A CFO’s Perspective on Innovation

Todd Burness (00:00):

In my career, I’ve always been a manufacturing guy, so I’ve always been more hands-on the finance role within manufacturing. For me it’s been a lot of fun playing a role that brings all the functions together in the business. I think where we’re going to take this conversation towards is what does that look like to bring engineering, manufacturing, and sales together in a way that propels the business?

Speaker 2 (00:28):

Solutionology is about being unyielding, with perseverance to get to the solution.

Speaker 3 (00:34):

To not give up, and to constantly drive for better. Even when we deliver a hundred percent, I want to deliver 110 next time.

Speaker 4 (00:41):

For me, the constraints of that project are the most important, because that’s what drives us to a solution. It’s all about painting a picture and getting all the details in.

Speaker 2 (00:48):

How do we develop a tool that helps share our journey, educate others, and bring more light to the realities of additive manufacturing? The Solutionology Podcast. We’re here in episode number 17 of the Solutionology podcast. All of our episodes up until now have been largely technical. Can you think back to the first one, 450 [inaudible 00:01:17]?

Speaker 4 (01:17):

Yeah. Sharing our progress with printing profiles and requirements to make [inaudible 00:01:23] successful. That’s just a small snippet of a lot of what we do, which is program-based thinking, strategic thinking for new product development as we’re supporting clients. Now we get to take our first step into that discussion today.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

Yeah, today we’ve got a unique guest. This episode’s not about additive manufacturing. It’s not directly about new product development, but it has aspects of those topics in it. We’re talking with Todd Buness today, who his day job is a CFO and a President actually of a client of ours, a product development client of ours, who has a really unique perspective, especially coming from a finance role. There’s a lot that we’ve learned from him and there’s a lot of really valuable perspective that he brings to the table in how to drive successful programs. Through the discussion today, we talk a lot about perspectives, evolving perspectives, and looking at a program from a holistic overview point of view and really getting into a solutions-based approach.

(02:37):

The Solutionology title for the podcast is great for today’s topic because we’re talking a lot about solutions-based approach, which is something that we’ve always struggled with in our industry because we’re not a standard service bureau, we’re not a standard product development firm. We’re working hand in hand with our clients as to understand what are the problems, what are you trying to achieve? And then we can add more value than just printing a part or designing a part. We’re walking arm to arm. Todd’s got some great examples in this episode of how he’s taken a solutions-based approach and driven success.

Speaker 4 (03:22):

Interesting for me to just hear from another individual where it takes all of these attributes where we’re challenging teams, we’re challenging each other internally, we’re challenging our clients in order to get to this best case solution. We’re very aligned with Todd in a lot of our approach, and Todd does a great job of telling a story. How do you get from point A to point B, especially when you have all these challenges in front of you, you have all these roadblocks that you have to get through, how do you persevere? We hope you enjoy some of our stories today with Todd, and we hope that we can elevate some of your perspective, as we continue to elevate ours.

Speaker 2 (04:10):

All right, here we are. This is episode number 17 for the Solutionology podcast. In all of the podcasts that we’ve had up until now, we’ve really been focused on more of the technical aspects of additive manufacturing and how those benefit organizations, but it’s really driving to the technical side of things. That’s great because we’re helping educate on additive. But the thing that we’ve been missing is the deep dive into the business and finance side of product innovation, innovation management. That’s really the underpinnings of the benefits of additive manufacturing is that you get speed, you get rapid learning early on, but we haven’t addressed any of that.

(05:01):

Today is a really special episode. We’ve got a great guest in person with us, so it makes it even more special. We’re going to be talking about that. We’re going to be talking about the business and finance side of product management and how to think about the early stage new product introductions and just how to think about the business performance side of things, which in our experience are oftentimes either overlooked or they’re misunderstood. We’ve got Todd Buness here with us today, a really special guest. We’ve become great friends with Todd. Todd is the CFO and president of Prinsco, who is a North American water management manufacturing business. Todd’s also an informal advisor to us at DI Labs. He helps us with some strategic decision making for big business initiatives. We’ve had just a great opportunity to get to know you, Todd, and to work with you over the years. Todd’s been with Prinsco now for, what is it?

Todd Burness (06:12):

Six and a half years.

Speaker 2 (06:13):

Yeah, six and a half years, times flies.

Todd Burness (06:15):

Yes, it does.

