#168 | From Chaos to Clarity: Change Management, Strategic Simplicity, and the Networking Muscle You Never Built w/ Iryna Lambrianides @Clar

Welcome to the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. My name is Alexander Leaminskam. I'm a former violinist turned management engineer, turned organizational psychologist, speaker and PCM leadership mentor and facilitator. In this space, everyone is invited to the table where we have real eye opening conversations about tech leadership.

Two keywords utility and real life implementation, knowledge tools, frameworks, ways of working, dos and don'ts. Taking from my personal experiences as a leader in the experiences of others is what you are going to get from every single episode. This is the Lemon Tech Leadership Podcast. Okay, so let's go and take some action and throughr life.

Hi everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast. Today, I have a very special guest, and very special because she's af ferend than most of the guests that are joining our show, different piece of expert keys. So I think you are going to have an interesting conversation to listen to. Irina Lamb is with me today, hiring a thank you for joining.

Hi, Alexandra, thanks thanks for inviting me. Okay, yeah, I'm very excited about the conversation because, as I mentioned you're a different person that I am most of the time I'm on the show, but you have an extensive, great experience in the area that can actually very much help our audience. So I would love to start from your story, because this is always the question that we start with. And I would love for all the people that are listening right now and they don't know you yet, to hear about your career journey.

So where actually your career journey started? What happened over the way? And Arry in health? Thank you.

I was born and raised in Ukraine and now I've been in the United States for over twenty years. And when I came here, I came here in my twenties. I was alone. I didn't know anybody in this country.

Back home, I used to be an English professor for a couple of years, and in the US, as many immigrants, I started in the jobs that would help me play the bills, and I was a restaurant server for a little bit, making about seven dollars an hour with no tips allowed. But I had high expectations of creating a career that would match my professional abitis more closely. And you know, I tried to apply for different roles and you know, different sectors that I thought I would be good at, and it did not work out because I did not know how it is to create a competitive resume, how to position myself in the market, how to network with people.

I did not have any network. So I wanted to become a teacher. I passed the certifications to become a teacher, and then I could not find a teaching job for a while, and I was like, you know what, I made a decision that changed everything. So if the door would not open, I would just build a new one.

So I pursued a PhD in education, and while being a student, I started teaching as a professor. I started supervising, managing grants, and getting involved in program evaluation. So then I became more interested in how organizations work, what makes organizations thrive or sink. So I kept investing in myself into my change of not really air of career, but change of the direction.

I continuously kept adding new skills, such as certifications in project management and change management, Balance scorecard, which is like strategic planning and implementation than in performance measurement and improvement leaning six sigma. So over time it helped me build a career across nonprofits, mission driven startups and higher education institutions, leading operations, transformation, strategic planning, building systems for measuring goals. I restructured complex international organizations, stretching over sixty different countries.

So on paper, everything looked like success, but behind the scenes there was a lot of despair, time and struggle. I was laid off twice from organizations due to restructuring and funding changes. I narrowly escaped two more layoffs by leaving early. There were moments when I watched my bank account shrink.

I questioned my worst I wondered whether I was too overqualified underqualified. Maybe I didn't pursue the correct career path. So those experiences taught me something powerful. Any institutions can be unstable, but my knowledge and my skills they stay with me.

So rejection did not reduce my value, but it helped me build resilience. And when I looked honestly at the evidence of my career path and you know all those setbacks, I had nearly tripled my salary in five years, and I. Kept making impact wherever I went, And I realized that my leadership style has been shaped both by success and by rejection. So success taught me confidence, rejection taught me adaptability and bread and that realization led me to recently create a clarity point consulting.

I now provide services of a fractional strategic advisors you well, like chief of staff, to help founders and executive leaders across mission driven organizations, startups, nonprofits, and education institutions. So I helped leaders bring order to complexity. I helped trend like the vision into road maps. I have build systems, operating systems, operating rhythms, and what I specialize in is I turning turning chaos into roadmaps and turn execution into business value.

You know what, I would love to start from what you said at the very end because this is extremely close to my heart as well. And I see a lot of complexity, and I'm sure I'm not the only person that sees that a lot of complexity right now that people add to their plates even if it is not necessary. So I see how people love to add more complexity instead of simplifying things and making as you mentioned, order in complexity. I love it.

