Transcript
Updated Intro - Feb 2024
[00:00:00] Sam: Okay, it's the Greatmakers from The Build Tank. Back after quite a long break, with a rare story of successful procrastination that actually kind of worked out pretty well.
This podcast was recorded a year ago, an entire year ago, with Ashley Boyd at the Mozilla Foundation, a group that we worked with to do a Technology Platforms Team transformation-- transform the way that they stewarded their technology and the value that they got out of it.
And because of that year delay, which I was feeling very ashamed of, it turns out that when I checked back with Ashley she had a beautiful sort of follow up coda to the results of some of that work we had done together.
So we're going to start this episode with the more recent updates just so we can cut right to the chase of some of the results that came out of it. And then we'll go back to the original interview from there. So check it out.
[Music]
Interview Update - Feb 2024
[00:00:51] Sam: Okay, so Ashley Boyd, Senior Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Mozilla Foundation.
[00:01:01] Ashley: Yes. Nice to chat with you again.
[00:01:03] Sam: Likewise. Listen, I know you're making time again for us right before you head off to London, so let's get right to it.
[00:01:08] Sam: We talked last almost a year ago, and shamefully I never got that episode out. But maybe fortunately, since it sounds like you have a new reflection to share about some of the results of the work. You want to share some of that?
[00:01:18] Ashley: Well, as you know, one of the key things that we were of course looking to do in our tech platforms work was to support our digital fundraising team against a really difficult digital fundraising landscape. We know that across the sector it is going down and it was certainly true for us. We had really lost traction because of our problems with data and tooling and team structure, team processes. So we were trying to see whether we could turn the tide on that.
And we have! And so the result of that for 2023 was we raised 3.43 million, which is 1.2 million dollars more in 2023 than we had in 2022. It was a 54 percent increase.
[00:02:01] Sam: Wow.
[00:02:01] Ashley: And so much of that is really due to the work that we did with you and with our teams to really invest in our digital infrastructure and our team structure.
[00:02:12] Sam: Oh, that's great.
[00:02:13] Ashley: Yes. It was surprising and exhilarating, of course, to see what a quick turnaround- with a lot of hard work- we were able to produce.
If we think about it, too, and I know you talked about this with us a lot, but it also equals more than the investment we made.
And I think also maybe a little bit of a hidden piece that was the driver also is finding the right staff to be able to make the most of the tools and technology we had. So I think because we had a clear pathway to improving our infrastructure, we were able to attract the talent who were excited about the transformation we were making, wanted to be a part of it and then able to make the most of the changes we had already implemented and make more.
So it seems obvious now, but if I look back on it, the ability to attract talent with the investment we were making and our mindset was a key factor.
[00:03:04] Sam: Yeah, that's so well said. You know, not only avoiding losing talented people out of, you know, frustration because of lack of systems they need, but really using great technology systems and people as a selling point for attracting another level of talent in the rest of the organization.
I wonder if I could ask you just a couple more quick questions.
Ashley: Sure.
[00:03:20] Sam: As you know, bad technology tends to breed a lot of conflict and finger pointing and turf wars and you name it. Usually not because anyone's a bad actor, just because there's this key gap that, that leads to basically no one getting what they need. And that's what we're trying to fill and then things start to ease.
So it's been about a year now. I'm just wondering if you're seeing the needle move on that stuff at all.
[00:03:40] Ashley: Sure. I would say day to day the amount of kind of conflict and confusion is down by 95%, which is, you know-- creates a lot more energy. So a lot more clarity about sort of who's doing what and how to resolve concerns. I would say a good example of that: There were significant bumps in the road implementing some of the newer tools, even very close to the end-of-year fundraising.
And there was a lot of trust that a solution would be resolved, a lot of communication, and a lot of partnership in figuring it out. So that's been a huge transformation.
What I've noticed is then it allows for the confidence and the ambition to take on more advanced projects together. So that's really what's happening in our system. There seems to be a confidence, and a collective ambition that's taking root, organically that wouldn't have happened before.
[00:04:34] Sam: Yeah, that's so great to hear. I know that's what we always say will happen and I've seen it, but I never get tired of seeing that transformation. Because it's just, it just feels like that's how it should be.