Speaker 2 (06:17):

Before that, Todd was with Heraeus. He was the Global Business Unit CFO. Then before that, that was for-

Todd Burness (06:26):

Four years at Heraeus,

Speaker 2 (06:27):

Four years at Heraeus, and then the long part of your career.

Todd Burness (06:31):

27 years at Cargill.

Speaker 2 (06:33):

27 years at Cargill. Todd’s led just a great deal of initiatives across many different types of disciplines, different businesses, and he’s been making a significant impact with Prinsco. Prinsco is in the water management industry. They manufacture products for agriculture, stormwater, residential, and now on-site waste. But really appreciate you joining us today, Todd, and are grateful and honored to have you as a guest on our show.

Todd Burness (07:09):

Well, thanks for the invite and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’ve had some of these discussions over time and to put it all together and talk about not only the technical side of what you guys do, but also just the business side of how do we make it all come together, I think it’s going to be fun.

Speaker 2 (07:26):

In your career you’ve been responsible for some major initiatives. Could you just talk a little bit about some of the more important initiatives that you’ve been involved in throughout your career?

Todd Burness (07:43):

Yeah, that’s a loaded question.

Speaker 2 (07:45):

It is.

Todd Burness (07:47):

I’ll just talk a little bit. I think in my career, I’ve always been a manufacturing guy, so I’ve always been more hands-on, the finance role within manufacturing. For me it’s been a lot of fun playing a role that brings all the functions together in the business. I think where we’re going to take this conversation towards is what does that look like to bring engineering, manufacturing and sales together in a way that propels the business? If we’re bringing value to the customer, odds are it’s going to bring value to the company and the business. I’ve had a lot of that experience say at Heraeus before Prinsco go where our business was contract manufacturing. We would develop a part for a customer and it was all about speed to market to satisfy that customer need.

(08:45):

Oftentimes we didn’t have all the information we needed to build to design it, manufacture it, and then sell it all perfectly correct the first time. A lot of the role I played was to bring those functions together, talking about what does the customer need, how do we make sure we’re designing something that makes sense, but also from a CFO perspective, how do we get it to market and start a revenue stream as soon as possible? Knowing full well that there’s a lot of issues that are going to come into play. How much is it going to cost? What price do we sell it for? Can we mass manufacture it so we get our costs down? But most importantly, can we deliver on the customer expectations?

(09:35):

A lot of that experience taught me a fair bit around get something in the hands of the customer as quickly as you can to vet out, “Are we on the right track.”? Knowing full well when we do that, it’s probably going to cost an enormous amount of money up front because you got all the initial development, the prototyping, and to think you’re going to sell that and recover all that cost on the first part you sell to the customer, it’s just not realistic. I played a lot of that role of saying, “What does this look like over time?” Because normally when we developed a product for a customer, a new part, it’s a program that you get commitment for over a period of time. One example was we developed a stylet in the medical component manufacturing for a couple different big medical companies, and we would take over that whole business.

(10:34):

We had to put a proposal together to say, “Here’s what we think the market would be for a part like that.” Knowing full well we needed to ramp up our capability to do that, but we couldn’t really recover all that cost with the way we were pricing it. The role I played was create a multi-year plan of this is what it’s going to cost in year one with all the investment and the people build up. Then as we get more volume, here’s what that cost starts to become over time. Then looking at the revenue stream relative to the overall cost stream over that period of time, it would help drive, “Is this a viable project for us or not?” Which made the individual functions a bit nervous because Engineering would say, “Well, I don’t have it perfect.” Manufacturing would say, “You’re throwing a part into us and expecting us to do this at a profit when the cost structure is going to be significantly higher than it’s going to be profitable.” Then there’s Sales who are saying, “I just need a part.”

(11:44):

Helping bring those functional areas together and understanding it’s a longer term play than just make a part, get it in the customer and make money. It has to be a partnership not only internally across the functional areas, but also with the customer. You had to have the trust that the customer wasn’t just going to cherry-pick and take a product that we develop, buy it for a short period of time and say, “Okay, I’m going to move on.” All of those things really need to play nicely together to have a success when you’re trying to do something new. In Heraeus, we had a lot of those programs where it really was can we get to where we need to be over a reasonable period of time to serve the customer’s needs, but also to make it financially viable for us? That really taught me a lot about especially when I come now to Prinsco around Engineering who says, “I’m so busy, we need more people.” Manufacturing says, “Engineering keeps throwing crap to me and I can’t make it for the cost that it’s going to take for us to actually make a reasonable margin.” Sales to say, “I just need something.”