I underlined it three times. So they creating road maps to actually make make create a business value out of out of the mess that we deal with all of those things that are just happening at the same time, all of the changes, transformations, transitions that are happening are more and more complex. So leaders who have the skill of thinking and thinking and doing more things in simple way, I think they are winners so in the long run. So what would you advise from your perspective, your expertise, your experience for leaders in tech?

You mentioned that your work with startup with as founders. I would love to to extend it because I think it's pretty universal. That doesn't really matter in which industry are working in the complexity everywhere. What would you advise two three things that in your in your opinion, from your perspective, leaders right now can do to simplify things in stead of adding more complexity.

What they can do in practice. First of all, it's about being clear where you're going. You need to clarify how that and state the desired future state will look like exactly like adding metrics, adding goals, adding you know, like a description. So it's clear to use an founder or tech leader and to the team that is working with you on to where you are heading and then creating a structure to get there.

And there's a lot I can talk about about how to get there, but just very briefly, it's about first of all, diagnosing where you are, what is working, what the gaps are, keeping in mind the pain points of the customers for what you want to you know, provide that service or product for. And also keeping in mind different types of turbulence overall in the environment in markets and funding, competition, you know, emerging ai uh, you know, innovations, emerging technologies. So there are a lot of stuff to keep in mind, but then create that translating that vision into concrete road maps, into concrete prioritized strategic initiatives.

That's what makes it things easier. It's about ruthless prioritization. It's just you know, getting the most important things done first that are essential for the business. And I mean there's always an opportunity to over make things to complex because especially for people who've never found an organization, it's like it's always a process of self discovery and figuring out what to do.

Actually, that's what I do as a fractional consultant to the startups. I help them clarify this vision and I help them set up the structures these operating systems to get them there, because vision alone without implementation is going to be more theoretical than practical. So yeah, it's just a very expensive hobby, I would say, from the perspective of op writing it. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I love what you said about the hardcore priority prioritization because I know from my perspective as a leader and entrepreneur as well, I see that we can have an the endless task list you have, you have so many things to do, and that's it is. It is crazy and without the priority, but the priority on what actually creates the business value value for the clients, regardless of if you're working as a startup funder or as a person in the ranization. So you have internal internal clients, regardless of that, you need to create value to be a valuable person in the team.

So it is for me, it's it's it's also about thinking outside of the you know Eisenhower matrix. Let's put it that way, so to focus on of course the important, but also on another dimension to it, as you mentioned, to to to put your time, effort, and energy and skills into what actually creates value. So this is this is it. And if what you said about about that and uh and adding complexities is easy, right, making things simpler and more this is the scale.

So this is this is something that I would love for more leaders to have. What they think. I think I want to add a little nuance here, and I totally agree with the Alexandra that now we are living at times that things keep changing and teach changing and changing. Change is constant.

It's no longer a project, it's no longer something that hasn't end to it. That will be always a change. So producing results in terms of short winds that create this muscle of producing results while navigating different changing environment. Because if you're planning something that's going to take a year to develop, maybe by the time you develop that product, you know a part of it may not no longer be useful because some other tech will come in into play, or some bigger play will be in the market.

So it's but constantly producing something something small. It's more big about Edgile. All the time. Yeah, that's true, And I would love to to dig deeper a little bit into what you said about that the change isn't a project anymore because as you mentioned about how you learned over the way, how you've got the certifications project management, change six sigma and so on and so forth.

I also a person who's learning all the time, and I see a lot of different moments in organizational history that is connected with how how the organization, how the organization looks like, and what is the shape of the organization, the goals of the organization, the products out, et cetera. And a lot of people who are listening. They are even not project managers, but they are they are parts. Sometimes there are stakeholders.

Sometimes they're part of that the change management team. Sometimes they are people who need to implement our an organizational change as a leader of a certain team. But the change isn't their idea. It is an organizational change and they need to implement that.

