Transcript
Hey, folks, well, welcome to another edition of Identity Matters, our podcast here that we put on at SailPoint. And I'm super excited today to be joined by my good friend, Kevin Lynch, who's the CEO of Optiv. So, Kevin, welcome to Identity Matters. Thank you, Mark. It's great to be here with you. It's like having a conversation with an old friend all the years we've gotten to do work together in our marketplace and build a friendship beyond it. So, it's been great and excited about today with you. Yeah, no, me too. I think as often has happened on these calls, I'm talking with people that I work with that have become friends and we kind of range from some topics about our industry and the market and also kind of leadership and how you've kind of navigated some career journey. I think that's always of interest to folks too. So, maybe we'll even start there, Kevin. I think I've looked it up, but you started with a communications degree from USC. And for those of you out there, that does mean the University of Southern California, not South Carolina. Sometimes people are confused. The USC is the one in LA. So, that's not often a typical path to becoming a CEO in cybersecurity, Kevin, a comms degree from SC. So, kind of talk about a little bit how that foundation in communications has shaped kind of your approach to business and strategy and leadership. Well, Mark, it makes me think a little bit about, at least in my humble opinion, one of our great presidents of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who would have thought that an actor and then governor would be a president someday. But I use him as a reference because at the end of the day, what he really was above all of those credentials was a great communicator, a great orator. And it makes me think like a great strategy isolated to oneself is just a great idea. An individual trying to get something done is just one industrious person. Someone that can motivate a team, be clear about objectives, levers to pull, activities, imperatives, et cetera. I think that's the crux of leadership. And so, yes, if I looked back at that young, wet behind the ears Kevin Lynch coming out of the University of Southern California in those early days, completely not qualified to do the job I'm in today. Thankfully, you know, like yourself, I'm a lifelong learner and I've gathered over what has a three in front of it today, but soon we'll have a four in front of it in terms of my years of experience and an MBA, second in my class, all those great sort of attributes we stack up like gifts from a kickoff meeting. You know, there's been a lot of long path along to get to here. It's been an interesting one. I've learned a ton and certainly have spent my time in the industry, including standing up one of my prior firms in particular, their cyber delivery center in Tel Aviv. So, along the way, cyber came into the mix and really privileged to have the job to lead our organization today. Yeah, I think you and I might probably agree as organizations scale, sometimes I've probably never said this thought out loud. You think I am kind of the chief communications officer. Quite often it is very much what are you telling the outside world, in our case, investors or your team or your partners or your customers. There's an awful lot of the job that is about communicating well to your point. You have to have great strategy, great leadership team, all those things, but boy, a lot of this job ends up being about communications and so some real training and skill there. I think another interesting thing, Kevin, about your story, and that's not unprecedented as we both know, but moving from kind of that advisory part of the world, right, in the consulting and all that world to running operationally one of the businesses, what do you think you learned kind of transitioning from advising folks in kind of what to do, but now you've got the ownership of the execution as an operator. What would you say is one of the bigger thoughts of transitioning to that role? It's interesting. I would actually say it's less about transitioning and more around staying the course. I know I'm being a little bit provocative with that statement, but fashioning myself as a great executive advisor to boards and the C-level over a long, long career, which was really fun and some of the business challenges I got to address were groundbreaking and really interesting. But when I sat with a CEO client of mine or a board, you know, for me, I'd often get asked this question, like, how is it that you do what you do as a great advisor? And my simple response was I made it personal. You know, their outcome was my outcome. If you were my client back in the day, you know, I cared about what happened to you. I recognized the magnitude of the circumstance. If you were calling for help from the outside, this was an interesting environment for you where you probably had a lot of chips on the table to use a poker metaphor. And so if I came into it thinking of it as a process or just another engagement or a way to garnish fees, I'm not saying that's bad, but that's one modality. I came into it thinking their success is my success and vice versa. This is personal. And I've adopted that same mentality in this role where, you know, the countless thousands in my care today and importantly, the clients we serve, I think of it as personal, right? I've got a real mandate to do something. These folks, I won't use that colloquial phrase of family because people overuse that, but it's personal. I want to see people succeed. I want to see people thrive. I want to see people grow. And that becomes the mission. So a lot of us stayed the same. What's interesting for me, if I kind of combine the first two points you've raised, like the experience, the background, and then how did I make this advisor move? I was really privileged and benefited from tons of operational roles over the course of my career. And I think back about those versus where I am today. And look, I love Optiv. I love our organization. I love the culture. And most importantly, I love the mission. But it's interesting. I mean, I've led organizations that were multiple times larger in terms of top line revenue. I've led in terms of like direct, not direct reports as in your direct team, but total organization count, an organization that was 20 times the size I lead today. And little known fact in that resume that you probably looked at, at one stage, because you and I both appreciate the fact that our role, certainly it's about customers and operations and decisions and capital, but it's really about talent. We're joined by great talent to go prosecute a mission. The little known fact about Kevin was I was a CHRO for a few years, reluctantly, for over 120,000 people globally. And