#173 - Culture as Competitive Infrastructure: Why Transformation Isn't About Tech: Julie Averill

Speaker A: Welcome to the Out Thinkers podcast. Plug into fascinating minds and breakthrough ideas that are transforming industries and the world. I am your host, Kyan Krippendorf, founder of Out Thinker, a global think tank comprised of strategy and transformation officers who are shaping the future of business. If this describes you, join us@, uh, outthinker.com now let's dive into this week's

Speaker B: episode with Julie Averill.

Speaker C: Every meeting that I was in, we would talk about culture and when culture would start to break down. And you can see it break down, pause what's broken about us because everyone has to know how important it is. You set the tone at the top and you hold that bar like, how are the decisions being made when you're not in the room? That's where your culture is, the glue that holds it together. Are people going off in their own corners and trying to solve it or trying to look good? Or are, ah, they coming together, sharing knowledge and getting to the decision as quick as they need to?

Speaker A: Imagine walking into a brand new job as Chief Information Officer and on your very first call, with no team, every single page of the website returns nothing but an error message. No monitoring, no alerting, no one who can even tell you who's responsible for fixing it. That was today's guest's welcome to Lululemon, and it turned out to be the making of her career. You're about to hear from Julie Averill, the technology and transformation executive who has led the major turnarounds at Nordstrom, M. Rei and Lululemon, helping scale Lululemon's global business from roughly2.2 billion to $10 billion in revenue along the way. Her new book is called Chief Impact Officer, and it makes the case that in the age of AI, the companies that win won't be the ones with the flashiest technology. They'll be the ones with the strongest culture behind it. In this conversation, Julie unpacks why every transformation she's led actually started with a crisis. Why she calls culture competitive infrastructure rather than a soft skill. What she learned from her father, a major league catcher, about reading, people and systems and her own journey from projecting fake confidence to leading through authenticity and vulnerability. We also get into what three decades of technology waves can teach us about separating real AI progress from euphoric hype. If you've ever thought that technology and culture were competing priorities, Julie is about to make the case that the best leaders never had to choose.

Speaker B: Well, Julie, thank you so much for being here with us. I got to read your book and think about it. Links to so many things that we've covered on the podcast. It's really a thrill to have you with us. Where are you joining us from today?

Speaker C: I am in Bellevue, Washington. Uh, happy to be here. Thank you for having me. And thank you for reading the book.

Speaker B: Yeah, very nice. Now. Thank you for writing it. No, I'm really excited for this. I mean, you've experienced all kinds of technological changes and transformations at Nordstrom, Rei, Lululemon, you've got the technology, you've got the people at Lululemon, you went from, you know, you helped it scale from roughly 2 billion to, I think, 10 billion in revenue, and so, so many things to cover. I do want to start with two questions that I always ask all of our guests. The first one is just for us to get to know you a little bit more personally. Could you complete the sentence for me? If you really know me?

Speaker C: You know that actually a very quiet person. Like, a lot of people see me up in front of crowds talking to people a lot. But I'm an observer. I love to listen to conversations. I love to participate as well. But inside, I'm pretty quiet.

Speaker B: Got it. Are you an introvert?

Speaker C: I sit square on the line between introvert and extrovert every time I take those tests.

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker B: Okay. And second question. What's your definition of strategy?

Speaker C: To me, strategy is where you have a unique opportunity to win and also understanding the choices that you're willing to make to get there. And for me, the catch with that is also that the entire organization has to believe.

Speaker B: Tell me more about the belief. Why is that important?

Speaker C: It's the execution engine of it. I don't want a strategy. Just be on a wall. Want to be something that's really understood and consumed daily by. By the organization. And everybody is rowing in the same direction.

Speaker A: Sweet.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think we'll get to kind of how that. How that propagates. I think when we talk about how you were part of scaling Lululemon's culture with the size and all the internationalization of the brand and company, how you propagate that at scale is really interesting. I'd like to start off. Uh, I love it. In the opening of your book, you talk about there's days before you joined Lululemon and you went to the website and just tell us what happened.