And it's happening all the time. I'm sure that you're experiencing that all the time as well. How change management in your career expertise over the last twenty years, I would say, or so shifted from what it was in the classical school of change management slash project management. And what you'll see right now, what's actually changed over the last years.

It's actually an excellent question, right now I am actually looking at change management from a different angle, because what made organizations successful over the decades until now is not what will make them successful and is making them successful now within the next ten years. As I mentioned, the change, the speed of change is so rapid, is so quick, and it comes from so many directions that many of the tools and the approaches for change management could be out of date or already are out of date.

And what I mean by this is saying that in order for the organizations to survive this decade, there's a need to adopt new toolkits. So the research backs this up, like MGISEE, IBM, others appointing to the reality of this disruption. And it means that I'm actually leveraging down new types of tools to support change in the organization. And that includes from what I mentioned earlier, producing small wins all the time, but it's also how to plan for the volatility and embed that into strategic plans of the organization.

There is this method that I'm using, I'm actually starting to use now I learned. I'm now a member of the Reinvention Academy, getting certified in the reinvention as another angle of change management. Is to like bring this other set of tools to let organizations be flexible in the way they plan for change, because it's sometimes hard to predict a lot of things, but there are things that need to be constant, like organizational values or you know, there are certain things like the way organization wants to help certain people certain communities.

You know, this is like something that is constant, but that goals, how we measure progress, how we achieve those those could be flexible, and it's about like testing, it's about seeing what works, what does not work, and discarding and having the flexibility embedded to the strategic road maps. Is that's what important. According to what you said about the old world and the new world and what is actually needed right now to lead a change successfully, what would you advise, let's shrink it to two three things again, for a leader right now that has a lot of changes to implement, sometimes at the same time, sometimes quite often at the same time, what they should do to move their team successfully through all of this this what is happening right now.

Regarding what you said as well in practice. In practice, first of all, there are these traditional change management those that are working well. It's determining how the change look like, determining the impact of the change on particular function stakeholders, processes, teams, structures, and so on. It's also about determining why that change is needed, how that change will help make the organization run better, or how that change will help customers get better service or better product.

So it's being very concrete and specific there. It's about including teams into collective feed like into these feedback loops, because we want to hear from people. When I hear what concerns they have, what ideas they have, and address them accordingly and maybe tweak the decisions, tweak the plans before we start implementing anything. It went through certain projects that had to you know, get a little.

You know, we had to make a step back because leadership made decisions that did not take into considerations some perspectives that were very important, and you know, then they had to rethink their approach and you know, and redo it. It's about being clear, it's about measuring progress, it's about communicating, it's about feedback loops. But it's also about this flexibility and agility to be able to deliver and excite people about change. Because change is scary.

People don't like change, especially if they don't understand it. And I think this is what's happening right now from the AA perspective, that a lot of people of the threatend or as I mentioned, they're just scared of it. That is going to take my job and I'm going to be on the street in a week, et cetera. And the guests before you, the Jordan Cutler from p Interest, and we were talking about it how how people are seeing only one side of the coin and they are not seeing the opportunity a lot because they are just in their own realm of being afraid.

And hey, this is fair. Of course, as you mentioned classical change management. They are the coplar rosco, right, So there are those phases of change that we are talking about it for like eighty years now. I would say, uh, And it is like the natural perspective from the human brain to embrace change.

But as you mentioned, we need to make it first of all understandable. We need to be transparent about what is happening, why we are doing it, and what kind of impact it will have on a certain team, on a certain person within the team. Even because this is something that is the easiest thing on earth, to show to the team what is going to happen, and sometimes nothing is going to happen because the organization and for example, it's not going to influence them very much because it isn't And to make them excited about the change.

This is this is a job. I thank you for saying that, because it is something that I don't see a lot of people are talking about. I'd hear we need to just survive, to survive another one, then survive another one, and then it's always talking about the survival mode and survive the change. And as you mentioned, changes copying all the time.

It is constant. It's not going to end very soon. So I would love to dig a little bit deeper into the excitement part because this is very unique of what you're saying. What you, as a person who lead change, who support organizations, support leaders in delivering a good change, what you do or what you advise for leaders to do to build this excitement how it is even possible, especially in the change is hard for you is getting them, you know, from their comfort to discomfort.

