Strategic Alignment of Talent, Tech & Data | Amy Henderson

Folks are asking better questions to find out and probably through that process encouraging people to know more about themselves. What motivates them? How do they succeed? What kind of recognition do they want?

Growth gets over simplified more often than we'd like to admit. Amy Henderson is an experienced executive, who helps organizations drive enterprise growth by aligning, talent, technology and data. All while operating with financial discipline. Her work focuses on designing strategies that can actually be executed. And building the culture and leadership capacity required to sustain them.

What sets Amy apart, is how deeply she understands the gap between strategy and reality. She spent her career working inside that space. Translating vision into action balancing ambition with rigor and ensuring growth doesn't outpace the organization's capacity to deliver. In this episode we unpack why misalignment not lack of ideas is what stalls growth and why sustainable scale only happens when culture, talent, and technology are built together from the start.

So let's dive right in. You know I wonder if chaos isn't the standard and organization is the exception in almost everything. So, you when you step into an organization and contribute like you have, it to at one moment it might feel like chaos and then you get this sense of we're we've we've got direction and we've got organization and we're getting the right people involved talk talk to us about something you're celebrating when you've gone from chaos to order chaos to order it's more like chaos to organize chaos I feel like a lot of times when you're in that fast paced um you know business that we're that we're in I I feel like honestly celebrating teamwork right when

when all of that has come together it's because people on the team folks on the team have played their part they've engaged they've understood the direction there's been clear leadership and that that is not simple that is not easy you guys both know that I know a little bit about your backgrounds and um that that is something to tremendously celebrate and you know people uh can be the biggest obstacle but they can also be the biggest contributors to success and um and yeah I I think I think it comes back to people in AI and we talked about chaos and ever changing and ever evolving the the necessity to to unlearn mm hmm what does unlearn mean

yeah that unpack that oh yeah that's a that is a really tough one unlearn I think it's you know stopping yourself from approaching things in the same way and it and it's you know if you've been a leader and you know organized teams in a certain way for so long like just imagine that you're not gonna do that anymore you're gonna have you're gonna organize by skill sets and you're gonna pull people together inside your organization according to the skills and the expertise that those folks have I mean what does that mean for your you know managers what does that mean for your you know all of a sudden they don't have that person on their team or

you know it's it's really fascinating um and yeah I unlearn I think it's it's stopping habits stopping stopping your way of thinking and recognizing your stuff right'cause your mind is just gonna go that way automatically it's interesting I'm we all grew up in an era where we did a disc profile or we did a Myers Briggs or we did some sort of a psychographic profile and then the organization would say well this person's gonna be a good cultural fit then they would put you in a job that is a drainer or maybe they put you in a role that was energizing but you know we keep doing these things that we're accustomed to we sort of trained to suffer a little bit as humans

and then we could just like set that down and what I've seen recently is companies evaluating the role the the the the job itself and putting a psychographic profile together for that role cause it's a human role in a human organization and then fitting the people to the demands and requirements of that role where it's flexibility etcetera and I'm wondering this is people are rapidly becoming far more aware of their own things that feed them and yes and where they're getting energy and how they're contributing energy so it's not just leaders but it's us individuals that are being I think speak a little bit to that is that is that because the technology is available

is that because we're more open what do you think that's about folks are asking better questions to find out and and probably through that process encouraging people to know more about themselves and what how what motivates them how do they succeed um what kind of uh recognition do they want that was one of the things that Derek talked about earlier um taco bar taco bar that's right hey I think we're all motivated a little by taco bars I don't know anybody that wouldn't be but um but yeah it was a Nashville hot chicken bar that hot chicken bar oh that's interesting yeah yeah um but yeah I I feel like there is this real push you know the teams right now with what's going on

you know are generally smaller they're expecting more from fewer folks so you want to still maintain that trust that um relationship that teamwork even though those folks may be managing you know uh agents right rather than than people but you you in order to make an organization work you still have to have all of those human components um in there and I do think there's a deeper exploration of what makes someone successful and what might motivate you to be a you know top performer for our team and it's it's a two way kind of conversation it's interesting you said people may be managing agents um wow

right yeah just rewind just a few years and that would not be in our conversation what are you doing well I manage a team of agents that's right today and there's 35 of them and individual roles look like this and sound like that um are people are people adapting to managing agents is this something that you see just a subset of people being successful this is part of this evolution right of where instead of a dev lead has you know four folks on their team they're now they now have are running AI agents um of you know seven so what do you see in education changes that might happen oh my goodness um that's a tough question I'm not a total expert on that

but I I think this human component and making sure things stay human that's gonna become the rare thing right if I go to school and I learn math or I learn computer science or I you know dig in on one of these really technical degrees you know am I also getting the foundation for that people aspect and you know you now only have I don't know maybe you only have 10 people on your on your team who are all doing very different tasks or owning very different parts of the business you know that can enter cross Silo communication is a is vital for that to be a

a success so there is there is this people psychology I think it was it Derek this morning that said um you know don't you after years of managing people don't you wish you had studied psychology and yes I was one of the ones that raised their hand so Simon Sinek says people that don't understand people don't understand business yeah and I agree with that completely more and more every day well problem solving right I mean we probably if you look at the fun part about everything that's true is that you're unbelievably ridiculously successful as a human and everyone before you was perfectly successful and everyone before you Johnny was perfectly successful so

we're sitting in a room now with a bunch of people grappling with new opportunities and new problems and we will be perfectly successful agreed hey thanks for listening to another episode of The Parallel Entrepreneur and thank you to our sponsors partners and the special team behind the scenes that make it all possible be sure to like follow or subscribe to our podcast and get the latest updates and to learn more about this growing community of entrepreneurs our mastermind and companion program for your parallel entrepreneur journey visit Parallel entrepreneur.com and of course thank you to all the visionary guests who trust us to share their stories