(13:00):

In Heraeus, it really has been a journey to help bring a different thought process to when we develop a new product, how do you do that in a way that satisfies the needs of all those various stakeholders? To me that’s been a really fun journey to be part of getting to that point, but also acknowledging that each functional area is going to have their own viewpoints of how this needs to be and what needs to happen. But at the end of the day, my role has been can we get to where we need to be by accomplishing the customer needs and making it worthwhile over a period of time, not on day one.

Speaker 2 (13:43):

That’s a really dynamic and complicated story that you just told, but it’s one that’s all too often, having those siloed departments. In fact, my experience in a lot of cases, Sales, Manufacturing and Engineering, they’re all like oil and water with each other. The ability to bring them together and then that’s one thing that I’ve always loved about talking with you is your strategic perspective and overarching approach. In cases like that, it’s really successful.

Todd Burness (14:18):

I’ve always tried to be the person in the finance role that understands the business enough where I can help bring the business together versus playing just a finance cop. I’ve often been told I’m not a typical finance guy, and I think that’s a compliment.

Speaker 2 (14:39):

It is.

Todd Burness (14:40):

I’ve really appreciated that because that’s where I get my joy is how to be the person that can bring the organization together to deliver something greater versus how that looks to me as an individual, say CFO of a company. To me, that’s paid off in spades here at Prinsco because we’ve done some really great things, not because of what I’ve done, but a lot of what I’ve been able to do is unleash the thinking and the confidence that we can do what we set out to do. We just have to be serious and go get it. But again, comes back to do we have the right people in the right seats with the right capabilities that believe in their abilities to execute. That’s been probably the most powerful learning I think across the Prinsco business is what’s possible.

Speaker 2 (15:36):

You mentioned Cargill and you mentioned that you grew up through Cargill and we’ve had a lot of fun conversations about some of those experiences, but I remember one, not specific conversation, but one general conversation where you talked about coming in to improve a business unit and helping shift the perspective of customers and helping them improve, not unlike what your role has been, what your role started at Prinsco as, but you did that for customers. That’s a mind-blowing undertaking, going and talking to customers and helping them shift their mindset. How does one pull something like that off?

Todd Burness (16:20):

I know exactly the conversation and the scenario you’re talking about. I came into Cargill when I was into a Cargill business unit called the malt business. I was coming in from overseas, I spent some time in Southeast Asia, and the malt business was a struggling business. The joke was, it was a Tonnes-R-Us business, run the plants full and sales guys, you figure out where to sell it. There was a group of four of us that were brought together to figure out can we turn that business around or do we recommend that Cargill sells it? What we did is we put together the first customer solution strategy in Cargill. What we did is we completely turned the business model on end because typically the sales guys would go out to a customer and bring a PowerPoint and they would say, “Here’s what we can do for you.”

(17:19):

What we did is we said, we’re going to change that because obviously it hasn’t been working and we’re going to say, no, we’re going to go to a customer, leave the computer behind and take a notebook and a pen, and we’re going to go in and all we’re going to do is ask questions. “Customer, what are you trying to do? What’s holding you back? If you’re able to accomplish what you’re trying to do, what’s that worth to you? In an ideal situation, what do you need to be successful?” As different functional areas and different members of teams, we would go into the customer, ask those questions, come back to the organization, pool our information and say, “How do we bring solutions to that customer’s problems to help them accomplish their goals and use that as a way to write a value proposition?”

(18:14):

In the end, our intent was to solve that customer’s issues with tangible value in their eyes that we could share in that value creation. Now, it always came down to a price conversation to a degree, but we converted a total commodity business into a thriving solution business and upfront we had to invest in a lot of capabilities that we didn’t have before. We spent a large amount of money putting capabilities in place for probably first three years, had to make some people changes as well because the whole Tonnes-R-Us model was entrenched in the operating side of the business. That’s all they want to do is throughput, keep their cost per pound or per tonne low. We invested in some new people, we invested in capabilities, some equipment, and in the end we turned a business that was barely breaking even to a thriving solution model that we ended up after I left, after it was about five years, that business was making over $50 million a year after tax.

Speaker 2 (19:26):

Wow.

Todd Burness (19:28):

The solutions we uncovered were not rocket science types of stuff. As one example, we were storing barley for one of the main brewers and it was pretty much our entire facility in a Wisconsin plant that was storing barley for free. We went to the customer after we understood one of their issues was they wanted the beer they produce, no matter where they sell in the world, it must taste exactly the same. We said, “Okay, we will provide a solution by specifically storing barley in a way that you get the same barley going into the malt process and you get the same flavor profile of that malt out of this plant every single time.” We went from storing that inventory for free to turning that into a model that said they were going to pay for that supply assurance and the flavor assurance coming out of that plant. One simple example.

