Speaker 1: 0:11

Welcome to Unfazed Under Fire, a podcast designed to elevate your leadership and amplify your impact. Each episode offers valuable insights to help you transform your vision into reality, cultivate high-performing cultures that attract top talents, and navigate the complexities of today's uncertain, chaotic world with confidence and clarity. Now tuning into your needs, here's your host and moderator, seasoned executive coach and leadership alchemist, david Craig Utz.

Speaker 2: 0:47

Welcome back to Unfazed Under Fire. I'm your host and moderator, david Craig Utz, the leadership alchemist. Now. This show is dedicated to helping executives amplify their leadership impact, gain fresh insights and build the resilience needed to thrive in today's crazy, unpredictable world. We feature two types of guests on the show thought leaders in the fields of leadership development, organizational culture and team dynamics, who share strategies that are tailored to executive challenges. And also seasoned executives, like we have today, who embrace leadership development and recognize that people and culture are the keys to maximizing organizational value and making sure that change initiatives work. Now this show focuses on pioneering breakthroughs in leadership and culture to create rewarding work experiences and inspire excellence for the greater good. And central to this is your ability to build empowering, accountable cultures, all driven by enlightened leadership, the development of which is really the key to success in all those areas. And ultimately, leadership and effective leadership begins from within. True Impact starts with self-mastery, the foundation for leading others with clarity and confidence. And in these disruptive times, self-mastery isn't just beneficial, it's essential. When executives harness their inner resourceness and lead from the inside out, they unlock the full potential of collaboration, which is really the most powerful unifying force that any organization can wield.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Now, today we're joined by special guest, siva Balu, and Siva is a seasoned executive leader in business and technology and healthcare. He has led various strategic initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, business hyper growth and well-known brands like Blue Cross, blue Shield, ymca and United Health. He's taken several ideas to scale, turned around businesses and built teams of all sizes. He's focused on creating value for customers and has been at the forefront of leading artificial intelligence efforts, and he's a renowned keynote speaker in those and many other areas. Now he's also a community leader and serving on various nonprofit boards. He's a lifelong learner, has earned his MBA, is participating in various executive programs and during his free time when he has it he likes to spend time with his family long distance ultra running, reading books, listening to podcasts and watching Formula One racing. So, siva, I hope I got all that right. Anything else you'd add at this point?

Speaker 3: 3:07

David, thank you for that pretty humbling introduction and thank you for having me Looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, and what I like to do. I start with all my first time guests. I'd love for you to talk about your journey in your own words, however you want to describe it. How did it end up leading you to this, leading this IT at the level that you do for one of the biggest healthcare companies in the world?

Speaker 3: 3:33

Yeah, I started. I grew up in India in very, very humble beginnings and I came to the US more than two decades ago for work. I started as an intern at Bluegrass Blue Shield and after internship, I became a software engineer and really was focused on the job at hand. You know, at the time I didn't know what I was going to be when I grew up, but I knew that I had good mentors. I had good colleagues who really invested in me.

Speaker 3: 4:05

Over time, I spent a little over 20 years at Blue Cross Blue Shield First eight years at the plants in the regional level and most of it around 12 plus years at the headquarters of Blue Cross Blue Shield. During that time, I built a platform business that went from zero to 10x growth where we impacted 110 million members across the US and globally. I had a really good run, ended up running the entire platform business and I wanted to have an impact. So I actually took a break. I went to the National YMCA of the USA for almost two years. There at YMCA, I had this unique opportunity to lead the digital transformation to take them to the next era, and remember this was also two months after COVID started in 2020. So we had this situation where over 3,000 YMCAs were closed or open and closed, and we had this unique opportunity also in front of us where we can give access to health for our members through digital tools and mobile and virtual health and whatnot. It is a really good run, built quickly various digital products, including virtual health, mobile, universal customer relationship management, because everything was done through your mobile or computer. You cannot go in to talk to the friend desk.

Speaker 3: 5:29

After that, almost three years ago, I joined what is now a Fortune 4 UnitedHealth group to lead their ancillary and individual businesses, digital technology. What it is is a group of mergers and acquisitions, a whole bunch of businesses that touches commercial, medicare, medicaid, segments of health care and also the consumer and provider. Really really good run. Somehow, my background has become business technology and health care. I also have various other interests outside of work where I help startups, I mentor startups, and that keeps my innovation and creative juices flowing. So that's how I got here.

Speaker 2: 6:10

Yeah, I know a lot of executives like to spend time in incubators because they can get a little stodgy in these large organizations and they can actually spurn some fresh ideas in you right.

Speaker 3: 6:22

Two things exact me. One is startups right, because they are so creative. Sometimes, you know, like Steve Jobs said, be foolish, like sometimes thinking like we can get through, but it helps. Right, because those ideas could be considered foolish. Or today, the Googles and Amazons of the world, which is actually people, probably didn't support it. Yeah, I like that, and I also like spending a lot of time with interns. I can see myself in the interns. They are fresh out of college or grad school. They're full of ideas and they're full of excitement. That's a level of energy that I can draw upon.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Yeah, absolutely, that's great. That's so true. Now I'm just curious I was going to ask this later but since you shared so eloquently what you did to YMCA, what was that decision about? You left one mammoth, you know, large organization Now, not that YMCA is a small organization, but comparatively that is and then you entered a Fortune 4 company after that. What was that at the center of that sandwich all about for you? What drew you back to an organization like that? I'm just curious.