Speaker C: Right. I was on the phone with the interim cio, and we were going through some things on the website, and then I clicked on one, and it did not respond with anything but an error message, and I clicked on another one. I got another Error message. And I said to him, is there something wrong with the product page? And he said, which one? All of them. All of them. And he's like, oh, can you send me a screenshot? And meanwhile, I wanted to just hang up the phone and get everybody on the line. I wasn't, hadn't even started working with the company yet. But that was my team's first interest.

Speaker B: You're joining a CIO at that point, Right.

Speaker C: I'm about ready to become the global CIO of a $2 billion company without a website. And so it was down for 20 hours, and there was no monitoring or alerting. I was the one that discovered it. And so this, as difficult as those 20 hours were and the next six months, frankly, of coming into the organization, it revealed so much to me. I realized that there, uh, was not a culture of ownership. So the website had been completely outsourced to Oracle. Oracle had it running in a data center in, I think, Maryland. And that website had, uh, that whole data center had been sold to IBM. IBM didn't know that lululemon.com was running on it. And so it took a while to figure out who's actually responsible for this website, who, you know, who was able to fix this. And the truth was, it wasn't us. So I came into the company with that, uh, realization that we had to change the culture to be one of ownership and passion and accountability. So it was a, you know, a tough first start, but actually I'm grateful for the way that it happened.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. That's jumping in. Ah, the problem immediately presented. Right. And just tell us a little bit how you, how you arrived at culture, because I see that as a theme repeatedly. Because if I remember correctly, Oracle gives you a fix that gives you a, ah, technical answer that will give you the comfort that it won't happen. Because they offered.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they offered. So, you know, I don't know what this is maybe the first week on the job. And I told Oracle, who had, you know, the full managed outsource of the website. I said, I need a plan. I can't have this happen again. And they came back with a $6 million proposal that would have, you know, another website, that I would have the option of flipping the switch after six hours of downtime. And I, you know, that was not what I was intending on being the end state there for us. And so instead of saying yes, I said no, and we built our own website that today is incredibly resilient. I mean, as witnessed through Covid, when All the stores shut down. And then one day all that Traffic went to lululemon.com and it just scaled beautifully. So by that time we had the teams that were smart and invested and curious and had tremendous ownership that, you know, we didn't get ourselves in that situation again.

Speaker B: I mean, there are theories of transformation, that it begins with the burning platform, the sense of agency, the case for change. And so that obviously gave you that. And I want to go into then what were how you approached that transformation. But generally kind of, you have led major transformations at Nordstrom, at REI, @lululemon.com do executives misunderstand about transformation?

Speaker C: You know, as a CIO, right, I come in with the hat of technology, but it's never about the technology, right? I mean, you need technology, but that's not the point, right? It's always about the humans. And that is always the hardest part of it, is the humans. And so, you know, at rei, it was similar. As soon as I came in, I got the CIO role and like three weeks later, we had a, like a disastrous outage. So phones in the stores went down, the website went down, corporate network, everything was down. Yeah, everything. And trace that back. There was one server that was in actually like 50ft from my desk that had not been patched. But that just tells you what a hairball it was that there was one server that could have such incredible impacts across the organization. And again, like you mentioned, this burning platform I talk a little bit about in the book of never miss that opportunity when you have that burning platform so visible, to be able to make the case for change and the case for investment, which is what we did at Bokoto. But again, that it's not the technology, it's how, um, you get the people to believe then to change themselves, to be open, to trust and to build something together as a team.

Speaker B: So I'd love to get a little more detail on that, right? Something like that happens. And there's so many places you can turn to, right? You can turn to that server, you can turn to the technology design, you can turn to the culture of people and teams. You could turn to the board, you could turn to leadership, you could turn to customers. And so like, here you are and you're thinking of like, uh, what sequence do I begin with? How do you decide how to, where to start?