(20:34):

Another really fun example is we partnered up with Boston Beer who had Sam Adams and they were a commodity customer. They were buying the cheapest barley from whoever. We went and talked to them. I went to one of their plants, talked to their CFO, we had Ops went in, we had Sales go in and at the end what we uncovered is they wanted to develop a light beer that had some color and had flavor, so they wanted to compete in the light beer segment. We went back to them and said, “We will be your flavor house. We’ll have supply assurance with a specific style of barley and a specific flavor profile of the malt coming out of that barley that will feed into what you’re trying to accomplish.” It was a supply assurance and a flavor profile guarantee, and the only caveat is it would have to be exclusive because otherwise if they have different suppliers for that light beer, we couldn’t guarantee that. We converted them from a commodity purchaser of malt to we were the sole supplier and helped them develop Sam Adams Light, and it’s been a huge success.

(21:58):

So just things like that that when you change the mentality from we’re a commodity business to we’re a solution-oriented business, great things can happen, but it is a complete shift in the way you think about the business.

Speaker 4 (22:12):

Through those transitions what do you think it was like on the client side? What was the client experience going from that commodity side to solution side? Were they happier? Were they…

Todd Burness (22:22):

Yeah, it was a transition almost like employees, with the customers it was like, “What are you guys doing? Why do you have your finance guy scheduling a meeting with our finance guy? What’s that all about? Why do you want your Ops person to come into our plant?” It was a bit of an education process of helping them understand, we just want to get better understanding of what it is you’re trying to accomplish and we need some access to your organization so that we fully understand what you’re trying to do. There was a bit of a trust barrier that we had to work through and that took time and was easier with some customers than others. Others had a hard time with that concept for quite a period of time until we started to have some success stories where we would have conversations with a customer, we would then start to write a value proposition.

(23:21):

In essence, all we did was we wrote what they told us. They wrote the value proposition. We just put it into a format that said, “Here’s what you told us you’re trying to accomplish, and here’s the value that you would realize if you got that, and here are the issues that are holding you back.” We would then go back and issue by issue, goal by goal, say, “Here’s your goal, here’s the issue, here’s the feature and the solution that we would bring to the table, and here’s the proof of the value of that, the way you think about it, not the way we think about it.” In essence, they would be writing their own value proposition that would come from us. And then we were able to talk a little bit about the next barrier was the value sharing.

(24:07):

If we could prove to them that we could bring significant value to them, then it started to be a different conversation, not just the price of the malt that we would sell, it’s the value creation that they would realize and what’s a reasonable sharing concept? There was stages of developing trust, developing that credibility and getting past this, “Your Sales guys can’t talk to my Operations people, you have to go through the Purchasing group.” We had to break through some of those barriers, but once we made some inroads and started to show some of the initial success, the receptiveness opened up, but it took time.

Speaker 4 (24:55):

Having the right perspective, having a Sales Team with the right perspective to come into those roles and be able to talk in that level and understand it’s really important. Otherwise you’re stuck at the commodity level. You’re stuck at pushing material and you’re not focused on, it’s just translating the client’s issue into something that’s visual that they can understand and that they grab onto.

Todd Burness (25:17):

Yeah. For sure, we had some salespeople that couldn’t make that transition from selling a commodity and just getting to the price versus exploring what the possibility is to develop a solution or bring the collective capabilities of a Cargill across all of the whole company. How do we bring those capabilities to bear to bring a solution to a customer problem? Some of the salespeople could quickly make that change because they found it really energizing. Those really commodity-oriented sales guy, some of them struggled and didn’t make the transition.

Speaker 4 (26:00):

We talked a little bit about pushing each other back and forth to make sure that we get to the ultimate goal that we’re trying to achieve. In that process you went through, how often did you push your clients and did your clients push you through that?

Todd Burness (26:15):

Yeah, we had, I’ll share one example. I’ll not put the names in here, but in the malt business as we were embarking on the solution strategy, we had our top technical resource who was a doctor of, I don’t remember what you call him, but he was a very bright guy in the technical aspects of malting. He was spending an enormous amount of time with a customer down in Brazil who was a commodity customer. As an executive leadership team, we said, “If we’re serious about this, we segmented our customer base and where are we going to invest in solution capabilities. Those customers that are just price sensitive, that wasn’t going to be where we want to invest our capabilities.” This customer in Brazil was a high-volume customer, so pretty key in terms of keeping our plants running. We had to talk to that customer and say, “We value your business, but we’re going to have to redirect our technical talent elsewhere, and you’re not going to have just all-time access to this resource.”