so it's multiple, 40 plus times what I lead today, right? So scale, in some ways, prepared me for something that was a little more intimate. And again, that brings me back to what's great about it is it can be really personal for me. And that I've heard some leaders say, I don't know how to attribute this quote to off the top of my head, darn it, kind of if you have a very large org or very large constituency or anything like that, like, you know, do for the one which you wish you could do for the many, which is a great mindset. Like I can't personally sit down with all thousands of my employees, especially when you had 120,000. But if you say, well, the ones I do get to sit down with or engage with, I'm going to treat them the way I wish I could treat everybody. Those kinds of things tend to propagate, right? And in Oregon, that's what often is things that define culture. Like, well, I've actually sat with that guy in a meeting, and he's like super concerned about how it's going for me or our team or, you know, that empathy. The other word I'd attribute there, Kevin, is empathy, right? Like that idea that I want the best for this person. And just like you, I've kind of had to wean myself off of the family. So I think I had the chance to, I think, start in a much smaller business here that you joined Optiv. Obviously, it was already up and quite healthy, done great growing it. We started this, as you know, from scratch. Well, you know, those early days, it's a little company of 10 or 12 people. It feels like a family. See, the family metaphor makes all the sense in the world. You get to hundreds and then thousands. Family is just not the right metaphor. Team is the right metaphor. And I say, look, we think like a team, not a family. The dark side of that little metaphor shift is you can't fire grandma when she's not working out, right? Like, you know, family is family. But team, you're like, look, we're motivated together. We care for each other. We're on the, use the word mission, which I love. Like, we're on the same mission. And you occasionally have to decide someone isn't the right fit on the team for the mission. They may be a great person. They're just maybe not the right fit for what's needed in the mission. Now, that's a team model, right? And I think as leaders, I think a lot of that is how do you ensure, you said talent, right? How do you ensure you got the right talent at the right time for the mission and where the mission needs to go? That's a lot of what we do in these jobs, right? 100%. 100% correct. Another bridge, Kevin, I think another part of your background that gets us a little closer to what's going on in the world of security today is you're, I believe, still kind of serving it as advisory board member for a VC firm. That means you're getting to look at a lot of emerging tech, new tech, things like that. You know, when you think about some of the bets that are being made around cyber, you know, both of us are in the identity space. Our firm's primarily focused there. You've got that broader mandate across the security landscape at Optiv for your customers. But what do you think are some of the interesting things unfolding in cybersecurity that people aren't as attuned to today? Some of the early signals you're getting from interacting with, like, the venture capital world? So if you look at, it's a great question, right? And we often, at least in my experience, our industry, and I don't mean just cyber risk and resilience, I mean technology writ large, is a little bit of an industry of what's flashy and what's current. And so something cool happens, and we all focus on that corner of the room. And today, you and I both appreciate that that's the gentic AI, it's AI writ large. You know, there's a massive conversation going on around that. And we can talk about that in detail if you want to. But I think given the focus is so overtly there, it's not other places. And one of the areas I'm watching is quantum. Yeah. And there's been this boundary condition everyone's looking at on quantum around Kelvin, and can we accomplish that? And there's been incredible strides to tackle that issue, tons of progress. And I think it's coming faster than people think it's going to come. You know, AI has been this sort of, like if you're at the beach, it's the slow rolling wave coming from afar. And it started back in the 60s with basic, you know, artificial intelligence. It's grown in magnitude and stature. It's embedded in a lot of the tools that you and I both have come to know as standard and utilize. And then it was generative, and now it's gentic. But it's been this slow wave rolling across the landscape, and now it's got to a peak, you know, ahead of the beach. And all the while, we've got quantum out there. And I think quantum has massive disruptive elements to it that'll change not just our security landscape, but a lot in our world. And then on some level, it won't change some things. So like, let's look at our common space together. I've heard people stand up and say, well, once quantum's here, what the vast data pools that people have accumulated, quantum can sift through all of that and effectively break any identity challenge that's out there and therefore destroy any notion of a existing perimeter or defense structure. I actually disagree with that. Some of the things that I see happening only reinforce the notion of identity. Yes, might it look different? Might it be less password centric? Sure, I agree with that, right? But the basic notion of it, it goes back so far in time. I think it's going to become the cornerstone of a quantum driven environment. No, that's great. I think in fact, you're right that, you know, I've kind of lived through a lot of this evolution in the identity industry and you have for many years now as well. And, you know, we just didn't have some of the language for it 20 or 30 years ago. But if you look back in technology, you know, it's always sort of been about an identity. We would have just had a person back in the day because we didn't know about non-human identities yet. Right. But, you know, a person going through some sort of computer, probably over a network, you know, some days in the early days, all the intelligence was in a big central mainframe. Then it was kind of split between a client and a server. Now it's very much split between the local device and, you know, cloud computing and everything else. But there's always been kind of this, you've got some person and now it's not might be a non-person agentic identity or something, trying to traverse some layers of technology to interact with data. At the end of the day, that's what we've always been doing, right? And I think there's this heightened focus on, oh, gosh, as the world's evolving, I really