Podcast Episode #2 - David Fox
David Fox
Senior Vice President, Customer Operations
SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, Roger Johnson and David Fox discuss the intricacies of leadership transitions, focusing on the importance of preparation, strategic planning, and effective communication. David shares his personal experiences and insights on how to navigate the first 30, 90, and 180 days in a new role, emphasizing the need for listening, asking questions, and establishing relationships. The discussion also highlights the significance of feedback, self-assessment, and aligning team objectives with organizational goals through OKRs.
TRANSCRIPT
Roger Johnson (00:35)
today we get the privilege of talking with David Fox. David is a long time colleague and ⁓ friend of mine, ⁓ first met in 2012. And David has a ⁓ long history both in the Air Force and as an intelligence officer.
and is a expert in the area of taking care of customers and making sure that customers not only are happy, but they're retained over time. And it's a privilege to have you, David. Thanks for being willing to jump on today.
David Fox (01:03)
Roger, always a pleasure to see you and I'm glad we picked the right uniform to wear today, which is smoky gray. don't know what uniform that is,
Roger Johnson (01:09)
Yes, yes we did.
Yes we did. That's all right. so today the topic is the concept or the idea of what helps leaders transition either as they move from one role to a...
another role within the same company, usually that's a higher level senior position. Or when they're moving from one company, either because they want to or they don't want to, and they're starting at a new company. So in those transitions, there's opportunity ⁓ both for success and opportunity, obviously, for failure. So in your experience, what are some of the pitfalls of that? What gets in the way of leaders transitioning effectively?
What have you found to be effective for yourself and what kind of things do you think are effective for folks who are going through that type of transition? What have you learned through the years that would be helpful to them?
David Fox (01:56)
Well, probably important context to share that I was an Experian for 20 years. although I had moved, you know, progressed through different roles, hadn't really thought about a role transition. And certainly not formally. When I left Experian in 2019 to join CM Group, which is now Marigold,
I was faced with this reality that I really needed to have a plan going into this role. And certainly in an executive role and a senior role that there, I should not have any expectation that my, you know, the CEO that I was going to be working for was going to tell me what I needed to be doing the first 365 days, especially in that role where he was like, I need you to come in and hit the ground running. So,
You one of the things that, you'll hear me kind of reference a book that I read back in 2019 called The Executive Transition Playbook. That's written by Hillary Potts. Yes. And so, and from that book, I put together what I would call my own personal onboarding journey. I took that book.
Roger Johnson (02:56)
appropriate name, that's good.
David Fox (03:07)
And I just created my own checklist. And I would say since I started using that in 2019 and I've, I moved through several different roles at Marigold. And then as I transitioned in 2024 to a whole new organization, very, very similar role, but you know, new challenges. It was really, really invaluable. And so I really leaned on that, what, my transition checklist.
I have also over the last couple of years when I knew people were transitioning in new roles, I shared with them my checklist. And so again, I would encourage you if you're you're moving into a new role read this book, but I'm giving you a little bit of a shortcut here. and hopefully today we'll be able to talk about like what I would.
encourage as your first 360 days and your next. So years one and two and certainly you could modify this to you know if you're if you're gonna be in a role for the three to five years sure you can you can do that as well.
Roger Johnson (04:06)
I I know when I've transitioned, I've personally made some assumptions or done some things early in my career that really hamstrung me or hindered me from
getting up to speed. And we're trying to talk about how do you get to a point where you're adding value that justifies your role, justifies your salary, justifies why someone brought you in. How do you accelerate that so that you're more effective, you avoid some of the delay and rework that has to be done, and you can add value as quickly as possible. So Dave,
If you just talk about pre, okay, before you're going into the role, before you're actually on the ground, what are some of the things that you think are critical?
David Fox (04:44)
Yeah, I think it starts during the interview process, right? So you, you ask a lot of questions. You don't ever want to go into again, if you're moving internally or moving from, one role to a new organization, you should be asking a lot of questions before you ever. So you should have a pretty good idea of what you're walking into. Like what are the big challenges? what are the teams doing really well today? What are the teams not doing really well?
And if it's okay, maybe I could just talk about, know, the way that I broke this checklist up was there's the first 30 days, then I've got 30 to 90, 90 to 180, and 180 to 360. And I really believe, if you follow this first 30 days, you're going to hit the ground running. you can call it onboarding. I call it.