(27:36):

They got ticked because they were used to calling our resource direct, they got ticked and they cut us off of a significant amount of volume. Financially it hurt. It was a bit of a bloodbath for a period of time. The key there is we were so confident in our long-term strategy of becoming a solution provider that we said, “Yeah, this hurts, but we can’t just cave.” If they’re going to take that volume from us, we’re not going to reverse direction. We’re going to continue the path. It was probably a good two years where that volume had a pretty negative impact, but at the same time, we were making progress with our other segmented customers that we deemed as brew masters, which was all about taste, and operators, which was all about their facility throughput. We started to have success in solution propositions that we saw this was working and we didn’t want to compromise that by caving into a commodity customer that got ticked because they no longer had access to some of our capabilities that they were used to having.

(28:56):

It was painful for about two years until we started to get that traction. Again, it comes back to that longer-term perspective and frankly to be a little bit all-in versus at the first sign of challenge are you going to cave? I think that correlates well to what I’ve seen at Prinsco is we typically have a view to the future, but we get tangled up in the short-term details. Again, that’s a role I’ve tried to play is are we thinking about this strategically for the long term? Let’s not get too hung up on does it cost too much to make this in the first year versus does it make sense to continue the path we’re on from more of a long-term perspective? A lot of those Cargill or Heraeus experiences have helped me put some of the thinking to the product development we’ve done in Prinsco. A lot of that is with you guys.

Speaker 2 (29:53):

I get super excited about that conversation. What I heard you talk about is the journey of coming from a scarcity mindset to an opportunity mindset, especially in the commodity business where you’re going from conversations of what’s the lowest price I can get to, “Wow, how do we get this business to grow even more?” The success that you had at Cargill was nothing probably compared to the success that cascaded down to your customers. I’d imagine that there was a major shift in their perspectives coming from where do I get the cheapest material to how do I get more engagement with Cargill so that I can even empower my business more?

Todd Burness (30:37):

Very much. The malt business was fun and challenging at the same time. There were only four major suppliers at malt in the U.S. Industry, and there’s frankly limited number of big brewers. So changing that perspective and helping them see the value of shifting away from this commodity mentality, once that started to click, you could see the energy in the customer side.

Speaker 2 (31:05):

Yeah.

Todd Burness (31:06):

Tons of fun to be part of that evolution.

Speaker 2 (31:10):

Significant impact on companies much broader than just Cargill.

Todd Burness (31:15):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:16):

I bet you that was a ton of fun.

Todd Burness (31:17):

It was a ton of fun. It’s not bad being in the beer industry.

Speaker 2 (31:22):

There’s that too. Speaking of, we’re going to have to grab that beer soon. There’s a lot of parallels with that story that you told at Cargill and what we see in our business. We’re very much a solution mindset, and that’s another reason why I feel like kindred spirits here, but just talking about the positive impact that you can have rather than the lowest price you can offer, and looking at things through that lens just makes the pie that much larger. It’s something that I hope that as our audience watches this, that’s really the main takeaway that I’ve had in many of our conversations is the power of focusing on enlarging the pie rather than getting to the smallest price, lowest price.

Todd Burness (32:12):

Yeah. I think it is important to think through, not every customer is going to be receptive to a solution. There’s always going to be those commodity or price sensitive customers. That’s not to say they’re bad, there’s a place for them, but what I’ve learned is you got to be really diligent about selecting where you want to invest time and energy on a solution mechanism to a customer that may be ready now or may not be quite ready, but you believe you can get them there. We had a few customers that we had to invest the time and energy to almost graduate them from a commodity way of thinking to more of a solution way of thinking. But it’s important to do that diligence upfront to almost classify the customers and those that are price sensitive and are always going to be more commodity mindset.

(33:11):

You don’t want to do away with those customers, there’s a place for those customers, but you need to service them in a way that makes sense and is aligned to a commodity way of thinking. It’s those that are willing or you believe willing to entertain a solution approach to helping their business that you want to invest in the capabilities to mature that relationship to a long-term almost partnership, which generally means you’re going to have more upfront cost and investment, but the payoff will be there. You just got to continue to do the work to understand their needs and their issues and how you’re able to bring a solution to that, knowing full well, you may have no idea how that’s going to happen. It’s important to have the business mindset, the people structure and the ability to generate the capability to deliver that solution, even though you may not be able to see what that looks like today.