You know, people around the organization who are trying to do important work should have this team of trusted allies to use those tools to solve your issues and knock hurdles out of your way and make things better.
So it's just so rewarding to hear how that's really taken place.
[00:04:59] Ashley: And I think, as you promised- the piece you promised has come true in one sense. Which is once people see the change that's happened in one area, they're banging down the doors to be next in line versus feeling fear.
And so that is really what's happening. Which is, we're going to really move this operation to the teams that haven't had this kind of collaboration take root yet. And so that will, I think, continue to accelerate the change. So picking spots, working them fully, I think that was much more effective than trying to impact all teams less well.
[00:05:32] Sam: Yeah, that's great.
[00:05:34] Sam: Well, thanks for joining for a second time. Congratulations. It's a huge milestone, a huge, new level to be operating at. It's really fun and inspiring to see. And just really appreciate you coming back and sharing again.
[00:05:44] Ashley: I'm happy to share the good news and just especially share it with you to appreciate all that you did to make it possible.
[00:05:52] Sam: Thank you so much, Ashley.
[Music]
Summary of update interview - Feb 2024
[00:05:53] Sam: Okay, well, that was really fun. I have to tell you, that had everything. That story has everything, all the benefits we talk about. But they, you know, sometimes they're harder to trace, especially while you're in a transition, a transformation.
So to come back almost a year later and have not only the big mama measure of them all- revenue increased by 54 percent, I think she said- more than the investment that they made in the transition.
They're unlocking staff and making the organization more attractive to a new level of talent and unlocking that talent.
There's huge reductions in conflict and confusion. She described a lot of partnership and confidence and trust that they're going to get through problems and actually give everyone the tools they need to do their work.
And then sort of the increase in appetite that comes once you have these kinds of allies in place.
So that story had everything to me. So that was really cool.
Let's get back now to the original interview so you can hear a little bit of the story behind it. And we'll start that with an intro that my former partner, Chris Zezza, joined me for. Because this was soon after he had moved along and he came back as a sort of guest star since he had been on that project.
And so you'll hear it now. A year later, but we got there. We got there!
[Music]
Original Intro - Mar 2023
[00:07:08] Chris: Why don't we do it, and then do the outro, and then do the intro.
[00:07:12] Sam: What do we call it? The Greatmakers. I don't know why I always forget right before we start recording.
The Greatmakers Podcast, welcome back. It's good to have you back. Um, I was talking to you actually, not them.
[00:07:24] Chris: Not them.
[00:07:25] Sam: Right.
Today we have Ashley Boyd, Senior Vice President of Global Advocacy from the Mozilla Foundation. One of the people that we worked with closely over the course of that engagement, the great Ashley Boyd.
Ashley and another VP, Angela Plohman, were really our partners in crime for a lot of this. There with us every step of the way helping guide the work and helping partner with us in the work, and obviously understanding what the needs were and what the mandate was.
[00:07:51] Chris: Yeah. One of the key things that can make or break one of these engagements is having that level of executive buy in. Not just buy in on a theoretical level, but really rolling up sleeves and getting into the tricky details.
And so Ashley and Angela really stepped into understanding the constraints and challenges and being decisive at key moments, making sure that we could really turn the corner on some really big challenges.
[00:08:20] Sam: Yeah, that's right.
And so, because it's sometimes hard to describe to people ahead of time, what I was really hopeful for with this conversation with Ashley is now sitting on the other side of this Technology Platforms Team transformation, she'd be able to sort of give a sense of what the challenges were ahead of time and what the results were.
So Ashley Boyd, Senior Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Mozilla Foundation.
[Music]
Original Interview - Mar 2023
[00:08:36] Sam: I appreciate this. I realize you got a lot going on now. My hope is just to be helpful to organizations in a similar spot to where you were, and who are trying to figure out what this is all about. And you've been through it.
[00:08:58] Sam: My first question was: I know that your organization has come a long way and sometimes it can be hard to remember back to the way things used to be. But if you can remember, I wonder how you would describe the problem that you were trying to solve back when we were first talking about a year and a half ago.
[00:09:11] Ashley: The problem we were trying to solve had a lot of dimensions.
