Abby Kearns, Chief Technology Officer, Alembic Technologies: Building Buy-In to Navigate the Innovator’s Dilemma

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi, I'm Shannon, Lucas. I'm the co-CEO of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break ship burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation and large organizations. And today I'm thrilled to have time with my good friend Abby Kearns. Welcome, Abby.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm excited to hear what you're going to share with us as a bit of background for our listeners. Abby is the chief technology officer at alembic technologies.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: She's a veteran tech, executive as well as a board director and angel investor. Her career has spanned executive leadership, product marketing product management and consulting across Fortune 500 companies and startups alike, including puppet cloud Foundry Foundation, pivotal software, Verizon and Totality. Abby currently serves as a board director for lightbend stackpath and invoke. All right. So that's the part that they can read online about you.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But we would love to hear about your catalytic journey, maybe with a few career highlights that you're proud of, that help us see your catalytic nature.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, I think 1st and foremost, we should start with. I didn't realize I had a catalytic nature until I read this amazing book

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that you and Tracy wrote, because up until that point

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I just thought I was a pain in the ass. So you know, it's a understanding that there's a name, for it is super helpful, and I get full credit

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: to our shared dear friend, Chris Cravens, who introduced us, and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: who started off with you, should definitely read this book.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: So big, shout out to Chris,

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: but yeah, it's the. But when you read the book

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: which, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't read the book highly recommend.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I give it out to people all the time. I I've never told you this Shannon. But I do refer it to people quite a bit, and everyone I know that reads it. They're like, Oh, my God! There's a name for this. Everyone has just gone through their career without, like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: yeah, without the ability to clearly identify and articulate what exactly is the problem. But we all.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, everyone collectively that it's similar in nature.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: as the catalysts that are described in your book

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: do feel that they're different, but they don't know why.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And so it's like growing up feeling like you're the difficult one, right? And you're like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Task.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And and you're like, Well, am I difficult, or do I just have very strong opinions about what should be done, and and comfortable voicing those opinions

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: which for those of us that grew up

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: as women and young women, we're told, were bossy.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yep.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: You know, bossy, opinionated type a, you know, all of those monikers that are really, we're just clever ways of saying, actually, maybe you've got a clear vision of the work we need to do, and are really comfortable.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: taking charge in the situation and bringing people along with you

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: or dragging them along behind you. Whichever

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, however, it works at the moment.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But I'd say my journey has. I feel like in retrospect, having read that book in that moment in time, and looking back over my career and actually speaking to you on a number of occasions.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I recognized the catalyst along the entirety of my career. Going back to. Even when I my 1st job out of college.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I got a the only job I could get was a project manager at Saver, which does the res system

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: for American airlines.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I landed my 1st job as a project manager there in the global infrastructure division which I didn't know what global infrastructure was or

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: what that meant. And I learned a lot around

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: infrastructure data centers, Middleware all of those things. And I loved it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I loved leading the team. And I love doing really hard, complex problems. And frankly, that's where I really

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: caught the bug of being on the enterprise side, doing very large distributed systems at scale, the complex, the hard. I just fell in love with that, and have stayed with it for the you know

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the last 25 years.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But if I look back with the lens of what is a catalyst.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I see it. Oh, okay, it showed up in my 1st job.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Oh, and that showed up in my second job as well. It's like, okay, well, we're gonna drive this project forward.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: We're gonna do this. And I'm gonna make sure it happens

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: whether you want to or not.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: This is what we're doing. We're gonna make it happen.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And and it continued to show up, and I and I really found myself

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: not being the kind of person that fit well into the stasis mold, but more

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the one that pokes their head up and says, What can we do better? What can we do? Different? How do we push the envelope just a little bit further? How do we achieve a little bit more. And how do we reach

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: for the stars in the process? And I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that's something that has been throughout my career, and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I had to learn the hard way what that means, because that means that there's some organizations and some teams that I'm not a good fit for.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Had I, you know, had you written your book.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I don't know 15 years earlier that have been super helpful, but better late than never.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I feel the same way. I wrote it for my 20 something year old self, for sure. Just on a personal note like how do you? How did you navigate cause like? If you don't know that you're catalyst, and you don't have the distance or perspective, or the naming of it can feel really personal when you don't fit onto the team like, what would you say to yourself 15 years ago about that.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, I think