As always, so what do you what do you do? I've learned the hard way that change management has to be a part of any strategic or any initially whatsoever. So whatever project it is that I am leading, now I am embedding change management into it because we all heard about the stories when the new technologies have been you know, introduced to the organization and then people are not using them. Why they're not using them Maybe because they don't understand how it is.

Maybe they want to survive that new innovation and just you know, do the way these things the way they used to be doing and they looked like they were wready fined. So in order to build the excitement about the change, as I mentioned earlier, for people need to understand exactly how that change will impact the organization and each of them. And it's okay if at the beginning may they you know, people may not have all the answers in place, but they need to be forthcoming about what they know for sure and what they still are looking to test, because change could be looked upon as a sometimes a test just see something how something works, maybe for one department or maybe for one function, So there's no need to roll something out to the whole organization and uh, you know that and then the solution may not stick.

So it's trying with one department, see how it goes, gets feedback, constant feedback loops, engage people in project if they want to be engaged. I mean you cannot engage everybody, but certain people who are excited about the change, we see the value in it, who already implemented in their work and they see it work. They could be ambassadors for change, so they can participate in different teams meetings. They can show it, Oh look there's technology that have I've been using it, that what it helps me with or those people could just say listen, this thing is not working out for me.

I'd understand, so maybe there's need for adjustment or maybe there's no need for that change at all. So that's about constant feedback reiteration. So once things you know, start working and you know there is evidence of it, then start rolling it out to all the units and you know, keep getting people excited about providing information on how that change worked for somebody, constant community all the time through newsletters, lack, you know, town halls, team meetings. Any's saying that would be helpful to get people more in, getting more informed and also support with that change, because some people are afraid of change because they may not be a stacky, or they may not don't learn another new thing.

They've learned so many already. I mean, like, leave me alone with this one. So it's all about constant communication and support and feedback. As you brought on the communication, I cannot help but to make different into this one because you know, my expertise is communication intelligence, and what I see is how neglected this area is, especially in entire because people all maybe not always, it's changing right now, but historically people neglected to social skills because they weren't as valuable quote unquote as the text skills or as we call it, hard skills like project management, change management, et cetera, process management, And right now there it comes with a huge cost.

The communication gap is huge, and I'm sure that you see it. Why do you think and do you see we all have experience in why communication, especially in change management that you've mentioned is so crucial and there is no successful change without good communication plan and execution of the plan. And we know that from the rational perspective, But so many people are neglecting communication. Why do you think it is happening all the time?

Historically happened and this is happening all the time right now in organizations. Because people do not know how to plan and manage to change effectively. That goes a lot to building the change management muscle throughout the whole organization. It's not about having two three people that do change management for the organization to be an answer to every single initiative that happens there.

It's about training people. It's not just trading, but getting them engaged in change management, getting them you know, excited, or have some ways of supporting the projects that they're working on, or maybe creating like framework tools and templates to make this easy. For example, like I have this communication plan template that I'm using that I'm sharing with whoever wants to use it in the organizations, and I'm showing how to use it, why to use it, like while those columns are there.

And also measure how successful you are communicating, Measure how well you know you are providing, like how well the information is structured providing like measuring the feedback, measuring what people are doing or say or how they're implementing things. It's you know, it's about knowing what to communicate, when, how too to what channels and measure. So it is mostly about the skills, but people just don't have skills to communicate. Well, it's not just skills, it's about having the tools and structures in place.

It's about the organizational culture that encourages communication and change and feedback. I would love to stick around to their measuring communication efficiency and effectedness that you mentioned, because when I talk about measuring the improvements in leadership or communication intelligence, people are shocked that it is something that we actually can measure. And most of the time, this is my experience, I'm super curious about yours. This is the first one anybody tells them that this is actually possible and how they can do it.

So what is your approach to how you measure what kind of KPIs you You know, you provide for your clients organizations that you cooperate with so they can actually measure how the communication works in their cases. Since I'm not a part of a communication department, I don't have like KPIs for communication, but I have metrics of progress in terms of communication when leading these initiatives. So for metrics, first of all, I would like to use the like different channels, like what channels are we leveraging?