Some of them include: not having the tools that people needed to do the work that they needed to kind of meet their ambitions. And that was in part because our scope had increased but also our ambition had increased, and, our specificity of what our programs needed had changed.
The teams delivering various aspects of technology were unclear about what they were accountable for, and often didn't have the right skillsets, particularly to be collaborators and identifying sort of problems connected to the right tools and processes. So there was just a lot of confusion about who was accountable.
There was frustration because of bad tools- you know, tools not fit for purpose.
And then I think finally there was an overall hesitance across the organization of understanding the role of technology to power our work.
So we had really sidelined it rather than made it a central component of our work and understood what it could unlock- what it needed to do to unlock the work.
[00:10:16] Sam: Yeah, it's so well said, and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to that.
[00:10:19] Sam: So you've got this new crop of leaders growing now- technology platform leaders on board now- and I wonder how they are distinct if, if you think they are, from a more traditional model of technology leadership.
[00:10:32] Ashley: Well what I'm hearing from people is just that they feel- which is really exciting- is just that they feel like this group of technology leaders - the Tech Platforms Team are excited to do creative new things. They're not saying no all the time, they're saying 'yes, and how can we think about it this way?'
So listening, providing options, providing feedback and then sort of energetically like, catching the ball, I think is the analogy that you often use, that feels like it's an emerging practice, of like, 'Okay, I've got this'. So it's a 'yes-and' approach to breathe life into the kind of creative collaborative space.
And then seeing the kind of communication and follow-through and collaboration that reinforces that 'I've got this, this is my area of expertise'.
And I think there is, a really important aspect of them being expert at what they're, doing. So there's just a deep expertise in feeling like, 'Okay, if this person is telling me it's possible, or it's not possible, I completely believe them and I trust their judgment.'
[00:11:34] Ashley: So yeah, I'm just seeing a lot of collaboration, excitement, and yeah, sense of trust and, and real expertise coming from that group.
[00:11:43] Sam: That's wonderful.
[00:11:44] Sam: We talk a lot about level of investment that's needed in terms of both money and time to be successful in technology platforms. It's one thing to sort of nod your head and conceptually understand that, but it's another whole thing to commit that level of resources. And you were one of the leaders of the Mozilla Foundation who was actually leading that charge and having to back up that investment.
So I'm curious what you might say to others in, in a similar situation or grappling with making that level of investment and, and trying to figure out how to make that argument.
[00:12:13] Ashley: Yeah. Well, there's two levels of investment. I mean, one, the level of investment of bringing you and The Build Tank in. Without a doubt we couldn't have done it ourselves. We needed an external mirror held up to our practice and somebody with more expertise and sort of how to re-make things. So there's that piece.
I think the overall investment in the team, what really has convinced me- and we're still on our journey of understanding- I started looking at the degree of time people were wasting not being able to do what they were meant to do. So I mean, my estimate was easily, it was a 25 to 30% sort of drag on people's time across the program areas. So that's a significant amount of money.
And so if you think about money differently and empowering the people... So if we think less about hiring more people to kind of fill the gaps of the time lost, and put that more into sort of our core, it turns out to be the same amount of money, but just reapplied.
So that was what convinced me. We couldn't connect with the right people because the CRM didn't work or sending too much mail to too many people when we could do be doing segmenting and, you know, earning the same amount of money and making people less mad.
So yeah. You have to think about money differently in relation to the investment that your organization's making.
[00:13:29] Sam: That's great.
[00:13:30] Sam: Is there anything you wish you had known before you set out on this project?
[00:13:35] Ashley: I wish I had remembered how destabilizing even good change is.
Like good change is still change, right? And people have different tolerance for that. And so investing the time, you know, Angela and my time as executives, but also the time to metabolize change across the organization. I probably would communicate even more than we did.
So yeah, it's a change process, right? Even when people were very enthusiastic in the beginning, there was a natural dip in enthusiasm and, and where fear took hold. And so just to be ready for that.
[00:14:07] Sam: Yeah.
