Sara Taillon, Managing Partner at TheoremOne, finds that spending time learning about people is just as important as learning about new technologies.

Alison Dean:

This is The Breakthrough Podcast, an ongoing series where we interview game-changing leaders in technology, business, government, and entertainment about their experiences and perspectives in life and leadership, learn about their latest breakthroughs, and hopefully inspire you to have some of your own. [00:00:30] Welcome to The Breakthrough. I'm Alison Dean, and today we are talking with Sara Taillon, currently managing partner at TheoremOne. She leads a division of almost 100 people, helping clients deliver on their most innovative initiatives through software strategy and delivery.

Prior to joining TheoremOne, Sara held a variety of leadership roles from VP of product to director of technology. She is a practitioner of lean and agile processes and has led these transformations at several companies, and [00:01:00] has driven to create ecosystems that enable software teams to thrive and do their best work. Sara sent me this quote from Buddha, "When it hurts, observe. Life is trying to teach you something." Hi, Sara.

Sara Taillon:

Hi Alison.

Alison Dean:

How are you?

Sara Taillon:

I'm good, thank you.

Alison Dean:

Why does that quote resonate with you?

Sara Taillon:

Well, I think sometimes when things are going wrong, we're just so eager to get out of the situation or put it behind us, move on, just fix it and [00:01:30] stop thinking about it. But I think it's important either in the moment or after the moment to really reflect about that. What is it that went wrong, how did it go wrong? How can we prevent it in the future? Otherwise, you're bound to make the same mistake again.

Alison Dean:

Well said. I think we all can improve on that on some level, right? Yeah. All right, can you walk us through a typical day for you at TheoremOne and do you have a morning routine?

Sara Taillon:

I do. I actually like to take the dog out for a hike [00:02:00] in the woods before I start work, which is a nice way for me to kind of focus my mind. It's easy to get caught up in meetings, going from one meeting to the next, and you just get kind of caught up in the day-to-day. So I like to spend that time really thinking about what's the one most important thing that I need to do today for this week, and make sure that I at least have some time to work on that during the day. Really focus on what's the one most important thing that needs to happen and how am I going to move towards that. In addition to [00:02:30] that, I spend a lot of time in meetings. Typically, the first half of my day is in meetings. I could be meeting with key leaders on my team.

I also like to meet with certain individual contributors who I know will really tell me how things are actually going, they won't just tell me what they think I want to hear, but they'll tell me how things are really going on the team, which is great because then I get a good perspective of what it's like for individuals on the team. I usually spend some time in client meetings, trying to understand what our client's goals are, whether they're existing [00:03:00] clients or potential new clients. And from there, I try to take a walk and, again, sort of reset my mind and then go back to whatever focused tasks I need to do, whatever kind of heads-down work I might need to do that day.

Alison Dean:

I need to take your lead on a walk reset happening.

Sara Taillon:

I swear by it. I swear by walking, not just for physical health, but really for my mental health as well. It really helps me just reset and refocus and not just get caught up in just reactive mode all day.

Alison Dean:

Well, [00:03:30] just also fresh air. I think all of us should have specific calls during the week where it's taking the call on the road, so literally, taking the call in nature on some level, whatever, or just not in our office. I don't remember, I think it was someone at Slack, I was watching something, some conference. I thought, "That's such a good idea. Yeah, we all should do that, a little reset." Although, there's so many meetings where you have to physically take notes, you want to remember things. That's where the walking just doesn't quite help with that.

Sara Taillon:

When I'm in [00:04:00] a meeting and I want to just be an observer or in a supporting role, I do sometimes like to go outside on the deck. It helps me not be distracted by things like Slack and other work and other messages, and I can really just focus. And I swear that I remember those meetings better because I'm in a different place and then I associate that place, "Yeah, I remember that call. I was sitting outside and I was watching that bird and we were talking about X, Y, and Z."

Alison Dean:

I love that. Actually, now that you're saying that, and I'm thinking [00:04:30] of times where I've done calls not in my office, you're right, those land differently. I like that, too. All right, what does digital transformation mean to you? 

Sara Taillon:

I think the V1 of digital transformation is just sort of a very literal transposing a paper thing onto digital media. For example, with standardized assessments, we went from taking those on Scantron or on paper, to taking those on [00:05:00] the computer in a digital way. And that's just the very basic level and it's valuable, it allows us to easily look at trends and scores and things like that, but it's not really what I would call transformation. It's just taking one thing and putting it in a different form. What I think of as real transformation is then the next level from that. We're working with a company who wants to revolutionize the way that educational assessments are given, and they've been in this business, they have an educational [00:05:30] assessment that has been one of the favorite standards for 30, 40 years. And they recognize that there's a better way to do it.