Speaker C: Uh, the first thing is, how do I get to a sustainable state, right? Like, you know, you put the fire out and then once you do, I think it's a. It, ah, has to start with leadership. So, for me, going to the board, being honest about where we're at and where we needed to get to, and then with that, with the board behind you and the executive team behind you, then you can begin to start to build with the team and get the team to understand what the opportunity is and what their opportunity is in that.

Speaker B: Got it. Got it.

Speaker C: And in the case of rei, there were so many people that wanted to do the right thing, but it had just been underfunded for a long time. So there was a lot of excitement once we started getting some funding and can do the things that they knew were the right things to do but hadn't been able to do because we hadn't been able to get that support.

Speaker B: I gotcha. I gotcha. Just tell us a little bit about interacting with leadership in the board at rei. I, uh, think you talk about that a little bit in your book.

Speaker C: Well, I talk about my first board meeting, which was. Is that the one you're referring to? Yeah. So I had gone. I was brand new. And to be honest, when I left Nordstrom to go to rei, I had just adopted my son and was ready for a little bit of just, you know, I'm going to have a little bit of bandwidth here. It was a co op, and I took a. I didn't take the CIO job at first.

Speaker B: Explain that to us, because I think that's really interesting about REI that many people aren't aware of, to, uh, explain to us the ownership structure.

Speaker C: So you could buy a membership for $20, and I can buy a membership for $20, and the CEO of REI can buy a membership for $20.00, and we all have equal ownership. And so at the time, there was 6 million members. I'm sure there's many more now, but everyone has an equal voting share. Very different than a public company where you have, you know, your key investors and public visibility of the stock price. So, good and bad. Right. The good is that you can make longer strategic investments and you can get commitment, because when you're in a public company, you're, you know, you're very much tuned into the economic realities of the moment. But in a co op, you have, uh, a little bit of shelter from that. Well, frankly, a lot of shelter. But the, you know, the downside is it does allow you to operate at a slower pace. And that's what I walked into, was a much slower pace.

Speaker B: So then how did you decide to ratchet up the urgency or however you found it?

Speaker C: I took the job because there was a new CEO who had come from a background where he knew the criticality of technology in building a business. And so I took the job believing that was his mandate for me. So I probably wouldn't have taken it if I didn't think that there was that ability to make the change. And then the outage just helped.

Speaker B: Yes. Interesting. Yeah. You've been blessed with helpful outages, helpful urgencies.

Speaker C: I've been blessed with both helpful ones and very unhelpful ones.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, sure. They don't seem that way at the moment. Right. Talk us a little bit about, you know, because you do approach then this the problem, because culture is not in your remit. CEOs aren't culture people. They're not organization people. You know, there's a view and have in it in the past, particularly the view that, you know, you're a back, uh, office function and you just make sure that we have the infrastructure that we need to operate, scale and not break. But you look at it more from a systemic, like, perspective. Where does that come from?

Speaker C: So I tell the story in the book about my dad. He was a professional catcher in the majors for seven years. His father is a baseball hall of Famer. So I've got a lot of baseball in my family. My dad had a really unique view on things and I think it came from being a catcher because the catcher is a person that is, you know, that is in a crouched position during the game looking out at everybody, right? Looking out at the runners, looking out at his whole team making the calls with the pitcher. And so they have to see the entire field. My dad always knew. He knew every batter going to a Mariners game with him was ridiculous. It was super interesting, but also kind of annoying because he was going to call what was going to happen. He's like, oh, I've seen this person before. He's going to pitch him inside and he is going to crank it over the left field field fence and then. Yeah, and it goes over the left field fence. But what he knew was he knew people really well. He knew their behaviors, their instincts, how they reacted under different stressful situations. And he just, you know, his incredible reader of people. And then he also saw the system, right. If you've got a weak second baseman, what does that do? And so I think I grew up just thinking, like I always have these conversations with my dad just about seeing things. And so I. That's how I see the world now. And that's how I see companies, right. I see them as a, you know, a bunch of different parts and Individuals, they have instincts and they're going to react differently under stress. And in order to get the most out of them, um, you have to be, I mean, think about any situation you've been in, right? If you want to be at your best, you want to be able to be trusted, you want to trust the people that you're around. You want to know that the things that you can say and maybe say I'm wrong, take a risk and not get punished for it. So I believe there's a really incredible balance between culture and competition where you don't have to choose, right? I'm, um, super competitive. I am like, um, like you think about the history of baseball, right? That comes down to incredibly competitive instincts at every step. So this isn't about just being the nicest person, it's about winning. But winning as a team. And that's really what my dad taught me. You have to have the best players on your team. If you have that uh, weak second baseman and you've given them an opportunity, they can't be your starting second baseman. So this notion of winning, this notion of incredible performance and working as a team.

