Hot Mess Hotline

Do you know how to tell the story of your career when there’s too much variety in your resume? Adrian Koehler is an executive coach who has transformed a “hot mess” of career experience into clear confidence for how he delivers compelling value every day and in the present moment.

This episode is for you if you’re working to develop the through-line to communicate how your variety of positions can contribute to your next career move and frame conversations so you can tell the story of your future impact, not justify your past career moves.

Find the full blog post at https://stefaniekrievins.com/tell-the-story-of-your-career-when-theres-too-much-variety-in-your-resume-with-adrian-koehler/

About Adrian

Adrian Koehler is a leadership engagement expert and senior partner at the executive coaching firm, Take New Ground. He coaches executives and entrepreneurs in the art and science of leadership for themselves, their teams, and clients to create new, unprecedented results and experience fulfillment in their work.

Drawing on his background in philanthropy, ministry, activism, and medicine, Adrian thrives in the extreme environments and finds comfort in difficult conversations—in fact, his passion for human performance has taken him around the globe, serving people in times of crisis, transformation, and stalemates. Over the last decade, Adrian has trained and developed leaders at NIKE, Virgin Hyperloop One, Jeni’s Ice Cream, Herschel Supply Co., Oprah Winfrey Network, Gavin DeBecker & Associates, Siegel & Gale, UCLA and elsewhere.

Making decisions isn’t always hard, but taking action on the decisions can be hard. Alexei Miller is a leader who lived that firsthand when his company’s locations were caught in the middle of international conflict. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Data Art’s “people first” philosophy was put to the test. 

A decision for their Ukrainian employees felt like a betrayal of their Russian colleagues. And a decision for their Russian colleagues felt like a betrayal of their Ukrainian colleagues. Which people do you put first when global politics interrupts everything? And you have employees who need to be moved to safety and you have the resources to help?

These decisions aren’t easy but they have to be made. Listen in as Alexei shares how the entire company and their clients pitched in to help during difficult times and no-win decisions.

Find the full blog post at ⁠https://stefaniekrievins.com/making-decisions-isnt-hard-taking-action-on-the-decision-is-hard-with-alexei-miller/

About Alexei Miller

As a member of the group of founders who worked here since day one, Alexei sees himself as a company builder, not a manager. He cares about everything that’s going on, but also recognizes that we often don’t control our teams but rather have to give them space and support to develop. He was lucky to join DataArt back in 1997 while still in the university, studying math and computer science. At that point, he and his colleagues had no specific vision for the company they would eventually become; they were just doing what they enjoyed. Two decades later, they turned DataArt into a global enterprise with over 5,700 employees and over $300M in annual turnover.

Successful leaders find themselves creating alignment during change. Michael Judd shares one of his initial turnaround gigs where he learned this skill directly and then took it with him for the rest of his career. Learn from his experience and self awareness:

Listen in to this wisdom-packed episode on logical steps to take for any hot mess.

Find the full blog post at https://stefaniekrievins.com/the-secret-to-creating-alignment-during-change-with-michael-judd/

About Michael Judd

Michael Judd is a technology and strategy expert that has over 20 years of experience working with Fortune 500 executives from a variety of industries. His past clients include American Express, Aon, HCSC, Providian, Raytheon, Washington Mutual, and Zurich Insurance. He is known for bringing strong strategic, financial, and operational skills to develop disruptive technology strategies that make sense for his clients. He is a CPA with a strong reputation for collaboration and global experience, he tackles the largest challenges, transforming how people and their processes engage with technology to drive business value.

Richard Luna came to a hard realization when he said to himself, “If you micromanage, then you’re not managing.” As his business and team were growing, he learned — the hard way, of course! — that he was controlling too much: filtering 1,000+ emails a day; creating specific dispatch schedules; putting out fires; selling services; being the CEO, COO, CSO, and CTO; working 18-hour days, the whole shebang.

Anyone who is driven recognizes this workload. For those of us who have broad shoulders, like to control for a positive outcome, and are wired for decision making, we all get humbled at some point about the limitations of what we can carry. Plus there comes a point in any team and company where 1 leader simply can’t force growth any longer. You can’t use straight brute strength to make more projects or revenue happen. The law of diminishing returns kicks in.

This episode of the Hot Mess Hotline details how Richard Luna went from micromanaging to managing to leader using the beneficial parts of his drive and living out his core values. Both are equally important. Listen in to hear why.