And then how effective that those channels are. For example, we have a slack right and on slack we are providing updates. What is the engagement with updates? See how many people one person responded to likes.

Maybe it's not like a good channel, or maybe there should be something else in addition to it, maybe just people when I read and don't engage. You know, it's about figuring out what would be the most helpful channel for engaging and testing. So emails we send out the emails, do we get any response? Town hall?

First of all, it's not just about what you're sending out. It's about how that information is getting perceived, how feedback is getting incorporated in. So what I did I had a tracker of different types of feedback and concerns that people had, and then the communication methods that were used to track uh and respond to those concerns, and then like measure the sentiment. So there would be you know, certain ways like sentiment measuring could be through surveys, could be through feedback from like from leaders, from team leaders about the team, how the everything is going.

It could be open office hour, and at the open office hour, people will come with concerns. So I would like log those concerns organizing by the category measure. This week we had you know, this many or this percentage of concerns dealt with how change will impact me. So let's just start providing more communication to people about how change will impact them via some other means of communication.

I mean, there are so many things that could be done just briefly. Yeah, of course, now thank you for sharing that. I think it's extremely interesting and useful on how we can how we can measure in different ways, of course, from different perspectives. Especially I have a lot of discussions about communication channels and how we are doing everything, and people don't read it, and I'm like, okay, what actually is in this everything bucket that you are doing and how you measure that?

And how do you know that people are not reading it because they don't know? Okay, so maybe you need to do something differently, because if you have only plain text, huge documents pdf files that are extremely hard to absorb, maybe you just need to create like a three minute video as a summary and a lot of people actually will will watch it, or maybe like a short podcast episode or something to listen to will be will be useful because people learn differently, So they have different learning preferences, So it is what you're saying is very useful, and thank you for sharing that, because I think that we have our own beliefs about how the communication should look like because something we learned something years ago, and we always did something in a certain way, and right now we are surprised that it doesn't work.

So this is my thoughts on this one. You mentioned at the very beginning when you talked about your story about not having networking first time you came to us, and I would love to dig deeper a little bit more into the skill of networking because I see how important this skill is right now, maybe more than ever, that we have an infinite amount of options for everything, that decision making processes are harder than ever because we have so many choices and so many options to choose from regarding where to go to school or where to go into MBA, what kind of community to join, what kind of tech to learn, what kind of strategy to implement my organization?

If when you're talking about project management, so many different frameworks that you can actually imply, so so many choices that the brain can explode our So for me personally as well, networking and I see, especially in startup world, for the founders, networking is the way to make like the clear vision and sounds out of the noise that is happening. So too, it is easier to talk with somebody who is even three steps ahead of me to ask them what actually they implemented, what worked, shifted, pivoted a little bit, adjust to my situation, and actually use it.

So what would you advise for people who have a very weak networking muscle because they've never used it before, they never thought it would be useful for them. But we both I think we both know that it is crucial, especially right now. So what they should do, how they can build the networking mascle. Being in startup world inside of our different organizations and I geo and geos doesn't really matter.

What can they do in practice too to build a muscle. Yeah, that's been a journey for me and what I've learned from it is no matter where people are uh in their professional journey, building connections across all organizational levels and functions is very important as well as building connections not only within the industry but across other industries is important. I know I used to be like Shah about approaching somebody or that is so much you know, civial levels higher than me in the organization.

But this is just has to be intentional because there's so much to learn and they're the same people. Uh, they're just doing a different job. And this was a learning opportunity for me. I'm gonna tell you one more thing.

So the cross pollination of ideas was of very valuable like professional and personal importance to me. Before I did not you know, when I said they could not find a job, I could not get a job. I just I did not. I don't know how to look for a job or who to ask.

Uh, you know, I was doing everything the hard way. But then when I started meeting people, they were like helping me along the way. I just found it so insightful and so inspiring that that I started talking one word to people. And now I am not seeing any other way of operating.

I'm always about having conversations with people in different fields. I'm going to different professional associations, organizations, meetings, networking meetings because I learned so much from people and find out like if they inspire me to help other organizations. Basically because I'm learning about the challenges that maybe finance person had, or a tax person or somebody who's working in a totally different field like an insurance Like, what do they have in common with me?

