Article At a Crossroads: Making the Right Choices as Leaders
Find out why it’s important to seek advice from others, even if you think you already know the answer.
By Insight Editor / 15 Feb 2024
By Insight Editor / 15 Feb 2024
As a leader, have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, struggling to make the right choices? It’s a common challenge, and it can be overwhelming. But don’t worry, in this episode, we’re sharing practical techniques for navigating these complex situations with ease and clarity. Featuring real-world experiences from special guest Megan Amdahl, SVP of Client Experience and COO of Insight North America, you’ll discover how to foster open dialogue, break down silos and reframe problems — all with an open mind.
Audio transcript:
Do you find yourself in a crossroads when it comes to decision-making? Where do I go? Who do I go to? Well in today's episode We're gonna help you answer those questions and find tips and tricks to make you improve in your decision-making Hello, my name is Z and I'm Jillian Jillian. Whoa, how did you teleport here? I know I had so much fun on the show the first time I wanted to come back. Yeah Well, we were kidding around earlier right when we talk about fit You know, we always say hey, what do I wear to work? It's been a while since I've been to the office and all that Things that we never really talk about back there, but now that we're going to the office more frequently It's like who am I what am I gonna? What is what is my what's my statement today right today? I guess I'm going like I don't know what's my state What would you do you went executive leadership today? 100% right on yeah. Oh, yeah, that's what I was going for. Yeah, I went it hipster chic and you pulled it off So today's episode is all about decision-making which ironically enough even when it comes in What am I gonna wear today can even be a decision that we make right? Yeah But decision doesn't just fall in line with work But everyday choices all these things that we that we that are that we have to make and think about Wouldn't it be awesome if we just had maybe some framework or some tools to make it a little bit easier for us? Oh, yeah, absolutely
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Overwhelming all the decisions we have to make that's why You know we come up with tools to make decisions for us. Yeah, I think you were so excited. You're like sign me up You know like where's me? Here's my money done making decisions(...) Well, that's what all today's episodes all about and we're trying to decide okay What who can we invite that would have some amazing experiences? Examples of you know what tools they have utilized in their leadership along along their journey And we immediately thought of Megan Amdahl And we're like you know what let's go ahead and have her on and actually I think it's one of our first sexual Executives in the podcast that I've recall No pressure at all So it's a brilliant one. No and I and I was a psych You know what who better than of course? Megan so let's give a warm introduction to Megan Amdahl SVP a client experience also our North America COO I mean the list goes on welcome Megan. Thank you so much. I'm excited for this conversation. It's a particular
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Area of passion for me and my team yeah, I want to introduce I'm sorry to cut you off, but you say her title your title has changed. I think Numerous times I don't even print business cards anymore Outdated that's why the time they get there yeah, yeah, that's why I was like what is it again? I forgot what's what's the title there's been so many different things but Megan for those who don't know you because again this is internally but also externally for a lot of our teammates, but also Partners even future teammates or what have you love tell them a little about yourself. Yeah, absolutely So I've been with insight for about 13 years now Held a variety of different roles, which I absolutely love I actually started as our controller for North America It was a director level position But I figured out that I really couldn't do another Quarter-end another audit I couldn't review any more Reconciliation or internal control so really started talking to leadership about other opportunities, and that's when I at the time was a VP of finance and they moved me into(...) Senior vice president leading operations and profitability Which was incredible it started with a team size about 360 and ended around 2400 by the time I left the role because we kept finding additional areas that we just thought were synergistic to bring together so That was incredible Ken Lammack our former CEO was very intentional with my career So then he said it would be great if you took on partner alliances and gained that experience Then he was like you've done that long enough. Why don't we have you remove operations and add? Enterprise sales or global enterprise sales team did that for a while and then recently was promoted To COO for North America and with that I'm responsible again for operations client experience And I've kept partners now for about four years so absolutely loved the job loved the team love insight Definitely a lot of evolution and move and talk about the other topic we could have talked about would be development Yeah,(...) absolutely yeah, yeah, that's amazing so today's topic is about decision-making so just to kind of set the table We'll probably start off with you know how how do as leaders how do we set clear? Communication and set the tone when it comes to decision-making not only for ourselves but for our team second We'll probably just go into like some of the tools and best practices I think a biggest thing to we might want to tackle is roadblocks along the way sure and then finally we'll just wrap up with Any final like tidbits that we can provide our viewers to help them with their decision-making? So Megan one of our leadership commitments is create clarity Absolutely what you say or actually what what do you think create clarity falls in place when it comes to decision-making? What do you see that falling into place?
