Value Creation Growth Levers: Innovation

Kyle Uebelhor: Hi, and welcome back to Alexander Group’s ongoing podcast series, executive podcast series on value creation and what it takes to actually create value for your organization. And today, I’m thrilled to have my colleague Kevan Savage with us. Kevan, probably give a moment to introduce yourself and why it’s important for you on this episode when we talk about innovation.

Kevan Savage: Absolutely. Kyle. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. And thanks for joining us today. Community, I’m Kevan Savage, I’m a partner at Alexander Group and I run our marketing and product practice. So essentially anything that touches into those areas in your organization is where I focus. And so when we talk about innovation and we talk about value creation tied to innovation, marketing and product teams are front and center. So that’s why I’m here today.

Kyle Uebelhor: Exactly, Kevan. And I think what’s interesting to us is we see our, you know, world-class organizations that we work with, regardless of what industry you’re in. You know, be it manufacturing, distribution, life sciences, product and marketing, innovation is so important to create that value for your shareholders and the value creation on innovation. Yeah. It’s easy to say, hey, we’re great at NPD, but innovation is more fundamental than that. In fact, we know there are actually probably eight key themes that we know what an innovation culture looks like. And that innovation culture leads you into some things that actually create distinguished value. And again, we’re all trying to do something here to create a differentiation between us and our competitors. And innovation is one of those elements in addition to organic growth, profitable growth, M&A, acquisition, that type of thing, innovation is its own discipline unto itself. Hey, Kevan, what do you say? Why don’t we launch into those? Let me give you a quick summary of those eight big things. And I think what we can do is just have a conversation of what we’ve seen out there of organizations that do these eight things really well. So if I can, I’m going to go ahead and list them out. So we’ll go through them one at a time.

We know that innovation is driven by a company with clear purpose and an obsession over the customer. And what we mean by that is it’s very client-centric. All of our innovation is externally focused as opposed to internally focused. Second is you got to have strong leadership with visionary, appropriate where we’re headed culture is a third element. You really have to have a culture that really infuses and encourages the idea of experimentation and forward-thinking. Thought number four is, you know, what does the talent look like? Do you have the right folks on the team who can, you know, display the innovation activities? And do you get diverse thinking within that talent pool? Five is that you do it fast. You got to have iterative mindsets as, as the as the manufacturing lead for our global practice. I will tell you that gone are the days where we could spend quarters, if not years. Finding that next new product innovation cycles are so much faster now. I’m looking forward to talking about that with you, Kevan. Six is that how do you balance, you know, exploration idea generation versus just getting stuff done? That execution model seven is making sure that you’re doing this on a long-term mindset. And then finally, number eight, you know, strong systems and processes. This is what we do. We do know you have to have a means to make this happen without feeling bureaucratic. So Kevan, I don’t know. They’re all pretty good. We’ve seen them all the time. Is there one place you’d like to start or should we just start at the top?

Kevan Savage: I think we start at the top, with a clear purpose and customer obsession is mission critical.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah, yeah. So when we say this clear purpose with customer obsession, my mindset goes to Kevan. What I saw what you saw when you were working in the industries, you know, you know, over the last, you know, two decades or so is that we used to have really good product-oriented companies and they were, you know, build the best widget and they will come. And that’s changed. It’s custom. It’s customer-centric now. I mean, I guess what are some of the hallmarks when you see that you’ve got that sort of customer obsession when we’ve been out there in the work that we do.

