We are taking on some of the biggest things, every single acronym you can have ERP, AI.

speaker-1 (26:24.704)
You know, all sorts of things at once. We're doing a brand launch, we're doing all sorts of things at once. And some days I'm like, I am insane. Like this, nobody would say, like, go do all these major five things at once. And yet, like, I believe in the foundation that we built and the alignment that we've had. And it's not perfect. It's never done. It's constantly, it's you have to build that muscle and that hygiene every single day to be successful. But I'm

I'm proud of what we've been able to do at CBTS just in terms of our transformation right now.

speaker-0 (26:59.138)
Yeah, you know, you've hit on some of the things that you shared earlier in terms of clarity and transparency and communication and building trust across the team. I think that's really awesome. And also I really appreciate where you ended that, which was to say it carries on. The work never stops. Alignment doesn't happen and then end, right? You have to keep fueling it, you have to keep investing in it. But you do get better at it, you get stronger at it, the team comes together around it, it becomes easier, but it never stops.

speaker-1 (27:15.288)
Yeah, it just

speaker-1 (27:29.539)
Exactly. It never stops. And you know, you have to we have in our executive team, we have, you know, we assign somebody that's like the minor. And the minor means like they're mining for not conflict, but like what are we missing? Like what, you know, is this really working as well as we think it is? Or what about that? They're the people that are actually trying to make sure that we're getting diverse perspectives into that room so that we can make the best decisions.

But you're spot on. This never ends. It never ends. There's never you don't get to not change as a corporation to especially right now. You don't go, no, not not this year. We're just we're gonna we're gonna duck out of the change thing this year. It's just we got a lot on our plate. It never ends. And so, you know, what the work that you do around this understanding this failure gap, I think is so critical because you can get alignment or agreement.

speaker-0 (28:24.822)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (28:27.65)
fairly easily, but to get to the end result, to return on the investment, you really have to have that alignment and it has to be constantly managed. It's like, you know, a car going down the road that's, you know, that doesn't have a driver. Like you got to constantly turn the wheel and check the dashboard and make sure that the wheels are going the right and pay attention to traffic. That's the alignment that is g constantly being needed and changed.

you don't get to take your hands off the wheel and just let the car drive.

speaker-0 (28:58.594)
Yeah, it's a great analogy. Except for in the age of Waymo, but it is a great analogy.

speaker-1 (29:03.014)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's okay. But even

speaker-0 (29:07.436)
there right like I've been in a way mode and it's constantly adjusting like you can see the steering wheel moving even though there's nobody sitting there.

speaker-1 (29:13.774)
Exac well, exactly. I drive a EV and it says you're not looking up. You're not looking out, you know, it catches me. You're not your hands aren't on the steering wheel, you're not looking out the when I have it on autonomous. So even in that situation, it's say, Hey, we need you to figure out whether or not this is going in the right direction. And you're just that's right, that's right.

speaker-0 (29:30.22)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (29:36.342)
I love it. I love it. Well, you said you had another story that you might want to share about a transformation that didn't go so well. I'll just check in and see if there's something you want to share there.

speaker-1 (29:46.124)
Yeah, I mean, sure. I mean, I so when I was at the state of Colorado, I, you know, I was brought in to really be a change agent for for IT and the Office of Information Technology. And so we were one of the first states to go to a cloud first policy. We were doing AI type of work even back then. We were just really pushing the boundaries on a lot of different fronts. And, you know, I came in, I run

Tech for a long time. So, you know, I they were on five different kind of email plot communication applications. three were end of service life. They were all old. Nobody could communicate to each other, even within the state. So the 30,000 employees of the state couldn't communicate with each other. There was no sharing of information. And so I was like, this is easy, people. Like this, we just have to go to a single cloud-based platform, you know.

speaker-0 (30:41.526)
Well

speaker-1 (30:43.094)
No big deal. Like this is this has been done a million times. Like I'm surprised that you guys have, you know, lasted this long. And so, you know, what looked like a really simple decision from a technology standpoint ended up becoming very, very complex. And you know, what I realized and what I learned in that moment is something that I've held through my entire career in tech: is that technology is easy, it's people that are hard.

And you know, when we think about new technologies and especially right now with AI, you know, it comes back to that emotional human aspects. I'm fear, you know, I fear, I have uncertainty, I have doubt. What does this mean for me? my my I'm not as efficient. I don't I I feel like I'm gonna get made fun of. There's all these very humanistic aspects of change, especially when there's a new technology. And so while we had agreement that we were gonna go to this new platform and

Everybody agreed and signed off and you know, everybody was excited about it. What I realized through the implementation is that we really didn't have alignment because they didn't understand, they understood the benefits of it, but they didn't understand how it would impact them in their workflow. And so, you know, we had to real I really had to take a step back and say, okay, it's not about the technology, it's about, you know, people's behavior and how they work. And you need to slow down.

