Tish Squillaro 0:00

Hi everyone, Tish Guilero. Welcome to Canda with Tish. As you know, I have a variety of guests that come on and talk about leadership, team building, and the scale of businesses. Sometimes I have someone I've never worked with before and we both are learning about one another. Other times I have the luxury of having people I've actually worked with before. And today is one of those times. Hans Atharson is someone that I've worked with for the last six, seven years. And I'll give you a little bit about his background. For over the last three decades, he's been building operating engines behind enterprise software and modernization companies in professional services, customer success that actually retains, pricing that survives procurement, and the governance that keeps complex programs honest. I first met him at Open Legacy, where he was the chief success officer and COO, responsible for the successful global deployment of Open Legacy and ensuring the highest level of customer satisfaction. Then we worked together, and over the last six years, he's been with CloudFrame, where he's the COO. And that's a software company that focused on mainframe modernization and cobalt conversion. I'm so excited to see you again, Hans. Welcome and I'm excited for our conversation today.

Hans B. Otharsson 1:13

It's nice to see you again, Tish.

Tish Squillaro 1:16

So listen, I know there's a million things that you've done, and as an operator involved with both the internal operations as well as all the people. The two times that we got to work together, you had to transform the teams and the businesses at the same time. And that's not easy because it's about timing, it's about talent. I thought maybe we'd start there because that's an interesting sort of challenge that C-suites have is when the business is growing and transforming, and then you have to look at the talent and the people. There's some tough choices and decisions to be made. So maybe you could tell us about one of those tough choices or decisions that you had to make and what went into it.

Hans B. Otharsson 1:57

Well, I mean, the two companies you referenced, Open Legacy and CloudPrame, were both startups, and we were small companies growing versus prior to those, I worked for large companies that had a lot of infrastructure and structure. So I'm going to focus mostly on the startup type culture where everyone is in everyone's team at the same time and involved in things. In a lot of places or when you're dealing with growing a team, especially in a startup, is people confuse agreement with alignment. Meaning you you're not opening yourself up to somebody disagreeing with you, or the company or everyone else in the call is saying you're not a team player. And what I've come to learn is the important thing is opening up that space to allow people to disagree, especially at the first team level. That you you need to have that space for disagreement, discussion, you know, I used to call it cuss and disgust, but that ability to open that up to everyone and not have an environment where you actually feel that you just put your job on the line because you called somebody's baby ugly. And I've always tried to drive towards that type of culture. And sometimes you will have people on your teams were there prior to you joining, and you feel like they're sort of grandfathered in. But you have to make those hard decisions saying they were good when we were at this stage. We are now at a different stage. We need to evolve past this. And the worst situation you're in is you know, you realize you're making a decision now that you knew that this decision needed to be made 12 months ago or 18 months ago. And when I'm saying decisions is either moving that person somewhere else or asking them to leave or redefining their job role and description, but those decisions don't get better with time. And you know, a lot of that is go with your gut in regards to these things. Don't let it linger. And in our history, you and I, you know, you probably know the the problems I was dealing with on some of those things. Is that you have this loyalty to people, you have people that brought you along, that helped you and supported you, but now it's just not the right time and the right person.

Tish Squillaro 4:22

No, and it's hard. Yeah, I mean, I agree. It's you know, it's very difficult to separate your emotions from these decisions because they're people related. And in your situation, you're right. In one place you came into an existing team that I think had to change its concepts a little bit. And so then you came in almost as the bad guy, if you will, because you were there to see that, okay, I was actually brought in to do this stuff, and I don't think anyone else knew. So I do think that was you kind of knew coming in that that was going to be the change agent role that you played, but you always had a very nice approach with communications, and I do think that's an important element to bring up. You had the conversations that they needed to have where you gave people options. And I don't think that sometimes people think it's through what options. Because one option is they they don't always have to go, right? And I think immediately when people get worried about the emotional side, it's like a firing or a termination. Sometimes it's just a change of role or a reduction in all the priorities, right? So I do think you were able to do the justice around giving people options to say this isn't working. And but I have options, and let's talk through options. And then it's up to that person. And there was one case I know we had that person didn't always like the options, and that's a whole different ballgame. And sometimes then you know what the answer is. Then you know what the answer is. Now you use the term your gut, and you know, I think that's a scary element because sometimes our gut has no plan. It's just a feeling. So when do you know the gut reaction, for especially if you know it's sooner than you're ready to act? You know, what's that that kind of element that you look for? Was it they couldn't perform? Was it their behaviors? Like, what was it that gave your gut that feeling that this is not gonna work?