Speaker 3: 7:27

That's a great question. So I did not know a lot about the YMCA, even though many of us have spent time at the Y, have been to the Y, have family members who learned swimming at the Y. So I was involved in many nonprofits pre-COVID and I'm still involved in nonprofits and when COVID hit I was exploring like what can I do to have an impact on humanity in general? It's a little bit of a macro view of what I wanted to do and the YMCA. I didn't know this, but a little-known fact is pre-COVID there were 3,000 YMCAs within the US. Their revenue was around $10 billion with a B and they're also in 140 countries, so the impact is pretty wide and broad. They've been around for, at the time, 175 years, so we all know the Y is almost at every corner if you start looking for it. So I had this unique opportunity to come and lead the digital transformation and what it means is really there is a mixture of paperwork. There's a mixture of health products and delivery. The YMCA was also the largest chronic disease prevention provider. Think about digital excuse me a diabetes prevention program. So how do we deliver all this beyond members coming into the branches digitally? So we shape the digital transformation strategy and roadmap during my time.

Speaker 3: 8:54

Really, the simplest way I can put it is you can log into a mobile app and take classes One can think of like Peloton, which is popular, right. Similarly, there are differences between a Peloton and a YMCA. As an example, one of the number one bylaws of the Y is to protect the kids. The safety of kids is the number one bylaw for the YMCA. So if you create a mobile app or if you put content in YouTube, you need to make sure it's protected for the kids. They don't get a recommendation that they can link on. So it's a learning for me where I can also bring my background in business and technology and digital and then also creating a level of discipline where we can focus and deliver this quickly at a very low cost to the YMCA. So all that combined excited me. My time there was very, very impactful. Some of the products are soon being used and being scaled, even though I left around three years ago.

Speaker 2: 9:56

Yeah, and you said you started it two months before or three months before COVID hit. Was it Two months after COVID hit? Two months after COVID? Two months after COVID, they really needed your help and that transformed their business right, because they were able to provide services to customers, because people really steered clear of those kinds of places for many, many months right, but which hurt their business. That's awesome Right Now.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Another thing you mentioned in your introduction is that you're, you know, a new immigrant to the country, or not new. You've been here for many, many years, but I'd love for you to share what it was like to transition into the United States. And I also, you know, because I have either first generation or first time immigrants on the show a lot of times who are in finance or information technology or marketing, whatever, and I love to hear their story about the transition and maybe a little bit about as you look at Americans that have been around here for generations, do you see that sometimes we take things for granted that we we have access to and that you maybe appreciate more than all of us? I think it's good to be reminded of that.

Speaker 3: 11:08

Yeah, yeah, going back 25 years, everything was new, right. When I landed here, it was the middle of winter and I was in New York not the warmest place to be and it was, I think, one of those weekends.

Speaker 2: 11:22

So I'm in Minneapolis, so I understand, and it was, I think, one of those weekends I'm in.

Speaker 3: 11:25

Minneapolis. So I understand. Yeah, exactly, new York is much warmer than Minneapolis, for sure, but everything was new. From experiencing snowfall, I grew up in a place where it is, on an average, 115 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year and we have monsoon, which is 10 to 20 days of heavy rain. Right, those are only two, two weathers we have or seasons we have. So, starting from the weather to the culture, to driving on the opposite side of the road, to driving, you know, all kinds of things is different. I grew up learning British English. There's a lot of things. Even now I make mistakes because I'm still learning, but the American, you learn proper english uh, I don't want to get into that debate here.

Speaker 2: 12:10

No, no, we won't touch that anymore sports were new.

Speaker 3: 12:14

You know we did not have baseball, we did not have nfl and whatnot. So everything is new. Uh, the easiest way I can say this is I was young and naive and I was also like a sponge. From time to time I remind myself of my first few years because that is a way that I can learn quickly Everything that we preach in office settings, like keep an open mind Two kinds of philosophies which I practiced as a new immigrant without anybody teaching me, because it was a necessity.

Speaker 3: 12:49

I grew up very, very poor and very, very humble beginning, so my focus was primarily at work and doing A plus job, making sure I delivered. Everything was given to me and I took on additional projects and assignments, even outside my scope of work. That probably helped me in my career grow, because I learned other competencies beyond software engineering, right Testing and business analysis and project management and communication. So really it's two sides. One is a personal life. Everything has to be learned from scratch. Another one is professional life. What are the etiquettes? How do I learn how to communicate in a team meeting better? How do I? You know, it's a lot of cultural differences. So I really learned quite a bit in the first few years and I continue to learn. And then there are times in my life where I sit back and think how great United States is and actually, you know, to be honest, India has also become a really, really fast-growing country. So much advances, In fact. They use everything today in their mobile, from paying credit cards to using it for day-to-day life, almost as a mobile economy, if you ask me.

Speaker 3: 14:02

But you said about taking things for granted. I used to think about what it is that is awesome about US. You know we are in a political cycle now. One of the phrases you hear is American dream. I'm really a true American dream, Somebody who came from very humble beginnings with nobody here. I borrowed $300 to pay back $50 a month over six months to come here, and then I reached a level I wouldn't say at the peak, because I still have a long runway ahead of me, but at a level where I can help others, I can inspire and impact. So I think the freedom of speech is something that I got.

Speaker 3: 14:40

My citizenship resonated with me quite a bit, where there are so many things in this country that we have in abundance, like clean air, clean water when I grew up, we actually had to buy water once a week that was delivered in a truck, so we had to take vessels and carry it for drinking water. I mean so a lot of good natural resources we have been blessed with in the US, as well as over the last, you know, 20, 30 plus years. So many good policies and so many good government initiatives and private initiatives. And the last point I'll make it is almost every country is envious of the US because it's a capitalist economy. Anybody can start a business, Anybody can start a podcast.

Speaker 3: 15:25

Anybody can start a podcast. Anybody can get a job at Blue Cross or United and you can shine right. There's limitations. Now, are there challenges? Are there limitations? Yes, of course, like any other country when there are people, there's going to be challenges and difference of opinion, but in the macro picture I think it's a really rewarding country if you're willing to roll up your sleeve and put in the hard work and do it the right way.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Yeah, I think it's really well said. I mean, this is common what I hear from people that have immigrated here, that the pressure of learning the culture and the need to show up and show up big, to sustain yourself and to take advantage of the opportunity and the resilience that that created and ability to like bounce back from things. I think that you know, sometimes I'll speak for myself. I didn't have to worry about that, I was like it kind of slipped right in, you know, and it was just there. So I really appreciate that sharing. And I also love India too.