Rather than having one assessment that you take once a year and you get the results as a parent, I just got my daughter's state standardized assessment results. And literally, she had a score and then for next steps it said, "Follow up with her teacher on next steps." It was really left feeling like, "Well, so what?" But the better way to do standardized assessments, [00:06:00] I think we all realize, is to do these more bite size assessments. Maybe every day or once a week in class, you're getting an assessment and it's digitized for one thing, it's not just a paper assessment. But then it gives you insightful recommendations. "Oh, it looks like this person didn't understand order of operations, so go back to this page, watch this video and then try these practice problems and then we'll reassess you tomorrow." It is a much more transformative [00:06:30] way of assessing a student's understanding so that then they can go on and do something about it, not just, "Oh, you've only gotten the 60th percentile. Sorry about that."

Alison Dean:

Better luck next time, yeah.

Sara Taillon:

Better luck next time and make sure you get lots of sleep next year in March.

Alison Dean:

It kind of reminds me, I just got in my Instagram feed, a recommendation for this app called Elevate. I don't know if you've heard of it, but I'm in my one week trial of it. But it is interesting because it reminds me [00:07:00] of these micro assessments, essentially, but they're just tracking you over, they're hoping you do it daily. But sort of interesting, I like the idea of what you're saying. Micro assessments over time with recommendations, it helps optimize us way more than just some once a year thing. I mean, we can say that about performance reviews too, so I think in environments where it's a once a year situation versus continuous feedback that's productive and what that looks like, how those two different approaches [00:07:30] really can create very different results.

Sara Taillon:

Yeah, there's nothing like getting feedback about something you did three months ago or something you learned three months ago and it turns out you didn't learn it properly. Nice to know in the moment we could have done more about it.

Alison Dean:

Totally agree. Okay, what project comes to mind for you that's most representative of a digital transformation? And it's fine if there's more than one that comes to mind.

Sara Taillon:

I talked about the one with the educational assessments, but another example is I previously worked in the clinical [00:08:00] trials industry and for years and years, that was literally a paper-based system where you'd go into the doctor's office, they would fill out a paper form, put it in a binder, and then those binders would get collected and the data would get assessed at the end. And the first step of, quote unquote, digital transformation was literally just to take those paper forms and digitize them. And that had some benefit, you could have basic data validation. Oh, we expected a date there, and you put a number, [00:08:30] an age and that sort of thing, and you can report the results earlier.

But it's really not transforming the fundamental experience of, in order to participate in this clinical trial, I need to find out a doctor who's participating in it, I need to go and visit them, tell them about how it's going. Report any negative things that might have happened, which I'm probably not going to remember that I had a headache last Wednesday when I go to the doctor, and it's only available to me if I can get to a doctor [00:09:00] that's participating in that study, which is really limiting.

So when we worked at this company, we had a revolutionary idea where we were going to bring clinical trials directly to participants. So instead of going to your doctor and signing up for the clinical trial and then reporting to them how it's going, what symptoms you're having, if you're getting any better, you would sign up for this clinical trial directly through a web application. There would be a lot of medical guidance along the way. You'd [00:09:30] have a doctor or a nurse practitioner who would check in with you at a regular time. You would have someone either come to your house to do blood draws or other lab tests, but it's coming to you. You're not having to travel to a doctor, you're signing up for it. You are directly reporting, "Oh, I had a headache this morning. I'm going to report that right now instead of in three weeks when I go to the doctor's office."

So that for me was really digital transformation. We were no longer just taking paper and turning into digital media. We [00:10:00] were actually taking advantage of the digital world in order to create an entirely new experience and unlock it for people who otherwise just wouldn't have access to clinical trials.

Alison Dean:

Okay. So separate from perhaps a digital transformation, is there a project that comes to mind for you that's the most memorable project that you've been part of?

Sara Taillon:

Lots of them. We've been doing a lot of projects this year related to enabling regular business people to have access to big data. So one of the trends that [00:10:30] I'm seeing in the industry is that a lot of, especially larger organizations, have very mature ML, AI, and massive amounts of data. Typically, in order to get access to that data, you have to pair with a data scientist. So you have to get funding for your project, get access to the data science team, and then have them answer your question for you.