Speaker B: So, huh, talk to me about, because you've been a great mentor, you've helped many people grow and develop and become great leaders. And they weren't all sons and daughters of catchers. Uh, how do you cultivate that in someone or do you look for it? How does someone that says, you know, I can see now that I've just been looking at first base and I need to now think about all the parts. How do you develop that in someone or yourself?

Speaker C: When I hire, I look for EQ above iq. You have to have IQ that comes, that just comes, gets you in the door. But EQ is really important and I'm not sure that's always valued in uh, a technology organization. But if you hire leaders who have strong eq, they understand how to unlock the most out of their team. So that's just starting point for me. And then I'm, you know, I actively coach like real time in the moment. Hey, we just got out of the meeting. Can I give you some feedback on that? Or here. Did you notice that when you said this, that person shut down? Why do you think that happened?

Speaker B: I can see how you having that perspective, that systems view and developing organization, a technology organization that is hired for that and develops that, how that can turn a, uh, functional technology organization that could just take tickets and fix stuff in towards being a strategic partner. Just talk to us a little bit about how the Role of the CTO CIO has changed over the course of your career.

Speaker C: I tell the story in the book that I have permission from Jamie Nordstrom to tell. But when I was very first starting my career at Nordstrom, I asked him, jamie, right, like, I love it here. What does someone like me need to do to have a great career in retail? And he said, julie, what do you think about it? Like, we think about the engine room, the word he used to think something different, but basically the water, the electrical closet. You know, when. When something's broken, we open the door, we rattle things around, we turn the lights back up and we go out. And I was like, great, I'm gonna stay here for a decade. Which I did. That was really early on. And when I told him later that I remembered that he said, said, I didn't really say that, did I? And then he goes, well, that does sound like something I'd say. But it's nothing. It. The reason why it's so funny is because it's so far from what he would say today. Right. When we went to the point of implementing store fulfillment, which was the ability to take an online order, fulfill it out of the store, all of a sudden, every store became a warehouse. Turn increased, store leaders were super happy because they were able to refresh their merchandise regularly. And so it was through these proof points where technology was able to take the business to levels that they were not able to do before. We changed the vocabulary of the entire company. People cared about thresholds, they cared about cancel rates, whereas before, that was just a little technology thing. So through this process of technology really creating tremendous value for the business, it's just changed tremendously. And I would say in the age of AI that we're in right now, it's even more magnified because right now, the technology is the easy part. Right.

Speaker B: So, uh, I see you're saying the technology now becomes easier, and so that allows you and allows other people to engage in the technology and shape the technology. Right. So I see it's more accessible.

Speaker C: Yeah. And CIOs today need to be really focused on being that enterprise thinker. Right. Uh, how? Because everybody sees their siloed functions, and the CIO is one of those that gets to see all those functions together, but they have to bring people together, lay down the data foundations. If you have one silo doing, you know, their own version of product data, and now they're doing their version of product data. You can't build those. Those enterprise capabilities.

Speaker B: Gotcha. I gotcha. Okay. So I Have so many places I want to go from that. But just give us a little context. Just tell us about, like, how did you decide to join Nordstrom? Because that's a great place to start. And tell us a little bit about the company and how I decided to do that join.