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I was always ambitious, and always wanted to do good work, and so I think where I ended up was.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, working twice as hard. I was also.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: more often than not, particularly the 1st 10 years of my career. I was the only woman in the room, and so I felt like I had to work twice as hard. So I

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we just continue to work really, really hard, trying to to fit in

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: trying to do all the work. But also, how do I like fit into the mold that on the team I'm on? And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think the answer, right or wrong was just work twice as hard and try to conform.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think it's hard to apply today's knowledge, though, with that, because this was also 25 years ago

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and tech as a job was still early.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and we didn't have a lot of the framing we have today with the way we work and what

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we didn't talk about things like collaboration.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, like things we take for granted today, we didn't have design thinking we all the things that we take for granted in terms of the way high functioning teams work. We didn't have

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the language around that. We knew what worked and what didn't. You kind of can feel your way through it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But there wasn't something you could just say, oh, how do we make a high functioning team more productive like?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: It's just things we didn't talk about. And I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we have a different language and a different expectation around

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that work today. But back then

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I would say that I worked twice as hard, but everyone was working twice as hard. We were all trying to figure out

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the early days of a lot of the technology that I was in, particularly on the infrastructure side, which was sort of bleeding edge.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I did a lot in early days of e-commerce.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: We were all just figuring it out, so

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I guess the upshot was. Nobody really knew what was going on.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes, and like I, I was convinced everybody else knew. You know what I mean. Like, yeah, there, there was part of that. The imposter syndrome, I guess for myself, early as a woman.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Okay.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I mean, I had that as well. I you know, I definitely assumed other people did. I'm just saying, in retrospective, like, nobody really knew we were all sort of winging it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and we were just flinging stuff around, as you know, as quickly as possible.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Which I think may still be true for more more context than not. Like, the the more senior, older I've gotten. I'm like, yeah, we're all just showing up and taking our best stab at it. You know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm curious how you relate to the concept of catalyst in your executive role.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: That is more interesting. And I've definitely put another lens on it. The older I get in. The further I get in my career, which is

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: one of the things that.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I know you talk about this quite a bit in your book, too, but one of the things that I don't know that enough executives internalize is

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: in order to be a catalyst. It'd be truly a catalyst where you're truly trying to change the way things work

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: in order to do that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you have to be comfortable with a couple of things that most of us are not by our nature comfortable with.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: One is being wrong. A lot

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: 2 is the high, high, high degree of risk you have to take on a regular basis

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: when you're having to chart the path forward there is no path.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And and so, as a leader, particularly those of us

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that have grown up and watched other people, you feel like one. You always have to be right.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And 2, you have to know where you're going, and you have to be clear about it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and sometimes, particularly when you're paving the way. You don't know, but you have to pretend, you know.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: but you don't really know, and you're sort of taking a risk with the bets you're making that you're going to get there because it's unknown where you're going to end up.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I think that all of that.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: particularly for those of us that have been in this field a long time are not always comfortable with that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and the secret the super secret

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: part about being a catalyst is, you have to be comfortable

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: with risk and uncertainty and doubt.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and if you're not, then it makes it a much more stressful role than it probably is to begin with. And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that's something I think, that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we don't talk enough about as leaders.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, how did you get comfortable with those 2 things?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think I've always had that level of comfort. I I look back to the early part of my career.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, after saber

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I did a short stint at Eds, but then I ended up leaving and joining an early stage startup that was doing

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: managed services, and I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: when you're a young, early stage startup and you have to be the

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: hear the people that know what we're doing in these situations for these large companies, like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: You're the consultant. It's like telling people what to do in early days of e-commerce, when literally no one was doing e-commerce.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: You know. It's like you kind of learn how to like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: take risk and be uncertain, but also be confident in uncertainty.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: F.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And so I think I learned that trick early on, and it just kind of stuck with me.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But I you know I've seen a lot of other executives really struggle with.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, how is this gonna work out? I don't know. Maybe it'll work, we'll see.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But you know my ability to say with certainty that this is how it's going to play out. If we make.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if we choose to do this, this, this and this.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: particularly if you're transforming a team or organization or moving to a large technology. Or, you know, pivoting something.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the level we we you can collectively understand the steps you need to take, but how those steps along the way will work out