You know, sometimes you have to go slow to go fast, especially in change. You know, we had to I had to address address the the FUD or the fear, uncertainty and doubt, especially because we were moving to cloud. And at that time, cloud was like this big scary thing that people were like, we can't trust the public cloud. and then just staying the course and just saying, you know, because there were times where people were calling me and saying, We got to go back, we gotta go back, we can't, we can't stay on this course, it's too hard. It's

We're getting too much noise. And in a public sector arena, you get lots of noise from lots of different places, including, you know, media and you know, attorney general's office and all sorts of things. And so there's a lot of pressure to to go, well, maybe we should turn back. And so, but we didn't. And I'm really proud of the fact that despite, you know, not handling the change management as well as I would like to have happened, we stayed the course and it's in.

speaker-1 (33:08.578)
Colorado became, you know, one of the best state examples about using, you know, new technology to really elevate how the state was serving its constituents, which at the end of the day, that was the whole point. And so, you know, it's it's one of those things where I learned a ton. And you know, I just think that what may be simple and and like of course, like this is obvious.

And how many changes are like, this is obvious that we have to do this, that it's like, no, it it actually you need to take them back to like, why are we doing this? What's the implications if we don't move? You know, what's the plan? Putting lots of support around that change.

speaker-0 (33:50.892)
Yeah. I it's such a great story because so many organizations are confronted with similar types of transformations. I'll have 17 ERP systems, seven of which are the same system but different instances of it, right? And it's like, well, we should consolidate that. Easy to say, it's easy to agree to, really hard to align to because of all of the different journeys that people have to take. And we want to define one journey for people to take to get there. But in fact, one of the things you've highlighted, right, is that

different parts of the organization have different needs. And their path to get there is going to look different. And as a transform as someone who's trying to lead transformation, it's really important to figure out what those different journeys are and help people along the way.

speaker-1 (34:36.098)
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I I I mean, I know you're you're talking to me, but I'm fascinated by the work that you do. So I'd love to hear like, you know, how do you help organizations approach that? Cause I think that that's the that's the million dollar question, right?

speaker-0 (34:51.256)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we'll all have a conversation about that for sure, but I'll share here that one of the things that we really believe in at Carakins Group is having the space for what we call quality conversations across the leadership team. Most leadership teams that we work with, if we ask them what conversations are you avoiding? What what are the conversations you're not having right now that you know you need to have? We'll get a pretty good list pretty quickly because they know what they should be talking about.

And they know why they're not having those conversations, but they don't yet have the space and the intersections between them to have those really quality conversations about what's holding us back and why aren't we getting where we say we want to get to. And once we start to unlock the capacity on a team to have those quality conversations about not just the software or the technology, because you know that's what they want to talk about, right?

They want to talk about the technology and the vendor and the this and the that. And we had got to train other people, but they don't want to talk about how they are leading. And so for us, we really believe that knowing what you want to do and why is important. But leaders also need to know how to lead together in order to transform their organizations. And that's the conversation that's missing, I think, in most in most transformations. There's a lot of conversation about what we should be doing.

Or what other people should be doing. Because leaders like to change other people. They don't really love to change it themselves.

speaker-1 (36:21.194)
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I love that so much because it is the how. I mean, you yes, you've got to ground them on the why, but so many leaders just talk about the what, right? And they don't talk about the why, but then they don't talk about the how. And you know, again, I I talked about my team and I'm just I I love my team because we started out with this thing that we need the minor to be able to say, okay, what what are the conversations we're not having? Or hey, that looks like a disagreement. Do let's let's pull the thread on that. Well, now my team is so

you know, they're so good at actually having those conversations that we don't leave the room in most cases without having the tough conversations because we know it's so critical. You know, I talk about the fact that as a leadership team, we're kind of the parents of the organization. And it's like children when parents don't get along or they're, you know, or there's, you know, there's not the right communication, the kids don't feel safe. The kids, you know, the children don't aren't sure kind of how

How to progress forward. And it's the same in organizations. Leadership teams have got to be able to have those tough conversations because they've got to be able to work together and then come together and say, okay, we are a united front. This is what we're going to do going forward. You can trust us and we're open, right? We're open to your feedback.

speaker-0 (37:40.524)
Yeah. I really love that role of the miner. It's it's such a data geek name, by the way, for that role, right? I just want to point that out at heart. At heart. We know where you come from. We know your best. What a great named role to have, right? That somebody should be mining for those conversations that we need to have. So I really love that as a a success practice that people can take away. Like if you can name that role.

speaker-1 (37:47.15)
I know, sorry. Yeah. That hard.