Speaker C: When I was in grad school at the University of Washington, Mr. Bruce Nordstrom came in and spoke to our tiny class. We had 28 students and I was mesmerized the entire time. He talked about taking the company public. He just, he answered every question that we had and I fell in love. And so when a few years later Nordstrom offered me a. A three month contract position, I said yes. I was actually had just taken a job at the same time at Seattle University to begin teaching. And Nordstrom was going to be my side hustle, which it became more than a side hustle as I was there for a decade. Wow.

Speaker B: Um, I want to get into, from what you shared, uh, I want to get kind of take what you described and sort of pull the thread a little bit on AI But I want people to appreciate just sort of. I think what is great is like you have these three very different and yet unique experiences. Just tell us a little bit. Bring Nordstrom a little bit to life for us as well.

Speaker C: One of the things that Mr. Bruce told us that night was the story of customer service and just how that began. He talked about his grandfather, I believe, starting the company, kneeling in front of the customers as he sold shoes. But then that it became something different. And he talked about when a customer went in to return a tire to a store in Alaska and the tire shop was not longer there, it was now in Nordstrom. And the store manager decided to return the tire for this person. And he talked about how, one, yes, that was the culture, but two, how much incredible goodwill they had gotten over time from that story. So he talked about customer service just being the DNA and how Nordstrom was wired and how the store manager was able to make a decision like that on the fly.

Speaker B: Amazing, Amazing. So I guess what you know, I'm seeing is even from like day one, you're thinking about kind of, you know, at a McKinsey they call the top management perspective. You're thinking about the higher order kind of purpose and culture of the organization. You step into leadership. I just like to talk a little bit about your approach, your approach to leadership and authentic leadership, if you might, just sort of, because you do say, Sharon, the book, if I understood correctly, that you did change your view on leadership, that you did evolve as a leader.

Speaker C: I used to think that leadership was about being the most competent person in the room. And that got me far. But then it got to a point where it was holding me back. And the reason was because some of the competence that I had was fake confidence. And I'll start with just being a woman in technology, especially when I was starting my leadership journey. Uh, a lot of times I was the only woman in a room. And in those rooms, you don't want to stick out. Right. Like, we're learning this behavior in middle school, right? You want to blend in and you want to be as good. And so I felt like I had to be a certain way and hide, you know, hide the more feminine sides of myself. Right. Just didn't talk about it so that, you know, like, I just started to wear these. These masks that were protective shields. And so I was able to be in a room and be very stoic and not show any emotions and, you know, get business done. But what that was doing, I realized after a mentor of mine asked me a very poignant question about how I was going to get teams to follow me if they didn't know the real me. I realized that people could. They were onto me. They knew that, you know, I was. I was still wearing my masks. And so I went through a very rough year of changing how I let others in. And that's what I call my authenticity journey. And, you know, it was scary because I think about things like vulnerability, and that was not a word. When you're portraying competence, you want to be the best. You don't want to be vulnerable, especially in a room of all men.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: You just want to be strong and competent. But I actually learned the power of vulnerability. And

Speaker B: I want to know, what kind of. What did you do to get there? We had Bill George. He on the podcast, he former CEO of Medtronic. He's coined the term authentic leadership, teaches leadership at Harvard Business School. And one thing that he has his students do is go really deep and journal about what he calls their crucibles, the really kind of tough things that happened. And what they learned from that. More like kind of what that, I don't know, maybe the identity that they created from that, you know? And so how did you start digging at that? Because I think that you're right, uh, is that we need to as. To be effective leaders. We need to be able to, like, drill down and understand why we wear the masks.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard. And your ego gets in the way, too, right? Because you Want? Yeah. You want to be the best and you want to be seen as the best. And if people know the real you and maybe they'll see those, you know, those. Not those imperfect angles. I. I had a coach and I. Oh, uh, man. This became like my full time job because I saw what a gap I had, so I was really focused on it. I had a speech for women in technology and it was like three months away and they asked me what my title was and I said authenticity. And I said it because I was so far away from that. And I knew that in order to give a speech on authenticity, I, uh, had to get to work. And so it's set a deadline on myself. But it really has been, uh, a journey of just life. Right. Continuing to try to take those walls down. But on the other side of it, it's so incredible because you can build relationships with people, understand the real person, have tough conversations, but have it grounded in trust.