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So I think a lot of times people start rushing forward to Here's what we should do versus really stepping back and seeing the full opportunity So I think one of the opportunities is leadership is to help the team sometimes take a tactical pause and say let's make sure we Really understand the full I like to say things as opportunities versus issues right? I mean as often as we can positively frame things. I think it's a great thing to do And when we do it in that manner and we bring in collaborative thinkers with us and we leave egos behind That's when I think we have the opportunity To stop pause think about what really matters What's really going to move the needle because often what's the most important thing that we decide to do is what we're not going to do and So, you know Sometimes it just needs leadership help to make sure that the teammates aren't rushing too fast to a conclusion That might not be the best one or over engineering it, you know A lot of times 80% is better than 100%(...) and we can make that needs a mic drop
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100% and it's interesting you mentioned that because it's counter, you know One of the things that we learned from even Thayer right a lot of our executives go out there One of the things that resonate with a lot of the leaders out there is they talk about this notion in order to go Fast you have to go slow. Mm-hmm, which sounds counterproductive But as you're just talking about actually helps tremendously because you're just going a hundred miles an hour You're missing so many things You're maybe doing things that are taking a lot of time that maybe you could have saved time by doing it Right or getting to the root cause or whatever the case may be What are your thoughts about that that notion of in order to go fast you need to go slow? Absolutely. I mean just even an example from today
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Leadership had started to get some feedback that because of all of the organizational changes that we've made that there's not clarity about Who to go to who to work with we took two hours today and we whiteboarded what used to work really well What what we think we broke and then but what would be the best new state because we knew even in our old roles that There was opportunity to improve so, you know two hours dedicated all of us in the room He goes off behind really to taking time to hear one another asking a lot of follow-on questions(...) And so from that we said actually there's quite a bit that we need to do to get back to Or to get to the optimal state, but we're committed to it So we're gonna go slow here for a couple of months and then come out with absolute clarity for our organization so I think it's super positive and We need to do more of that Yeah, I'm taking that pause and you know Really just two hours may seem like a lot of time taken away from your day-to-day I can imagine but it's well worth it at the end. Absolutely What are your thoughts about that term? She just said leave it you go out the door. What comes of mine? That's a great one. I was actually wondering, you know Sometimes when you're at the top you have that clarity to make decisions or at least the leeway to make decisions I think sometimes middle management or somewhere below You maybe feel like you don't have the option to stop or slow down Maybe you know from those aspiring leaders growing up Like how do you how do you get that sort of liberation to slow down and and ask those questions?(...) I think it one of the ways that you can tactically implement it is add that time to your calendar I have a life coach and she said to me Megan when do you have time to hope dream? Think read And I laughed. Yeah, right But we actually worked on tactical ways to implement that and so I think that's something that we need our teammates adding into their calendar and feeling the grace to do that because(...) Insight has you know with our us being in the technology industry. We have to transform So frequently and the best way we're gonna do that is having all of our teammates feel accountable To helping us make that transformation our teammates are meeting often with different people than we are and so they have amazingly great viewpoints and clarity about what's important to partners clients and Our teammates and we need to hear it from them regularly. I love one of my
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Favorite kind of partners in the community. He has a weekly meeting With his brother and their co-ceos and the question that they ask their teammates It's tell us something you don't think we want to hear or tell us what you don't think we want to hear I mean, you know just giving that freedom to make sure that we're all being real with each other positive feedback negative feedback Yeah, no, I think that you know that whole ego can can can take over sometimes and we don't Hear the things that we need to hear and the fact that they asked that question that right away says like hey Like I'm just like you I want to find the best solution. I want to empower you. That's what I heard I want to power you to call to call us out or to identify things that are not working so we can improve on it So that's awesome. Absolutely When I thought of the ego thing Again, I do have time to watch Netflix once in a while There's this documentary right now That's about it was back in the 80s if I can recall a bunch of artists that got together and sing this song
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And these are like top artists of the era, right? Can you imagine the type of egos that were in that room? You know and they only had maybe a small portion of the song and had a sing But can you imagine if they all kind of took in their take like this is how I want to do it No, they all had a cause like or they had a goal. We want to deliver this amazing song There's a cause behind it and even they had a like a sign in their door check your egos at the door Because that that's a that's a big roadblock which leads to the next question There's tons of roadblocks that come our way as leaders as teammates(...) What what have been some of your best practices when it comes to helping? Helping yourself but also your teammates overcome those roadblocks when it comes to decision-making(...) probably one of the best pieces of advice that I've gotten in my career was a Partner that I used to work with Eddie and why and he was on the account that I moved to and his advice to me was hey, you're new to this company and You have a lot obviously