A trend we're starting to see is cutting out the data scientist in some of [00:11:00] those cases. So enabling just regular business people to know where to go to look for the data, to be able to take advantage of other similar questions that people might have asked, or maybe they've even asked the same question and that's been answered for somebody else who has a slightly different need, to be able to take advantage of that and get access to the data themselves, rather than have to always work through a data scientist.

So that's been a theme that we've seen on a couple of projects this year. I think it's really interesting and [00:11:30] exciting just to enable more data driven decisions and to not have it be a big deal like, "We got to get funding and go to a data scientist in order to make a good decision based on data." That shouldn't be the case.

Alison Dean:

Right. Okay. So can you talk about the most difficult project that you've been part of and the learnings from that project?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. We're working with a client to replace a legacy system. It was very central to a lot of just [00:12:00] their day-to-day operations, and we did a discovery project with them and we thought we knew how to build the replacement system, but it turned out that we had underestimated some of the project needs because we were not really thinking enough about the systems that needed to integrate with us. We realized, maybe a month or two into the project, that we had underestimated the amount of work that was going to be involved. [00:12:30] We also assumed that we could deliver a more minimal viable product than was actually needed. We were replacing a legacy system, so when we were thinking we could leave features out, we weren't properly thinking about, "Well, what happens? They have that feature today, so what are they going to do-"

Alison Dean:

When they don't.

Sara Taillon:

"... in the MVP world when they don't have that?" So that was challenging that we had just been so just overly optimistic about what it would take to deliver the program. It [00:13:00] worked out well in the end though. We aligned with the client, they understood. In fact, they sort of expected that it was going to be harder than we thought it was going to be. So we were able to correct the situation, but it was challenging to think that we could do it pretty easily with a not very big team, and then to realize it was actually much more complex than we thought.

Alison Dean:

Okay. So based on that project, what are you going to carry forth with you to future projects to ensure that doesn't happen again?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah, I think the main thing there is setting expectations. [00:13:30] So especially when we do a discovery phase, I think it's easy to expect that we know all the answers after weeks or even months looking at systems. But the truth is, you don't really know until you really just roll up your sleeves and start building it. So we could have done a better job of setting expectations about what we actually knew and what we didn't know, and where we were making assumptions. Highlighting assumptions is a big mistake.

Alison Dean:

I feel like it's a theme [00:14:00] that I've rumbled many a time, maybe not to you, Sara, but to others on the team where I've just said, "Expectation setting, it's a big deal."

Sara Taillon:

The thing about assumptions is you don't really always recognize when you're making assumptions. You think that you understand and that you're clear, and, "No, I'm not making assumptions. Those are just the facts." But it's hard sometimes to know when it's not actually the fact, that you didn't ask enough questions there.

Alison Dean:

I wonder how more external contributors can be leveraged in [00:14:30] those types of situations to perhaps get a different purview on some of that. I wonder how that could possibly be course-corrected, just people that aren't in those typical projects.

Sara Taillon:

I think it's important to take the exercise of really thinking intentionally about what are the assumptions, what are the things that I think are true, that I think are facts? Because some of those might actually be assumptions, not really facts.

Alison Dean:

Yeah, I love that, actually. I could use that in just any of the procurement projects that I've been part of and what are the [00:15:00] things that I'm assuming. There's a lot of things that you can make assumptions about when you see a demo of a tool, like, "Oh, well, I'm going to assume it does this because it does this," and that's definitely gotten me into trouble.

Okay. There's obviously been a very hearty handful of recent projects that you've been part of. Given the velocity that technology is changing, changes, et cetera, what do you think has offered you the most new learnings, and what are [00:15:30] those learnings?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. As I get more mature in my career, I find that the things that I'm learning are not necessarily new technologies or hot new ways of working. It's more about humans and how humans work together, how we interact, how we fundamentally behave. So I think it's interesting that the more advanced I get in my career, the more basic the lessons are that I need to focus on.

For example, one of the things that I'm [00:16:00] really focused on is creating psychological safety. So Google did a study and found that one of the best indicators of a high performance team was their sense of psychological safety. So it wasn't about who is the most senior engineer or how many people are on the team or any of that. It was about the team sense of psychological safety, which is the ability to ask questions and raise concerns and not have fear [00:16:30] of negative consequences of that.