Hans B. Otharsson 6:16

I think in in some ways, my career, as you mentioned, professional services, uh delivering projects, engagement management. I've been building teams every time you're taking on a new customer or a new engagement. So you you build almost a you know, a muscle memory. You know what burned you before, you know what worked before, you're dealing with different types of people and characters, and you know, when you're doing project delivery, you have three masters, three hats: the customer, the project team, and you know, the company itself that you're working for. And you sort of learn how to do that, you know, that dance very well on how do I structure this team, how do I make that team successful, what are the factors that are going to impact the success. So when I say gut, it's it's almost you know, it's a combination of experience, uh seeing what has worked before, seeing when you bring somebody new in, what is the initial reaction of people? Because in all honesty, people stick with their first impressions. You know, they do rule of thumb, you you know, you only get one chance at a first impression, and somebody that comes in and doesn't make a good first impression either with the customer, the project team, or or management, that's a hard thing to overcome. And sometimes you have to go to bat because you're confident that the right person. They just, you know, they they fluffed it in the beginning. But other times you got to realize, no, this was not a good hire or a good placement, or this is not the right person. And when I say gut, it it really sort of goes back to scar tissue, and you say, Yeah, yeah, no, I've been here before. I know this is not gonna work.

Tish Squillaro 8:04

So it's a lot of experience combined with instinct. And I do think something, a seasoned veteran in a role, and why they're so valuable and powerful is that we've learned through our mistakes, and you try not to do them twice. And you know, one of the things I bring when I go into an organization is I probably saw this problem a few times, different characters, but it's the same problem. And so I could at least bring a framework. And I do think that's you know, your role as well as executive. You've done it before. For those people who are newer, I do think you had C-suite members on both teams that were very first time. How are you able to influence them when they had to kind of learn the ropes themselves? Because that's also the team. The C-suite team isn't always at the same level around the table. And so then sometimes you become, if you're the veteran of that group, you start teaching them or you could get frustrated by them and it becomes challenging. What was your experience with that?

Hans B. Otharsson 9:08

There's a couple of things that I always appreciate when you get new people on a team. I do this probably a couple of times a week when I'm hiring new people or new people or joining a company, mostly from services deliveries, that a fresh set of eyes allows us to see things that we don't see ourselves. And so when you're bringing a new set of eyes onto the C level, the first team or you know, the executive team, you have to open up that space to let them ask questions, let them understand, let us have to explain to them and not take that as judgment. You know, why are you doing it this way is a perfectly valid question. And you can't take offense to somebody new asking that question. And in a lot of ways, that's almost introspective that I need to be open enough to want to learn from this new person. You brought them on court for some reason. Uh, if if you if you sort of take this role or any of these roles, that I know everything, I'm gonna drive this. To be honest, you're not gonna succeed. You have to be able to accept the fact that you can learn from anyone, and you learn most from other people's insight and perspective than you do, and you also learn from your failures, but you learn more from that than you do from you know just assuming you're you're right about everything. So again, it comes down to that sort of open, transparent communication that everyone's at the same level. The problem, though, that you have with a lot of companies I come into or I've done this is people say they have a first team, they have alignment, they have agreement, but then they are motivated and incentivized by I'm in services delivery, I care about margin, I'm in sales, I care about sales revenue, I'm in you know, finance and legal, I care about risk. And we all might all say at the same level that we're we're all in agreement, but we're not motivated by that agreement. Right. That breaks a lot of this stuff down. You know, it's yeah, we're in agreement, we're in alignment on paper, but in reality, we're not. And it's seeing through that, trying to point that out to people.