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: most of them you don't know and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: expect, you know, kind of appreciating. That

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: should be part of the journey, but it's also something I think we need to get more comfortable as a collective talking about like, who knows? Maybe that'll still work. Maybe it won't. I don't know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's so true because it's like, okay. So as a catalyst, what the research says is, people will describe us as being comfortable with risk and ambiguity, but often the truth is for us, right or wrong. So I like your 1st point like we might be wrong, but once we have that vision we're like, it's risky not to do this thing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So it's a little bit of a reframe on our relationship with risk, because sometimes to us it doesn't seem risky, though to everyone else it might totally seem risky. But I think there's the other layer here, which is, you know, we get to talk with so many organizations and embracing ambiguity is the like. If you, if you actually have a strategy that you think is going to stay the same for 5 years. You're already wrong. Right? So it's like how, as catalyst executives do, we

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: help

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the art organizations like navigate that risk? And like, we're gonna have to try something right, and might as well be this thing so

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: super interesting.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, it's it's it's a hard thing. And I feel like I feel like I'm saying a very watered down version of it. But it is actually a bigger challenge, particularly the bigger the organization gets.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: You know, eyesight.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Clayton Christensen's work from the nineties a lot innovator's dilemma.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if you haven't read the book, and you're in any technology job. I highly recommend that be required reading, because every company you work at

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: hits innovator's dilemma at some point in the journey.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and the short version of that is that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the thing that drives the bulk of the revenue for your company, your team, your product

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: will one day hit a wall, and you have to come up with what you're going to do next.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And it doesn't matter what you've invented. You will eventually hit that wall and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: switching gears into a different product line or different feature set or different capability

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: is incredibly difficult, because you're having to say no to the thing that works.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: because oftentimes you're saying no to the thing that works when it's actually still working.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And you're going to have to say yes, to something

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that you're not sure is actually going to work.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: There is a leap of faith you have to take to manage that transition, and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: not everyone is comfortable making that transition, and that's where I think catalysts honestly shine is because there is a level of uncertainty, and catalysts will often leap into that uncertainty and say, we will figure it out.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: We'll probably be wrong, because you probably will be. But we're gonna learn quickly, iterate and try something else.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I think, really leaning into that and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and organizations leaning into supporting those individuals

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: is key for that journey. But I think it's also the hardest thing to do, because you're not only gambling on an uncertain future, but you're gambling on an individual or a handful of individuals

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that can shepherd you through that uncertainty, and in a time where

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: every bone in your body says that's probably wrong.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that's an incredibly difficult thing to do

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: for anyone in in large companies. I mean, it's hard, and I feel like it's easier in smaller companies, particularly startups, because there's an expectation. Things will fail fast, and we'll try something else, but

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the bigger that revenue number is every year, the harder it gets.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: A 100%, and the more monolithic the product set is in a large enterprise, the harder. That is because if you have, like the cash cow

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: like disrupting your own cash cow is going to be really tough as opposed to like. Well, this one we're going to end of life, and we're going to have a swath of other potential opportunities.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Do you have an opinion about like how large enterprises should do that like, do you create like the X lab internally. Do you look at partnerships? Do you look at acquisitions like

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: any thoughts on how to navigate that.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think. Look, there's been no end in research, particularly over the last 15 years

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: on how organizations transform. I mean.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we kicked off the great digital transformation conversation. What 1215 years ago.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: when we started talking about Cloud. And so I think there's been a lot of research on that.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: My humble opinion is carving things out, putting them on the side, creating special labs. What have you?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I don't, I don't.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: This is anecdotally so. Please take this with what it is. But I've never seen that really work long term.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think it can get you an interesting proof of concept, and I think it can get you interesting data points.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But if you're looking for true true change, this is not going to get you there.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and unfortunately the true change comes from the CEO, the board.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the executive leadership team being in lockstep on making the change.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And if that is not the case.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if you're ever talking to someone, and you've got some mid level manager that's driving the catalyst change, and there's no executive buy in. There's no CEO buy, and there's no board buy in.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But it's never gonna work. So you might as well just give up now.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: because if you're doing true change.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that is a significant level of impact to an organization.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And your board isn't bought in.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: It's not. It's gonna it's gonna fail. Because you know what's gonna happen for 3 or 4 quarters of that change is, things are gonna look bad.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yep.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Revenue is going to slow down. Yeah, growth is gonna slow.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, velocity is going to slow down. All of that stuff starts to slow down.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and you're gonna have to stand up, particularly if you're a publicly traded company. But even if you're private you're gonna have to stand up to your board. You're gonna stand up to your shareholders and say, Hey.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: things look bad now, but trust us 3 quarters totally. Gonna be there.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and everyone says I can do that in the 1st quarter. Sure.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But the second quarter, the 3rd quarter, when you're still having that same conversation, and everyone's got short term memory on why we're on this journey. To begin with.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: it becomes very difficult. And if you're not all in on holding that, you're gonna really struggle