So we want people to speak up, especially sometimes you can be in a conversation and you might have a concern or a question and nobody else is talking about it. And so you might doubt yourself, "Maybe it's not important," or, "Obviously there's an answer otherwise other people would be asking it. What am I missing?" But it's really important to raise those concerns because it's actually more likely that other people are in the same state of mind. "How [00:17:00] come nobody's talking about the big obvious risk that we should all be worried about?" So if teams feel safe raising those questions and concerns, they're more likely to learn from their mistakes, point out issues before they become real problems, and you'll hear about the warning signs before they're actually problems.

Alison Dean:

Spot on. You've been in technology for basically your entire career at this point. So are there some major lessons that you've learned? Obviously you've shared a lot already, but if you were to bullet [00:17:30] out the great lessons from working in tech, what would those be?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. Specific to technology, I think it's just important to keep in mind that timing is everything. So you might have an idea for something, and maybe it's not possible today, but it might be possible in a year or in five years. Or it might be that you have a great idea and it's totally possible and you make it happen, but people just aren't ready for it. For example, with that clinical trials software, [00:18:00] it was a good idea. We were really excited about it and what we learned is that the world wasn't quite ready for it. We needed a way to create that sense of trust. How do I know that the data that I enter in the system is going to be safeguarded and used as I think it's going to be used?

And so what we came to realize was her timing wasn't quite right there. We ended up scaling back a little bit and focused instead on the informed consent process, which the world was a little bit more ready [00:18:30] to receive. So I still think it's a good idea. I still am sure that eventually that industry is going in that direction, but the timing just wasn't quite right at the time. So I would say, when the timing's not right, just put that in your back pocket and revisit it later.

Alison Dean:

So many things are coming into my mind where I'm like, "Yes, that was a timing thing. Yes, that was a timing... Yeah, that's spot on." Okay, what are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned from being a leader in technology and otherwise?

Sara Taillon:

Boy, when I first [00:19:00] became a technology leader, my concept, my mental image of what a leader is, was that person who stands in front and says, "We're going in that direction," confidently knows all the answers, and they just point the team in the right direction. And my style as a leader was not like that at all. My first team that I led, I was on a team of really talented engineers and I was appointed the lead engineer and I thought, "There must be some mistake, 'cause those other guys are way better engineers [00:19:30] than I am."

And what I came to understand was the best person in the team lead role wasn't necessarily the best engineers, it's the person who leads the team, coordinates their work the best. And I am the kind of leader who gets a lot of input from my other leaders and team members. I like to know what their perspective is, I like to hear their concerns, I like to hear their ideas.

And I thought for a long time that that was a weakness. And what I've actually come to understand is that's actually a really good way to lead teams. [00:20:00] I'm not going to have all the answers. I'm never going to be the best engineer in the room, the best designer in the room, the best product strategist in the room. So it's better for me to hire all the right people, ask them the right questions, give them autonomy and lean on them. I don't have to have all the right answers.

Alison Dean:

I also think that that's what really inspires new leaders. So giving people the space and also the trust. I think it really empowers people to take ownership [00:20:30] of whatever it is that they want next in their career, whether it be a leadership role or otherwise. I think having a good boss really opens the doors to that stuff. It gives you the movement to have space to think about that stuff. When you have dictators, it doesn't work that same way, I think. You feel small.

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. I think a mark of a good leader is that the team can function independently if that person goes on vacation for two weeks. If the [00:21:00] team falls apart when you walk away for two weeks, then clearly you haven't empowered the team, and you've created a really risky single point of failure for the program and for the company. Yeah, it's important to give everybody a chance to give their input.

Alison Dean:

I think that's the thing that we're actively working on right now, especially with my role, is if Alison can take a vacation, that's a really healthy sign that all things are going well.

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. Actually taking a vacation is a really good tool for a manager because it's a great [00:21:30] opportunity to test where are there places where the team doesn't know how to function when I'm gone. It's also a good opportunity for people who maybe might want to be a leader but aren't sure, to step into the role for two weeks and see how it goes, and then learn some things and decide maybe, "Is that role for me? Yes, and I want to work on these things," or "No, thanks." So yeah, going on vacation is highly recommended.

Alison Dean:

Right. So many reasons why. What [00:22:00] do you want your direct reports to remember you for?