Listen, ask, observe, learn and connect. And the big one, I think if I could just start there is you have to understand what the organization goals and targets are. Before you jump in and make some assumptions about what your team's supposed to be doing, first ask that question about what is the organization trying to achieve as a whole? Then that next question is, what are the team goals and expectations?
this is a pretty busy 30 days, but I promise if you did all of these things, then you're already making a difference. You you need to do a financial deep dive. it's really important to understand what the current team metrics and do some benchmarking around those metrics. Hopefully they have all of those metrics together. If they don't, well, that's a key ⁓ learning.
right there that you need to understand about how the organization has been managed in the past. I mean, the first week I'm in a role, I'm going to have one-on-ones with all my direct reports. Here's another little, maybe I call this a pro tip. What I have personally found successful is I always start working from some people like OneNote, not that big of a fan.
But if you're working from Google Docs or just a Word doc, I'm always really prepared for these meetings. So I'm going to go into this very first meeting with my set of questions and I'm going to document those. I've been in my new role. It'll be a year in November. All of my direct reports, I can go back to the first meeting I've documented those. I don't go back, you know, that far typically.
But every week I go back and look at the previous week's meetings and look at what we talked about and what we agreed on and what we said we're going to do because, just try to do that from, you know, a notebook or memory. It's just you're not going to be successful. So one on one is really important. Doing that. Yeah.
Roger Johnson (07:13)
So. ⁓
David Fox (07:15)
Go ahead,
Roger Johnson (07:15)
So
let me just interrupt you for a second there. So your first week you come in, you're asking questions. in your experience, what's the balance between asking questions versus setting the foundation of who you are as a leader? So I've seen people kind of emphasize different things. certainly have an opinion about this, but I'd love to hear you talk about in that first meeting or in that first week, how much of it is you kind of
David Fox (07:30)
I would
Roger Johnson (07:40)
trying to kind of plow your leadership stuff versus I'm learning, I'm listening, I'm ears open.
David Fox (07:47)
Boy, we're just going to jump in with a controversial question early on, right? ⁓ This is a great conversation. would say at least 90 % listening, asking questions and listening, maybe five to 10%, 10 % maybe on the high end of like talking. there is, I have in my experience trying to go in and prove to people what you know, they don't really care.
Roger Johnson (07:51)
Yeah, yeah, I hope we are. Love it.
David Fox (08:11)
I want to hear about what's going on. Like I'm going to formulate an opinion. And as I get to the end of the 30 days, I'm going to kind of start formulating what I believe, again, what's not working, what is working, what do we need to stop, start and continue? I think by asking questions and listening,
I'm going to have a really good idea about where we are at the end of that 30 days. This should not be a six months to figure out what's going on there. If you're really asking the right question and you're really listening, you're going to know at the end of that 30 days. And one of the things that I talk about as being one of the deliverables at that 30 days, I should go back to my leader, whoever that is, president, CEO, or it could just be a manager or a VP.
and just share with them like, you know, I think it's important to test some of those assumptions with your leader, right? Like, here's what here's what I know about, what I think your goals and objectives are. Here's how you're performing against those. Here's what I think is really, really important. Here's who I think is going to get you there or not. And you know, assuming someone in their role is paying attention.
that they're gonna have opinions about what you share with them. And because you've been listening and you've been asking questions and you've been observing, you're gonna have a lot to share with them. You're gonna have a really robust conversation on that 30 day mark to say, hey, am I understanding my scenario here? And I'm also gonna give them some of my, here's what I think that our goals should be over the next 30 to 90 days. Because guess what? At the end of that 90 days,
you're going go back and you're going to say, Hey, got some more observations for you. Here's where we were supposed to be hitting the marks. I think there's also kind of in that there's a lot in this first 30 days to you need to be compiling those key things and observations. but you also need to be thinking about what are two or three quick wins. And I would say two or three quick wins should all be around what's going to make
the people's jobs easier and the customers experience better. As I always tell my teams, like, if you're doing things that aren't improving the customer experience, then please raise your hand. Let's stop doing that sort of stuff. and that makes, not only does it make a better customer experience, it makes a better employee experience, right? You can't have a great customer experience without great employee experience. So freeing up time for your people to focus on customers, which typically in my world and the customer facing roles,
That's what people really care about really. They care about delivery for customers. if you're going to make that easier for them, like your first 30 days, that's a huge, huge win.
Roger Johnson (10:46)
it sounds like what you're talking about is, hey, I'm going to go in, I'm going to keep my eyes open, keep my ears open. I'm going to learn as much as I can. And some of that is I have fresh eyes. I can ask some questions. I can have a different perspective than than what is normal. I can create an understanding of what is currently happening and I can pay attention to for you. It's like, you know, what's value to customers.
For some in a different role, it be, where are we missing value at opportunity? Where are our folks distracted? What's become normal that probably needs to not be normal anymore? But because you're listened for 30 days, you now have a well-informed opinion as opposed to the idea of just kind of coming in and just making some assumptions and rolling from day one.