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: because you're going to want to give up.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So spot on so many of the organizations that we work with today. We talk about like the 1st team going back to Lencione, because it's like, if you were sitting in the C-suite. And you guys are not all aligned to what the actual future of the company is. If your competing line of business be use.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: are dependent on in your compensation and all of that, then you're going to be pulling resources. And there's going to be this this sort of infighting. So I totally love the clarity of everyone, the execs, the board. Everyone has to be bought in. I think there's an important point about the expectation setting.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm wondering if you have any advice, though, because people will even say the right, the right thing right like, yes, we? You have 18 months runway even on this thing, and they're all sitting there shaking their heads and agreeing to that. And then we've all lived through the reality of they weren't actually that bought in. Do you have any like like test points or advice for how you get to the clarity of? Are they really bought in.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I mean

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: someone that I, I think, does a really great job of. This is good at probing the CEO with those questions like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and she's very talented. It's but I think it really requires a direct approach, which is to say

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and do like scenarios like, Hey, you've got this

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: strategy that you've invested millions of dollars in in the last 6 months.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: What if I tell you that is incorrect, and we need to throw it all away and do something different.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: What's gonna be your response?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I think that's a great question. Because if the executive is like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Well, I don't care. I'm really wed to this idea.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: then. Great! You know that you know what we're done here. This is. This is never gonna work.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But if an executive says, You know what great. Then that's what we do. We throw that away. And we we look for the right path forward.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I think there's questions you can

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: asks that gauge someone's level of commitment.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, and if they're willing to walk away from money if they're willing to walk away from time.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that they've invested. If they're willing to deviate from an idea.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: then you know, someone is really up to the task of both pivoting frequently, if necessary, but defending that pivot

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: to the Exec. The other execs, shareholders, board, etc.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, I'd love that. The specificity of the scenario. What did you say? The probing, the scenario probing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Maybe this is related to what we were just talking about. But I'm wondering what one or 2 of the biggest challenges you faced as a catalyst executive, and maybe how you overcome them. What helped you overcome those challenges? Also, we love stories of failure. So if there's a learning, you're like, oh, that was hard one that can help us see it too.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I feel like.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I only learned from failures personally.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But I think I'm trying to think like

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I'm trying to think of a specific scenario. I know the general problem, though, and I and I realized it when I read your book

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: they again not to

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: taught the book over and over again. But I think they're important. There's 1 nugget in the book. If you don't take anything else away from the book.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: there's 1 nugget in there that really hit home for me, because it's something that I don't do really well.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that is bringing people along on the journey with you.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And that is a problem I know that most catalysts I know have.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Because we get a clear. We get a vision in our head, and we know how to get there. And we just want people to just say, show up and do the work and follow along like. Don't ask questions, just do what I tell you. We'll be fine.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: That's what we want in our head. We don't say that out loud but secretly. That's what we want in our head.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and when you have to bring people along on the journey, that means you have to build a clear story, and you have to storytell a lot. And you have to get people excited about the idea, and you have to get them bought in, and you have to really

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: shepherd them through that. And I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that is a lesson I had to learn over and over again, because

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I really really struggled in years past to get people bought in

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and to continue to bring them along. You can't just say once, hey, here's the vision. Aren't y'all excited about my new vision. Let's go

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: no, you have to continually repeat that vision, and you have to get people bought in, and you have to have people understand their role in that vision

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and continue to bring them on that journey as a collective.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And, by the way, that's not just the team that reports to you.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that's not the team that supports you on it as a collaborator. That also includes your executive team, your CEO. Your board includes