Sara Taillon:

I hope that they remember me for helping them do their best work. For me, my goal as a leader is to create an ecosystem where software teams can do great work. So putting the right people together, supporting them with the right process, giving them the right sense of purpose or mission, and then just standing back and letting them be autonomous. So [00:22:30] I really try to understand what circumstances allow teams to do their best work, and I try to recreate that for people. It's not always perfect, but that's what I hope I remembered for.

Alison Dean:

What are the most important lessons that you've learned from your mentors?

Sara Taillon:

I had a boss, Teresa Mulvihill, and she really taught me how to focus on people's strengths. So at that company, everyone took this assessment called the Clifton Strengths Finder, [00:23:00] and it maps out what your strengths are. And we would use that, and sometimes she would look at the results for a person and create a unique role that uniquely suits their strengths. And we would try to pair people up on teams or as partners so that one person's strengths would support or fill in for another person's weakness.

And it was pretty amazing, and we got really good results. We [00:23:30] got so much more from really leaning on people's strengths and focusing on their strengths than we did on trying to shore up their weaknesses. We all have weaknesses, and they can't go without being addressed. But when you exclusively focus on weaknesses, you're just going to get a little bit of growth. But instead, if you create a situation where you can make the most of people's strengths, you're going to get way more out of it.

But you have to allow yourself to be a little bit flexible. So you can't necessarily have a certain mold of what [00:24:00] one person should look like in a certain role. You have to be a little bit flexible. With this person, they're going to have these additional responsibilities, and we're going to have somebody else take over some of the other responsibilities so that it's really tailored to their strengths.

Alison Dean:

I wonder what would happen if, as part of the onboarding process or even in the interview process, if you were told to take the Clifton Strength 25 test, just how that would change the landscape of recruitment.

Sara Taillon:

I actually had a bunch [00:24:30] of people on my team take it, and one person who was a product manager, he was a good product manager, he had some challenges and we were working on those together. And he took the Strengths Finder and what he discovered was that we actually weren't positioning him in a place where he could make the most use of his strengths. He was a far more strategic thinker, and we had him more in a tactical role. And we eventually moved him to a different role in a different part of the company. And he's been super successful since [00:25:00] then and way happier too. So we've had a success story there, already.

Alison Dean:

There's something to be said for the Clifton Strengths, yep.

Sara Taillon:

It's a good one. I like it. Yeah.

Alison Dean:

I actually just redid mine recently. I feel like I should send it to you and you can tell me what you think. All right. So this is a fun one. Rohan Weigel, VP of data and operations at Realm was on the podcast, and he has this question for you, Sara. As companies move from early stage to later stage, what do you think is the key to keeping employees [00:25:30] who join for the startup experience highly engaged?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah, that's a great question. That's a challenging one. What I would say is that it's probably a little bit of an individual question. So the first thing you should do is talk to those key people and see what keeps them motivated. And the other thing too is to understand that their circumstances might change over time. So maybe they joined the startup and they loved the fast pace and they were getting stuff done, and they could see so much value [00:26:00] they had built, but maybe their life circumstances have changed since then, and what they prefer now is something a bit more stable. They want to work regular hours and not work at such a crazy pace. So I think it's really important to check with individuals and see what they need because it's probably not one solution that fits for everyone.

The second thing I would say is that it's really important for people to have context and understand how they fit into the mission. So if you [00:26:30] can make sure that they understand what the company mission is and they can figure out what's the best way that I can play into that mission, or even if they have to do something that maybe is not their favorite work to do, it's a lot easier to do that work when you see that it's an important part of the mission. So yeah, this isn't my favorite thing to do, but I'll do it for a couple of months because I see it gets us to this next place, and then we'll talk about the next role then.

Alison Dean:

What projects are especially [00:27:00] interesting to you as you continue in your career?

Sara Taillon:

I'm really interested in projects that help people. Honestly, anything where I can see a real impact for people gets me excited. So for example, I mentioned the Educational Assessment Project. I have two kids, a junior in high school and a fifth grader, so to me, that's something where I can personally see how much value that would bring, and that's exciting.

But even some of the sort of enterprise software that we build can even be exciting [00:27:30] as well, because I can sometimes see the legacy systems that people are working with, how painful it is to do something that might seem like it should be pretty simple, and I'm excited to solve that for them. They're working in this system all day long, and I want it to be a better experience for them. So those are the kinds of projects that I get really excited about.