Kevan Savage: Yeah. A couple of points to think through for your organization. One is around understanding your markets. Your customer needs your pain points and value drivers. Unfortunately, that is not a that is not a core muscle that we see in a lot of organizations today. We see pockets of it. We’ll see it in marketing teams, in product marketing. We’ll see it in product teams in terms of product management, maybe R&D, maybe engineering. But that consistency around really understanding, you know, where you play, why you play there, what customers expect from you. And really internalizing that is very, very critical. So that’s maybe point number one. Number two is the customer. Obsession is just as important for your customers as it is for your colleagues. And what I mean by that is that you actually have to show your colleagues more and more how you’re obsessed around customers in terms of their needs, where you’re meeting their expectations, where you’re not meeting their expectations. In some instances, we have some organizations that actually have hired their customers to actually show the level of customer obsession that the organization needs to build out to replicate, you know, that experience that they created for a certain customer. So, you know, I think you need to combine the, you know, the definition of how you want to obsess about the customers you want to go after. But then you have to show your colleagues, you know, how you’re going to operate to get there.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah, Kevan, we’re going to touch on this in a little bit more detail in a moment, how this all wraps together. But the one thing I’ve seen is that you said it earlier. There are pockets of this that almost every organization has, you know, you’ve got council groups of your vendors or your customers, whether. You’ve got voice of customer outreach that might happen from marketing. You’ve got NPS, something we all talk about. But that customer obsession oftentimes is very pocketed. Where I’m seeing world-class organizations connect the dots is that when everyone has this common view of our mission is customer centricity, and these customers have certain issues that they’re interested in solving for. And we talk the same language as we talk internally. I think that’s probably the most thing and most important thing about being customer-obsessed. And I got to tell you, the day-to-day lives of many folks, especially those who are in a publicly traded environment. You’re thinking 90 days ahead at most. But customer obsession is about that lifetime journey. The customer, I think it is.

Kevan Savage: And it’s also the storytelling behind it in terms of what are the use cases, what are the applications, what are the actual the market examples of how you are improving customer outcomes, right? And I think that gets lost a lot in both kind of strategy, articulation and organizations, but also how they kind of socialize that into their teams and show their colleagues on how they’re improving, you know, societal outcomes, customer outcomes, etc., etc.

Kyle Uebelhor: Kevan, this may be a bit of a Socratic question, and I’m going to say it’s unfair for me just to put you on the spot with this, but do we see major differences in really great customer obsession organizations with a clear purpose of being customer-centric across industries? I mean, I know clients of ours do it differently. I know we see examples out there, but are there major differences based off industry type where customer obsession has to look different?

Kevan Savage: You know, I think it depends on organizations in their end markets and how regulated they are is maybe one component here. But we do see differences, like I’ll tell you, for example, in healthcare, there is a natural orientation to improving patient outcomes. Right. And improving healthcare system profitability. And, like, that’s directly connected to you and I in our day-to-day lives, right? When we talk about maybe cybersecurity or emerging AI applications, there’s different ways that you show customer obsession there. Right. And that could be, you know, improving kind of consumer privacy, improving consumer security, things along those lines that you and I can feel, which may feel a little bit less tangible and a little bit harder to show in terms of, you know, what those customer outcomes actually mean for, you know, a day to day consumer that’s interacting with a B2B organization. But there definitely are some differences. What I think you see different in industries, though, is the value story behind the customer obsession. Right. Where it may either be less, I would say population-focused, it might be more product-focused or financially focused, right? And so that’s where we see a lot of variation in industry. Certainly, in healthcare and life sciences, we see a lot more call it in-market orientation around the value story. In tech and media, we tend to see more kinds of consumer orientation or application orientation. Manufacturing, I think we tend to see more market orientation. Right. And so I think there are just some nuances in there. But they’re all different dynamics of obsession itself.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah. And I think that’s right. Great answer by the way, because I think you nailed it on the head. There are hallmarks of every great customer-obsessed culture that lead to innovation. And that is to say, what are the outcomes that these customers are interested in? What are the outcomes that we can help provide, and then connect the dots? Every industry you alluded to in my mind still has that marketing, sales and service connectivity back to even to the in my world, into the manufacturing environment, and on the operational floor. They still think about the customer as the primary piece. And I think that’s the piece is that you have to understand you can’t look for a silver bullet or a magic wand that says, this is how I’m going to be, you know, become innovative through customer obsession because your industry is unique. But if you can first map who your customers are and what they really need and understand that entire buyer journey and how your teams connect to them, that’s how you actually start to tell the story the right way. Hey, let’s move on. I mean, I’m already thinking of a couple of examples, but what strong leadership, strong and visionary leadership this is, really, I think, number two. Number two for a reason, because it’s easy to say we’re customer-obsessed. But unless you have that sort of executive mandate with inspiration behind it, that leadership piece is oftentimes just the first fail point of this working out well.