But then I learned that when I started learning all these strategy, project management and changements, all these methods, they apply to any industry. It's just a matter of, you know, tapping into the right expertise of people to make that project or that initiative successful, because one person cannot know anything. That's how consultants work. They come into these different fields, these different industries, and they're able to adjust very quickly because they just they see these this cross pollination.

They see the destruction the framework behind each organization. That's how they're able to support different organizations without knowing something like very specific that deals with you know, production, or like something specific that deals with farms yet and so on. And they see the patterns, right because as you mentioned, we see a lot of different organizations, different examples, but there is a pattern after a pattern that actually comes out of it. And this is my experience as well.

But I can be very helpful as as a consultant, as a fractional person to the organization even giving them examples from different organization no names, of course, but hey, I have this leader or I have this teme different client that has a situation like this, and I think it's similar to what you're experiencing. And either I can connect you to. So this is the networking part, right, So I can connect you to so you can have a conversation about it that I know that, and I can ask, of course, but I know that he or she is like super open to As you mentioned, people are very helpful when you once you ask, and this is it's very rarely that I see that people are saying, hey, no, I don't want to help.

Sometimes it's about figuring out to find the time to do it. But this is the completely different situation you're in conversation. It's not about I don't want to help. I want to help.

I want to share, but it is at the timing and my calendar is crazy right now, so we need to we need to just find a time for a call or a coffee or something. Right, So this is that or I can share that the experience, but I've heard they had. Of course, it's always going to be better for them to and to describe it from their their own experience, but I can share it and this is this is it? What is something?

Because what you mentioned that it were shy and the networking muscle was very weak in your case, I was there as well. So this is our short experience and this is the skill like any anything else that it is learnable and it is teachable. You can actually learn it. And I remember how I just sat in the corner in my phone and I was just I was just thinking of leaving the situation that I was in.

Right now, I don't have those issues. I can be tired, and I just want to get you know, and some some some time off and just recuperate and just relax and get my energy back. But I remember those times that I didn't know how to start a conversation with somebody that I didn't know. And I'm silper curious on your first one two opening questions that you use all the time that are working very well for you, that you can share with the audience, that people can just take and use it as well.

Oh gosh, it all depends, but it's so true. You know, I used to look up online, you know, thanks to say so, thanks to ask when you go to a networking event or like if you thanks to ask when you ask, you know, talking to a person from totally different back, you know, background, professional background. So I don't know there is like one formula that works for it, but I want to learn about them. Everybody likes to talk about themselves.

Everybody likes to talk about their experiences. It's about really being curious what they're working on, what they're struggling with it. You know, it's about asking these meaningful questions instead of like, hi, Hawaii you. I mean, it's kind of not the best way probably of approaching conversations.

So that's and also at the end of the conversation, I like to ask, would you recommend anybody in the field or whatever I'm talking about that I could speak to? So that gives me like an you know, build chain reaction like networking, uh like paths to continue the conversations in the fields that I want to. It's great for you know, when you're looking to grow as a professional, or you're looking for another role, or if you're looking for funders or you know, or really anything.

Yeah that's true about that. Yeah, it's it is all about them, and people really like to talk about themselves. As well. I agree with that one, Mike.

My opening that I'm using all the time is how, for example, if I'm at the event a conference or something, it is like, how do you like the conference so far? What was the part that you enjoyed the moss or what speech you enjoyed the most. This is like it's working all the time for me because it's quite recent and people can really relate to this one. And then we just we just start talking about what you said, So what you do, what is what is your area of expertise?

What we can ask what just truth is struggling about right now? As a leader, for example, as a professionalist centerfield, What kind of trends do you see? Is a very good question because people have really good insights about and we can learn something out of it as well. And I love that question.

If if there's anybody who maybe has the same thoughts as you are, I can, I can I can talk to It's something something something like that can be great as well. Yeah, and sometimes it's only about one question, because the first question is always the hardest right to ask. Then it's like it's conversation is going and it's easier. Yeah, and it's online.