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: everyone, and I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: that is a lesson I've had to learn over and over again, because I don't think I've done that as well as I could have, and

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: to this day I do remind myself, bring everyone along on the journey with you.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So how do you do that? How do you? How do you? Yeah. How do you bring people along? Now that you know that concretely. It needs to be more of a focus.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Do a much better job of communicating what's in my head

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: like, just because I see where we need to go.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Look, my job is also to write that down and communicate it, that in a way that others can understand.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I I say that last bit because I think it's important, because, like just communicating what's in my head doesn't necessarily articulate

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: to others why we need to do that. And what does that actually mean? And what are the ramifications of that? And so I think, really being clear on.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: where are we going? Why are we going there?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: What are the steps that we're going to

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: measure our momentum along the way. And what does good look like? And how do we know it's good?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And I think that

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: those are things that I believe many of us as catalysts keep in the back of our head.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But for me it's also

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: writing it down and articulating that, and not just once, but over and over and over again, in different mediums, different formats, different levels of altitude.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: just really continuously circling back to to that point.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What I hear under that is like some sensing skills, maybe empathy and curiosity about like what the person in front of you needs to know, like the purpose, the how, what, where, why, what it means to them, making sure that they actually understand. How do you assess their understanding? Both like just full understanding. And then like, if they have to do something, are they clear on what they have to do? How do you know when you're like nailed it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Sometimes, I think, do we ever know it? Feels a little bit like a philosophical, existential question.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Share? How do.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: We know we're there. Do we ever know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Maybe.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I feel like sometimes I like nailed it. And then, like a week later, you're like, Wow, I really did not know it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: They just.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: True.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Like some smiling and nodding. But then there was like, later, you're like, no, no, didn't know that one.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Totally okay. The other thing that comes up for me when people talk about this communication because it is so critical. And I I agree. It's like it's 1 of the biggest places that we lose people is the emotion, because, like, I listen to you, and it just brings up these feelings of like. I want to poke my eye out with a pencil because you just have to slow down and repeat yourself so many times, and it feels like it's slowing down the whole process, even though we know it's actually accelerating it. But with that comes some self

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: management, some self-awareness. I'm wondering, like, how do you navigate? What could be like?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: My words? Lack of patience, not your words, so that you can stay excited and keep bringing everyone along.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I mean, it is a patience piece of it, like I've had to learn that like, it's like, it took me 2 decades. But I'm like, Okay, Patience, Abby. Patience.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: it's still my daily mantra. And I think that it's something I do struggle with all the time, particularly

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if things are stressful. And there's a lot going on like, obviously, all of our patients goes way down.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think one of the things I had to really recognize is, it isn't just a matter of me saying it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But sometimes, no matter how many times, I say something, if people don't like the idea that they're never going to get bought in.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And so you have to understand

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: what are the other things you can do that get people to the objective.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: but get it, get them there in a way that is

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: meaningful to them, but still achieves your outcome. And I'll use an example.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Agile software development has been around for what? 30 years? Shannon, 25, least 20 something years.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yep.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And we all feel like, surely that is a well understood process.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: But it's really not, and there's a lot of now baggage tied up in the words hydro software, development.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And so one time I was trying to roll out agile practices

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: as a team, and I was just running to roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, and everyone be like, yeah, sounds great, and then

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: proceed to not do it at all.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And fun. Fact, just because you're in charge does not mean. People will listen to you.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Damn it.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Just so just putting that out there. So

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I I decided, like, you know what? Huh?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: It's not that I don't think people really hated the idea of doing agile. I just think that there was a lot of emotion hung up in the the

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the framing of the words.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: So we decided, I decided to stop calling it agile, and decided to just roll out

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the rituals around it, but call it something different.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that seemed to work. And so I think it's also not just not just saying, like the words and assuming people get on board with them, but figuring out if there's limitations to understanding awareness.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: If there's

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: baggage around it, maybe they've tried to implement it before in the team and it failed. And so there's a lot of baggage there

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and figuring out if, hey.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: what's important? It wasn't important for us to be doing agile, with air quotes around it what was important is that we were doing the rituals around them, and so if I called them something different.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we're still good there. People will. Still.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: we're getting the work done, which is what I wanted. I wanted to have a faster cadence.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: more transparency around what we're delivering