Kevan Savage: Absolutely. And I know we’ve had a few quite a few engagements with our clients around this point. Exactly. Right. In terms of how to create that compelling long-term vision and create space for innovation and show shareholder value, value creation progress. But, you know, not for substituting kind of near-term gains and gaps in innovation. Right. It takes time. You have to create that space to get there. And so maybe, you know, maybe to start off with visionary leadership, you know, one of the things that we’ll see work well is we’ve had some leaders call it a victory plan. We have some that call it more tactically, a kind of goal tree. But others may call it more like an innovation council in terms of, like, how do we grow the core of our business, but actually, how do we start to kind of build an incubation center to talk about innovation as an organization and build the involvement from the organization. And, you know, one of the things we’ll see work well, there is, is a leader who actually puts that in play, as opposed to being the leader that’s driving it, just putting that in place. So curious to get your take there, Kyle, on what you’re seeing with your clients, too.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah, I especially think, Kevan, if you think about it, the Innovation hub, you know, it grabs a lot of attention. You see that a lot, especially in manufacturing. And that idea that we’re hey, we’re obsessed over becoming something more than where we are today, that next evolution, that higher geist, if you will. But I will tell you what great organizations, great leaders do: two things. There are really two things that I have found that create an expectation that there is breakthrough growth to be had. And that breakthrough growth comes from a multitude of sources. But we’re going to focus on the sources that are, you know, highly derived, hey, these are the 3 or 5 goals that we’ve got, the growth tree you mentioned. And we’re going to put that and promote it. As important as my annual quarterly business review, we’re going to do a breakthrough growth, and we’re going to do a growth committee that is just as much as an important part of who we are as hitting tomorrow’s number. The other thing that I think is really a hallmark, and this is for those of you out there who are in an executive position or aspire to be an executive position, is the key trait that I’ve seen in leaders who are really great at driving innovation throughout the organization.

They balance learning as much as they do results. They really do aspire to have folks kind of obsessed with how do we learn from what we just did, and then how can we translate that into a result? But rather than like, did we get the new product launched on time? I think that’s really key. And you know, obviously, the art of delegation is huge here. You have to set the vision. But then you do have to sometimes get out of the way. And this is where, Kevan, maybe we can talk a little bit about when we see founder-owned, founder-led private equity organizations. Oftentimes, that founder was the innovator. That was the he was the product developer, and I think that’s where these folks sometimes stop. That cycle of innovation is the founder gets too entrenched in what he had already created, as opposed to expanding that team around him to create new things.

Kevan Savage: Yeah, and I think that’s also expectation setting. So if you’re, you know, if you’re a founder-led organization, which is awesome, by the way, you need to set that expectation in your leadership archetypes that like that is like that is how we’re going to operate. Right? So we actually build the innovation kind of more broadly as opposed to individually. It’s something that’s a tenant of your it ties a little bit into your culture, which I know we’re going to go to at some point. But it also sets the expectation that, you know, leadership is a body of innovation as opposed to an individual of innovation.

Kyle Uebelhor: I think that’s exactly right. In fact, you know, Kevan, let’s go to number three. It’s culture that is a great bridge. Culture is as a leader, you’re responsible for sort of setting the tone, but culture is manifest within the entire organization. That’s what’s fascinating to me, when we look at corporate culture, we can see so many different flavors that are out there. There are good ones, and there’s some toxic ones. Good ones, especially good ones that are great in the innovation environment, are ones that really foster the idea of taking risks without punishment of bringing curiosity and ideas to the table without actual concerns for where their remit is and making sure that we have the platforms established for that, due respect amongst everyone and extreme cross collaboration. I, I don’t know, I think cultural pieces is something that starts at the top. You lead with culture, but the way it shows itself up in organizations is where the middle and the lower middle management lead this every day. And I don’t know, Kevan, you’ve got so many great examples from when you were in the industry. I know we both seem, you know, good and bad. What’s a great example of a good culture when it manifests itself into sort of how do we spur innovation?