Tish Squillaro 11:20

And that's hard because it's a different role. You know, I do think that first team mentality is you don't wear the hat of your function leadership role. Yeah. You wear the business hat. And what you just described is that you may be motivated, paid, and bonused on your function hat. And then when we get together in the leadership for the business, I may be sacrificing something that my function hat would have gotten to give for the business. And that's where I think the alignment and uh agreement where you mentioned earlier come to play because you're torn. And, you know, I do think it's the the key leaders of that group, sometimes a CEO could be the COO, has to really remind the group that we're here for the business first. And so you're motivated by the business being successful in this room. Because not everybody can make that transition. That is a very, and that's why a lot of where I focused with companies, you know, more lately is that leadership team that has to wear that new hat because no one trained you to go from what you're motivated by and what your team expects of you to joining this leadership focused on the business. Did you ever find it where you had to help get the team there? Because sometimes even if you see it that way, the other members of the table may not see it that way. And then how do you get them motivated to realize that it's a different room we're sitting in, that we have to focus on the business?

Hans B. Otharsson 12:57

That's an excellent question. And I uh I'd like to say I have an organized way of doing that or seeing it, but it is it's almost my sort of matter-of-the-fact way of dealing with issues and problems and people. I don't want to say I try to eliminate, you know, the feelings and the personality. It's really, hey, we're in this room, this is the hat we're wearing. The problem you run into, as we were just talking about, is that a lot of people move up to the C level because they've moved through the ranks. And yeah, I, for one, moved up through the ranks through professional services, operations, and all that. So you have an affinity for that, but you need to sort of be able to step out of that. And I think one of the most successful ways I've been able to do that is not really rotating people. I mean, a lot of companies pride themselves on rotating execs, but it's also it it's almost saying, hey, why don't you and Hans work on this? Marketing take this and let's collaborate on that. And sometimes you take the two that have the biggest friction.

Tish Squillaro 14:04

I think that's perfect.

Hans B. Otharsson 14:06

Friction can easily be solved. I'd rather deal with friction than deal with complacency because nothing gets resolved. You bring them together, you say, guys or gals, let's work on this together, let's drive that and come together in regards to how do we solve this. How do you bring your both sets of skills? How do we improve the scenario and move that forwards? And that to me has been successful, but you have to keep replicating it all around. You know, a C-level in a company my size and the ones I've been, you know, we're four or five people.

Tish Squillaro 14:42

Right. It's hard to hide. So you have so you have to definitely put your time in. Agreed. It's like you can't let the other person do it. You're in it, you're involved in it. So if there's friction, you're part of it. And I think that's the first tough question is am I causing or fostering this lack of open door policy? We could talk about stuff and not be upset, or there's a freedoms here that we can have our voice and still not taint a relationship. And those are all very personal things. I mean, you just don't know how people are going to react sometimes.

Hans B. Otharsson 15:15

Oh, yeah, most definitely. And as you said, you you need to have that. Maybe I'm the point of friction. Maybe I'm the causing of this. As you know, I used to say in the old days is that every family has an uncle Fester. Uh we don't know who it is. It might be you.

Tish Squillaro 15:32

Take it on. Take it on. No, and I do think it's a good way, and I've seen this work, to put yourself in the question so that you are part of it, even if you're probably not, but to allow yourself to say, look, I know I do this, which sometimes makes it feel like that, or I know I've offered that feedback, but I also didn't love hearing the feedback. So I'm also like everyone else. When you bring that humbleness to get everyone to feel the same, and you throw yourself in the ring as I've done it too, it doesn't make it as scary. And I have seen you do that, by the way, where you took the onerous of the problem being the problem when you weren't really the problem, but you played the part so that others could talk about, like, oh yeah, I feel that too. And and it kind of allowed the dialogue to happen around what we really need to talk about. And sometimes the hardest part is just getting that real topic to the table because we talk around it if we are not comfortable instead of addressing the actual issue.