[00:14:08] Sam: And related to what you're talking about, obviously your role is not explicitly technology focused as a VP of Global Advocacy. So I wonder if it might have been surprising that we want to be in frequent communication with executive leadership like yourself- you and Angela- throughout an engagement. I'm just curious for your feedback on the importance of those regular touchpoints that we had over the course of it.
[00:14:27] Ashley: Yeah, I mean, Angela and I were co-executive sponsors with the project from the beginning.
I think our expectation with a project like this normally would be to be more hands off. But as we started to see, you know, the ripple effects across the whole ecosystem, across both of our teams, the structural changes that were required, having those regular touchpoints with you made sense.
Also, I think, you know, that as we started to drive projects forward... I didn't really understand the degree to which consequential decision- making had been decentralized until we were sort of in the meat of some implementation bits. It became really obvious that that kind of executive leadership and visibility was just gonna be essential to get things done.
So I was convinced in seeing how things had been happening and how they needed to change that Angela and I were gonna be a crucial part of the success in terms of the visibility and understanding the components driving the change.
I think that's ever more important too, especially working with external folks. It was really important for people to know that we were making the decisions with your input. Not that you were making the decisions that they were then gonna be able to reverse.
[00:15:35] Sam: Yeah.
[00:15:35] Ashley: People needed to feel like it was: This is where we were headed and that's where Angela and I were leading us.
[00:15:41] Sam: Yeah. So important.
[00:15:42] Sam: Okay, last question here. So looking ahead with the Technology Platforms Team in place growing to the vision that you have for it... What are you hoping might be different about the organization's future?
[00:15:53] Ashley: I hope we can be more responsive. I hope we can use technology to really express our vision and our work, with speed. And do that in an orchestrated way across teams.
My hope is that we reach more people, that we do that with more confidence, with more ease, with more speed. And really are able to sort of fire on all cylinders as it relates to, mostly related to connecting to people.
That's so core to our theory of change. And so our inability to do that has really held us back. But we have a lot to share. We have a lot of conversations we wanna seed and technology's at the core of that. So that's really what this work is about for me, super-powering that capability.
[00:16:32] Sam: Amen.
[00:16:33] Sam: It's great. You have such good insight and it just reminds me how valuable and important it was to have you as a partner throughout that whole thing. And in the midst of this busy moment that you have that you still took time, I think is, is so appreciated and going to be so valuable for people.
[00:16:48] Ashley: Sure thing. All right. Take care.
[Music]
Outro - Mar 2023
[00:16:55] Sam: So there it is. Ashley Boyd, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Mozilla Foundation, talking about the Technology Platforms Team transformation that we worked together on.
The thing that I, that I grabbed on right at the end- the thing that clicked in my ear when she said it- is her vision for the organization now being able to 'fire on all cylinders'. I think that's a great phrase for sort of what we are trying to describe here.
It's like everything your organization is trying to do in the world has a technology component related to your technology platforms- you know, your CRM database, your website. Every function of your organization needs to use those things. And so if you do have a team that is looking after the daily high function of those systems, now you are kind of a machine that can fire on all cylinders. I really think it makes that case beautifully to hear her talking about it.
[00:17:44] Chris: That's great. I love how she tells the story of going from thinking that she's not going to get too involved to then understanding they do have to get involved and understand these core consequential decisions. And then getting involved and that, that really unlocking the organization's transformation.
That understandable thinking of: 'Yeah, that's a technology thing, that's that's below my pay grade.' To understanding: 'Oh no, this affects everything that we do and our capacity to deliver from every department.'
[00:18:14] Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Amen.
Sam: Well, there we go. Another successful, I hope, episode of the Greatmakers Podcast. It's brought to you by, I don't know, whoever would bring this to you.
But there we are. Great puh-, uh, the Greatmakers, technology- what are- unicorns? Changing the game? I don't know. Thank you for joining me again.
[laughs]
Good to have you back.
[00:18:37] Chris: Thanks.
[00:18:38] Sam: Yeah. Normally you would say something a little more enthusiastic there.
[laughs]
[00:18:41] Chris: The way this works is with enthusiasm. Uh, uh, yeah, that was great. That was great, Sam. Thanks. Oh God.
[laughs]
[00:18:52] Sam: Woo!
[00:18:53] Chris: Woohoo!