Kevan Savage: You know, I think it starts with the first point, which is how do you show experimentation progress to improving customer obsession, right, or some of those outcomes? So I’ll give you one example from one of our active clients. One of the ways that they encourage experimentation is very simple and very task-based, which is okay. But for them, that means so they use Rs, which is a customer effort score, right? Similar to CSat or NPS. The way that they’re trying to encourage experimentation is to show how are they improving the experiences of their customers in a very kind of pragmatic way, so they can either show success or show failure very, very quickly, but they can iterate and they can be responsive. They can be more agile. And colleagues can feel like they have direct connectedness to the experimentation. But also, the first point we started with around customer obsession. So maybe that’s one at a micro level. At a macro level. One of the things that we will also see is that this has been happening in, you know, the media space forever, right? Is value story experimentation right? Like, how do you put different messages in the marketplace? A b c, d testing. How do you kind of understand like, how you’re getting the kind of reach for response activation on some of those messages? Some marketing teams do that kind of just as part of their typical day-to-day. Many don’t. And so what that means is that the continual innovation and experimentation around the value story means that your customers expect alignment with your messaging. That’s another one that we see as a great way to align leadership around what we’re seeing. Observing what we’re iterating around, what we’re not seeing work. That’s another example that I’d share.

Kyle Uebelhor: I completely agree with you, Kevan, and I like that idea a, b, c, d testing. You think about that. That is something very common to traditional marketing teams, and that is something that’s kind of necessary to see to, to prove the worth within their job and how that’s actually how our campaigns affect. But innovation actually takes that testing to the next level because it says, hey, we’re listening to what people care about the right way, and we’re connecting the dots to product, to sales, to service, all those things combined. And that’s why these pockets that are out there, if you’re thinking about it from a cultural standpoint, are sort of transfused, but you might be doing some of them already. That’s the piece that’s really interesting. You have a cultural obsession over innovation. Is it inclusive of the whole organization? I think that’s the piece that really matters here.

Kevan Savage: Yeah. And I’ll throw another example out there that was from late last week. We had this customer and they have what’s called a value realization team. And the whole spirit of that team is around experimentation. And one of the things that they’ve done, which I thought was really cool, was, and this is a tech software as a service company but they’ve had a challenge with their customers really, really being onboarded and in a meaningful way onto their platform and basically showing success to different pathways. Right? In terms of like, you know, consumption to this path in a certain duration of time. And so one of the things the Value Realization team has done is they’ve used actual customer and user-level data to drive their product-led growth experimentation. So what they’ve done is they’ve turned that into something like Kyle. Others like you have found success onboarding this way in our platform, and they’ve personalized that as a way to accelerate, you know, Kyle’s path to onboarding into their platform, knowing that Kyle’s path is different than Kevan’s. And that’s been a unique way for them to start understanding, you know, how different customers expect to be onboarded differently than others. Whereas before they just assumed that, like, that’s how we onboard. Right. And everyone’s going to onboard the same way. And so they did that through little sprints of experimentation and cohorts of different customers or users. They were onboarding. And I thought that was kind of a very cool way to kind of move also into personalization, a bit around experimentation.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah. And yeah, that’s exactly right. Those examples are what’s so fascinating when you see good sort of real world examples out there, Kevan. You know, actually going from culture, culture is comprised of, you know, our next one. And that is talent, the actual talent and the team around you. You know, we’ve known for a year for years rather, and decades, if not more that, hey, good diversity on your team provides the best creative environment, and I’d say that absolutely still holds true. But the diversity is that I’m finding really interesting. It’s there’s a common thread of back to curiosity. And I don’t know, it’s tough to say, hey, we can’t be diverse because all we want is curious people. But man, if you don’t have curiosity from people with different backgrounds, it’s really interesting. So I mean, Kevan, speak to a little bit about what’s the hiring profile that you’re out there when you’re looking for organizations that truly want to infuse an innovative culture, what are they looking for in terms of the talent beyond curiosity?