David Fox (11:30)
And by the way, listening and learning and asking questions is not just for the people that work for you. what are your peers here about the team? What are the executives? You know, if you're in a senior role, you want to talk to the CFO. Like one of the first things that I have on my checklist for the 30 days is get a financial overview of the organization. Like how are we performing?
Are our margins good or margins not good? we spending too much on X and not enough on Y? So because then you're going to be, as you have those conversations with peers and the people that work on the executive level, your questions are going to be a lot better when you talk to people on your teams. when they say things like, I don't understand why we're not, why we're not staffed up by, you know, 25%. Well, you've got a financial perspective, so you maybe you can ask some different questions and you're like,
or I don't know why we're not spinning 20, you will know because you've had those conversations with your CFO and with your product people. know, what are the, are the product people staying?
Roger Johnson (12:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So, yes, absolutely. You've kind of laid out this idea of like, when I come in and transition, I'm going to ask questions before I get there. I'm going to spend the full 30 days when I get there interviewing people, asking questions, going through a checklist. On the flip side of that, why do think people don't do that?
David Fox (12:29)
and your sales team, obviously.
Roger Johnson (12:47)
Because I've worked with lot of leaders who come into organizations and not everybody does that. I wonder whether it's because they have already kind of a predisposition to think that I have to prove that I'm worth the job. And so I have to come in and share my expertise rather than spend that time listening. They feel like taking 30 days to listen is taking too long
Does that make sense? they don't want to delay.
David Fox (13:11)
It's, yes.
Yeah, and it's easy to get sidetracked on the wrong stuff, right? Because what's helped me is by sticking to a plan like this, I'm not going to get redirected to one particular problem with one customer. Let's face it, you know, in any role, there's probably one customer who's having a pain point at that particular time that sure, you could jump on a plane, maybe it could be appropriate in that scenario to do that, but...
you could get sidetracked really, really quickly. And I think that's why really sticking to a very, very well-defined plan as much as possible. mean, I there, you know, you had to be flexible. Things are going to come up. Your boss is going to want, you to go, you know, spend a week with him and, know, and you're all in a different office or something like that. But yeah, I think that happens a lot as people get distracted and again,
you really have to have a good understanding of what the organization's goals and objectives are cause those are going to shift if you're probably, I mean, in most organizations, you're to come in and I've been in scenarios where you come in and they've got 50 objectives. You're like, okay guys, I'm probably not in the first 30 days going to go stop doing that, but probably.
30 to 60 as I'm talking to them about how we're going to establish a strategy. That's when I'm going to say, look, we're going to focus in on, how do we, create better engagement with our customers? How do we, empower our employees? How do we amp up efficiency? we're going to do those things. And what are the couple of objectives around those that we can execute in the next quarter that are going to drive those? Because those are the things that are going to drive
the team objectives and drive the organization goals and objectives. As you can tell, I'm a big OKR person. I live and die by OKRs.
Roger Johnson (14:52)
Yeah,
that's good.
Yeah, that's good. first, anything else about the first 30 days?
David Fox (14:57)
again, another, I'll just keep saying pro tip is don't wait for people to reach out to you. Like don't go, you know what? I think the CFO probably will get around to talk to me at some point. It's like schedule time with him. He or she may not have enough time, same thing with your peers. Like you're like, Maybe they'll reach out to me at some point. I'm new, they, like, no, they will really appreciate you.
Roger Johnson (15:04)
yeah.
David Fox (15:18)
reaching out to them and saying, I'm new, tell me the lay of the land. I've had that happen. I had it recently for someone who started in a row as my peer in a different business unit. And man, within two weeks, they reached out to me said, hey, I'd love to just spend 45 minutes, tell me what you know about this place. I was really, really impressed. And I think it really accelerated his introduction to the organization.
Roger Johnson (15:42)
Yeah, love that. That's a great pro tip. Because it is true that a lot of people go like, hey, I'm the new person. I want people to reach out to me. And what you're saying is like, no, Let's be assertive. Let's get out there. Who do I need to talk with? And really harvesting as much information as you can as quickly as you can in that first 30 days.
David Fox (15:59)
And don't get, you know, the, the, the, have to use the old cliche, that it's a marathon, not a sprint. And so I think that is also can be applied to relationships. I mean, I just know again, in this role, there are people that probably in the first 90 days that I really, I really wanted to establish a strong bond. And for whatever reason, they're really busy and they couldn't and I didn't give up on those people, right? It wasn't like, must not like me or.
You know, they're too distracted, whatever. I try to be pretty persistent in relationships so that the people that I need to align with, people on the sales team, people on the product team, that I'm continually pursuing those relationships. Don't give up on people, don't give up on relationships.
Again, another pro tip there.