Speaker B: Yes. I got you. I got you. Yeah. I think it is what you said at the very beginning is that so often we conflate trust with, as you said, being nice, which is to not actually make decisions, but to just sort of agree to a, uh, compromise.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think when people talk about culture these days, they think about culture as soft. I talk about it in my book as competitive infrastructure because I believe that is the foundation upon which you can create a team that innovates at scale and at speed. Once you have that trust in place and a great culture and people can show up as themselves and they bring, you know, they bring everything that they have with them, and that's what allows you to just create really great teams. I've seen it happen.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And I think when you have high retention rates like the companies that you have had, that culture becomes a sustainable competitive advantage. That's very hard to copy. Talk to us a little bit about your approach. I, um, don't. I'm imagining like a work plan that you come in and you probably do it intuitively, but maybe there is sort of like a work plan that we can follow. What are the sequence or where do you start?

Speaker C: I think it's about, number one, hiring the right leaders. And I haven't always done that perfectly, but through time you learn, right. You hire the right leaders that share your values, share the company's values, have EQ to help lead their teams. So it's about repetition, prioritization, and persistence. So we talk about culture all the time. Every meeting that I was in, we would talk about culture. And when Culture would start to break down. And you can see it break down, pause what's broken about us because everyone has to know how important it is. You set the tone at the top and you hold that bar.

Speaker B: Got it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I can see, uh, not how difficult it is, but how counterintuitive it is, especially in a moment of urgency to when you could just like barrel through and just make a quick decision or, you know, install something to stop and look at culture.

Speaker C: Well, that's when it's most important. Like how are the decisions being made when you're not in the room? Right. That's where your culture is, the glue that holds it together. Are people going off in their own corners and trying to solve it or trying to look good, or are they coming together, sharing knowledge and getting to the decision as quick as they need to?

Speaker B: Got it. And you particularly face that at Lululemon. I mean you go from again, 2 billion to 10 billion. I believe it' there that you also build a, a big team in India and you sort of have this global expansion on the back, you know, on the infrastructure side. And now you have to scale culture. And huh. What did you learn about what works to scale culture?

Speaker C: Yeah, I started, it was a Vancouver based company. I opened a tech hub in Seattle, then we opened a, uh, tech hub in Shanghai and then in India and eventually, you know, many more. But what I learned is that the same things that are critical to creating culture in one part of the world are the same in the other. So when we opened in India, for example, there were differences for how the culture showed up. Right. So the days that you get together, it's big family day where everyone brings their family and it's just, it's part of the culture of India. Eating together is a big deal in India. So I guess the practices can be different, but we were able to create in India a tech hub that felt like you walked in any Lululemon anywhere in the world, even though there was no stores in India. But the culture was so rich because we just focused on the same thing. Had leaders from North America, that moat to India to create that culture, that environment.

Speaker B: I see. I got you. So part, uh, of it is leadership and modeling and the. Yeah, the propagating. Okay, now I'd love to continue with that. I've got so many things that I'd love to cover with you, but I know we're reaching towards the top of our time with you. I think that the listeners here would feel that we missed something if we didn't Talk a little bit more about AI. And when I think of it, you know, you've seen the web infecting M E commerce, you've seen mobile come, you've seen cloud and SaaS come, digital transformation and now AI. You've seen this patterns before. So like what patterns do you see from prior technology waves that we can help us understand AI? Or maybe there are patterns that AI won't follow. Like what? What can we learn from past such transformations that can inform how we think about AI?