need to understand, not that the traversing in between is not critically important, networks and devices, but like I really need to understand the identity, what's its role, what's its intent, what's its context, and what data are we talking about and how important is that data? Is that data being exposed? Is it being used as intended? This idea of intent is a new concept that's rapidly circulating on Agentic, where what is that agent supposed to be doing and is it staying along the lines you thought it was? Because one of the things we're already seeing in the early days is not always, right? Sometimes those little agents run off and try to accomplish their mission in ways no one thought they would. And so I think there's a sense of this space has become kind of the hot epicenter of if you're going to secure enterprises and data, you're going to have to really understand the parts of this value chain, and it probably does start with identity, and it gets very quickly to the data, right? That's right. And you have to understand both ends of that. So to your point, I think there's lots of evolution we're going to see in quantum, to your point. I'm certainly no expert there. I will say I'm pretty sure it affects both ends of that in the middle, right? It affects how we think about identities and how they operate and the speed they operate and the data, how much data can be accessed and at what speed and where, and how do you get to it, right? I think all those things are going to be, like you said, pretty disrupted. I think we've all lived through a lot of disruption. I just crossed over recently that four-decade number. I know you're close to it in the industry. And wow, you know, seen a lot of change in 40 years, nothing quite at the pace we're seeing now and the disruptiveness of what we're seeing. So it's a fascinating time to be in it. So I think that's the thing I think we're all talking about. When you think about, and you do spend a lot of time advising CISOs and security leaders at various levels and very large organizations and mid-sized organizations, what do you think are the conversations they aren't having, they should be having? Like we just said, they're talking about AI. You can't not be. Are there other conversations they should be having today that you don't think they are having? Well, I think the AI, they're having an AI conversation. They're not having the right one, in my opinion. And it's just my opinion. I think a lot of organizations are followers here, and I'll put a little economic theory to this. I think this is a place where you need to lead. over time, you know, while we're all somewhat struggling with how to characterize the use of Over time, you know, while we're all. AI in our organizations, and the potential or likely effect that will have or impact it'll have on the workforce. And we're all dancing around that question, or trying to answer it in some moderate way. But in parallel, there's an economic decision set that's happening. And I look at what will happen under agentic in terms of process change, speed and velocity of an organization. And I think to myself, in the short run, there'll be investment, there'll be a business case associated with that investment. The capture of that business case, I think will be for the leaders and not the followers. I think over time, the economic advantage will get competed out, like most things do. I think the speed advantage will reside and stay. And so the first mover that invests and is successful in any area, let's just say it's customer support, let's say it's credential management. I mean, pick your area of the enterprise, there's literally countless. I think that the advantages will be for first movers here, who can move quickly. And my concern when I think about what a board is doing today or a senior management team, they're launching a thousand keels if this was a shipyard and not dedicating to finishing any one of them quickly. I would actually invert that and say, go find your number one priority and your number one opportunity where you can make a distinct competitive advantage in what you do as an enterprise tied to your core competency and go all in using agentic AI as much as possible. And please don't leave security as an afterthought, like do it in parallel, invest appropriately, win and succeed, and then turn around and do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And so I think there's this almost school of thought difference where some organizations are attempting across a broad spectrum and some fewer are going deep. And I'm in the belief that the deep category will ultimately win. I think there's going to be a lot of complexity in the use and adoption of AI. And we've joked about this before. I know we have where there were plenty of people that said we'd never see a multi-tenant cloud environment for computing. And boy, did that happen fast, right? So for every time I start thinking about something not happening, I'm reminded that markets are not only efficient, they're persistent and things happen at a velocity. But I do believe we will have constraints on the availability of AI capability. You're already seeing the real core asset that delivers this is a data center. And data center construction has slowed for the first time in a long time. And the biggest reason behind it is power availability. Most of the existing data centers are not running much north of the mid-60s in terms of productivity. So we're to the fragile end of rate limiters. And so our CFOs would probably be sitting here and saying, can I buy a derivative or a hedge on compute center, data center access to belay the risk? That'd be a really intelligent business to be in in the next five years, I think. But beside that venture, I look at it and say, don't let those constraints get in your way. But to get that capacity, go deep in one area, make it work, prevail, securitize it, and then move to the next. And I still think companies are in this like sandboxing, trialing, tepid, toe-in-the-water environment. And I think they have the real risk of sort of losing on both ends. That's a really astute observation. Yeah, I think probably nothing wrong with doing some early sampling, testing, trialing. But like you said, pretty quickly use that process if needed to identify one or most a couple strategic moves you can make, particularly in a competitive dynamic landscape, saying, well, I'm going to go big here because I think it's a way to win. And I think a lot of companies are making those kind of bets. Yeah, it's funny when you, I remember seeing a quote from Benioff after COVID, others coming out of various other either economic or market crises, where generally the retrospective view is always should have been bolder, should have made more decisive, bigger