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: clear association with objectives and the ability for everyone to have line of sight to that. That was the most important thing to me. Not that we called it certain words.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I think it's so important, because as catalysts. And maybe this is true for a lot of humans, we can get really tied to the vision, our specific vision of the way that we want the thing to be in the world. And what I'm hearing you say is like bringing the curiosity about like, okay, what was the actual? What were the roadblocks here and being open to like? There's baggage there. So getting back to 1st principles. But, like, what am I actually trying to achieve?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What I'm trying to achieve is these different ways of working these rituals? And so how can I do that with the least amount of friction.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And sometimes look. And I'll be honest sometimes if you want people to get a certain direction

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if you want people to go in a certain direction. But it's a bit it's a it's a big ask, and it's a big lift.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Sometimes the easiest thing is to just have that vision in your head.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: but when you communicate it, communicate it milestone by milestone.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Sometimes

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: saying, Here's the grand vision, all at one time is really really difficult for a lot of people to internalize. So maybe say, hey?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: We wanna implement agile practices. But maybe you're like, Hey, you know what we'd like to do. We'd have to like to have daily stand ups.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know what. Let's have some daily stand up, and you just kind of

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: roll it out increment by increment.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: And you're bringing people along with you. But you're not giving them an overwhelming amount of information that they also have to ingest. So sometimes it's understanding

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the pros and cons of where you bring people in and how you bring that story to them.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Super smart, I love that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Are there other pieces of wisdom that you have for our catalyst listeners?

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: I think a big one was. Find your tribe.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: No.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Binder tribe of people that are also working on this much like

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Shannon, what you and Tracy have developed. But I think

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: sometimes talking to other people that are struggling with the same things you are, makes you feel a little bit less crazy.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: you know, particularly in a role where you're often.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: if not, the only you're one of a few, and it can feel like a lot of pressure is on you, and there's a lot of uncertainty, and you're having to hold a lot of that internally.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: because there isn't a lot of people you can lean on in your workplace

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: having a tribe outside of the workplace, where you can share ideas and best practices, and just, you know, not feel crazy all the time, because

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: sometimes it can feel like a little like you're a little crazy, you're like, well, I keep saying this thing, and everyone keeps looking at me like I've lost my mind.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, a hundred percent. No, I mean, that's why we created a catalyst leadership trust. And so I think there, it's nice to have, like the out, the external perspective where they're like. Not only is that not a dirty word to us, but we can see how you could do it bigger, faster, whatever. But there is also, you know, if you can find the people, the people in your context, like most organizations, are going to have a couple of catalysts minimum. And so people who can help you navigate like what the institutional

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: history is combined with your catalytic nature can be super impactful.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Yeah, it's just anytime. You're in a a role in a company, and you're one of

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: only a few. If you're a minority, having support

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: team outside of that can be super beneficial. Because when you're in the minority.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: like I said you often because you're you feel so other. You feel very othered in the role. And what you're doing.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: having others to say. Actually, I see you. And also I've I've been there

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: can be immensely validating. And it can really help you continue on with the work which can often feel a little Sisyphean on a daily basis.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: A 100% totally the power of being witnessed. All right.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Last fun question. I'd love to hear about your favorite catalyst asked or present who inspires you? And why do they stand out to you.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: When we started this, podcast I said, I don't know anyone. But as I was describing what I've learned from other people.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: one popped up in my head.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: and that would be Siobhan Mcleany. She's the CTO. At Kohl's, and is

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: the best catalyst I think I've ever seen in motion

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: before. She's just really really great at doing transformative work in large organizations and a lot of what I have

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: seen and witnessed

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: as ideal ways to handle these scenarios I've actually observed from her. So I would say Siobhan.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. We will put a link to her in the show notes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Abby. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. It's a pleasure as always, to catch up.

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Abby Kearns I Alembic: Hey? Thank you for having me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: To our listeners. Thanks so much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world, be sure to check out our book that Abby so beautifully plugged over and over again. Move fast, break shit for now, or go to our website at catalystconstellations.com. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, please take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and of course, as you think about all the catalysts you can now identify in your life, hit the share button and send a link their way thanks. Again.