Robert has spent the last 20 years working on industry-leading software platforms. Building the culture around them, driving adoption across 100-1000 team organizations, and delivering on the promise of business agility. In his journey, he wasn't afraid to tear apart monoliths, consolidate repetitive systems, fully automate developer workflows, and migrate many things to many clouds. If there's one thing he's learned, it's that platform success is achieved fastest by focusing on people. You have to sell the vision, get the buy-in, build the team, create collaboration across massively distributed teams, make sense of inter-team dependencies, and manage change. These challenges are as large, if not larger, than the technical challenges.
00:00:01:29 - 00:00:26:16
Narrator
At a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity. How do you navigate forward? This podcast focuses on making smart choices in a rapidly changing world. We investigate the challenges of being at a crossroads and finding opportunities that arise out of disruption. Listen in on future forward conversations with the brightest luminaries, movers and shakers. Let's navigate forward together and create what's next.
00:00:26:19 - 00:00:55:18
Lisa Thee
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Navigating for podcast. My name is Lisa Athey and I'll be your host today. We love to collect the most innovative luminaries, movers and shakers to bring their best insights into your world. And today I have the luxury of introducing you to Robert Duffy. Robert is a seasoned vice president of software Engineering. He has helped large enterprises reach platform and drive platform transformation across thousands of users at places including Salesforce and Amazon.
00:00:55:20 - 00:01:11:28
Lisa Thee
And most recently, he has joined Expedia to help bring that wisdom to them. He brings an entrepreneurial lens to the problem space and really helps to drive long term transformational change and innovation into large companies. And so we're thrilled to have you here today, Rob. Thank you for joining us.
00:01:12:00 - 00:01:14:18
Robert Duffy
Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
00:01:14:20 - 00:01:23:00
Lisa Thee
So, Rob, do you mind telling us a little bit about your background, where you're from and how you think that influences how you're effective within the roles that you're doing today?
00:01:23:02 - 00:01:48:12
Robert Duffy
Sure. I've spent a long time building platforms, so, you know, I started off early in my career. I just graduated from university when websites were really taking off and e-commerce was really taking off, working for a small agency where we, you know, we decided to build a platform for e-commerce websites and content management systems and from that point on, I really worked my way through a number of different platforms.
00:01:48:14 - 00:02:13:29
Robert Duffy
You know, in the UK and then eventually over to Seattle and joined Amazon for their Webstore team and then Enterprise application services team and then all the way through to their website application platform and digital store platform. Then I left to join Time Inc and created one of their content distribution platform and then I founded a startup creating a platform, went to Salesforce to work on their Lightning web stack, which is their UI platform.
00:02:13:29 - 00:02:44:25
Robert Duffy
And then now it's they're on their platform. So platforms are really, really my jam. I've been through a number of different platform transformations and I'd like I just I, I like them. They're very, very challenging. They sometimes unrewarding because you know, you're not always shipping glitzy, glamorous features. It's very hard for you to tell your parents what you do right, for them to actually see as they go to the website, you know, in 2 seconds.
00:02:44:25 - 00:03:16:17
Robert Duffy
FOSTER And now it's teams don't have to do the same thing 100 times. Like it's it's not that kind of work. It's really the kind of work that people who are passionate about helping other people be successful and other teams be successful and really bringing efficiencies and economies of scale to companies thrive in. And that's sort of one of my mantras is, you know, what can you what can you be doing today to help other people be successful and that's really the rallying cry of platform executives.
00:03:16:19 - 00:03:44:10
Lisa Thee
Sometimes when you're brought in to be a change agent to things that are not broken, People aren't super excited to be told that the baby's ugly. So what is what do you think inspired you from your childhood to shape the work that you're doing? To have the resilience and the patience to help people go through that journey of why it makes sense to make this change and how it's going to benefit them when sometimes they don't see it right At first.
00:03:44:13 - 00:04:06:24
Robert Duffy
I mean, was that first of all, you've kind of hit the platform problem on its head. So, you know, which is you're trying to you're trying to convince a large number of people to change. And that's always difficult. And I used to be early in my career, I really, really screwed it up hard, you know, by going out there with mandates, you know, like, hey, you have to do this.