moves when there was some level of disruption or uncertainty, because those are the winners in the next generation, almost inevitably, right? So yeah, that sounds 100% right. Well, listen, let's, another slight shift, but not really, kind of topical, but light turn here, kind of in leadership and culture, which I know you and I care a lot about in the context of what we do. So, you know, we both are in these cyber companies and the nature of cyber is it's kind of intense and can even be kind of high stakes, high risk and some level of crisis management, not crisis, but perhaps like a lot of tension at times on what's happening. When you think about how you lead through that scenario, like either within your team or your team helping your customers, right, kind of live through what feels like a constant state of crisis or uncertainty. There's this, I've been repeating this, I guess it's an old military acronym, VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Like that's kind of the new norm, is what I say to people, like that sounds like just life from now on, doesn't it? Like it's going to be kind of volatile and uncertain and complex and ambiguous. I don't see an end in sight for any of that right now. Like, I don't know when we cease to be somewhat volatile or super clear or unambiguous or simpler. I don't, you know, life and technology look like they're getting more complex, not less. So when you think about that backdrop, like as a leader kind of navigating that through with your team, helping your teams help customers navigate that, what are some of the things you've kind of learned to rely on to help people work through that? Well, let's first have the record books reflect that you beat me to the punch in terms of using a military acronym today. So good for you. That's a good one. Which is not me. For those that know me well, Kevin, I'm not the military guy. That's not me. But that was a good one. I'm going to keep that. You know, it's interesting because you and I have talked about this literally for the entirety of our relationship, which started in COVID. And, you know, we've had this conversation more times than we can count around when will, you know, the headwinds and the difficulties and the complexities stop? I, you know, when will help show up? And I've actually come to a different place in terms of mentality on this, which is maybe it never is. Maybe at the end of the day, the world's just getting more complex. The uncertainty is less about some event or condition. And it's more around the fact that the pace is accelerating in life so much that they're all squeezing together. So they seem like more difficult periods. And maybe at the end of the day, as a leader, one has to reframe this, not only for themselves, but for their organization, that this is about building that resilience and that muscle and that capability to lead in times that are challenging, because isn't that going to be the competitive differentiator? You know, for me personally, this is interesting because I think I wouldn't characterize it as a struggle. But again, you and I share this passion around lifelong learning. I would definitely put it in the curriculum set. Like, how do I show up every day? And I think of that as something that I have not mastered, but that I'm industrious every day around how to be the best in these different times. And, you know, I love a good piece of literature. You know, I go back to Sun Tzu on this one, and I'll butcher or get wrong what he said, but I think the basic sort of yin-yang thing came out in most of his writings, which is, if your enemy is strong here, be weak there, be strong where they're weak. And I think about that, and it sort of influences my thinking as a leader around how I show up in different times. And I think that a leader has a real interesting opportunity when there's abject chaos going on, right? It's the quarter close. It's a difficult client that's asking for something that's unprecedented. It's voluntary terminations have risen above our norm. Pick whatever the malady of the day is. And people are running around nervous, uncertain, manifesting the basic crisis that we're trying to deal with. I think that's the moment where the leader has to, as comfortable or uncomfortable as it may be, show up as the voice of reason, show up calm, and be opposite the basic condition you're fighting. And conversely, when and if we're in times that are more peaceful, you know, more steady sailing, life is easy, it's good, you know, growth rates coming through the door, everyone seems happy with what they're getting paid, etc, etc. You could show up and be that peaceful person again, and just float along with it. I guess the time when you have to show up and create some imperative, and drive and instances of need and change. And so you have almost have to have this complete opposite or asymmetric play, where you show up for your organization differently than they are. I almost think that comes part and parcel to a leader. And take titles aside, titles are important to managers. Leaders don't care about titles. It's as a leader in your respective part of the organization. It's how you have to show up. It's the complement to your team at any level. There really is the secret formula. So I try every day. And again, it's one of those things where I'm not perfect, I learn every day. But it's how I try and show up for my organization. Yeah, and candidly outside of my organization. Yeah, that's, that's well said. I think, you know, we, there's an awful lot of wisdom in that whole balance and complimentary nature to all many, so many things, right? Teams are best when they're diverse and complimentary. Our own leadership styles are best when we have multiple tools and we'll get for how to lead and how to use the tools at different times in leadership. And as you say, I think you're spot on with that. That might be a new thought for some of the younger leaders listening in is sometimes your job is to counter the thing happening around you because when people are too comfortable, you might need to shake them up a little. When they're feeling a little shaken, you might need to bring some calm. And that, that often is the role of the leader I've learned over many years of leading like you. And I think, yeah, and today, and well, and now tie that back to where we started on VUCA. And, and if the new normal is pretty much hard and, and challenging and somewhat disruptive, a lot of what we're doing is kind of keeping the while navigating the challenge. It's like, we're not waiting for the challenges to end. As you said, I don't think that's wise to think, oh, I just, I'm sure in a few more years, it'll settle down, whatever settle down means and not be like this. I don't know that we'll get