It's the same principle goes online. But sometimes it's easier online because you see, if a person posted something that really was interesting for you, you have like a natural way of asking follow up cash question, can you tell me more how you approach this or you know anything else. It's easier online, especially for people who are introverts, to get engaged in a conversation. Can be, can be, and I would love I want you to talk a little bit more about about it, because if you really prefer to work on your own individually talking to people, especially strangers, it's way, it's out of your conform zone.

But you really want to build your networking mascle because as as we both mentioned, this is a very important scale, especially innership in different areas, different different industries. So what do you think about being intentional while going to events to make it less stressful? What I mean by that is that this is something that I did at the very beginning to put for myself a goal that I'm going to talk with three new people, for example, or that I'm not going to listen to all of the lectures, all of the keynotes, but I'm going to put myself out there and for example, create some slots for meeting one on ones to do and make a list of people that I want to speak with that are going to be at the event.

Do I little research among speakers and participants maybe or sponsors or something like that. What do you think, because I see that starting to happen recently, that people are more and more intentional about going to events not only to learn out of them, but also to build meaningful connections, to extend the network, to find mentors, to find investors, to find co founders. So when you're talking about a startup world, so what are your thoughts on making the networking part events the conference is more intentional than just go there.

Actually, you partially responded to what I was thinking about, saying, I do look at the list of who will be attending from what organizations, and you know, I make that list if it's available, But that list I. Prioritize because sometimes there are so many people and naturally I will not be able to speak with everybody, or I will not be able to find those people where they will be busy. So I create the list. I prioritize these, like several people that are crucial for the work that I'm doing for example, Uh, these people are dealing with AI in nonprofits, and I love you the approach, so they will be on top of my list because that list directly connects to what I'm working on, what is important, or what I want to learn, or what I don't know enough about just to because every person brings a value, but you need to be very intentional how that conversation could help.

Uh. Your this is me. Growing my business or learning something that would be helpful. Yeah, I agree, and I very much advise it to to others as well, because it is sometimes it is the easiest and less expensive way to to actually find somebody that you that you need at the moment right now, especially when you I think I'm thinking about looking for investors for example, or looking for team members just to you can just go to events.

A lot of those events are free, so you don't need to even pay the participation fee. Uh, and you just just go and have this goal. Okay, today I need to find a web developer in a certain technology, for example, or I need to find a marketing person, so I go to marketing events and look for people who are in the area of expertise. So this is I think it for it is great for the brain to feel more or less anxious about this.

Hey, I have a goal. I need to be laser focused, and I'm just looking for a certain person or somehenomenal of people. And this is not that I'm just walking around and just looking around for it. I don't know what.

So I love that too. You're on the same pitch absolutely, Indina, I have a couple of writing questions, super short questions and answers. You ready, Okay, let's see, let's do it. What is the worst leadership advice that you ever got in or heard of?

There's no need to change anything. Be content but what you have, because if you start trying new things, you may fail. You know, I'm laughing, but because it's so absurd, as I you know, I cannot believe that it's still happening that people still actually talk about it like that. So thank you for sharing that.

What is the one thing that you wish to know at the very beginning of your management, leadership, entrepreneurship journey. You should never be afraid to ask questions and approach people at all organizational levels. And I mentioned that already, but I just want to emphasize. That Yeah, that's true.

That's true. Don't be afraid of people on sea level for example, right you can. They're just people as we all are. Right.

So this is this is it? What is the best book or article or podcasts that you that you use recently that you can actually share with all of us to just you know, get inspired, learn something out of it. That is that was helpful you, isful for you. So recently I watched the course by Justin Welsh called Create a NBA.

So this is a course on how to start and run a successful business in any field and how to build a meaningful career. I found it very informative for me. Yeah, and full practical advice. Mm hmm yeah, I love it.

I need to check it out because this is this sounds super interesting for me. I'm going to I'm going to use it as well as for sure. Before I asked the last question I have for today, I would love for you to share with the audience. For those of people who get inspired by what you said, they want to check on you, they want to connect with you after after this they finished listening to episode, where they can find you on their internet.