Speaker 2 (34:14):

It’s a hell of a commitment.

Todd Burness (34:17):

It can be a big commitment.

Speaker 4 (34:19):

It seems like there’s a few areas, like key areas that are critical for navigating any program. We’re really talking about programs in general and programs impact clients, and there’s key areas. You got to have a team with the right perspective. You have to have a team that challenges each other both across the client to us, whoever the vendor might be. Internally, those challenges have to be transparent. That’s how you get to a good solution. There’s probably one other key there. So perspective, being challenged, and-

Todd Burness (35:02):

I would say maybe the other one is just pure intellectual curiosity. In the malt business I worked with the most creative Sales leader I’ve ever worked with, he was a visionary kind of a guy and totally creative. He would look at… It was funny, I forget where we were, I think it might’ve been South America, and he bought a bag of gummy bears and he was chewing on these things and he started to think, what if we developed a beer that would have a gummy flavor? He was that kind of guy that he would do something or see something or hear something, and his mind would automatically start thinking about how could we take this to a different level? Now there’s dangers to that, and he absolutely had extreme value, but extreme risk. Again, that’s the role I played in the malt businesses, is to help him take his ideas and channel it in a productive way or reel him in when he was getting off on a tangent that was going to create more risk than good, and there was a number of both of those.

(36:12):

I think that intellectual curiosity and that natural desire to say, “What if, how could we do that?” That was a fun experience to work with somebody like that, that was so creative that you had to really keep up with him. Now, I would say on the other side, you’ve got my experience, typically, engineers are not that type of people. But you need that combination of that intellectual curiosity with, “Okay, but what’s it going to take to actually do that?” Blending that together is a bit of an art.

Speaker 4 (36:50):

Sounds like a wild journey. Gummy bear beer. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard or tasted any of that before.

Speaker 2 (36:57):

I’d go for some gummy bear beer.

Todd Burness (37:02):

But that’s what makes that kind of a business model a lot of fun. Now, it can also be a big risk if you don’t make sure you’ve got some way to corral all those ideas and not try to act on all of them, but build upon an idea and have a team of people that can banter that back and forth, especially as it starts to correlate to something that the customer is needing.

Speaker 2 (37:31):

I’ve got a couple questions. There’s been other questions, but I’ve got a couple of specific questions. Somehow you’ve got something like, I’m doing the math real quick, something like 37 years of experience, but you’re only 35, which we’ll touch on that one later. We’ll talk about how you pull that off over a beer. What advice would you give your 20-something younger self if you could today?

Todd Burness (38:00):

Wow, it’s a good question. Yeah, I would say be more patient. I was someone that was quick to react if something wasn’t going right, to be more hard on driving for results. I think growing up in Cargill early on in my career, that was the expectation. That was the role of the accounting side of the business. I got myself in a little trouble a couple of times of trying to be too pragmatic about delivering on something, and I probably wasn’t enough of steward of culture 20 years ago. It was all about results. I think the learning that Prinsco has helped me understand much better is if you have something like the culture and the values that drive a competitive advantage, you got to be all in and really foster that versus demand that. I think that was my younger self was more of the demanding type versus the nurturing and influencer.

Speaker 2 (39:09):

We just keep learning. It is a journey. I think that’s what’s really fun for me and rewarding about conversations like these and others that we’ve had is just sharing in that journey, learning from you. You’re obviously very passionate about having an impact and passionate about having a career that makes a difference, and that’s something that we’re passionate about as well, and I really appreciate having the time to be able to chat through those stories.

Todd Burness (39:42):

Yeah, it’s been fun.

Speaker 2 (39:45):

The last question is, this conversation could go on for a long time, it’s like we’ve learned, we have a lot of fun with this, but we’ve talked about this tension that exists between different silos in an organization and the importance of getting an initiative launched. Not worrying so much about that cost and those sorts of implications right away, but having a commitment to it. What advice would you give to some individuals in those teams who may be siloed? How do they either elevate their own perspective or get colleagues to elevate their perspectives? Really broad question.

Todd Burness (40:25):

Yeah, it is a broad question, but it’s an important one. I think the way I’ve tried to tackle that at Prinsco is ask probing questions and shy away from answering questions with specific answers, but also being very clear on what is it we’re trying to accomplish.