Kevan Savage: Most organizations we’re working with that have next level talent. They are looking for market makers, category leaders marketers that are really, really that passionate about the market and understanding the dynamics of the market how they how the organization should be meeting the market and actually showing the organization on how to do that. We’ll see product marketing teams fit that bill. We’ll see market development teams will actually see market managers in some organizations that are owning that. And they’re almost like little general managers, right? Where they’re essentially showing the organization where the market opportunity is, why they should play there, how to play there, how to organize to actually play there, and how to execute there. And historically, that’s been a kind of chain of team members who were responsible for doing that. But stronger talent profiles are expecting that level of leadership. And that curiosity that you mentioned in some of those roles. Now pivoting a little bit to the product side, what we’re also seeing are talent profiles that are emerging to really what we would call. And we’ll touch on this in more detail, that broader cradle to grave kind of product lifecycle management in terms of showing the organization like what is a good customer portfolio of products and solutions look like, the connectivity to, you know, what the customers expect, to actually what we intend to build in our 3 to 5 year roadmap. That is not an engineering discipline, that is not an R&D discipline, that is not a product management discipline. That is all the above disciplines. And so what we’re seeing is that adaptedness to kind of reinvent the product leader profile, to incorporate those things. That’s what’s making organizations in their talent a lot more successful.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think I actually love that I’m going to I’m going to reorder our discussion right now to go right into that, because I think this is this is a hallmark that I know delivers value to whatever your next iteration of value creation looks like, and that is be it a private equity company selling or going IPO ING, or an existing publicly traded company that just wants to show to the investment community that this is worthwhile because we do this well, the long term mindset, Kevan, I know we had that number seven. I’m going to pull it up here real quick. You alluded to it. It’s so crucial. And a long-term investment mindset is that whole idea of cradle to grave market management and the micro iterations that happen in between. And it’s really interesting because yes, indeed, you could actually create that next new widget and you will be rewarded for that next new widget. Good luck. The world’s out there and it’s innovating faster than ever before. But those organizations that take this long-term mindset of what innovation is for us are the ones that I know are being rewarded with their, you know, increases in valuation. Kevan, I want to have you continue that conversation because you hit on it a moment ago. It’s so important is this idea of it’s not about what’s next. It’s about the whole life of the organization, the whole life of the customer journey.

Kevan Savage: Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. I’ll give you a quick directional stat from our client engagements. I kid you not, 85 to 90% of the time. We’re talking to organizations and they say, well, we’re just trying to launch a new product or service. We’re not really good at that, or we need help, or we’ve done it a few times and it’s failed, and we’re trying to figure out why it failed. And one of our questions that we asked right away is like, is that how you feel your long-term mindset? And the answer is, well, that’s kind of what we think is going to drive the future of the organization. But when we ask a second question, which is to talk to us about how you’re managing the existing portfolio today to drive long-term growth, the focus isn’t there. And so what I mean by that 85% is there’s a lot of focus on new product introduction, but there’s a lack of focus on how do you build a sustained strategy on maximizing the long term investment and performance of your portfolio itself? And so we’ll find, you know, sales teams are not focused there. And product teams may not be focused there. Marketing teams aren’t focused there or they may talk about it. And hey, we’re launching a new enhancement to this product, or we’re fixing defects for this product, which is good. You got to do those things too. But if you don’t think about the combination of feeling new product development, but also sustaining portfolio and getting growth from that strategy, you do not get the combined long-term investment mindset and expectations from your operators and your PE firms that are going to feel your revenue growth and profitability.

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And Kevan, I’m not going to pile on, but I am going to pile on here. Another really interesting example from recent engagement a nice fortune 500 manufacturing global manufacturer. I was sitting with the president of this particular business unit over lunch a couple of weeks ago, and he was describing to me some woes on this idea of innovation. He goes, let me give you just a quick example, Kyle. I had the third and final presentation from one of our product leaders for this new widget that had just been created, and I asked him the appropriate GM-level questions, well, how much did it cost to develop this, and how long have you been at cycles? And we’re talking millions and millions of dollars and multiple a year plus to almost two years of development life cycle. And he asked the very next question, which just shocked me that when the response was, what’s the market size, the market size for this particular widget that was developed and passionate that this individual had brought forth was about one tenth of the budget that they spent to develop the product. And this whole idea of the lack of a mindset on a long-term vision allows for a lot of waste to go into the system. If you’re not thinking holistically about man, that particular individual, that particular team, they could have found so much better uses of time and value if they thought about the whole idea of that long-term mindset as opposed to I heard a problem, I’m going to fix a problem. And I think, Kevan, that’s that sort of damming example. I think it happens all the time.