Speaker 2: 16:30

I spent six months in India back in 1983. I was on a spiritual journey, but I love that country. The thousands of years of history versus 200 plus, you know, 250, 260 years of history. You feel it there and the people are beautiful. I found it was very I drove at the time it was it wasn't Mumbai, it was Bombay Took a train into. You know, getting a seat was a challenge and I slipped under a guy and everybody celebrated it. You know they were upset at me, you know. So it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Going back to your work, what are you most passionate about in the work that you do. What really floats your boat every day like, puts a smile on your face, puts a bounce on your step?

Speaker 3: 17:18

Yeah, the number one thing, as I grew up in my leadership career and journey, is people People side of it. People first. You know a lot of leaders talk about it. There's a lot of books and speeches, but practicing is a tough part because people come with complexities and I enjoy and draw energy from people of all roles, all job calibers. Even though I have a large team, I like to run a flat organization in terms of anybody can talk to anybody, anybody can speak up. So I enjoy the people side of it.

Speaker 3: 17:56

When I have these kind of conversations it gives me a moment to kind of remunerate what I'm here for. I'm here to do. I like to inspire people. I like to have an impact in people's lives. Some of it could be big, some of it could be small. As simple as giving somebody flexibility at work can have a huge impact if they have kids or elderly parents or fighting some medical issues, whatever it may be. I don't need to know that, but having an impact and inspiring people is what excites me. The second one is equally, if not something that is personal is solving problems. I tend to believe we wake up and we go to sleep and we solve problems throughout the day in our lives At work.

Speaker 2: 18:43

That's life right there.

Speaker 3: 18:44

Yeah, exactly the opportunity to take complex problems. You know, we hear about all the problems in health care in the headlines, in news stories, in politics, in outside politics. Who's going to solve this? And I'm privileged and honored to be part of that right. How can we solve problems? Similarly for technology? Right, Tech can help us our life, enable and enhance, quite a bit like the video conference we are using right now. And it can also sometimes impact us if it doesn't work or if it doesn't work for the optimum part.

Speaker 3: 19:20

So how can I use the available data, the available technology, the people to solve problems on an everyday basis? And I don't look at any problem as small, medium, large, extra large. I look at all problems as okay, here's the problem, what are my solutions? What is the best solution at that point in time? And then, through a lot of self-pondering, it could be the engineer in me. I went to college to study engineering. I'm an engineer at heart, so maybe I like to solve problems. So those are the two things of people and solving problems to have an impact on lives really excites me at work.

Speaker 2: 19:57

And I think you know what you said about people is really so true. People leaders underestimate the impact they have on people's lives. I remember one leader I was talking to said you know, I went to a wedding and I watched the father give away the bride to the groom and I realized how much, how many lives like that I'm impacting at work, the way that they, you know, they go home and they want to kick the dog, or they go home and they hug their wife, you know which one do. What kind of effect do I want to have on their, on their lives, and that's what's. You know, hundreds of people. You affect hundreds of people through the course of your career, if not more. So it's well said. So if you look at your leadership brand, you know somebody would say what Siva's leadership brand is. You said it's people centric, it's about solving problems. Would there be any other qualities that you would say that you either want to be known for or are known for as a leader?

Speaker 3: 20:56

Yeah, yeah. There's three things I have practiced over time at work. When I take a new role or when I get a new team to lead, I make it very abundantly clear these are three tenets I follow, very abundantly clear. These are three tenets I follow. Number one is trust. I work very, very, very hard to build trust. I believe if there's trust whether it's personal relationships or professional it's very easy to solve problems. It's very easy to work together. When there is a lack of trust, no matter how hard you work or how correct you do the work, there's always going to be a little bit of catching up to do to make it perfect. So trust is something I work very, very hard. How do I achieve trust? By being exceptionally transparent, something I learned a long, long time ago, especially when I became a C-level leader.

Speaker 3: 21:38

A lot of leaders lose their jobs because they're not transparent, especially in security, in technology. So I go above and beyond to keep my stakeholders which could be my team, which could be the board of directors or my leadership team in the loop of what's happening the good, the bad and the ugly. And then, as long as they know, somebody got it under control, somebody has it like me. That's kind of the trust and transparency. And then teamwork is something. I stop saying that only because it's implied. But we are a team of teams. No one leader, no one team like IT team is not going to deliver all the IT. Nowadays, anybody a business person, an operations person can take a course in AWS or cloud and go and do stuff. They can create reports. So I believe trust and transparency are two things I would like to be known for, with the foundation of teamwork as a mindset.

Speaker 2: 22:31

Yeah, well said, and you've led a lot of transformations across large organizations. You scaled a lot of businesses, you turned around some struggling ones, you turned around some struggling ones. So you know, and of course, probably the issue of relationship building, trust, transparency, obviously solving problems, but is there anything else when you go in to like make a large first things that you do in transformations like that, like you know, on a practical level, to actually manifest those?

Speaker 2: 23:09

things and get off Cause. It does, as I think in those situations, getting off on the right foot, like it's the first 90 days, the first 60 days is pretty critical. If you hit, if you have too many hiccups along the way there, you can get behind the eight ball Right and be challenging. So what are some of the things you do when you first walk into situations like that? Uh, when you scale, you try to do a large scale or turn something around or or transform something. What do you do?