00:04:06:24 - 00:04:22:14
Robert Duffy
You have to like, this is the new platform. This is the new way of doing it. It's like, if you're not migrating on to this, then you know that's a problem and I'm going to escalate and I'm going to put your name on some report that's going to go in front of the CTO, like whatever, and like you're going to be driving organizational change by Monday.
00:04:22:14 - 00:04:45:27
Robert Duffy
And all that does is build up resistance. So I don't know whether I was good at it for a long time. So it's interesting you said what's inspired me from my childhood to to do this. I actually think I learned later in life that, you know, going out there and being a strong leader and saying, here is the new platform, this is the right way of doing things.
00:04:45:27 - 00:05:09:07
Robert Duffy
This is the this is how we should drive change in the organization sometimes isn't the thing that you need to do. And that was a hard lesson learned for an only child like me, because, you know, basically when you're an only child, you run in front of everyone and you say, this is the way we're going. And and you, you know, you get people to follow you by having a strong vision and and a platform and organizational transformation.
00:05:09:10 - 00:05:27:00
Robert Duffy
I, I think actually the opposite is what you want to do, which is you want to sow the seed of change and you want to help people realize that change is needed and and you want to help them see that the benefits are changing and then they want it. They come to you and say, Hey, this is where we should go.
00:05:27:02 - 00:05:56:10
Robert Duffy
You know, this is this is the direction that we should go. And you're like, yes, you're right. This is the direction we should go. Let's go there. I've been there a couple of times. I know where all the bodies are. Very mobile. The minds are, Let's go. So it was a very hard transformation for me personally, coming from like an only child background, you know, from a single parent where I was used to all the attention and all of the leadership to be much more oriented around group decision making and helping groups come along with me so.
00:05:56:13 - 00:06:18:17
Lisa Thee
I can resonate with that on such a deep level. I also am an only child. I also grew up in a time where it seemed like I was watching it with my own daughter. Now she's ten years old and she walks into a group of 12 people and she is like, So here's what we're going to do. And they're like, Hey, ten year old, we're not really looking for you to tell us all what you to.
00:06:18:19 - 00:06:34:10
Lisa Thee
So coaching her through that process of how to be an inspirational leader by giving people the why and helping them come along the journey versus leading maybe for more of an authoritative, fair perspective and and kind of pushing change on people. Right?
00:06:34:12 - 00:07:00:05
Robert Duffy
Totally. And I think one of the things one of the mental models that I have is like, you know, there is a race or an expedition. And in a race, if someone is limping behind you, leave them to limp and you just track ahead. And you know, when you're ahead of other people, you feel great about it. And then there's an expedition where if someone's limping behind at the back, the expedition stops and you go and meet them where they are and you try and pick them up and bring them forward with you.
00:07:00:07 - 00:07:17:20
Robert Duffy
And, you know, I think as long as you can keep in mind the fact that change in organizational change is more of an expedition than a race. And you can still that and your teams and your partner teams that we're all here to help each other get to the same destination. Then you then you're much more successful in the long term.
00:07:17:22 - 00:07:33:02
Lisa Thee
And I love that example of are you focusing on an expedition or a race? Can you share with us the benefits of why you want to make sure that everybody comes along on the journey? And what inspired you to think about that?
00:07:33:04 - 00:07:59:04
Robert Duffy
You know, I was incredibly inspired by my mother. She's and she is an incredibly successful woman who went through a lot of a lot of hardship and a lot of changes. You know, she came from a not well-off background in Scotland, Glasgow. She was, you know, one of the few early female computer science students at Glasgow University. You know, when they still have male and female social clubs.
00:07:59:07 - 00:08:23:02
Robert Duffy
You know, she went from there into a job in tech and, you know, started working for some large multinational companies, oil companies, and, you know, where like they still had female typing boards. It was a very, very masculine dominated environment. And she made it as a woman in tech through a lot of challenging times. And it certainly wasn't.