Kevan Savage: It does, unfortunately, it does. But, you know, that’s partly where these podcasts are helping folks kind of think through addressing it. Right?

Kyle Uebelhor: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, let’s get a little bit more tactical. I mean, there’s two more and two more bullets here. And I think they, they kind of go hand in hand. And let’s just talk about them. It is, you know, how you balance this idea that I think we’ve been promoting exploration and curiosity and where you need to be with, you know, true execution. It’s great to have think tanks, but unless you get stuff done, it doesn’t really work. And I think that leads nicely into the systems and processes that last bullet of what people do to do this really well. So Kevan, I’m going to, you know, you text your test, test your brain a little bit, bring those two things together from the balance of exploration and execution to weather the processes that people do.

Kevan Savage: Yeah. I think there’s a piece around there, certainly systems and processes, which I’ll get to in a second here. But there’s also I’m going to go back to learning and curiosity. There’s learning and iteration that needs to be done. Right. So this is about, you know, whatever you want to call it. If you’re in your waterfall, your agile scrum, you’re putting out MVPs and focus on your backlog and user stories and user points and how you’re aligning those points to your roadmap, like, fine, you need to do all that so you learn faster. But you also need to do that collectively around kind of a core system process and operating model. And so you have to bring your colleagues into that fast learning iteration cycle. And in some instances we well, many instances, unfortunately, we don’t see that happen. And so someone needs to champion the strong systems and processes. And I don’t mean the kind of heavy administration overhead, you know, bureaucracy. I mean more of those kind of collaborative, connected processes around, for example, we’ll have like product operating councils. Right. And while that sounds boring, that’s actually bringing the sales, product, engineering, R&D and marketing team into one area and kind of saying like, how do we move faster? How do we kind of adapt to the market? How do we kind of iterate? What are the things we want to prioritize? If that happens in one team, but not collectively around a kind of core system and process, you make zero progress.

Now, the other thing, though, is that it gives you a pathway from ideation to innovation to concept to market. And that kind of articulation of showing your board, showing your executive team, showing your PE firm, you know, what is your pathway to value creation that systems and processes help you annotate that, right? Visualize that for the team because you will get those questions. If you’re not getting those questions, they’re coming. That also helps you align measurement criteria around the value story and the value creation. Right. So like what are the metrics that are helping you learn? What are the metrics that are helping you adapt? What are the metrics that are helping show impact? Either align to revenue or not align with revenue. You need to compartmentalize those a little bit so you can create that space for innovation, exploration, execution, and agility. But actually show your leaders with that process, those criteria. Right. Like, what are we learning? What are we observing? And that’s okay. Right. Like I just watched the DeepMind documentary. If you haven’t seen that, you should watch it. It’s very, very cool. But it was all about kind of learning, like, what are we learning? What are we training our kind of capabilities to learn from? To know what we should drive adoption for. So just your systems and processes and your culture and your leadership should kind of create that need for that system and process.