Find the full blog post here: https://stefaniekrievins.com/if-you-micromanage-then-youre-not-managing-with-richard-luna/

About Richard Luna

Richard Luna is a recognized national computer and IT leader with over 30 years in the field. His tech experience includes serving as IT Director (CTO) of U.S. News & World Report. Today, he is President and Founder of Protected Harbor and NetMagic Systems. The company has grown to more than over 30 employees and is a regional leader in providing managed IT services, data management, cybersecurity, software development and data center and technology planning and consulting for clients from multiple business sectors.

Leaders lead humans and people working together, not robots working together. Denise Cooper and I explore this topic in a very frank conversation. We’ve gone off course with leadership when we think that multi-tasking and motivating all employees in the exact same way is going to work in the 21st century. 

Humans can’t multi-task; hell we’re not even supposed to have multiple priorities. (“Priority” was created in 1400 and “priorities” was created in the 1900s.) And each individual needs something slightly different to do their best work. But we still see leaders treating their folks like robots: same expectations, same hours, same communication, same motivations, multi-task everyday all day, and keep multiple plates spinning.

The most successful organizations of the future will choose their priority: what to focus on first. Listen in to learn more.

In this episode we mention a new kind of management framework that might be helpful for you to explore: Holacracy.

Find the full blog post here: https://stefaniekrievins.com/great-leaders-know-they-lead-humans-not-robots-with-denise-cooper/

About Denise Cooper

Denise Cooper is the Founder and CEO of Remarkable Leadership Lessons, a company founded over 10 years ago to assist C-suite, senior-level business leaders, and managers in raising their game as contributors to profitability.

Denise serves as an Executive Coach and Keynote Speaker, with a proven process for grooming diverse candidates for succession. She does this through one-on-one customized development plans, professional assessments, and time-proven case studies.Her expertise and wisdom are grounded in neuro-leadership, behavioral & psychological principles along with 25 years of experience. Denise has worked across a wide range of industries and organizations from Fortune 500 corporations, small to mid-market & nonprofit businesses. Change is impacting every aspect of business and executives need leadership skills that inspire trust, enable quick response times, clarify purpose and create work cultures where belonging and contribution are foundational principles.

IT executives have too many root cause analysis examples to count. Benjamin Pulatie is a leader and entrepreneur who’s no different. But because of his mega hot mess he learned how to take control when everyone was in charge but no one was in control; and check his emotions at the door.

Listen to this Hot Mess Hotline episode as Ben describes how he methodically evaluated what wasn’t working across 300 servers to find a solution that was costing millions of dollars a day.

About Benjamin

Benjamin Pulatie, CEO of MAD Software brings 24 years of technical experience across multiple industries such as healthcare, energy services, and retail with expertise in information security, supply chain, and workforce management. Having consulted for small organizations and fortune 100 companies, he brings a pragmatic and common sense approach to innovation and operations management.

Solving the right problem with change management is a perennial problem for IT leaders. Juan Betancourt is a tech entrepreneur who is willing to keep looking in the mirror, ask the hard questions, and continuously improve until he gets it right. Our conversation focuses on how he led his team through massive business shifts because that’s what it takes to keep up in his industry.

Leading a team through change that is forced from external pressures (looking at you ‘rona) is different from leading a team through change because of internal pressures and business vision. Listen to this episode as Juan describes his leadership and company pivots when demand for their services went to zero.

About Juan

Juan Betancourt is the CEO of Humantelligence, an HR enterprise software solution like Grammarly, but instead of writing tips, it surfaces tips for communicating and collaborating. This major innovation, impacting the way distributed knowledge workers collaborate, earned HRO Today's Top HR Tech for Collaboration and TalentCulture’s Top HR Tech for Employee Collaboration awards.

Juan also founded Gonza Executive Search and served as a client partner for both Korn Ferry International and Heidrick & Struggles. He was an executive at Procter & Gamble, Decathlon, Siebel Systems, Reebok, and Puma. Recently named a Top 30 HR Tech Influencer, Juan is an expert in helping organizations build high-performing teams, while operationalizing inclusion & belonging.

Leadership is about taking risks, not seeing into a crystal ball. Pamela Diaz is a leader that asks her team to trust her enough to take risks with her. And she returns that trust with empathy. Here at The Change Architects, we work with a lot of teams that demand all their questions be answered from their manager before they move forward with plans — which stalls progress and problem solving. And it’s simply impossible. Fortunately there’s another way and Pam knows what’s up.