Speaker C: I think many of them start off in this phase that I think of as euphoric confusion where you know that there's incredible potential but you don't know really what the application is yet. We're still there with AI where some companies have figured out how really to put it into use. But if you look at the data, a lot of companies are going big on headlines and weak on actual results. Now not everywhere. Some of uh, there's incredible investments being made in research and lots of different areas but a lot of the layoffs that we've seen have been made under the headline of AI. When you poke a little bit at that you realize that these are companies that probably over hired in the beginning and now they want to take some of that money that they hired into and reinvest it so that they can pursue AI. So I still think we're in this, yeah, this state of euphoria of what it can do. And the companies that I really see succeeding are the ones that understand their business well and are figuring out how to use AI to magnify their business. Business not versus the other side of that would be I'm going to gain 20% efficiencies. Like where does that come from? What business processes do you have documented enough that you think that you can take 25, 20% out through automation. How are you as a company making decisions if it still takes you 30 days to get everybody in a room to make it to make one decision and now your data is real time. Doesn't matter, your data is real time which you're still going to get everybody in a room once a month. So there's a lot of change that has to happen on the business side to take advantage of AI. It will happen, companies will figure it out. But I think the thing to answer your earlier question, the thing is that we go through this process of maybe being over enthusiastic about what's possible before we actually do the work and realize how that's going to work in my particular business.

Speaker B: Mhm. I got you and this is, I'm sure this is a superficial and incorrect view from just an outside consumer. I kind of look at Nordstrom. I think of them as, I'm guessing, being a more careful, slower adopter of technology because they're so customer focused and hands on and kneeling in front of the customer. I kind of think of REI as being kind of also, you know, the fact it's like owned by members and it's a culture, it's like a, uh, identity. Maybe Lululemon maybe was like a little bit more kind of leaning in. So, you know, I'm guessing, you know, here you were in three places where you kind of have people, culture and you have technology. And often I think that they're a choice, right? They're like, you either lean into people or lean in technology. Here you are a technologist advocating for leading into, into people and cultures. How do you reconcile those?

Speaker C: I don't think you. I don't think you choose. I bring them together. And I actually met with the CIO of Nordstrom not that long ago. They're doing incredible advances in AI and I think they have a really smart approach to it and they're thinking about the people on the journey and the, you know, the processes that you have to go through. So I think it is, I think it's a challenge for every company. But the ones that are going to be most successful aren't just out buying tools and figuring out how to make AI work in their own organization. They start with, who are their people? Where are we going together? What's that strategy? And how do we leverage the technology to help us get there faster?

Speaker B: So, so you have this incredible, like, in that incredible career, like you got, you got these three great transformation stories. One company after another. You are, uh, you got this leadership, you got systems understanding. And now you decide that you are going to take a very different path. Why do you decide to take the path? Why do you decide to write this book?

Speaker C: The book was something that I knew I had in me for a while, but I didn't know what it was about. And yeah, I mean, I have strong feelings on leadership and on culture, but there's something that's changed in the way that the world is acting now. And we've lost our minds in some ways in the euphoria of AI as a technology instead of as a business enabler. And I've always cared more about my impact than about anything else. And so I wrote this book called Chief Impact Officer. And what I hope it does is I hope it helps companies unlock how to achieve innovation at scale with AI and modern technologies, but also with people. Because I think at the end of the day, the people are really what matters.

Speaker B: I love that. Yeah, we've touched, we've come back to that several times on this podcast. Yeah, that's great. I believe it as well. Again, we ran out of, um, time with you, but people can certainly buy your book Chief Impact Officer. How else can people continue to follow you and learn from you?

Speaker C: They can find me on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Julie Averill, or at my company website,

Speaker B: goldthreadllc.com goldthreadllc.com and we'll put links to both of those in our show notes. Julie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, for taking a step away from your journey to dedicate yourself to writing this book for all of us and for spending some time to share it with us today. Thank you, Julie.

Speaker C: It's been a pleasure.

Speaker A: Thank you. To our guests, Julie Avril. You can find her on LinkedIn or at her company website, goldthreadllc.com links to both are in the show notes along with her book Chief Impact Officer. Thank you to our executive producer, Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Humium Jam, and our editor, James Pierce. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. I'm your host, Kyren Krippendorf. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next time with another

Speaker B: episode of Of Out Thinkers.