Kyle Uebelhor: I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s great. And I’ll tell you, like what I’ve observed and what I know, when what I know when great things happen, they do have an expectation. It’s on the calendar. We’ve got breakthrough growth sessions. We have these councils that come together. We have an expectation that this does have a flow to it that is being monitored and observed and you give the space for the answer, but you actually create the rigor around doing it. And this is the other piece that I think a lot of you out there are could be appropriately concerned about. And we get this a lot. And that is hey, give me a value. Put a revenue growth number on whatever fill-in-the-blank innovation is going to give us. And that growth number all of a sudden becomes a published number, and you anchor to it and suddenly, like, whoa, I am now responsible for X percentage of millions of dollars that are now a part of what we’re going to go do. Sorry. Buckle up, buttercup. As they say in the movies, you’re going to have to do it anyway. It’s out there. So be comfortable with the uncomfortable nature of what that revenue expectation is and know that it might adapt. But if you go through a rigorous process, no one is surprised when it doesn’t happen. No one is surprised that it’s not there. But you’re using the rigor of a very planned and thoughtful cycle to help everyone see the headlights on when it’s going well, or the tail lights when it’s not going well, and potentially adjust that number. But you put the rigor against us. That is what organizations that have shown that they can execute. They get valuation for that, not just the new widget that’s going to come on the backside. That’s really important. You’ve got to have that rigor to then demonstrate and be brave, but be okay with a number in front of you. You’ll have to hit for whatever you’re trying to innovate to.

Kevan Savage: Yeah, 100%. Kyle. I want to, on this topic, kind of share a quote from a CEO and a board that I thought was pretty meaningful around innovation. The CEO said, like, I have a very simple innovation strategy. One is, I’m going, I need to bring myself to the people to innovate, but I also need to bring my people to me to innovate. Right. And so what they’ve done is they’ve created this kind of culture and system where the CEO is working with an R&D manager on innovation, just like an R&D manager, you know, never worked with the CEO before. And so if you can kind of create that space, you know, with time commitments and expectations, of course, you need to create that connectivity top to bottom. And I thought that was a really meaningful thing for the CEO to say, like, hey, I’m going to go sit in customer care for two days and just listen to calls and talk about how we innovate with customer care more. I’m going to ask the customer care lead to come sit in with my executive leadership team and share with us how we’re innovating with customers. Like, those are really, really meaningful things. And as a leader, your colleagues and your employees expect you to work that way. They may not be telling you that.

Kyle Uebelhor: That’s right, Kevan. That’s right. Well, we covered a lot of ground in this podcast series are so fun for us to do because it gives us a chance to expand on what we’re seeing. So, again, just sort of maybe wrapping it up. Kevan, we you know, this is the innovation as a value driver, in addition to all those other value drivers. But innovation, if you think about it, with those eight key ideas that clear purpose and customer obsession the strong visionary leadership, a culture that encourages that exponential exploration and experimentation, the right talent on the team, and then how you actually learn fast and iterative cycles, how you balance exploration. What is that? Strong systems and processes to get you to a long-term investment mindset. They’re all there. There are pieces that we know are good. And it’s a journey that you go through. I mean, Kevan, it’s always great to hear from you. And I think maybe if you would leave us with some parting words on that, the 1 or 2 pieces of advice you’d share with everybody, in addition to listening to other podcast episodes we’ve been hosting? But what else? What else would you say that people might want to do if they’re going to take a 1 or 2 things away?

Kevan Savage: Yeah. Number one is, you know, take these tenants and use them as a way to create a conversation with your leadership team. Understand, like how do you put it in play? Because maybe there’s something that you can do quickly around, you know, visionary leadership, like wow, that’s not articulated very well. Go focus there. So use these tenants as a way to kind of as your own kind of roadmap for development with your leadership team. That’s number one. Number two, which I think does tie very much to customer obsession, is to ask some basic questions of your team, your functions, around what the importance and effectiveness of customer obsession is for us. What does that mean? How do we actually measure it today? How should we measure it differently? How should we learn from that? What you’ll find is that pretty quickly, you have a little mini roadmap of things that you can go improve on. So maybe those two things use this as a way to kind of create conversation with your leadership team, but then also, you know, relook at customer obsession in terms of how that fuels your understanding of where to innovate.  I would start there.

Kyle Uebelhor: That’s great. That’s great. Kevan, as always, thanks so much. It’s been great talking to you. And for all of you out there who are interested, we really do appreciate the time you spent with us. You know, this series is out there for you to enjoy. And anytime there’s questions, we’re always here to respond to those. So thanks very much, and again appreciate your time today. Looking forward to the next conversation. Take care, everyone.

Kevan Savage: Thank you.