Exactly. Exactly.

speaker-0 (38:08.93)
Whatever is appropriate for your organization, and have somebody who's really paying attention to are we having the conversations we need to have? Or are we just having the most comfortable conversations that keeps everybody in a, you know, quasi safe space? And I think that could yield some really interesting results for people as they go forward. Yeah.

speaker-1 (38:28.192)
Yeah. Yeah, I agreed. Agreed. And I think it's also just knowing the people around the table and who they are and where they came from and you know what their personalities are and their preferences around communication and things like that and understanding that, you know, it's not there's diverse people around the table. And so you've got to use different paths to get to those conversations in different ways as a leader of a team. And

And being very respectful and understanding that because not everybody's going to show up as you and nor should they. And so how do you actually help to pull that out so that people feel like they can be themselves and you can get to what the richness of the conversation that you need as a leader to take the change forward?

speaker-0 (39:17.708)
Yeah. And I really love where we started and you were saying that different people are different places in the transformation journey and you have to meet them where they are. You can't ask them to meet you where you are, especially if you're ahead. You've got to be willing to walk that path with them. So yeah. Exactly. We have covered a lot of ground in the last little bit of time. So I want to say thank you for some really great insights and examples and stories about how you have led transformation in organizations.

Talked about clarity and communication and the need for transparency and building trust and having really clear conversations with people about what the transformation looks like, spending your time and energy on the people that are gonna put positive energy and you know, positive space into the into the work that needs to be done. So lots of great little takeaways for people who are listening. Before we shut down, we always ask people a couple of questions at the end.

One is if you were going to give somebody a couple of tips or tricks, things to absolutely be doing if they're leading transformation or if they're struggling to move their team through the failure gap and get them beyond agreement that something's a good idea and actually align to getting it done, what would be your top three maybe suggestions for people to take on?

speaker-1 (40:33.396)
Yeah, so I think first and foremost, you know, as a leader, you've got to find your space and your res your own reserve. You know, we talked about the oxygen mask metaphor for leaders. And I think during change, it's it's you know, emotional, it's physical, it's mental. There's a lot of resources being taken from the leader to to get through that change. And so understanding where the leader needs to recharge, I think is important and taking those time, that time to recharge is I think is important.

You know, I we talked a lot about communication, right? So, you know, just really getting in depth about the concept of communication is understanding, not telling, to your point, not talking, but listening and absorbing and really trying to understand where the organization is at. And that requires a different skill than I think sometimes leaders, you know, have, especially during changes.

And then the last thing is, you know, I I say it's agility, but it's really, you know, for me, it is about kind of being curious and courageous. You know, it's it's about, you know, asking questions and it's also say, okay, this is the right direction and this is hard, but I'm gonna be I'm gonna be tenacious about this, I'm gonna persevere because this is what the organization needs, or this is what my team needs. So this.

This aspect of agility, which is kind of this combination, right? It's courage to continue down the path, but it's also curiosity to understand where you're at and what's happening around you so that you can adjust if you need to in getting to the destination that you're trying to get to.

speaker-0 (42:17.036)
Yeah. I think that's so important in maintaining that optimism and that energy around transformation is to know that you don't have to know all the answers up front. What you do have to know is that you're smart enough to figure things out as they come up and continue to move through them really, really successfully. Yeah. Thank you for that. Our last question we like to ask everyone, it's a bit of a dream along with me question. If there was something that you could get some group of people, it might be the world, it could be your business, it could be your family, your friends.

get somebody a group of people aligned to tackling together, what would that be?

speaker-1 (42:51.84)
Yeah, I mean, I I I I love the the quote from Mar Margaret Mead that says says, never doubt that a small group of people, thoughtful, committed citizens, could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that has. I love that and I'm probably misquoted quoted her, but I love that quote because I think that we look at times in history around, you know, the COVID vaccine and what people came together to to do. And so

You know, my dream would be, you know, how do we actually help to solve food insecurity for the world? Because at the end of the day, that creates a lot of downstream negative effects for populations and for humans. And so I think that's one thing that I'd love for us to come together to figure out the food insecurity issue that has plagued many nations, including our own. that that would probably be my dream.

speaker-0 (43:49.134)
Yeah. What a great dream. And I, you at Carakin's group, we like to say to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together, and to go far fast, get aligned. So if we can get people aligned to working on that, I think we could take ground pretty quickly because there are solutions out there that people have worked with. And it's just kind of how do we get the spread happening? So thank you for putting that out there in the world. We believe in putting the vision out there and seeing what happens with it. So I appreciate you sharing that.

I was Kristin, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. As always, with the Failure Gap for all of our listeners, we'll have show notes that'll include information about Kristin and her company and what they're doing. And feel free to check those out. Check us out at the failuregap.com. We'd love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments, or if you have suggestions for other guests who we should be reaching out to, we would love to hear that as well. So, Kristin, thank you again. We appreciate you being here and spending your time with us.

speaker-1 (44:45.57)
Thank you so much, it was truly my pleasure.

speaker-0 (44:48.718)
All right, we'll see you all next time on the failure gap.