Speaker 3: 23:37

yep, uh. I will answer it two things right. One is taking a strategy from an idea to scale. Another one is is, if something is in trouble or problem, turning it around. I'll go back to the previous response I gave about coming to the country and being like a sponge but learning everything new. Anytime I'm heading out a new venture or a new responsibility, I become a sponge, right. What I mean by that is I learn everything and anything possible about that business or the workflow or the data flow, and I do a lot of deep dive sessions. It could be quick, one hour sessions, it could be two day meeting but I bring in the key folks, the subject matter experts who have done this for years. There's always SMEs available for us and sometimes leaders unintentionally alienate their SMEs. I like to bring them and try to listen to them, ask curious, focused questions. So the deep dives are an important part of it.

Speaker 3: 24:38

Why I'm doing all this? To understand the baseline. Whether we need to scale a strategy or we need to solve a problem which is very complex hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. It's very important to know what we are fixing, which means we need to know what the baseline is, whether it is the people side of it, process, data technology, finance, operations. You know, those are the key things that we'll deal with Once I understand the baseline and I'm going fast here right, moving at 100x speed is very important in the initial stages and then taking all that in and sorting it out and saying, okay, these are the three things I'm going to focus for the next six to 12 months. These 12 things are nice.

Speaker 3: 25:22

A quick example I'll give is I said I joined the YMCA of the USA two months after COVID, like any other organization. There were tens of projects that the team was working on, but also there's a lot of uncertainty because everybody's remote this priority. What should we do? Bringing the focus and saying we're going to focus on this one thing called digital transformation and we're going to create these three products because that's what our members need. So I got really good at doing this over and over Deep dive, understand the baseline, cut out the noise and bring focus on what is priority, and not only keeping the team and the subject matter experts in the loop, but the stakeholder buy-in is something that's going to make me successful or fail.

Speaker 3: 26:05

So, whether it is the business partners, whether it is my boss whether it's a board making sure they get periodic updates. Sometimes it can be too much information, but it's okay in those kind of transformational point in time and validate with them. Hey, this is your two-week update. Are we headed in the right direction? If you see something, say something Now. Initially, me including, and all the people working on it are not going to like what the feedback is.

Speaker 2: 26:32

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. You have a little conflict. You have different points of view what the problems are. You have levels of the organization that have different degrees of political power. All that's played in there too, right?

Speaker 3: 26:45

Right, and whoever has the highest title or the loudest grade or what. So that's where the trust part comes into it. Right, being humble and say that I came into this, this is what I'm seeing in the last two months. I could be 100% wrong. Usually, what happens is it's a 70-30,. 70% will agree 30%. They'll be like, and every time they say something is not correct in the strategy or data collected, it's another point to chase, another thing to identify, because you know, if I'm running my, I like to run my team and my department as my own business.

Speaker 3: 27:20

One of the things I heard continuously about Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, all this very, very, very successful billionaires. They don't just dismiss ideas, they actually take it and say did we miss this? What's going on? Even though you know, when we see it through social media and stuff, it may look like they're dismissing ideas. How did they build Amazon or Tesla or SpaceX? Because they probably had a lot of ideas that clashed and they said you know what? This is, what you is, what my competitor with us in the case of SpaceX, it could be Boeing are not doing. I'm going to do this. So doing it at a different scale, obviously for me, but continuously improving it.

Speaker 3: 27:58

And then, six months as an example in this hypothetical is when you start saying that, okay, we are seeing results because of these three things or we're not seeing results because of these things. It could be. In many cases. It's really the change management side of it. You got to bring the people in the journey. In some cases it could be financial we didn't plan budget for next year In some cases it could be legal, but mostly it is a people and the change management side of it. Even if we don't show a result, if you show a roadmap and if you say, hey, we are waiting for this December thing to happen, then we have a two-year roadmap and this is what the roadmap tells us and my commitment is to come back on a monthly basis and provide an update and bringing back the transparency. Nine out of 10 times this worked for me.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Yeah, well, I mean what I hear. I say maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but you go in and you do a lot of listening and a lot of data collection and a lot of understanding of what's going on, and you must have a set of questions that are consistently you know when you go in you're going to be asking in situate. Of course there'll be customized to the specific problem or technological complexity you're dealing with, but it sounds like you have a kind of a structure of how you think about going in and collecting that data and then what you're doing is, on a regular basis, spitting back out what I'm hearing. Is that right, you know? And then you're boiling it down and prioritizing what are the top three, which is smart because you know, sometimes I think organizations have, you know, innovation-itis, they want to innovate everywhere and they get a million projects going on.

Speaker 2: 29:35

And then you got every stakeholder has their favorite pet project and nothing gets done because they need other stakeholders involved and not doing any change management. So I mean you're kind of the captain of that whole ship, of trying to get it steered in the right direction and moving at a good clip but consistently forward, and so you do that for a period of time and what you're saying you find is, sooner or later, people get that you're listening, they get that their input has been taken and even if the direction seems to go against that, they feel. Well, you take it into account and, quite frankly, if I'm looking at it as priorities, they're probably right or I can live with that and I can go along with that and that's the trust. But you really start with mutual respecting where they're at. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 3: 30:26

One hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 30:26

You got it. Yeah, very good, awesome, and you know how does. In situations like that, how does culture play into this, or the culture or the values of the organization? How do you engage that? Do you sometimes regenerate that or rethink that? How does the actual culture development piece come into play, if it does for you?

Speaker 3: 30:50

Yeah, you know. Over 20 years, David, I had read, attended seminars and trainings, thought about culture, only to come to the simple understanding Culture is not with what people say or do. Culture is how people feel. That's true. That leads to what they say and do. Exactly, culture is how people feel that's true.