Hans B. Otharsson 16:39

Yeah, hard topics are hard, and bringing them up, you can be you can do it with blunt force, or you can do it with some finesse, or you can make it everyone's idea that this is something we need to talk about and bring up. And being an ops, you sort of you try to have that look around the entire table and around the entire company of okay, how does all this fit together and where do we need to go? Um, and I think that's honestly why I like this sort of work is that you you know you wake up in the morning, you don't know what problems you're gonna deal with today.

Tish Squillaro 17:12

Not everybody wants that kind of job, Hans, by the way. You happen to like that.

Hans B. Otharsson 17:17

Well, we're not gonna go into psychotherapy now, so let's But you wear it well.

Tish Squillaro 17:23

You always are very calm. I have to say, you always had a very calm demeanor, which I do think is an important part to leadership, is that people are comfortable. And I'll leave us with one last question for you. You talked about the role you play where you have to get customer satisfaction, you have to have internal satisfaction, and you have to have personal satisfaction of yourself. I mean, that is not an easy task to accomplish. If you were going to give a COO future or someone in that seat a tip from your 30 years of experience of how you balance that, what is the one lesson that you think someone should be always comfortable going to or that go-to thought process to balance that?

Hans B. Otharsson 18:09

I'm not sure if this is a I don't want to say it's a superpower, but you need to be able to put yourself into the shoes of the person you're trying to communicate with. If I'm in the role of the customer, I'm the IT manager at a bank, or I'm this, what are my problems? How am I dealing with things? And what is it I want you as my vendor or my supplier, my consultant, to communicate with me and and and work with me. And the same with your team members, how do they want to be able to communicate with you? So it's that almost having that ability or attempt to have empathy with their status and their situation and what they're dealing with is critically important. Especially even as simple as sending them an email is understanding how are they going to receive this. It's not it's important that you're communicating what you want to get across, but it's important that they don't just read it, they understand it. So they read it and they say, Ah, I didn't think about that, or thank you, or whatever the reaction they get out of it. So it is trying to put yourself into other people's shoes.

Tish Squillaro 19:21

Which is not easy.

Hans B. Otharsson 19:23

And it helps me manage things when I sort of look at it in that multidimensional way. So I'm not walking into a trap that I set myself.

Tish Squillaro 19:33

Right. And it's not accommodation. You know, I think sometimes leaders feel that they're overcompensating or accommodating. And I think it's the opposite. It's a lot of confidence that you have to have in your abilities to actually put yourself in the other person's shoe for a minute to say, well, what could I be doing for them? It's a me, me, me sometimes focus. And it really just flipping that over to the other side will give probably better outcomes because that other person will feel like the empathy, feel that you've actually thought about it from their lens and maybe sometimes even educate them. Like, I didn't even think of that, right? So that's when you know you're building the right relationship. And that relationship is one with the customer, two, with the internal, and even yourself. You must feel better when you know you actually accomplish the goal at hand, which is we're trying to move the business forward. However, that means we do it, we will know it's going forward. We also know when it's not. And that is true. And we've all had our share of realizing, oops, that didn't go the way we thought. That didn't go the way we thought. Well, Hans, thank you so much. It was so fabulous to hear from you and see you again. And great words of wisdom, as always. I do love the alignment and agreement, it's not always the same. And I do think that's a great takeaway. Make sure agreement and alignment is equal because if it's one without the other, you probably are gonna have friction. And not that friction's bad, but better to be on on top of the friction than it is not to.

Hans B. Otharsson 21:02

That is very thank you.

Tish Squillaro 21:03

It was great to see you.

Hans B. Otharsson 21:05

It was nice seeing you.