something that resembles settling down. So some of the challenges, both keeping the teams kind of focused and calm as necessary. Some of it is, I think, reminding people they have to insert some level of calm and, and, and reflectiveness or mindfulness or some buzzwords in the world today. I don't want to get too tripped up on those, but just that idea that, you know, you have to kind of step back from the day-to-day frenetic pace at times and go, think clearly, reflect on what's happening, what's needed now, how can I lead well? I think sometimes the challenge is to step away from the frenetic nature of what's happening. And boy, it feels pretty stinking frenetic right now with what's happening with AI and everything around is like, wow, I, every so often I do, I feel like I sit back from the keyboard and think for a moment, like, what is happening? What, what do we really need to be thinking right now? And it's, and it, by the same token, you can't go ostrich and, you know, avoid, avoid it and stick your head in the sand and wish it would not be the way it is. It is the way it is, right? That will definitely not work as a formula. That's a, that's a no-go. Yeah, no, exactly. I think that's exactly right. You know, I think another thing you talked about scale, and I think this is a great one for people that might be wondering about how do leaders, you know, adapt as they scale. You know, when you think about growing a large org, not near as large as you once had, but, you know, I guess this is your largest one as a CEO or a senior leader of the team in that sense. Like, what do you think are some good practices to stay connected and grounded? I think one of the challenges when you get a multi-layer management structure is you start to feel like you can get disconnected from what's happening on the ground, so to speak, right? And back to military parlance, it's like, you know, obviously, one answer at the time is, the answer is spend time with the troops. How do you, how do you do some of that? What are, what are some of the mechanisms you found that are effective to kind of staying grounded, making sure you're in touch with everything that's happening on the ground level, so to speak, in your teams? Yeah, well, so if you think about the role we're in, and I remember studying this somewhere in my youth, serving CEOs in particular and thinking about what's their life like on any given day, and certainly with a quiet aspiration that someday maybe I could be one. And I asked a lot of the CEOs questions over the course of years serving them, because you would build a really tight relationship in being their trusted advisor. And what I really came away with was CEOs, man or woman, domestic or global, doesn't matter, they are public or private, one of the most isolated cohorts on the planet, if you think about it. Organizations generally restrict information flowing to the CEO versus enable it. Boards used to be their advisors, and now they're their governors, right? So like, they sit in this sort of very compromised middle position between the organization and a ton of information and insight and activity. And a set of people, whether again, it's their board or their stakeholders or public shareholders, et cetera, at large, that expect great visibility and transparency and an ease of getting an understanding. So they're in this very, it's a quandary. And so I think leaders in our capacities have an inherent challenge, how do we break that norm? Upward, I think, is the easier of the challenges where it's like, you can just condition your stakeholders on what to expect from you. Your board in particular, I think you would lead that relationship, and I think you can do it with objectivity and transparency. I remember one of my clients, who I will not mention by name, but a character, great CEO, one of my favorite guys in the world. At one stage, he asked me to be a successor for great CEO, one of my... him in his organization. It wasn't the right time or right fit for me, but he broke all public convention as a public company around how to communicate with the stakeholders. Like the board communications person that worked for him on investor relations probably pulled their hair out, right? And then down in the organization, if we want to be hierarchical for a moment, you know, I think there's some harder things to do, but really principally important things to do. Yes, you and I both undoubtedly have articulated to our teams, my door is always open. My phone's always on. You have to create that effect of openness and willingness. But I think that and that alone is not sufficient. One of my mentors in life, a British guy, a British client of mine who was facing a growth issue and I was helping him grow from the UK into the US. So that was my role in life then. Once said to me something very, very powerful, which was, if your organization thinks that you're above the work that they do every day, doesn't matter what the work is that we're referring to, then you have created a wall and your job as a leader, if you believe that the information flowing through your ranks is critically important to your success, is to eliminate walls and certainly not build new ones. And so one of his principles, and I've adopted this full strike, is make sure your organization knows and is fully aware that you're prepared to do anything that you would ask them to do. Right. And you and I are both customer facing, customer centric leaders. It's very easy to do there to showcase to your teams, look, I'm happy to be in the field right with you, side by side, any day, anywhere with a client where I can make a difference. In fact, I not only welcome it, that'll be the happiest day I have that period. So I've always tried to adopt that stance of be available, be engaged in the work that your teams are doing. So you're not creating us and them mentality. And then wherever you have a chance, less about policy, less about procedure and process, and more around behavior, flatten the organization. Right. Like I'm doing this lately, by the way, drop in on a regional frontline sales managers call on a weekly basis with our team. And just not sort of like jump in unknown, but jump in, announce you're there, make it clear. It's not about me. I'm not here to have you herald me because I've walked in from above. I'm just one of the team. I want to hear what's going on. I'd love to hear what's going on with all of you. Undoubtedly, there are going to be some challenges you're facing. Maybe I can cut the corner and get some resources to fix that problem with you. But do things like that, that compress the organization, not structurally, but behaviorally. I think you do things like that, you start creating a different information flow that really enables you to have greater