Speaker 3: 31:10

That leads to what they say and do Exactly so, getting beyond PowerPoints and media posts and whatnot. To me, culture is how people feel, and how people feel the measure of success if they feel like they can speak up and they can say what they want to say. Now, we may not agree all the time. I have this quote that is debate, decide, comment. We debate vehemently Different ideas. Let's say there are 10 people in the conference room or in the meeting Debate all the ideas, put it on whiteboards. We used to put on paper parking lot big you know sticky notes, sticky pass, decide. Decide means decide together, even if my idea is not the idea. That is part of the decision. I have said my two pieces and I have contributed to that discussion. Right, so the debate part is vehement. Decide is together. So we decide on the direction.

Speaker 3: 32:06

I talked about the top three right in the previous question. How do I come to top three? I don't know. I don't have any magic bullet and I don't want to think that I know all the answers. It comes through these exercises. So we decide together.

Speaker 3: 32:18

These are our top three strategy items. We want to proceed and then commit. Commit is where I think it's very, very important to get the buy-in, because out of the 10 people in this example in the room, seven people's ideas were not picked up. It's the two or three who said this should be the top three. And then we thought, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 32:38

We all commit to make sure that strategy, that vision, those top three, are supported by all of us, which means we are not passive-aggressive, we are not agreeing to this in a boardroom and going back and not supporting it. We are putting our teams, our resources and ourselves behind it. So the when we lead teams, the teams will see through it. If you're just acting, you got to be honest and you got to be truthful. Right, because people will talk. There's always water cooler talk, even in the virtual world. So, going back to your question, I had this debate, but level setting and saying that, hey, listen, this is all within work settings. We should still be able to go and grab a drink, because this is not personal. Yes, my idea was also not taken. In some cases I'll throw in extra ideas, so some of mine gets rejected.

Speaker 2: 33:29

They can see that you're willing to let go of your own ideas. That's brilliant.

Speaker 3: 33:34

And I also joke about that. Hey, I only had three, but I gave five because I wanted to be part of the debate, but making it very clear on an ongoing basis. Now this cannot just sit in the old room or the conference room. We had to talk about this in the town halls all hands meetings. We had to collect feedback with the staff who are day-to-day in the front line. We had to collect feedback from our partners. So, basically, creating the structure, being intentful and then communicating. And then I haven't talked about communication, the whole thing. We are talking about trust, transparency.

Speaker 3: 34:07

Some of the foundational things is ongoing communications.

Speaker 3: 34:10

Having those one-on-one meetings, skip level meetings and making sure those top three are always discussed are always part of our goals and this way, nobody feels left out and everybody can say you know what, no matter what, I had an opportunity to give, going back to culture with this example.

Speaker 3: 34:30

At the end of this six months, 12 months, whatever the time frame is, everybody feels like you know what? 12 months ago I did not agree to the direction. Now I am able to deliver with my skill sets, my team, my funding to this strategy. That's what I want to achieve as part of culture my funding to this strategy. That's what I want to achieve as part of culture, and it's not the C-level, but everybody can say I contributed to achieve this, and that, I think, is very, very, very difficult. But if you do it on an ongoing basis, people will be able to relate and say you know what? This is something I've done very successfully. No matter what your role is, whether you're a junior software engineer or a CTO make sure what you do you understand how it contributes to our customers.

Speaker 2: 35:16

That's what I wanted to get to To me. While you're doing a lot of listening and data collection, I would imagine you have to do a little bit of preaching when you go in, or not preaching, Maybe that's not better. You have to say what are we going to align around that we can agree to, and is there, is there a set of principles you ask people to follow that everybody aligns around? That helps with the conflicts and the disagreements and my ideas not being accepted and all that. What? What are some of the things you you try to? How do you frame things so where people are connected and aligned? What do you do for that?

Speaker 3: 35:54

Yep, what I'm going to say is important, but sometimes it can get cheesy. Let's say I took the job, my previous job. The first two months is everything I said right listening, doing deep breaths. However, creating that mission, vision and tenets is very important for the leader and I recommend this to do, no matter what is the size of your team, whether you're a manager, you're a CIO. Create the mission, vision and tenets. One of it is what we want to be when we grow up. Vision is what we want to be when we grow up. Mission is how we want to accomplish it. Keep it very simple. English like that everybody can understand.

Speaker 3: 36:35

Tenants is something that we usually refresh on a yearly basis. As an example, accountability is a tenant. Why is? Why was that a tenant in one of my initiatives? Because people felt they were not empowered. So we said okay, empowerment, accountability are tenants. If you don't feel empowered, you have to speak up, send an email to this mailbox so we'll take care. So creating the tenants has been very successful. The debate they said commit is another tenant. Now, these are things that everybody can understand. Take the strategy and tie to it.

Speaker 3: 37:10

So when I have my quarterly town halls or monthly newsletter or I have a lot of skip levels where I meet with people across the globe, both in person, virtually. I talk about these things. I say, hey, this year our goal is X. Let's say the goal is to meet 100 million members, whatever it may be. We are currently at 30 million. We are say the goal is to meet 100 million members, whatever it may be. We are currently at 30 million. We are half the year.

Speaker 3: 37:33

I'm not sure where I sit, what the real problems are. Start speaking right and really creating that kind of a safe, belonging environment and making sure that don't dismiss anybody's idea, but do an assessment and feasibility on that. Anybody's idea, but do an assessment and feasibility on that. So some of that I have been tailored for the situation. So everything I said is doing different phases of my career, different projects, different initiatives, but the foundations are the same Making sure you're building trust and you're transparent, making sure that there are tenets that everybody can sign up and say you know what? This is what we're going to do. We have a new leader. He or she has said that we are all empowered to speak up. I'm going to speak up in every meeting. Now, in reality, not everybody will speak up. It will take some time for them to get comfortable that this is real, not some.

Speaker 3: 38:27

You know, I've seen a lot of memes that says when you take a confidential survey, your manager sends a reminder hey, you haven't completed the survey, how did he know about the survey?