Roger Johnson (16:46)
That's good, that's good. All right, so walk us through, okay, first 30 days really important, probably the most important. Then What are the themes or the things you're trying to do in those next
David Fox (16:56)
I call them the next 30 to 90 sharing key observations and establishing strategy. So, like to do, I created kind of my own operations assessment of and it could be different if you're managing multiple teams like I am, like you look at one team and you go.
Oh wow, know, they're a fairly proactive team. I think they've good processes. They stay ahead of their customers. Then you have some other customers who are kind of like fighting fires. I'd call them reactive. So just doing that assessment. I like to do this start stop continue exercise with my leaders. Really important in the first 30 to 90 days.
I would do a town hall in front of all your people, all your teams. this is one of the best introductions that you can do is what I have done in the past is you want to be, you want to be realistic, but you also want to be positive. Like, here's the things that we're doing really well. you know, I came into this role and I'll say the people are so smart and really amazing. And that is just.
the flat out truth, from leadership, individual contributors. I was amazed and so, talked, you know, maybe shared some stories then I talked about some challenges, some things that we, that I observed and I said, you know, here's some of the metrics I've seen or some metrics we don't have yet that we're going to have, and then start this whole conversation about, if you're not familiar with OKRs, this is what they are. Don't make an assumption that everybody's, you know,
black belt, you know, don't think OKRs have black belt, that everyone's been using OKRs for 10 years. Maybe this is the first time they've heard it. So you can do a quick three minute overview and talk about here's what it is and here's why it's important and here's why it's going to be of benefit to you. It's going to make sure that you're not working on 20 things that are maybe important. You're going to be working on the very most important things that are going to drive value to customers and make you better at your job.
Roger Johnson (18:39)
So can I interrupt you for a second there? Because I think that I'm just kind of thinking one of the things that might.
David Fox (18:43)
Absolutely. Because you know I'll talk all day.
Roger Johnson (18:46)
Well, one of the things that triggers in me is a question about how you think about how the people that you're coming in to lead are adjusting to who you are and how you're coming in. So you're introducing a new concept. For you, it's OKRs, like other leaders, might be something else, their management style or the way that they do stuff. How do you...
lessen the amount of fear, concern or uncertainty that happens when there's a transition. Because when you're coming into the new role, you are the transition. Like you are the thing that people are fearing most of the time. And they're fearing the new leader, they're fearing what might change, they're fearing, you know, those kinds of things. How do you like you're in front of your folks for the first time?
David Fox (19:27)
you have been listening, you've been asking questions, you've been listening, you've been observing, you've been asking follow up questions, you've been following up with people when people ask you questions, you know, responding to every email. And it's just like to me, it's like, it's just a core part of leadership. So it's like, when you tell people, reach out to me anytime, people probably will please answer, answer quickly, answer thoughtfully, be consistent.
And again, you're probably not going to alleviate fears in the first 90 days, but just be consistent, right? you'll have fewer fears than in 180. Then you had it 90, then you had it 30, cause they're still trying to figure it out against why I would strongly discourage coming in and going like, this is the things that we're going to be doing. Cause you probably don't know enough. Like you could say in generality.
you we're going to deliver a better customer experience. Yeah, right on. Yeah. I think people would be like, that sounds fantastic. But if you say we've got too many X or we don't have enough of these employed people are like, what is he talking about? Like, has he been listening at all? I think one of the things I would do in the second 90 days, do skip level interviews. I want to say that it was one of the most
Roger Johnson (20:26)
Yeah.
David Fox (20:35)
value in the probably the first 30 days I had a CSM reach out to me and say, can we just have a conversation? I was like, yeah, of course. I'm through, you know, this was a very high performing CSM. They just kind of shared some, some really important challenges, not that just they were having that were impacting all of the customer success managers. And it really helped. It really helped.
solidify an idea that I had about, I had some ideas about how we should be segmented. And I had this conversation. It's like, man, she's hitting every point that I think I've heard. like having that conversation with her. as we announced those changes and I went back to her and said, Hey, you know, your feedback really, really helped me. It really helped establish that relationship with her because I knew she was a key influencer. That's the other thing is you, you know, in the first 30 days,
you're going to pick up probably on the leaders and the people, individual contributors that really had the most influence. And you're going to have to figure out, they going to be with me or are they not? Not to say you need to throw them out of the boat in the first nine days, but you figure out who the people are that are going to be ones you can rely on.
Roger Johnson (21:34)
Yeah, yeah.
it's good. I have this thought in my mind see if you agree with this, that the people who developed the job description, interviewed you and hired you probably don't have the level of detail, the level of expectation, level of understanding about what's really happening as you will after the first 30 days.
David Fox (22:00)
Absolutely.