This was a fun conversation. Listen in to this episode where I reference Indiana Jones and Turduckens. Pinky swear they’re both related to change management.

About Pamela Diaz

Pamela Diaz is CEO and President of Entara, a security-first eXtended Service Provider (XSP). Under her leadership, Entara has been recognized for several awards due to its forward-thinking and strategic security solutions by CRN, MSSP Alert, and Channel Partners. Pam is also the Co-Founder of Forecheck, an automated incident management, remediation, and resilience platform built for ingesting incidents from security providers.

Pam is dedicated to connecting organizations with the IT and cybersecurity solutions that their businesses need to thrive. She is passionate about building relationships and connecting with individuals that challenge the status quo and stretch to continuously improve our future. Through her dedication to building a great team and company culture, Entara has been recognized in both Chicago and on a national level as a Best and Brightest Place to Work.

Pam is on the Board of Directors of Bounce Children’s Foundation, an organization transforming the lives of chronically ill children, and serves as Chair of the Governance Committee. She is also on the Events Committee of the Female Integrator Mastermind (FIM), a peer-to-peer female mentoring group. Through FIM, she regularly presents about equality and female empowerment.

Resistance to change doesn't always show up in your team like you think it does. Jessica Carroll is an executive who has driven multiple digital transformations as a CIO and Chief Customer Experience Officer. The same lessons that apply to "going to the cloud" also apply to digital transformation and how to use AI in 2023. In this episode we discuss how it's easy for the leader to think their teammates are resisting, but they really might just need more information; think about the problem from a different perspective; or need to wrap their head around the project in a way that's different from you.

Listen in to this episode where Jessica describes how you can move your team from needing more information to action.

See the full post at: https://stefaniekrievins.com/resistance-to-change-isnt-what-you-think-it-is-with-jessica-carroll/

About Jessica Carroll

Jessica Carroll is a speaker on the topics of client engagement, team culture, and digital transformation. She has been published in CIOInsight, BizTech magazine, among others, and was named a Computer World Premier 100 IT Leader. She is a contributing author to the book, Digital Transformation Demystified, in which she discussed client and employee engagement practices.

Currently Ms. Carroll is the Chief Experience Officer for Acuative, a global managed services provider. In this role she is responsible for guiding customers through their digital transformation, serving as their consultative advisor and advocate, and holds responsibility for enhancing the employee experience for the Acuative internal team. Prior to joining Acuative, Ms. Carroll was the VP, Customer Success at TenFour IT and had a noteworthy tenure in a variety of senior IT Leadership positions at the United States Golf Association, culminating in her role as the Managing Director for Information Technology where she led the infrastructure, business resilience, security, operations, and development disciplines.

Have you ever felt like you weren't delivering the results as an executive that matched your compensation? Scott Couchenour is our faculty member who can tell you exactly why and how to get you focused on results, actions, and the mindset needed to do the strategic work necessary at your level. It's easy to get sucked into too many meetings, too many decisions, and too many tasks. As a senior leader you need to focus on delivering the value that only you can. Usually that means more time on strategic planning and execution, managing investments, aligning staff, and business development — not making a decision for a teammate who is abdicating responsibility to you!

Listen in on Scott's episode to learn why you need your very own "offensive coordinator" so you're being proactive, not reactive to whatever hits your inbox each day.

About Scott

Drawing from nearly 30 years of experience as a COO and CEO, Scott helps Gen X leaders who are successful yet dissatisfied with the uncertainty of where their life and business is headed. He concentrates on helping owners of small to midsize companies create clarity and design a comprehensive life and business plan. He helps not only with strategy but secures solid traction through an iterative approach. Scott’s clients are reaching new heights and accomplishing much more than they ever thought possible.

As a Pro Troublemaker, Scott focuses on creating clarity first, helping clients to reveal their many options when they might normally feel backed into a corner. Clients will find that Scott is genuinely interested in what they do, is committed to closing the gap between “where they are” and “where they want to be,” and that his goal is to create a fun and engaging experience during the important work of coaching.

Scott is a Certified through ILCT (Institute of Life Coach Training) and is proud of working with his long-term clients. One of his clients is on their second 5-year life plan and he loves to be there to witness their positive growth. He is also extremely proud of his husband, father, and “Pop Pop” to his grandkids. He loves to play piano, work on spreadsheets, and explore coffee shops.