Speaker 3: 38:36

Inputting that in the team and then leaving it as an example, right when I don't just spit all this and go away when there's issues especially in technology there are outages, there are security incidents, there are audit incidents being there and making sure I understand what it is. That's where, since I came up through doing various roles hands-on, I still do a lot of hands-on work. It helps me to talk about those issues because I've been there, I've done it hands-on. When I talk to a database administrator, I really talk about the database structure how are the keys generated, how are they doing backup, so they're able to relate to me and they're not thinking here's some CIO doesn't know what I'm doing. And if I don't know what somebody is doing, I go back and ask a lot of questions and they say, hey, help me understand. So I think culture really is making sure people feel they can speak up, they belong there and everything else is to me either a business-driven or tactical or strategic, but creating the culture is the oneness being together.

Speaker 2: 39:38

Yeah, and I think you know you talk about the vision being like that's the why, like why are we doing this Mission? Is, what do we have to do to get there right? Simple English, everybody can understand, and the tenants are kind of a how and that how can change. Like we have to be accountable this year, next year, maybe the next quarter, we have to do debate or whatever, or there's a number of them that you might say we have to focus on and it all comes down to like a primary strategy for you is to make sure there's transparency and trust being built along the way and people feel heard and that they're giving input Correct, cool, and that all builds the culture. In a certain way, the feeling of this is going in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 40:19

Now, this is a little bit of a different road to go down. You're leading a lot of AI efforts in healthcare. Both. Ai is like changing every day and healthcare is rapidly changing, so both of these things are evolving simultaneously, right? How do you? And then healthcare has different like, has these stringent compliance and patient privacy issues. I mean, I'm trying to open up a big can of worms, but how do you balance that innovation that's coming down the pike with those concerns, and what advice would you give to other leaders to incorporate AI in their strategies? That's a lot right there, but see what you can do with that.

Speaker 3: 41:02

Did you just say this is a five-hour podcast?

Speaker 2: 41:05

Yeah, a five-hour podcast. Yeah, Two minutes.

Speaker 3: 41:11

One thing that is very helpful for leaders to be successful and I will say I mentor a lot of up-and-coming leaders and this will tie to your question is to simplify the problem, to make it very simple that anybody can understand. You know, in some cases we call it system thinking, where you make it smaller portions so you can understand our first principles approach, where everything has to be asked why are we doing this? Regarding AI and I'll replace AI with any technology that came before us, david blockchain, web3, mobile internet, pcs, whatnot Any technology that was successful was because it found the right business use case. If you remember when you first used a computer or the internet or a smartphone, probably those are good moments because it enhanced, but they found the right use case, meaning you know what People can access information using internet. People can do things that is done manually using computer. You can access data anywhere using a mobile phone.

Speaker 3: 42:23

The technologies that did not take off like recently Web3 and Metaverse is to be determined. Or before that it was blockchain, or before that it is like a Google Glass. That did not take off like recently Web3 and Metaverse is to be determined. Or before that it was blockchain, or before that it is like a Google Glass, because the use case did not scale enough. Not enough people thought, oh my God, I have this problem to solve. I'm actually currently preaching the same thing for AI, because everybody wants to do AI. Whether you are an technology person, business person, board stranger neighbor, everybody is all AI right. However, the hype is real, I think, meaning we can use AI to solve a lot of life problems, both in our personal life, professional life. There are a couple of things that is very important Finding the right use case If you're in any settings not just healthcare, but in finance or any other sectors not chasing tech for the sake of tech, right.

Speaker 2: 43:17

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:18

Two, making sure that you can afford it. Now you can do a proof of concept or a prototype using a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million dollars, depending on the size of the company, but if you really want to do something meaningful for your customers, for your consumers, it should be affordable. 15 years ago, everybody wanted to go to cloud. Still, everybody wanted to go to cloud. The reason is there is cost to it. You cannot just move your data under the cloud and not do anything. You have to tool it, you have to train it, you have to follow it. So, under the cloud and not do anything. You have to tool it, you have to train it, you have to follow it. So find the use case, make sure you can afford it. Meaning, use commoditized AI, meaning something that has been tried and tested.

Speaker 3: 43:57

And then, specifically for healthcare, the risk is pretty high. The risk reward is completely like out of balance, because what I can do in social media, what I can do in sports, what I can do in many other places, I may not be able to do in healthcare because lives are at stake. Let's say, you go for an annual physical, you do your blood work and there is no lab technicians involved, there is no doctor involved. They just use AI to send you something and you happen to be the one false positive or false negative, depending on what you're looking at and somebody tells you okay, you have XYZ, you have a terminal, something. You're going to probably sue the hospital system and make a big deal out of it, but this example is to drive a point that we cannot afford that even one person to have the law, clinical diagnosis or wrong, whatever it may be. So that's where healthcare is a little more longer runway.

Speaker 2: 44:55

Longer play.

Speaker 3: 44:57

Because lives are at stake, right? Yes, the outside of that, or the opposite of that, is you can use ai to do a lot of what I call as back-end progress. A front-end is when, depending on who you are right, you can have providers, members, patients, brokers, whoever in the front-end who are your consumers. You're pushing the information. Back-end is I'm talking about operations, I'm talking about customer service, I'm talking about workflows. Many companies have so much workflow created over time we don't even know why they are there anymore, and this is a good time to disrupt internally, because the barrier to entry is lower. You're not hurting people. You're trying to improve your operations. You're trying to improve your efficiencies. I'm sure your stakeholders will be very happy if you can do something with $8 million instead of $10 million and you do a little bit of investment in AI. And the last point I would make is rely on not only your internal staff, but make your vendors and partners part of the process. You know the well-known names, the TV ads of Salesforce or Microsoft, and nowadays every vendor is trying to do a lot of AI. So I created a framework. I'll quickly tell that. Think of a triangle. The bottom layer is foundation. Use AI to do all the foundation work, like developer productivity. You can use a co-pilot to create developer productivity. You can use Microsoft co-pilot to create PowerPoints and documents and spreadsheets 80% correct or 50% correct and then you can have your teamwork on the remaining of it right. So foundation is basically the productivity things.