Roger Johnson (22:00)
So when you're transitioning after the 30 days and you're starting to talk a little bit more with your team, are you also kind of re-educating some of the people that your peers and folks who brought you into the organization, are you educating them on, here's what I'm finding. Here's what's really happened.
David Fox (22:20)
Yeah, one of the things that I list as, you your first 90 day objectives is, and again, I am super diligent about updating my boss every week on where we are across OKRs, across metrics, everything so that he never has to guess what's happening. and hopefully.
You need to advocate for making sure that can you get in front of the executive team to share these? one of things I've enjoyed about my current role is that we have a monthly meeting that includes the CFO and the CEO. And I get to talk about where we are, where our performance stands. And it's really helpful to me. mean, they know so much about the organization and it's a very collaborative meeting. So.
So I get to really test my theories every month to say, hey, here's some of the things we're focused on, and you can see the results, or we didn't have the results that we expected, and here's why, and where can you help me with that?
Hope that makes sense.
Roger Johnson (23:17)
Yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting because it, you know, I think we've all worked with people who are not that transparent and they wouldn't have that level of transparency with the folks above them. would try to kind of shield the organization and I'll tell you what I want you to know, not what you need to know. And so, it sounds like you're more of an advocating, hey,
The more transparency you have of the organization as a leader, the better that's gonna be for you and for your team and for everybody moving forward.
David Fox (23:46)
You probably remember a CEO that both of us worked for that used to say facts are friendly. He's right. I probably say that once a week. Like people get freaked out. You know, I'm like, Hey, can you dig a little bit deeper into these metrics? And they're like, Whoa, why is he asking this question? Because he wants to fire some people. No, no, no. Look, we need to know what the numbers are. Let's start from there. Don't ever be afraid of what the numbers are.
it's either going to inform some areas that need big improvement or, you know, cause for celebration.
Roger Johnson (24:16)
Yeah, yeah, there's a earlier my career, I was taught by somebody that, Hey, what one of the requirements of leadership is You have to be able to look at the truth and acknowledge it's true. So you don't live in a dream world, And that's why I think that that whole idea is facts.
facts are friendly is a sense of like, you cannot make meaningful leadership influence. can't make decisions. You can't think about strategy. You can't think about people if you're not looking at what's true, facts are friendly and you gotta look for them. Yeah, good. So what's next? What's next on your strategic plan?
David Fox (24:42)
Yep. Yep.
⁓
I would also just really quickly on that first 90 days, I mean, if you're in a customer facing role and this would be, I mean, probably apply to a sales role, certainly in customer, I do align by line in your first 90 days. know, I always advocate getting out in front of your customers and sometimes you will have opportunities in those first 90 days to get in front of your biggest customers and certainly should not your top 10 customers, but.
at a minimum do a line by line review
Roger Johnson (25:13)
like for people who don't know what a line by line review is, they're probably going like, this is over my head. What's a line by line review? I know it's simple, but just to get out of the jargon, what does that mean to you?
David Fox (25:22)
Yeah, and it can look a little bit different for different organizations. But the way that I treat a blind-by-line is I want to know for every single customer, where are we? What is their revenue? What's the contract look like? Who owns this account? Who's the CSM? If you've got, you know, other teams that are attached to a client, who's attached to that client? for our organization, we have professional services, people that are assigned to accounts. So I need to know who are all these
Typically what I have, I have the CSM present their clients. So who the client is, what the contracts are, when the renewal is. But then what's the current state of the customer? ⁓ also what's their health score? Hopefully you're scoring your customer's health, but what's the customer's health score? What's their CSAT? What's their MPS? What's the current state? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? And where do they need help? That's kind of the general format of a line-by-line.
Roger Johnson (26:14)
Yeah, yeah. And I know that you're a big kind of implementer of like, have to know the health of your customers, what's the health of the account, what's the health of the engagement. And you have a certain formula. Doesn't matter what that formula is, there has to be a formula That's a good thing. The first 90 days,
At the end of the day, here's where we're generating revenue. Here's the state of those accounts. Here's the health, the risk, all those kind of things.
David Fox (26:37)
Yes, and so 90 to 180 and I've named this one step into action, not to say that you shouldn't step into action on day one, but really there's kind of lot of like true things that need to be executed on in that 90 to 180 so that first, so that you finish the six months successfully. I, again, when I lead different teams, I'm a big advocate for monthly business reviews of those teams.
I think that's been one thing that I've been really, really enjoyed, first of all, in this role and the teams have done, the first monthly business review. So I'll just use an example. So if you have a monthly business review for your support teams, it's like, tell me for the last 12 months, how many tickets per month have you had? what's your trending, you know, average speed of answer? What's your trending turnaround time?