transparency and visibility of what's really happening. And then you and I both know like one of our critical jobs is to think about our strategy, make decisions in light of that, and in light of our resource availability, ultimately with a return in mind for our stakeholders. That's the crux of our job. And this, I think, enables you to make well more informed choices. Yeah. I think at one level, when you feel like you don't understand what the folks are doing day to day, then how can you possibly be confident that your culture and or your strategy is working well, right? I think you have to sort of get out there. And of course, the whole post-COVID world has made some of this tougher. It's more remote sometimes than we used to be in person. But some of that has now just become a choice like, well, you got to get out and go see people and go visit them and create situations and environments to do that. So yeah, we certainly try to do that internally. We try to do it externally. I think we've all learned there's a lot of efficiency and cost savings associated with doing remote things, but you can't do it all remote or you're definitely losing a lot as a leader in terms of understanding what's happening. I think one more thought that's kind of in this juxtaposition of leadership and what's happening in the market around us today, right? I think we've got some incredibly rapid technological change happening, and that generally means people have to think differently and think out of the box, to use all those old phrases. What do you find is helpful for leaders today, whether mostly, I guess, in the cybersecurity landscape, we're probably experiencing as much or more change than any other industry, but in terms of how you encourage people to get out of prior ways of looking at problems or issues or thinking and think creatively, what are some things you've seen work effectively to get folks to kind of break out of their ruts, I guess, to use an old term? How do you find ways to do that? You know, it's interesting. I'm going to reference another British client. You're thinking to yourself, heck, I didn't know Kevin was going to reference the Brits so much today, but I had another client of mine who was not- Make sure we publish this in England. Exactly. Let's go get some business going in England together. He was not the top executive in this firm, but he was the central sort of thought processor. He was the CFO technically, but he really was the strategist for the business. He was incredibly good at thinking about capital sources and uses. And I'll never forget a meeting with him. I was in my impressionable late 20s, early 30s. And I walked into his office one day and he asked me, he goes, do you think I've been successful, Kevin? And of course, my answer was yes. And by all regard, he had been incredibly successful. And then he asked the more important question, which is, why do you think that's the case? And I struggled to answer the question. And he answered it for me. And he mentioned two things that again, these are big, you know, like all of us, we learn from our quote unquote elders and we try and apply that in the context of our own lives. The two things he said that day were very powerful for me. The first was almost silly in the way he delivered it, which was, I make sure every day I have enough time to stare at the ceiling. And I thought to myself, well, that's absolutely insanity. Like, you know, that's not productivity, et cetera. But what he was counting upon was I need to create the space and time where I have free range of thinking that if I'm frenetic and everything I have to do, and I'm booked from six to eight, you know, an incredibly long day, I'm burning out my capital stock and I've lost any bandwidth to be creative or think differently about the business. So when I apply that in my organization, again, I put this in the question, don't overload your top team. Periodically, you're going to have things that happen. You're going to be acquisitive, or you're going to divest something, or you're going to be doing something on your capital structure that's going to require an abnormal overload on the team. But on a run rate basis, make sure the team is in a place where your top team in particular, the ones that are direct reports to you are not at their full capacity. And then once you're there, make sure they're spending that time staring at the ceiling, thinking about different ways to run the business. So that was one. The second thing was a little more directly practical. And it's been my mantra for my entire career. And it was maybe easier to do as an advisor with a consulting team or teams around you and clients. Maybe it's a little harder to do in a classical corporate environment, but maybe not. And that was, and his words specifically were, manage velocity, not time. And I thought it was such a direct to the bone kind of comment, manage velocity, not time. And I think the industrial revolution and industrial world and that which preceded it economically, taught us to be time masters. Punch clocks, eight to five. Our cultures are all built around this sort of time orientation. And at the end of the day, if you and I were sitting somewhere and we were evaluating a common employee, let's say you were the CEO and I was your CRO for sake of just grins and giggles. And we were evaluating John Smith, one of our guys. And you said, look, John puts in 60 hours a week. And I said, I don't really care. And then we had Nancy Smith and not married, but fellow colleague doing the same job. And Nancy puts in 10 hours a week, but her productivity is twice that of John. Who do you think we stack rank to the top? Right. It'd be a simple conversation. Results always are going to trump time. And so as leaders and as managers, and with the leaders and managers in our care, if we can get them to reorient that velocity matters a lot more than sort of butts and seats, I think we end up in a much, much better place. It's a better, what I like to think of Mark, it's a better covenant with your employees than one that's based on just commitment of time. Yeah. To your point, I think I'm no super deep student of business history, but yeah, the whole time in motion studies, Deming, all that stuff out of the thirties, forties, industrial revolution, we have a lot of hangovers from that in a world that isn't that, right? We're not working in a factory environment most of the time where it's time on task and things like that. It's how effective are you? And that may not be, like you said, highly, it's somewhat probably correlated with time, but certainly not completely correlated with time because we can all find that we spend a lot of time on relatively worthless things and sometimes accomplished great things with relatively