that you're learning and coming up to speed on(...) The number one thing that you can do to build relationships and build Collaborations so that you guys can transform and move faster is for you to be soliciting Advice from people, you know really tell them like what you're trying to learn or what you're trying to understand And how you think is best to proceed and even if Megan even if you think you already know the answer and you already know What path you want to go down just by having that collaborative conversation is going to build this amazing rapport And what I find it's probably most companies biggest roadblocks is when you don't have a unified Cohesive leadership team that truly cares about one another. It's a total difference You know about working with one another first is genuinely caring about one another and I think you know building that rapport And taking moments insane relationship over a task because once you have the relationships in place the tasks get a lot easier to complete and That's when you can truly start transforming as a company is when you have that kind of trust So I think people need to lean in more to the relationship building than most people do I like that I like that it's you're not just asking questions, but you're specifically asking for advice. Yeah, how do you think this should be done? Huh? That's pretty good. Yeah, I like that approach to give that a try. Yeah I mean our previous episode we talked about having your own personal board of directors, right? Those individuals those folks that you trust that can advise you Mm-hmm But a lot of times we tend to think that maybe somebody at a similar level or higher level than us We can seek but no you just you just said no It can be anybody can you be your own teammates because they probably dealing with experiences that you've never dealt with before or They're seeing something that you're not seeing that could be totally beneficial and that's that human element part Which is awesome. Just okay I'm just gonna say you said even if you know the answer to ask your advice anyway I imagine that also kind of lends itself to kind of maybe building up their egos and confidence a little bit Absolutely credit for absolutely. Yeah Just as an example why leaders always need to stay very connected to all teammate levels within an organization I was meeting with an analyst on our global operations team a few weeks back and she works on a lot of our big devices of service opportunities and I said Why do you think we lose some of the opportunities direct to OEMs? Why is our offering better than ours in some regards and she said it's absolutely not There there's no reason that any client should ever go direct OEM They should always go through insight and this is why and she listed out three amazing compelling reasons We had her shoot a podcast after that, you know but(...) You know, it's those moments where you're just really seeking feedback seeking to understand from somebody that's very close to something that I'm passionate about and You just can get some of the most amazing ideas. So I will be presenting on amplify
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Almost forward forward what she said to me. Oh like a little sneak peek. Yeah Coming to amplify near you, right? So so I know for for the sake of the podcast in our audience You know a lot of them do know a lot of the ones that listen to us probably work with us or they're in the channel Or they're in the IT industry. But for those that don't when you mention OEM, can you elaborate a little bit about what that means original? equipment manufacturer So that's really saying the people that are creating the hardware technology that we sell versus ISV When we're mostly saying the software technology that we sell but you're right. I do love an acronym We all do right. Yeah, so in that same In the same vein that we're talking about one of the tools that we use and you're a big advocate of it because earlier You know we talked about you know, who was somebody who in an organization quite a few to be honest But one that is a champion and somebody who really instills this This technique or this tool and empowers our team to use it was was yourself So tell us about it now. It's known as completed staff work. Okay, it's an army or military term But insight we've you know, we've changed the name for our culture and what fits for us and it's before action review Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about what it is and how you've instilled it or utilized it in your in your business? Yeah, absolutely. So it really is a methodology to be able to push decision-making down To lower levels within the organization and the reason why that's important is it builds scale within your company? And if you want to become a much more sizable company and as you grow and you get more matrix(...) ensuring that You're empowering people to make decisions Improves everything it improves your culture it implores your teammate development and often your client experience because think about it in your own lives When you haven't you're interacting with you know an associate at a store and they're empowered to make an out of policy decision for you Your brand loyalty goes up like that So we recognized back when I was leading operations and profitability that we had a scale problem And so we employed this technique and really what it is is it helps our teammates with critical thinking because when there's an opportunity or a Potentially an issue what they're asked to do is stop make sure they fully understand it and then And they explore the different options in terms of how we could
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Optimize the issue or the opportunity And so through that they have to really thoroughly understand it and then they summarize it And so the great part about it is they do an executive summary about what the issue of the opportunity is They make sure they're giving you context So, you know if something's highly political or you know This team wants this and this team wants that they include that context in there So there's no nobody's not understanding the full situation and then they stop and they make recommendations and then at the end