00:08:23:02 - 00:08:44:23
Robert Duffy
As you know, Hycu is the one place that we're in today. And, you know, she did all that while raising, you know, a boisterous, mischievous, you know, kid for a lot of the time on her own. And I think that was really inspiring to me. And it still is to this day. How inspiring and courageous and tenacious she is.
00:08:44:23 - 00:09:06:04
Robert Duffy
And, you know, after all of that and in a successful job and, you know, tech and they didn't move into like Jp morgan in finance, she said, I'm screwed. I'm going to go and learn how to be a teacher, you know, And she put ourselves in front of a group of, you know, 14, 15 year old boys. You know, after I left the house, she put herself back in front of the whole group of boisterous and mischievous boys.
00:09:06:04 - 00:09:14:21
Robert Duffy
But, you know, she went on to learn how to, you know, teach computing and teach i.t at schools and like, that's not that's not easy. You know.
00:09:14:24 - 00:09:35:09
Lisa Thee
Sometimes it's not as appreciated as you would like to believe financially wise, but have you the pay off is later, right? She obviously has the persistence and the fortitude to be the role model, to be the visionary and help let people come to it at their own rate. Clearly, she was a hero of yours. You're working in that industry now.
00:09:35:11 - 00:09:47:07
Lisa Thee
Exactly what have you learned along the way that you think could help people to stop wasting time or not be effective because a lot of these lessons are hard learned for all leaders, right?
00:09:47:09 - 00:10:24:12
Robert Duffy
Yeah. Like, you know, this is a the like, wasting time thing is kind of interesting because I think a lot of time is is wasted on trying to convince people that this is the right way and and that they need to change their mind and less is spent meeting people where they are and understanding the challenges that they face and helping them position your solution or your platform as a solution to that problem.
00:10:24:14 - 00:10:52:18
Robert Duffy
I think like that the most time I'm PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets and tracking tools and like presentations and brown bags, a wasted in organizational transformation with just broadcasting information without really asking people like what was difficult. Like, Lisa, what, what are you finding hard today and how can we help you with our platform get to a better place?
00:10:52:20 - 00:11:19:14
Lisa Thee
That's something I've really enjoyed about moving from the corporate world into the consulting world. Some of those frameworks that we're able to bring in to organization around empathy mapping and journey mapping and really helping people, helping get people come to people where they are to get them to where they want to go versus tops down. We're going to tell you what to do and you better come along or, you know, the slowest gazelle doesn't make it through the jungle right?
00:11:19:16 - 00:11:20:18
Robert Duffy
Exactly.
00:11:20:20 - 00:11:41:01
Lisa Thee
Yeah. And so with that in mind, do you mind sharing with us, you know, how do you use data and technology to accomplish some of those goals? A lot of the organization that are driving change need to have data informed decisions to feel justified in slowing down, to be able to go fast. How have you leverage some of those tools, especially living in a software organization?
00:11:41:01 - 00:11:45:17
Lisa Thee
I'm sure everybody is coming to you to be like, Show me, show me the data. Why should we do that?
00:11:45:17 - 00:12:08:03
Robert Duffy
Right? I have recently started filming this opinion that there is two different, two separate things what data and metrics. Right? And I think in a modern software organization, it's very hard for you to operate in a world where there's no data, there is always data. There's even too much data lying around. And every time you try and look at look at stuff, it's like, Oh yeah, we're measuring that, we're measuring this.
00:12:08:05 - 00:12:32:14
Robert Duffy
And I don't think people when you look at it and I mean hands up, have you ever been on this project where you start off imagining all the things that you want on the dashboard and then you build this dashboard out over a three month period that has all these beautiful charts and all of these different pieces of information, and no one looked at it, a piece of it, like I've been on that project.
00:12:32:16 - 00:12:56:22
Robert Duffy
You've been on that project, like we've all been on that project. And I think a much better way to use data is to start from the customer, start from the journey, measure the things that are hard in that customer journey. I built developer platform so that my primary focus is internal developers. So we look at, you know, checking out code all the way to getting it running in production and so, you know, taking traffic from customers.