short amounts of time. Yeah. I think that first one, I resonate with a lot too. Matter of fact, I've joked about this for years. I probably should do this. I'm now say what I need to do is, I'm not a t-shirt company guy, but I need the t-shirt that says, don't just do something, sit there, right? It's the opposite of the normal phraseology. Don't just sit there, do something, right? I think a lot of us need the, no, stop doing things and just sit there, right? It's that step away, take the time, clear your head. And this is a particularly challenging one. I think for leaders today, I feel it. I bet you do too. I want to use up the time I've got a lot of times with productive things. I want to listen to another podcast, listen to more information, build knowledge, and all that can be really good, right? Not that it's bad, but at some point you need to kind of turn the stuff off and just think and go, what have I learned by listening to all of this stuff? I think that's part of the challenge I'm working on at this stage is like, don't just add more information. That's useful. Make sure you're reflecting on the and drawing inferences or insights that are actually useful for you and what you're due to do at work or at home or both, right? So that's one of my things to don't just do something, sit there. But one thing to add to that real quick, I mean, you know, what you just said really clicked with me. And I harken back to yet another story of being an advisor. This is hardwired in a lot of us, right? When you said it's sort of all that hangover from all the legacy, that's a powerful statement. This is really hardwired, not only in our generation, but beyond us. And the unwiring is not easy. And I had a great CEO client who I won't mention his name for sort of anonymity, but he came back from the stuff that we do in our roles, a whirlwind tour overseas, back domestically, investors, roadshow, stopping four cities, comes back to his home city, goes to a charitable event that night in black tie, right? So he's been on the road hard for three, four weeks. Also a guy with the three moving to a four kind of history of working and gets about halfway through the salad course and falls flat in his face on the plate. And he didn't have a stroke or anything, thankfully more sinister, but the body has this unique way of saying, like, if I have to make a choice of where I send blood, I send it to the stomach for calories versus the brain for processing. So he passed out. His board was obviously Alarm, public company. And they mandated he went to Scripps for a big workover and like, what's wrong with you and what do we need to do to fix it? And the doctor looked at him and said, there's three things you need to do. You gotta eat a tomato every day. You gotta get a lot of sleep. And then you've got a clear two hours a day of your calendar. As logic was, you know, the, the CEO was sort of like beside himself, like this sounds like country wizardry and magic. And what are you talking about? And I thought I was at Scripps, you know? And the logic was if you eat a tomato every day, you're probably eating other things with it that are healthy. So let's work on your health, even though he was a reasonably fit guy. Second, the notion of like the workout, Garrett's like, we make excuses for the things that we ultimately don't end up doing. So take all the excuses away, uh, which he had a massive issue with. He's just like, so my shareholders are going to pay for me shipping shoes and, you know, dirty workout clothes around the world. And the guy looked at him and said, what's the cost of losing you versus shipping this stuff around the world? It's a easy trade off. And the third around time, I mean, he had a massive consternation over this, um, talking about being hardwired. He's like, how do I look my shareholders in the face and say that I take two hours a day to think? And the guy said, how do you not? Um, and it literally changed him in the last less than trimester of his sort of career. Um, and, uh, far less than trimester. And, you know, fascinating to watch that. So if he could do it, we can all do it, but you got to recognize it is hardwired in us, right? It's a challenge. Yep. A hundred percent. No, that's, there's some, there's some wisdom there. I don't know about the tomato. I'll actually love tomatoes. I could probably just eat a tomato by itself, but I'm weird that way. Um, but, uh, you know, there you go. All right. Um, this has been so fun. I knew it would be wide ranging and a lot of great stuff to talk to. These are the fun couple, three questions, Kevin, I've given to a lot of the guests, excuse me, as we rip through this. So here's one that's such a common question you and I both get with our lovely white haired selves. If you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? That's one I've had to answer, but I bet you have two. Oh yeah. Look, I'm gonna be complex in my answer here. I would sit with myself and say, the older Kevin has a rule of three for you, which you should adopt earlier. The first part I adopted very early in my career, which is always be creating options. And, you know, option theory would tell you, create options, you know, mature them to the point of where there's real value and then harness them, right? Or harvest them if you prefer. I've done a lot of that in my career. It's how I've managed and driven and navigated a career that looks pretty variegated to the world. The other two are simple, right? Which is, well, I'll come to those. But along with that, I think that a lot of people fall into play with that. But at the same time, they lose sight of what, optionality doesn't mean continued analysis of the world. It means creating options. But once you've executed something, that kind of gets me to the second two, which is be fast and decisive. And third, you know, have conviction. And there's good scientific reason behind those. If you actually look at sort of speed of decisions, there's great research on this, where speed of decisions versus slow decisions, irrespective of the data that the leader or manager has, yields a better outcome in any statistical or computational model. So as a leader being faster and decisive, not reckless, not silly, but speed does ultimately matter. So it's think about and create your options, move with speed and imperative. And then this notion of conviction comes back to this notion of the options. Like a lot of people overtly say, well, I always have options. And so they're contemplating, did they make a good decision? Did they not make a good decision? Should they change their decision? Do they have lament over their decision? I bought the green car, I should have bought a blue car. And I think that drives you to the point of lower productivity and probably