- [Narrator] It's lunch time, and this is Bard Anderson's lunch break. Here in Redmond, we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet pretty much everyday. Every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. Today I finish talking with the CTO of Estee Lauder, a very smart and always fabulous Rhonda Vetere. So now let's take a look at your team itself. And, you now, the IT department. How has the morale gone now that you've moved so much to the cloud, how has that morale gone up? Do people say that their jobs are more impactful, or have they this, this fear that they have, well maybe my job gets eliminated? What's been that impact? - That's been an interesting transition. And really worked with a team on the mental model shift. Their mental model on growing and spring boarding into what we call the new technology world. The morale is up. At first you have what I call going the valley of despair. And then it goes back up, just like things in life. But as you lead and show them how things come more productive, how they're giving back, how they can free up their time, quite frankly, and work on more fun things. And not so fingers on the keyboard on operational issues. Their morale goes up. And we're proud of that. And there's a lot of rock stars that have developed out of that. - So that topic of staying relevant is really important. You know, during your career, you spent time at CompuServe and WorldCom and MCI. You've had a front row seat at companies who were at the pinnacle of driving different portions of the industry, and then kind of fell away, right? What can technology leaders learn from that? What did you take away from those experiences? - Being relevant and that you become obsolete overnight. And not realize it. No matter what field that you're in. Being in technology, you can be merged, acquisitions, everything happens. And things are coming at you from all angles and you need to be able to manage that change. So I took that as a learning experience, and stayed through all the different merges and acquisitions to be that constant denominator to drive that change in making the companies more relevant as the world changed. - I read an article where you listed your top ten list of business standards. And there were three of them that just like really hit home with me because I value these three as much as you do. One of them is what you called managerial courage. - Very good. - Recognize your team. And then know your metrics. - Yes. Recognize your team. So I'm always about it's the team. And recognizing them. It's celebrating success as most people forget to celebrate. - It can be little successes that you celebrate. That have a tremendous impact on the culture. - Absolutely. - Give me an example. You talk about leadership courage. - Leadership courage is the ability to step up and say the power of no in a nice way. I don't agree with this, this is what it means, we're doing the wrong thing, and even on a team and partners I look for that. Someone who has a challenging spirit that can tell you you're going down a wrong way. - All too often, people are afraid to say no. And most times, you know, who you're talking to, they just wanna know what the answer is, and no is okay. But it takes courage, and for many people, that's a courage that has to be developed. That's actually one of the interview questions that I asked when I'm interviewing senior leaders. Tell me about a time when you had to say no and were convicted that the right answer was no. And you knew it was gonna be a challenge to get the rest of the organization aligned. I'll tell you, if people cannot come back and give me an example of exactly when they've done that, they haven't had enough leadership time. They haven't had enough leadership experience. - Great point. That's great. - It has been a pleasure. - It's been a pleasure. Thank you. All right. Thank you. - Thank you so much. Bye. - [Brad] Next time on Brad Anderson's lunch break. Duckworth-Lewis. - The Duckworth-Lewis say, I can give a, it says one of the most illogical things to happen in that regard. Erstwhile, deployment architectures, you know are a thing of the past. You can't manage such explosion with that kind of a thing.
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