Speaker 3: 46:41

Core is the middle layer, which is what is needed to run your business. In healthcare, it could be claims, membership, management, provider relations. In finance, it could be something else, like consumer experience or debit and credit transactions. Aspirational is like going to the Mars. It's like in my example, it is giving diagnosis, clinical diagnosis. If you use AI to make our foundation and core strong and better the best, I think it will be a disservice to work on aspirational because we are trying to go to Mars without building a rocket on Earth. So that's something I've been kind of talking in many keynotes where thinking with a framework, a foundation, core, aspiration, investing your money, time and people and effort on making sure you could use tools like Copilot and others. There's a lot of AI products and apps out there to solve your foundational problems and core problems. I think it'll feed automatically to aspirational. So that's kind of where my thinking is with AI.

Speaker 2: 47:45

That's very clear, very helpful, and we didn't have to have a five-hour podcast on it. I was very impressed with that. It's very good, that was beautiful and it sounds like really at the core of it. The best use of AI right now is how can you improve the productivity of your processes and improve the speed at which you can get those things done. Take pressure off your workers so they can be used for different, more creative things or whatever.

Speaker 2: 48:08

And then yeah, yeah, I'll say it. This may be another long one, but I just was curious about your thoughts. You've been a part of a lot of mergers and acquisitions and, as you know, the success rate is not always as high as you'd like on some of those things, and so I always like to hear from my guests that have a lot of involvement. That, and given your extensive experience, what are the critical factors leaders really need to consider as they look at a successful integration of companies? And maybe you've already touched on that, maybe you just want to reinforce it, but anything that you'd add to that?

Speaker 3: 48:43

Yeah, yeah, that's a great topic. Anything that you'd add to that? Yeah, yeah, that's a great topic. So the way to look about mergers and acquisitions beyond the transaction and the banking and the financials putting that aside for this conversation start with the people side of it. A lot of times we talk about change management and whatnot, and in this conversation we have talked a lot about people. It's going to be tough for teams to align to new culture, new leadership, new. So people's side is very important. In addition to all the qualitative changes they're also going through, probably if there's a merger, their W2 change and new health benefits, new HR team. So there's a lot that the people coming in are going through. Right In headlines we see a lot of M&As.

Speaker 3: 49:29

I can use some publicly known mergers, but that's the first thing Make sure the people side is taken care of. In fact, if you're a global team, then you have to think about the laws and rules of hiring and retaining and paying various countries. If you have immigrants in your team who are under visa or Greek or processing, you got to take care of that. Each one of that will create a level of insecurity if you start address proactively. So I have a whole playbook on people things. These are a few things top of mind, and it goes on and on. Right, but taking care of people and making sure they are communicated properly, what will be their new role or title? What will be the new package? In most cases it will be similar. In some cases that will be a retention bonus, whatnot. But as much as possible, leaders and boards should try to remove the level of insecurity.

Speaker 3: 50:19

Now, if there are areas where there's going to be reduction in force, I think the teams and people who appreciate more are the ones who've got the transparent information way ahead. I understand many times human resources and leadership cannot openly discuss it because of a lot of legal restrictions and whatnot. But as early as possible, make sure people know they're being impacted. So that's a people side of some highlights. One big topic we didn't touch in this is cybersecurity. That's a people side of some highlights. One big topic we didn't touch in this is cybersecurity. I spent a ton of time on cyber, making sure that when you acquire or merge a company, it's going to be in two different tool sets, going to be two different protocols and processes. What is not different? Bad actors. They have no mercy.

Speaker 2: 51:00

They'll come at you with they're salivating at an M&A right. They're looking like how can we get in?

Speaker 3: 51:06

the cracks now, right, yeah, yeah. So they don't know and they don't care about who's who, right? So making sure that the security is top-notch. Like you have user security in place, you have multi-factor authentication, everybody. There's no loopholes, right? It's very easy to say shoulda, coulda, woulda. So making sure that.

Speaker 3: 51:25

The second one is, whether it is firewall or laptops, or user security or multi-factor authentication, make sure all that is in place. And I'm not saying the acquired company should implement it, right. Just doing an assessment and making sure that it is up to standards of both the parties, because both parties are at stake If it is a public acquisition. They both were in the headline, so people know what's happening. So that's number two, and in many cases nowadays, people are used to it. However, again, there could be change. Somebody might be using one tool, somebody else must be using a different tool, and then everything else comes after that.

Speaker 3: 52:00

Do you want to merge the systems? Do you want to merge the processes? Do you want to leave it alone? Because there are some business advantages to leave them alone. The famous example is Amazon bought Zappos and left them alone with the branding, and they were just operating under their own CEO because probably Amazon wanted Zappos to grow as its own, even though they are the owning company? Right? There are many, many variations of M&As, but the foundations are the same when it comes to integration and over time. The goal is why are these M&As happening? To give value to customers. So somebody like CFO or a CEO losing their sleep, thinking beyond these day-to-day issues, how am I going to justify this cost to my stakeholders? How am I going to add value to my customers? Right? If we always think about value to customers, whoever it may be, I think everything else will fall in place.

Speaker 2: 52:58

Yeah, that's a nice bow right there. I think it's customer focus and I also the other thing you said about you know different countries and pay and all the benefits. That's important. The cybersecurity is critical, obviously. That's a really good point, but that and what you just said bringing those two things together makes a big difference. I think the people issue is where a lot of them fail, which I don't know if you would agree with that that sometimes they're're so focused on making them maximizing the benefit of these companies coming together for the shareholders. Sometimes the customer and the people are left out, or one or the other, and that's where they seem to fall apart.