a loss of inner peace. Whereas conviction where it's like, I've made the choice. And now I fully have to be on with that choice and make it work. And in fact, it's become a filter for me when I think about who do I want, not in our families, but in our teams. I want people of conviction, right? Because otherwise we end up creating environments with friction where people have alternative thoughts or contemplation. And it's like, no, we want conviction. Go drive what we agreed to do together, hopefully in a collaborative process, to a great outcome. Yeah. Those are good. Those are worth telling your younger self. So you should figure out how to go do that Michael J. Fox style. Hey, if you think about books, podcasts. Quantum's coming. What's that? Quantum's coming. We'll figure it out. Yeah, that's right. Okay, now kind of the book, podcast, a thinker, kind of you were gonna point some of our listening audience to somebody they had to go engage with. Maybe it's somebody familiar already. Maybe it's somebody less familiar. You have somebody you'd say, hey, you ought to go read or absorb some of the content from this person. Anybody come to mind as kind of a good thinker for you? Yeah, so look, I'm gonna go old school, new school on this. Old school, not a day goes by that I don't read something from the Stoics. You know, and people are like, who are the Stoics? Well, Marcus Aurelius is a Stoic. A lot of old Greek and Roman dudes that got around and talked about doing hard things and why. And I find great inspiration in that. They're short, they're interesting, but they're applicable in today's context. So that's the old school. On the new school, I'm always trying to find a way to broaden my horizons and think a little differently. I'll be the first to admit there's business books that sit on the side of my bed or side of my desk and I'll pick them up, I'll read them. I'm a pretty fast judge. If I don't think there's something there that's worth going deeper, I'll look for the crib notes version. If I don't find anything good in that, I'll throw it away. I think a lot of business books we create out of 400 pages, it can be done in five. But just amplifying a basic concept. But the one on my desk today that I'm reading is Dan Davies' The Unaccountability Machine. It's a couple of years old as a book, but I finally got around to it. And it's all around how organizations build structure and almost protective defensive structure for senior leaders of all capacities to be defended and not accountable for poor results. And I do believe in a world where we can be more transparent, more accountable, more decisive, more conviction, and better teaming and collaboration. You kind of have to find those things and get them out of your organization or you're gonna pay a big price for them. So I'm sort of intrigued by the notion of the book. Early days, but I like what I see so far. Yeah, I'll check that one out. That one hadn't crossed my radar. I pay some attention to the, like you said, the incredible flow of business books coming by. There's so much, and like you say, a lot of them are an article crammed into a book. That's my version of saying what you said about five pages and 400. But on the other hand, like you say, some every so often will catch your eye or your ear. And that one, I'm a big Patrick Lencioni fan. I've admired a lot of his writing for years, five dysfunctions of a team, all that stuff. We rely on the ideal team player model here, humble, hungry, smart. But that accountability layer of his five-part stack and those five dysfunctions is a biggie, right? We don't have a culture, if we don't, excuse me, if we don't have a culture of being accountable a whole lot of things go wrong, right? When it's okay not to do what you said you were gonna do and not follow through, then all kinds of stuff breaks. So I think that's a great one. I'll dig into that one, because I'm a big fan of that in general as a thing. Well, that's the last one. We call this podcast Identity Matters. So what is some way in which you would say that identity matters? Well, you know, you were asking earlier about big technology revolutions, and I came back to identity and that construct. I read somewhere, I can't validate that this is true, but I read somewhere in one random fact that the military salute that we all appreciate today in a Western world, you know, this is actually an identity construct. And it goes back to the knights of the days of the knights where they would flip up their visor and then flipping it up, it looks like a salute so that they could show the counterparty in any environment who they were, right? And I say that, and I referenced that in that identity is not new. Identity is an old, old, old idea, right? If you think about trade, most trade in the world started around cities that were eventually walled, right? So they had perimeters, like in our security environments today. And people passed into and out of those cities to trade an identity that you were friend or foe mattered. And so identity is not new. It's been with us for a long time. Identity is not going anywhere, whether we're in a quantum environment where I think it becomes even more pertinent, whether we're in an agentic world as we are today, where non-human identities are the hot du jour, like this isn't going anywhere. It may have changed in its complexion, may have changed in sort of the way we do it. Of course it will, it has. And so it will continue to. But my one word, if I had to put it in one word is identity is timeless. It has been with us forever. It will be with us forever. It is the cornerstone of a trust-based relationship, which spans well beyond the corporate and business environment that we today spend our time protecting. Well said, yeah. You think about all these, you know, apocalyptic dystopian movies and novels, and inevitably there's some sort of loss of identity, right? Like we all become automatons, robot, like that's the whole human condition is to have a unique individual identity. And then in our case, how do we safely protect identities and data as we said, but you're right, that's a core human element of, you know, we are who we are. Well, that's fun, Kevin. Thanks so much. This has been great. I knew it would be lots of wide ranging conversation. I'm sure there's some nuggets in there for folks, no matter what they were looking for, whether they wanna get a little smarter about security and identity and stuff like that, and agents and AI, or if they wanted to just think about leadership and how to maybe become a better leader. So I appreciate all your thoughts and been a great conversation as I knew it would. So thanks again. Thanks for tuning in folks, if you're out there and Kevin, have a great day. Thanks everybody. Take care.