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They submit it to their leader and Their leader is if it's done well can just review it and simply provide approval decline on the recommendation What I found is it's often not approval decline. It's you know, you've said you recommend option one Why couldn't we do option two with this tweak and this is why I'm thinking of the tweak So what you're doing is you're building scale because you're giving them how you think(...) But you're jumping off from a very informed position and so what I consider success with completed staff work is you have individuals go from Seeking permission asking what to do to saying hey I'm about to do this to saying I've been doing this So if I think about it, you know I don't spend time really asking my boss for permission to do things at the level I am in the organization But that progressed over time and when you employ tools like this That's how you get scale. So we started it at first senior managers and above and it took off so well I was a huge sponsor of it, you know when I would get a really good completed staff work I would send it out to the whole organization. I'm like, that's what I'm talking about Like this is so good. Look at this then. This is what's great about it, right? And so then people were like getting hype, you know, like I want to do that I want to be blasted to 2400 teammates, right? And so that's when we really started to see At the adoption of it, you know down to the individual contributor level So it's very rare now that I have to flip a note back to the team and say hey Can you take time and put this in a completed staff work format? But that's what I do, you know, I don't accept like chaos in an email any longer, you know Yeah, that's awesome. And it's funny when you said that I'm like I was a recipient a lot of that like hey I want this can we have this can we get some training? I'm just like where is this coming from? Who is championing this and I'm does now I know the origins But no, it's such a powerful tool as a leader who wouldn't want their team to you know Come to them and saying have a powerful recommendation Here's here's the opportunity. I love that now and I'm gonna be using that Here's the challenge of the opportunity we're facing here's how we got here the contacts right? Here's those Historics or how it ended up and what I love about that when I do the trainings to talk to a lot of leaders and Teammates, I always stop there and say why do you think this is important? Why do you think it's important for us to go back and understand how we got here? And right away for them it starts to well It makes me now get better clarity of you know The how you know why this even got started and the or it just allows me to have a better understanding(...) Because we're easily can say this doesn't work. This is a challenge fix it You know now it's like I'm taking ownership and I did my research. I've taken the time to investigate So I love that step But then the last part people have a hard time with this is I have to come up with you know various options And then finally here's my recommendation People have a hard time with that What why do you think that is and if you want to share like what do you think people have a hard time with? Okay, I've done the research. I know this is why we how we got here But now I have a couple of options, but I'm hesitant Why do you think people would be hesitant to share their recommendation? I I think it's from mobility you know you're putting their stuff out there that you could quote-unquote be wrong(...) And so that's why I think the response from the leader is super important, too You know I usually would start with totally get where you're coming from here This is how I'm thinking about it you know and so you try and make it a bit conversational So it's not just like no do option two you know like you're not gonna really build great
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People feeling(...) Like so empowered if you it's all in that interaction and in the moment They're giving context back to them right I love the dual benefits, too Yeah, you're you're coaching and teaching your teammates to do critical thinking, but also as you mentioned You're no longer dealing with a chaotic You know Unmanageable inbox of questions and problems right where you're scrolling through and you're like who's this person do they work at insight? Or they work so you know all that's gone It gives you a lot more scale as a leader And this is something that I think more leaders need to think about as soon as my teammates get good at something I remove myself from a process like okay. You're good there. I'm gonna go work over here, and so That's the other thing is I you know the more you can push those approvals down The more I can push to my leaders and they can push down and so on and so forth and now all of a sudden We're all doing jobs that are appropriate for the roles We have within the organization versus getting sucked into Activity versus productivity and that was a theme of this season right was like hey as a new leader You've just been you know assigned a new team or a previous leader now You're coming back into leadership because it happens right sometimes We decide hey, I want to go back and do something else, but then I'm coming back The hardest part is like to your point we get so busy. We want to take it ourselves, which we know it's impossible You're gonna burn out So this is one tool now that can give you empower your team to take that ownership to now allow you to work on other things That are more impactful and valuable to the organization while your team is making the right decisions and to the vulnerability piece I love that you say that is a big fear of people, but as soon as you take away the nope That's a no give me a nut you know come back It's like let's have a conversation Let's work on this and then fine-tune it together which is great and it empowers them to come back again and come back again So awesome(...) What what other advice them is we're wrapping up? Is there any other advice when it comes besides completed staff work or you can use continue with that? What has what what are some examples or differences that you've seen it due to your team in general overall like you know? One of the compliments that I've gotten is just a level of scale that my team has I've been asked How did you achieve that and so I actually thought pretty critically about it? And I think it's how I started my career is I was an auditor and the way auditing works is it's very Hierarchical so you start out as a staff and then you become a senior and a manager The staff do all the original work and then the people above review They don't fix your work They give you audit review notes and then you go fix your work, and then they review it again So it can seem like highly highly inefficient But actually it built massive scale because from those review notes They do it that much better the next time and the next time in the next jobs And so that's how I really work with my team is I don't take Anything that they give me and make my own edits you know I'll call them and talk it through kind of slide by slide or I'll type up an email with hey This is what I'm thinking you know and the reason I do that is if I were to just change What was it what I got? They'd never maybe notice those nuanced differences or maybe dramatic differences from what I got to what we went forward with and as we scale That down it's really important, and so I think sometimes people feel like well. It's just faster But every time you do that. It's just faster move. You're actually not building scale within your organization You're not developing your teammates. You're not doing one of our you know leadership commitments