Speaker 2: 53:38

So, coming back to the personal, as we kind of start moving towards wrapping up the podcast, you know you obviously stand as a leader. You demonstrated it through what you shared today and how you do things. You know you're clearly one of the things I can see about you. You're kind of an integrative thinker, you're kind of an operations researcher. In a certain way, you're being able to pull things together. But when you look at yourself as a developing leader, what has been the most impactful things opportunities and practices you believe helped you most to awaken that internal leadership to be expressed outward. When you look back at your learning journey, what has been the most impactful things for you that you've done?

Speaker 3: 54:23

Two things I had put a lot of weight into. One is having the best mentors that I had. I have a personal board of directors, I like to say, where I have acquired and collected mentors who I have a very good personal relationship with, whether they were my boss and retired. I met them through nonprofits, whatnot. I like to go to people for advice, different people for different reasons. It also gives me other ideas. I can draw upon their experiences and their life journeys and then it gives me perspective that I may not get in my own soapbox right. So having mentors has always helped me.

Speaker 3: 55:02

The other one, which I spent quite a good amount of time, is pondering upon my mistakes. By no means I have no God complex like I know it all, whatnot. But whether there's a small issue, whether I misspoke in a meeting, I gave a presentation, the data was not fact-checked or something big I made, I actually take a lot of time to ponder upon A what is the lessons learned from this, what could I have done differently if I had to replay it? And trying to look from an inside-out perspective. Now in technology we do something called root cause analysis whenever there is a software outage or whatnot. Many times it'll be like the vendor issue or this person made a human mistake. It is not going to solve the problem if you don't systematically look at it and we just put the blame on somebody else right.

Speaker 3: 55:50

So I like to do always inside out, personally and professionally. So those are the two things that comes to mind, david, where having really good mentors who want nothing but me to be successful. And number two is always being thoughtful that, hey, these are two or three things I did good because the results are good, the people are happy. Two or three things I did not do well. It could be a quarterly thought process. It could be real time if you're journaling or whatnot. Sometimes I like to journal, but those actually helps me as a leader, as a person, to be grounded as well as to improve, to go to the next level.

Speaker 2: 56:26

Yeah, and I think the umbrella for all of that is we all have to have some humility. So you have to have humility to look at your own mistakes and take feedback. And the other thing is you have to have humility to ask for help. And one of the most powerful things we can do is make a request for help, and I think sometimes people that rise to a certain level believe OK, I got to, I got to have my act to prove, I have my act together, and they close that down to their own detriment. That's really well said. Well, as we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to share, feel like you would like to say as a way to complete the podcast today?

Speaker 3: 57:03

Yeah, first, my thanks to you for having me, and I enjoyed the conversation and very thoughtful questions, and you've done a lot of research. I can just see it, david. So thank you for giving this platform. I hope that this succeeds and more people can benefit from your previous and future podcasts and videos. From my side, what I'd like to share with folks is life is a continuous journey, right, no matter what role, title or job you are in. Take it one day at a time and always have. It's good to look forward and see what I want to do in two years, five years. It's good to look forward and see what I want to do in two years, five years. It's good to look back and reflect, but also I'm starting to appreciate it's very important to be in the present. So I actually started taking notes on a notebook after, I want to say, 15 years of typing notes and I have started, you know, turning off. Luckily, we have technology to turn off alerts during off hours and weekends.

Speaker 2: 58:08

Technology to turn off a technology.

Speaker 3: 58:10

Yeah, yeah, we used to have a BlackBerry over 15 years ago. I had different ringtones for my boss. I used to work in an operations center and I would just wake up at 4 am and try to respond. Now still some of those happens. The real-world problems are going to happen. And try to respond. Now, still some of those happens. The real world problems are going to happen. But being in the present, making sure that whatever you're doing, whether it is your life, your family, your work, your colleagues, do justice to themselves and to you, and I found it to be very enjoyable to be in the present, and not always it simplifies everything, in fact.

Speaker 2: 58:41

That's why, at the center of my leadership model is executive presence, and I literally define executive presence as being in the present moment, to, so you can solve what's actually in front of you, and you know more of my clients that begin to practice that and really engage that. As you say, and you might find the same thing is sometimes, the solution for your problem isn't overly thinking about it, it's right there, right in front of you. Your problem isn't overly thinking about it, it's right there, right in front of you, and if you just get quiet and look at the situation, either somebody or something comes to you that makes it so simple, and so the moment many times will solve the very problem that you're facing. You know that's what's paradoxical about it.

Speaker 3: 59:21

Yeah, yeah, spot on yeah.

Speaker 2: 59:23

Yeah Well, thank you so much, steve, for sharing your thoughts about technology culture, application of you know how it's transforming us, and also in your own personal transformation story and regardless to those who are tech whether you're tech, finance, marketing or operations leaders I know that you got a lot of value from hearing what Siva had to say about how to expand your leadership impact, what Siva had to say about how to expand your leadership impact, and to all. So thank you very much, siva, for you spending the time today on the podcast and spending time with me. It was a very rich conversation, thank you, and, to all you who are tuning in, thank you for being part of this journey with us. Your time and attention mean the world to me and if you found today's discussion valuable, please help us spread the world by letting your colleagues, friends or anyone know who could benefit from the Unfazed Under Fire podcast. We broadcast over 18 podcast stations, including Apple, amazon Music and Spotify, and if you're watching this on video, the share link that lists those stations are shown at the screen right now, and if you're on audio or video, that link is always provided in the description, depending on whatever podcast station you go to listen to. So until next time, keep leading with purpose, making an impact. And while I know the days run together and sometimes can be a blur, take Siva's advice learn to stay in the moment and know that your enlightened leadership touches people in unimaginable ways and makes a huge difference in their life. So have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 2: 1:00:48

This is David Craig-Otz, the Leadership Alchemist, signing off for now. Thanks again.