What's your backlog look like? Can you tell me what are your tickets by cause and by product and things like that? the first ones are a little clunky if they've not been doing those before, but you get to a point where, certainly in this role where we invite all the leaders to the first couple ones, it's just the leadership team of that team.
But again, I'm asking lots of questions like, why do you think that every speed of answers going up or going down or why are tickets going up or going down? we're going to wrestle with those. We're going to answer those questions as part of the monthly business review. And again, they're not going to, the first one's not going to be perfect, but they do evolve over time. Right. And everybody kind of understands, may go from measuring 20 things to like, guys, I like these 10 things.
You know, they're interesting. Maybe they're appendix type metrics, let's like, what is driving the real core of the customer experience? It's probably these five or seven things. So I think those, those monthly business reviews are, really important starting from day 90, you know, enough now that you can start asking questions in each one of those business reviews and help them evolve that process as well.
Roger Johnson (28:21)
Yeah.
Yeah, and find those key metrics, find those key data points that you can have a discussion with the team about.
David Fox (28:41)
And I think it's also important, you you finished your 90 days. you, should already have your draft. Okay. R going into the next quarter, right? It's, it's again, going to probably be not perfect, a little rough around the edges, but I think the more that you can kind of share from 90 days going forward, your key observations about where, where you think you are like guys, when I got here 90 days ago, here's some things observed.
Those have turned out to be true. These things, true or not as important, probably not driving as much change as maybe I thought originally, but again, testing that with your team members, your leaders, your peers, the people that work above you, the ELT or just the CEO potentially.
Roger Johnson (29:26)
Yeah, good. So stepping into action. you've now learned a bunch, now you're going into action. Talk about at a high level, what are you trying to do by the end of that period?
David Fox (29:36)
so at 90 days, you should have enough information to be tying your performance to the overall organization's performance, right? So you probably walked into, let's just say if you're in a role like myself, where you're leading customer success, you should know where your gross retention, net retention numbers are, and are we trending up, are we trending down, and why are we trending up, and why are we trending up?
Because you're going to be able to start reporting on that going forward by month and what are your actions doing to drive up gross retention, net retention? You know, what are the actions that you're taking to drive, in the employee experience up or down? So you should be, you should be at a point in 90 days where you're going to begin to get into this cadence of being able to report and get feedback just more regularly now. Like it should be more refined the first
90 days, you're going to throw out some theories about, yeah, I think we should, again, do X, Y, or Z in your bosses like, yeah, you know, I think X is a really great idea. Y, you really can't do that because of this or that. And you're like, okay, well, that's good to know. And shift and change and adjust, just like you always should.
Roger Johnson (30:46)
Yeah, yeah. Good.
So where you go from there in your plan.
David Fox (30:49)
So the 90 to 180 is ⁓ what I would call step in action. The 180 to 360, I use often the plan, do, check, act framework, or I sometimes said measure, validate, adjust, and execute. And so that's really what you should be refining every three to six months
are you really working on the most important things? You also broaden your network of people, right? So you're having more, you're having more meetings directly with your sales team, with your product team, with your engineering teams, you know a whole lot more than you did, you know, your first 90 especially you know, I guess if you're moving in from, you know, a very, very like organization to another, even in those instances, there's a lot of
differences between organization to organization. You for me, I moved from on healthcare, a very provider focused technology and platform to a very payer focused platform technology that interacts with provider, but it's very much different. The payer world is much different than the provider world in healthcare. And so, I continue.
to this day, there's a lot to learn.
Roger Johnson (31:59)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Fox (32:00)
So that continuous
learning is a big part of it as well.
Roger Johnson (32:02)
Yeah. Yeah. And one of things that I've thought about throughout the years is every time you go into an organization, there's a lot to learn. There's certain jargon. There's certain ways that certain assumptions, there's certain ways that people talk. There's certain things they understand because they've been there for long time that you're asking questions that sometimes you feel dumb. You're like, I don't know what that is. Tell me what that is or tell me what this is.
And a lot people get stumped by that because they don't want to admit they don't understand what that is. And I think one of the things you've emphasized here is you need to go in and be the person who's willing to ask the questions that other people won't ask. And so moving from one focused industry to another industry, and you've moved out of healthcare back into healthcare,
I think that's one of the things that's like a pro tip is actually go into it trying to ask the questions that no one else will ask. Try to ask the question that people are like, look at you like, why did you ask that question? Because a lot of times people have assumptions about those things. And when you ask the dumb question that they think is the dumb question, actually everyone then kind of gets alignment, which is really good.
David Fox (33:09)
Yes, that is absolutely true.
