TALENT / PRACTICE LEADERSHIP / FOLLOWERSHIP Flashcards
How have you built relationships and partnered across Industries, Offering Portfolios and/or FSS?
I lead cross-functional teams and go-to-market strategies and in doing so, I find the right people and capabilities for my teams regardless of industries, OPs and FSS’s. That said, I’ve taken deliberate steps to build relationships across these areas. Across industries, I’ve worked with my commercial Offering and MO counterparts on strategies to align our capabilities across offerings. I’ve also worked with our commercial business to find the right capabilities when they don’t exist within GPS. As an example, we recently did a pitch at USCIS for an AI/ML $150M contract which required databricks - a big data analytics service that we haven’t supported much in GPS. I engaged with a commercial team and pulled them in to support our presentation. I also work broadly across OPs and FSS - specifically Advisory, in the go-to-market teams that I lead. They are an integral part of my strategy and the relationship has be build as a result of my need for their support to win new work. I’ve engaged with Joris Vega and Dave Thomas within our account for AI/ML support, Doug Schneider and Vin Gupta for CBO devOps support and Gretchen Brainard and Aaron Druck from C&M for some of their UXD support. My pipeline of work requires their support and by engaging with them, I’m helping to grow their pipeline and portfolio of work into new market spaces.
Who do you go to market with? How will that change if you make PMD?
Within my Offering, I work closely with Kevin Corcoran on several engagements and pursuits that I lead. Within our broader OP, I go to market most often with our F&EP Offering and our Advisory counterparts. There I go to market with Bill Olsen who leads our Finance Ops MO, Patrick McCoy who leads our Real Estate & Location Strategy MO, and Aprajita Rathore who leads Shared Services. On the Advisory side, it’s Chris Stewart and Tony Gioffre and outside of EP & Finance Ops, it’s Nick Son on the Cyber, Joris Vega and Dave Thomas from S&A, Doug Schneider from CBO and Gretchen Brainard from C&M.
I don’t foresee anyone on that list going away, but I do see a higher level of interaction from S&A and CBO given the pipeline of opportunities I’m pursuing specifically at USCIS.
Who are you developing behind you?
I have a strong and diverse team that I have developed to support my business case. I’ve helped to make a couple of new Senior Managers over the past couple of years - people like Steve Harms, and Cyrus Gerami who currently supports a couple of my engagements at ICE OFM. I’ve also been able to develop other key SM and relationships who I’ve pulled into my delivery and pursuit and firm engagements. People like Melinda Ward who now leads my SEVP work at ICE, Yoon Ji who leads a large part of my USCIS pursuit strategy, Randy Turkel my Deputy Market Offering Leader for BoTT and Dave Wade who lead DEI for me in my BTI CTO role who also just made SM and now dedicates a significant portion of his time supporting the Black Action Council.
What are our biggest challenges around talent and how would you
recommend we address?
I think there are two significant challenges around talent. 1. is addressing DEI gap and well-being. We are doing a lot around DEI today at all levels, Nationally, at the Industry and as an OP. The question this begs is why now and why not sooner and how long will it take for our actions to trickle down to our practitioners and would it be too late. That’s why I started the Black Practitioner and Allies Accelerator to take all of what’s happening around DEI firmwide and to accelerate the impact within our account, project teams and our staff. Those are the people who reach out to me… Regarding well-being, we need to better balance work and life. This is a competitive environment, and it’s easy to get caught in the hamster wheel of work. We need to allow our people to take the PTO they’ve earned without it impacting utilization. It doesn’t make sense to say take PTO but you have to work more than 40 hours to take all of it. Blending delivery, firm and people impact would help address this. They’re all equally important and should impact our utilization similarly.
How do you think about incorporating well being into your projects, and why is this important?
Both physical and mental. On the physical side in the old days, I had a project team events to do the Crystal City 5-k, Indoor rock climbing, and Barry’s Bootcamp sessions. Virtually, we’ve done team fitness competitions, informal outdoor hikes at Great Falls and walk of remembrance for George Floyd.
Mental - brown bag sessions about running, virtual meditation sessions, topics such as mental health. We’ve started book clubs and movie clubs to educate our allies about the history of the social and racial injustices in our country and have held courageous conversations to bring to the forefront the issues from the perspective of our practitioners.
This is part of our culture and an area that needs some attention in the competitive and at times stressful environment that we work in.
How do you envision the Future of Work at Deloitte post COVID? What do you
see as the biggest challenges and opportunities?
The future of work will be more virtual, better automated, yet better connected. I’m working with the ICE CIO to define this right now. What does Service Delivery in this new world mean with Platforms and Automation as a Service. How do we leverage mobile to be as effective in the field as in the office. And how do we utilize technology in new ways to help us deliver on our mission objectives. The culture has changed where we’re not going to work the same way - yet there are aspects that must remain. Building culture, followership and providing recognitions and rewards to motivate our people. We should improve on those things that are working and figure out how to do things that aren’t working as well more effectively. One of my favorite everyday equations is teleworking does not equal always working. Burnout is a real challenge - meetings for me have started earlier and are ending later. There’s an aspect of inserting Flexibility and Predictability into how we do our work and define our culture for a hybrid, geographically dispersed workforce.