In terms of trends, technology trends, I mentioned before making big data accessible to regular business users is something we're seeing a lot of this year. We're also seeing [00:28:00] a lot of just movement in blockchain, NFT, smart contracts. And those projects are interesting to me because, honestly, right now a lot of them seem a bit trivial in nature, I don't see the big value. But what I think is happening there is I think we're all just taking a moment to kind of play with the Legos so to speak, to understand what we can build with it. And so I think the really meaningful projects using those technologies are in front of us, once we know [00:28:30] what we can build then we'll come up with some really compelling uses of that technology.

Alison Dean:

I'm not sure if you already answered the next question based on what you just said. Is that a future innovation that you're excited about, or one that you're just like, okay, we're playing with the Legos right now, it's interesting. Or is there any other future innovations right now, future tech, that you're excited about, and where do you see things progressing?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. Not necessarily a technology per se, but one of the trends I'm seeing in the technology industry is a move [00:29:00] towards more diversity. We're seeing more culturally, geographically diverse teams, teams with more gender diversity. And I think that that is really crucial because more and more we're facing more challenging, more complex problems that are highly ambiguous, and it's not at all clear what the solution should be. And when we have those super complex problems, we need creative solutions. [00:29:30] And so we need to think of things very differently. If we're all sitting in a room, we come from the same background and we have similar experiences, we're going to have similar ideas, and that's not going to be as helpful as if we come from very different backgrounds and experiences, and we have very different ways of thinking about things, then we're going to get a bunch of different ideas, and then we'll have creative solutions to these challenging problems. So I'm really excited about that. It's important, and it's been a long time coming.

Alison Dean:

I agree with that. So [00:30:00] obviously I think as it relates to more acceptance of the remote work environment, that's really leaning into DEI, diversity really having a bigger impact. But at the same time I'm curious your thoughts as it relates to feeling connected to your company. So it's that push and pull. It's like there's so many advantages to global hiring and getting global perspective for problem solving, but how do you also keep [00:30:30] those people all engaged and feeling like they're all a unit when you're not necessarily knocking on the door next to you and going hey, you want to grab a quick coffee or-

Sara Taillon:

We have to be way more intentional about it, that's for sure. So we'll do things like we'll have All Hands meetings within the program or within the team, and we'll use that as a moment to kind of step back from the day-to-day work and think about what's the bigger mission and how is what we're doing right now play [00:31:00] into that. That gives people that sense of purpose, makes it a little easier to slough through the unpleasant aspects of the job. So I think being really intentional about sharing that mission is really important.

And then in terms of culture, boy that's tricky. There are some technology tools that really help with that, video is absolutely one of them. I have a bunch of team members that when I finally meet them in person it's so funny because we'll both say oh my gosh, [00:31:30] this is the first time we've met in person, how crazy is that, because I feel like I know you so well, we see each other face to face every day. So I think video conferencing is really important. Slack, too, is really important, both in terms of being able to communicate in near real-time, but also just a place to have fun and make jokes and create a sense of culture there. And then you know too that we before COVID were doing retreats, which is great to get people face-to-face and really create that human connection. It is hard to [00:32:00] replace the FaceTime, I know it's difficult as we're all across the world, but there's just nothing like being together in person.

Alison Dean:

And breaking bread, yes. Can you speak about a breakthrough that you've had recently?

Sara Taillon:

Yeah. So over the past year or so in my role I now manage director-level people. So when I first became the manager I was managing individual contributors. I was helping them do a job that [00:32:30] I personally knew how to do, and then it kind of got to the next level where I was then managing managers. So I was helping people help other people do the job that we both know how to do. Now that I'm managing directors it's even more meta, so now I'm managing people that manage managers.

As I go up the ladder so to speak the job changes. So now it's not about tactical strategies, like how do you run an effective sprint planning meeting? [00:33:00] It's more about how do we create an organizational structure that's scalable? How do we make sure that people are happy and engaged and want to stay here for a long time? How do we share the mission with everybody and make sure that people know how their work fits into the mission? It's about helping them make good decisions, asking questions, rather than offering solutions. That's one of the breakthroughs that I've had over the past year is helping people manage [00:33:30] other managers.

Alison Dean:

Okay. Any other final thoughts, Sara?

Sara Taillon:

Ooh, I don't think so, I think we covered a lot of ground there.

Alison Dean:

We did right? Not so bad. Well we thank you so much for being on The Breakthrough.

Sara Taillon:

Yeah, thank you so much, Alison. It was a pleasure.

Alison Dean:

And thank you for tuning into this episode of The Breakthrough. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at BreakthruPod. I'm your host Alison Dean, until next time.

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