Roger Johnson (33:11)
Yeah. So I don't want to cut you off in terms of the plan, but you've gotten down to now 180 to 360. you're now kind of in this rhythm. Is there something different that you would do in the second year or
just maintain that rhythm of execution, quarter to quarter, month to month.
David Fox (33:27)
Well, I think one of the big ones, I touched on this a little bit, is to continuously share your progress or lack of progress up, down, and across. it's really important that everyone knows where you are, your objectives and your key results are. I bring those to, when we do...
business unit quarterly reviews, always bring in my OKRs and I'll do this at the executive level. Here's our OKRs. Here was last quarter. Here's, here's what they were. Here's how we delivered. Here's next quarter. Here's what we need to be doing. Here's what we're going to deliver. And I share the same information, not just with the executive team, but I'm going to go to our town halls and I'm going to share it with all of my team members and say, Hey everyone, by the way,
Here's what we set out to do last quarter. Here's what we accomplished. give yourself a pat on the back. We executed well here. Or we fell short here, and here's why. And maybe we're not going to carry that objective forward, Or maybe we are, and so you're going to see it happen in the next quarter. in addition to being able to demonstrate...
incremental or dramatic change is that consistency that you're driving with it. one of the, one of the ways I know that I failed my team members is if they don't understand what we're trying to achieve, right? If I get, if anybody goes to one of my team members and says, can you tell me about what your overall, why you're trying to drive, what you and the teams are trying to drive? And they say, I'm not really sure I failed. Like, so to me that, that is just one of the critical things that
just always have to happen, you know, the first 90 days and then they could be five years later, you should be sharing the same information so that your team's never in the dark about what's happening and never in the dark about how they're contributing to that. think that, you know, being able to connect performance to individuals is really, really important, right? That was one of the best things we do in these quarterly all hands is,
I love this format that I spend the first 10 to 15 minutes. talk about what happened last quarter, what we're going to do this quarter, big picture strategy. And then I'm handing it off to my teams and they get to talk about their teams and they get to talk about, how they contributed to those, that performance and who contributed to that performance. they get to highlight people. and I think it just creates this connectedness to everyone that we're all in this.
this together and that we all share in the successes and you know when we when we don't hit the mark that we all understand what we need to do to achieve that in the next quarter.
Roger Johnson (35:59)
Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot in there, you know, that you think about in terms of how you communicate, how you use different platforms to communicate. But clearly, communication, regular communication, alignment, so people can connect their role to those those parts that, you know, what you're trying to accomplish in an organization. You're very thoughtful and strategic about that. And that doesn't matter what your role is. Doesn't matter where you are sitting in organization. That's just a leadership.
kind of pro tip best practice. And that's fantastic. So you may have more to share. don't know. Maybe we can create a kind of take some of the work that you put together and put it into something you'd be willing to share with the audience. But my last question for you, David is,
you've gone through various transitions. And so you've gone through transitions that went really well. You went through transitions that you're like, oh, I could have done better. What has helped you specifically accomplish successful transitions at a rapid pace,
David Fox (36:55)
Yeah, I mean, I'll try to narrow in on that one. I think always having a strategy helps, right? Because you have a thing that you can measure yourself and your teams against. And that could be as an individual contributor, and that could be as a leader. And I think doing honest assessments of performance is really helpful.
I had a leader in my last organization who, and I, I, I hesitate to, because I want to make sure that I, that I described her methodology here, but she had basically her performance cheat sheet and she would spend 30 minutes or a week or so. And she would just kind of write down things that she had, she had done really well or things that she wanted to do better. She was an extraordinary leader and performer.
And I think that a big part of that was her ability to constantly be evaluating performance. And so I would say that constantly evaluating performance and getting feedback from her, you know, from her peers, from her subordinates, from her leaders on, is she assessing her performance accurately and correctly? Cause you can always adjust. The thing that you don't want to do is get so far.
away from things that you know you have to be executing on and just kind of get lost in the weeds. And it can happen because you know people are really busy. I would say 95 % of your listeners are really, really busy in their roles. Like they don't have a lot of headroom, but make the space, right? To do honest assessments. know, take the time to write it down. Take the time to validate with your boss. Like I
I found my boss to be just super helpful in that, you know, when we talk every week, he's very willing, eager to share his advice. And he asked for my advice. So, you know, establishing those relationships with your boss and your leaders makes a massive difference.
Roger Johnson (38:57)
Well, one of the things that you're saying is take the time to ask for feedback. Take the time to reflect on your own performance. Take time to try to get a clear picture of what's really happening and how you're performing as a leader in the midst of trying to
trying to adjust and move into this organization. So that's really important. One of the things think is true is that the higher you get in organization, the less feedback you get. So the less actual direct insight you get on your own performance from outside, from other people. They either assume you know it or...