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so That's one that I would say is probably Some of these answers I think get a little repetitive year from all the leaders But that's just an actual tool that I think is pretty useful Hey, it goes back to go you know in order to go fast You got to go slow right like you know we it's like some some leaders are probably listen to this right now I'm going oh That's gonna make things go faster for me back slow be careful right as we know yeah in the short term in the short term Long term as you said you've been able to scale teams, so you do kind of have to put in the extra work in the beginning Yeah, so gently any any other final questions with thoughts before you wrap up well I do like to know when you have to make a difficult decision who is on your speed dial Well I work for a D burger, and I think he's brilliant, so he's definitely on the list, but(...) What I think it's awesome is It's not just my direct reports. It's it's really the whole team I know most of the team really well And so you know if it's a specific issue I kind of know right who to go to to know that on the streets view I know Okay, well this is gonna have to be put in a super executive format so I could pull this person into so I think it's about building the team and then leveraging them and and not having Ego's about who you meet with you know and really going to the source
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Because you're gonna be so much more on point and you're gonna get there so much faster when you're bringing those individual contributors along with you(...) And it goes back to our previous episode. I love that you're building that you know It's a personal board of directors those individuals and you leverage them when needed right depending on the situation like this is a situation That I already know who I can reach out to and talk to you. That was a good question Let the electric question it was like a parent who's your favorite child or favorite kid. She's like oh The other thing that I would just say and because I'd love for especially insight teammates to think about this a lot It's we have incredible partners Mm-hmm and some of them are absolutely world-class and certain things that they do or a lot of things that they do So, you know when I took over a client experience, I was like super humble reading all the books But I went and leveraged, you know in all of our relationships They could I meet with your client experience leader and really hear what's working best and what was a waste of time And and so, you know, there's just so many opportunities and we do that I think pretty well as an organization, but there's a lot of partners on speed dial - I would say yeah I would agree 100% so just to wrap up Jillian you should like to ask look, you know yourself today You kind of in the rich shoes today. What was your biggest takeaway from today's discussion?(...) I have to list just one. I seriously I could probably just listen to you talk about leadership and your career all day long Thank you Really just a lot of great different takeaways I like the approach of how you do take those strategic pauses but for opportunities or think about opportunities I like that you are able to think about your your staff your teams as Kind of like your up-and-coming bench and you do it's it's helpful for both of you to take a step back and let them Learn how to make strategic decisions Yeah, I think I this will be one that I'll probably save for later and listen to you over and over Yeah, no for me the biggest takeaway is that can we talk about you know, you're at a crossroads Just reminding leaders that you're not alone, right? You do have so many untapped resources in front of you not only at various levels Just start to leverage them and I love that your example of when you're even going to a different organization or department that you don't Have a lot of experience. Hey, I don't I'm here to learn right? I'm gonna do everything I can leverage those partners What do you recommend that we do here? Right not just asking questions. I'm asking me. I'm like But yes, I love that too What do you recommend instead of like yeah, you know, I need to answer immediately to giving them that time to process and think about it So that's gonna help, you know a lot of times It's like now you now you that decision has even elevated become a better decision for you So making any final thoughts any final takeaways that you want to tell our audience as we wrap up I'm really loving Jillian's fit and I think I might be like replicating it tomorrow Just a heads up. Thank you. Good choice. Yeah. No, this was awesome. Really appreciated the time you guys. Yeah Thank you again for taking the time. So for more content again Don't forget to continue to to follow us like subscribe share this podcast if you know somebody that is starting Leadership or as you know mentioned, you know what? I'm really having a difficult time to Making decision or helping my team empower my team and make better decision share this episode with them And I know they'll get tons of value Just as a sneak peek our next episode will be recorded from amplify this year, which is exciting Our topic is going to be shared leadership. So be ready for that and we look forward to next time. Have a good one.
Host
Z Tinoco is a diversity, leadership & organization development manager who believes in building teams, inspiring minds and creating authentic connections. He helps people reach their goals and find success through humor, leadership and a diverse mindset.
Co-host
Richard is an experienced paid media specialist with a proven track record of creating and executing successful campaigns across various platforms. Richard has a passion for tackling new challenges, connecting with people and loves all things tech.