Tell us all the. Places claritypoint consultants that as my website and I'm the only person who has this name in the world. I look myself up. So if you want to find me on LinkedIn, just type in Arenal and needies.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. It is an advantage of having, like you know, a very unique first and last name and combination of it. So so thank you for showing.

Yeah, we are going to put link links at the website and your LinkedIn in the show notes. I you can just click away and say connect with you d MU, so check out what you're doing. So thank you for sharing that. You know, I'm extremely grateful for you to join me.

Thank you for finding the time and having this conversation. I love your insights. I love how your brain works and how different sava approach you have to the organizational management, the change management, the perspective for leadership and what actually counts right now to be a great leader in this crazy world, what to focus on. This is not an easy thing to do, so thank you for coming.

And the last question I have is about leadership because a lot of leaders are listening, but also people who are standing in front of the choice of the leadership or entrepreneurship journey. So they are great subjects when our experts their amazing individual contributors and they are thinking about their future. As you mentioned about your career paths, your pivots, all of those things that you had in your journey, there are moments of this one and we both know that in those people.

Sometimes they have an offer on the table. Sometimes they have in a recruitment process in front of them for the leadership roles, or they think about going out of the organization and start something on their own, so starts a startup and be a founder or a co founder to get out of the organization. Sometimes they are tired of corporate. Sometimes they need more autonomy, they need more freedom.

Of course the freedom is with sometimes they are more more trapped in the in the start of them in the in the organization. But it's a completely different, different conversation that we can have part two of this conversation to start on the startups. What what the point is that is that h they're on a crossroad, right, so they're thinking about changing their careers from ice to being a leader to being the founder. What would you advise for those people to do?

How they I don't know if make sure it's a good, good, good name for it. But how they minimize the risk that this this is going to be a bad choice for them? Not much for them. What would you say for those people who are just yeah, making them in front of this decision for their careers.

I've actually recently heard about the study. I cannot quote it because I don't remember it exactly. That people need to constantly now keep changing their careers, are inventing themselves to stay relevant in the light of all the changes that are happening in the field. And it's okay to do that.

I've done that a few times, and every iteration informs the next step, because you want to be helpful, you want to be relevant, and you want to enjoy what you know. People try one thing and they maintain see it's not workand for them, or they don't like it, and it's okay to try something new. It's all about trial and error and about looking for the inspiration, what makes them happy, what makes them like they are realizing their potential. So change is great in terms of reinventing yourself.

And I know what. I love what you said about that it is always okay to try to realize that maybe a certain path is not for me, and this is perfectly fine, but you cannot know it without trying it out right, So you just need to be more courageous and just try. If you don't know yet, if it's just for you, you can always make a little contract if it can be a trial period from the ner role for example, and uh and have a support gets you know, gets more knowledgeable about the role itself because without the practice, it's only theory.

So we need to just experience the role itself. And it is not a failure. And I think this is something that people need to hear that it is not a failure that you come back to your own role. Or I think it's about the mindset.

Yeah, it's a mindset of experimentation. True true true true. An a failure, it's just another lesson. I think it's a beautiful way to end the conversation that you are having.

But I feel that we are going to have a part too. Because I have a lot of notes and a lot of bullet points that we didn't have a chance to, you know, to dig deeper into and to explore because of the of the the time of the of the episode that we have so if you're up to I plus you in a while have another conversation because you know you have so many different insights that we can we can all use that. I would watch you. Oh, I greatly appreciated, Alexandra.

It was very insightful conversation for me as well, and learning about the parallels that we have. Uh and you know other people do as well. It's it's great to see how we all can support each other. That's true.

That's true. I agree, that's why we are doing it. So so thank you. Doesn't plus to have you on.

The show now, Thank you for inviting me. It was and thank you yes for me as well, and thank you for listening. I hope we hope that it was insightful and interesting for you as well, because we are doing it for you. So hey, sure a way, if it is something that you found interesting, insightful, informative, it is something that we can use, share the link with a person who can whom I use it because this is how we learn the guar through sharing, trailing knowledge, sharing some something that we found valuable and useful.

Because because it's as we mentioned over that the episode is a lot of different things over over the world, over the Internet. But then the real value is to just find something that you can actually use in practice.