They're too busy to give it to you. So what you're talking about is really important, is trying to take ownership of that. What have you found to be effective for you to get that type of insight on?
David Fox (39:34)
Absolutely.
Roger Johnson (39:49)
on what you do that makes you unique as an executive versus the other executives in the room. You're not all the same. You bring something unique to the table. And I'm assuming that you've gotten clearer and clearer on that throughout your career. And how has that clarity helped you execute the plan that you have, that you've outlined?
David Fox (40:09)
⁓
Yeah, I'd have to go back to the fact that I'm not just willing to do what I would call a thorough self-assessment, but to have people in my life and in my career universe like yourself, and just to be transparent, our monthly hour and a half.
two hours of coffee every month where we can both talk through, what are the challenges, it's always super helpful for me to be able to talk to you about, these are the things that, that I find very, challenging. And you don't know the players in the organization, you can look at it from a, 20 or 30,000 foot level and go, Hey,
you have you thought about, so you and I can, can listen and ask questions to each other where we can, you know, the whole steel sharpens steel. ⁓ And, and, and having someone that you know, and trust that, you know, the things that I do well, but you also know, and here are the things that I don't know if you necessarily would say don't do well, but you know, just areas that, it's not a focus for you or you know, you
Roger Johnson (41:04)
Yeah.
David Fox (41:19)
you kind of fill in that gap and can help me understand that.
Roger Johnson (41:23)
Yeah. Well, I always think there's a consequence to not seeing ourselves accurately. And I would say you don't know until you get external insight. If you're just relying on your own perspective and just looking in the mirror and you don't see what you do that makes you so uniquely effective.
And then you don't know kind of what some of the things where you actually shoot yourself in the foot unintentionally. I think the thing that we can do as leaders for each other, and I would, you
David Fox (41:44)
That's right.
Roger Johnson (41:54)
say that anyone can do for a peer or a colleague is establish that type of relationship where they're actually creating a safe conversation, regular conversation to go, what are you struggling with? What are you not? Hey, here's what I see in you. Hey, remember, you get tripped up by this stuff. having those regular conversations allows you to cycle through some of the stuff and clarify.
what's true versus the, when we're on our own, we can be distracted and not necessarily see ourselves the way that we need to see ourselves. So that's one of the things I think is just true about us as leaders. I need that, you know, you need that.
so that they can take a step back and look at that. And I think, for you, you're bringing us some really good insight about how someone can increase their path to adding value in an organization. And one of the ways is getting that insight from peers as you move through that process. People above you, peers, and people below you.
So that's good.
David Fox (42:56)
It's never too late to start. Right. I mean, even if you've been in your role for, for a year and a half, you're like, crap, wish I would have done that in the first, 30 days or 90 days. It's not too late. some of these, these ideas are applicable even into your role, deep into your roles. I start establishing, you know, monthly business reviews and, and, as a reminder, and I remind myself this all the time is,
Listen more, talk less, listen more, talk less. Ask questions, listen. And you need a constant reminder of that. And I totally agree with you, someone like you that I can have these conversations, it's gonna be different. My boss is not gonna have the type of honest conversations that you and I have. It is a different relationship.
Roger Johnson (43:22)
Yeah.
David Fox (43:38)
but yes, having a professional relationship that you can be honest with each other and grow and learn from each other is just really critically important.
Roger Johnson (43:49)
Yeah. And, I guess just an encouragement. or kind of a pro tip is, is, being willing to ask people, for their insight from their perspective on our performance.
is a huge risk. you got to be vulnerable to go in and go, Hey, I'd like some, some feedback on, how you think my team's doing, how you think I'm doing leading my team. Like that's a vulnerable thing that most leaders really don't do. and I think that, you've had the courage to do that. I've learned so many things about some of the blind spots that I've had throughout the years.
that I only learned because someone else who observed me was willing to be honest with me. And there's a huge benefit to taking that type of risk.
David Fox (44:29)
And I don't say this because you're my friend. I say this because...
very few people are, are qualified enough to really sometimes give you the kind of feedback that not only do I trust you, but you, you understand leadership and coaching to a level that you can ask the right questions and respond in the right way. So, like I say, it's a privilege to be able to,
have these conversations with you and work with you because, there's only a handful of people that I would, I would trust to do that.
Roger Johnson (44:58)
Well, I appreciate that. thank you. And I would say right back at you, you are the one of the longest running colleagues I think I've had where there's a truly mutual engagement back and forth in terms of encouragement, challenge, truth telling, throughout the years. So.
very grateful for the fact that we bumped into each other in 2012 and have been sailing together ever since.
Well, David, thank you very much. ⁓ Very much appreciate it. Look forward to our next conversation thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.