00:12:56:28 - 00:13:21:29
Robert Duffy
But how do we get that out? How do we bucket that into four or five or six different phases? And what is the metric that we're going to put at the top of that phase and then let that feed our data gathering exercises and feed what we're pulling up into those metrics. And that is the that is the critical thing to to get right is not have too much data and too much metrics.
00:13:22:02 - 00:13:42:23
Lisa Thee
Yeah, an abundance of data doesn't mean that you have any more wisdom. You have to be able to glean the wisdom out of the sea of information. Right. And that's where dashboards and reporting comes in. And I heard this quote from a friend, and I'm not going to cite it properly, but I think it's exactly the right essence, which is if you're talking to a shepherd, you have to talk to him about sheep.
00:13:42:26 - 00:14:02:10
Lisa Thee
You have to come to different people with different language to say the same thing. The data is like an anchor for us all to look at it objectively, but you have to come to people in the ways that they care about it. So in that mind, I'd love to know what you I what gets you motivated to come in and face the next day when things are going a little off track?
00:14:02:11 - 00:14:23:19
Robert Duffy
It's a great question, you know, and it's also this sort of like existential question. I think we all that we all struggle with on a on a daily basis. But for me, I, I love the fact that when you're building out a platform, you make your customers lives better. You help them focus on things that are important to them.
00:14:23:19 - 00:14:56:27
Robert Duffy
Like you unlock a tremendous amount of agility and you take a you know, you put a huge amount of power in a developer like whether it's a UI developer or it's a service developer. You put this this power in their hands to just focus on delivering value to their customer quickly. And you, when you reach a certain point of maturity in your platform, like you just hear all these great stories about how I was so easy to spin up this app, I'm like, We delivered this thing and we had this hackathon and we got something out to a customer on a day.
00:14:56:27 - 00:15:28:23
Robert Duffy
Like for me, that's my way. Like just enabling people's creativity to be unburdened by all of the, the, you know, compliance and security concerns of deployment and networking and infrastructure and all this sort of stuff that goes along behind it, behind the scenes, like you might actually be inside a company, a large company, in a well-resourced position with fantastic ideas and access to a large number of resources and not be encumbered by large enterprise slowdown.
00:15:28:23 - 00:15:32:06
Robert Duffy
And like that's when you start unlocking the power of the platform.
00:15:32:08 - 00:15:39:21
Lisa Thee
So it's really about impact for you, empowering your users to drive the impact that is captive in them. That needs to be. Yeah.
00:15:39:21 - 00:15:57:25
Robert Duffy
And you also have a massive impact on the bottom line in the business, right? Like you two, you are talking normally about thousands of developers. You know, it's a pretty expensive resource. Normally it's a pretty large item on the panel and you know, you don't have to move their efficiency very much, right? Like you have to make their life 10%, 15% better, which is achievable in most scenarios.
00:15:57:28 - 00:16:13:17
Robert Duffy
And you've you've created a huge amount of value for the company and you've made people's lives meaningfully better. So I think that that inspires me to keep going and, you know, trudge through some of that, some of the harder times.
00:16:13:19 - 00:16:21:04
Lisa Thee
Absolutely. So what are some emerging trends that you're seeing in your field that you think we all should be paying a little bit more attention to?
00:16:21:06 - 00:16:45:13
Robert Duffy
Let me answer that question in two different ways. So I think from a from a technology leadership perspective, I think these last 12 to 18 months have meaningfully changed the way that we speak about people, the way that we speak about feelings, the way that we speak about our own feelings and mental health and, you know, like how we've approached Ekua in the workplace.
00:16:45:16 - 00:17:10:23
Robert Duffy
And I think I was having a conversation just two days ago with one of my colleagues and I'm like, man, you know, this whole like lockdown and isolation has really negative aspects to it, but it also has some really positive aspects just about how we learn how to interact with each other, with more empathy. And, you know, we were having this conversation in the context of, man, wouldn't it be a real shame if, like, we all got back to the office and all that?
00:17:10:23 - 00:17:14:26
Robert Duffy
Like, you know, we learned how to be nasty to each other.
00:17:14:29 - 00:17:18:04
Lisa Thee
So we lost all lessons in the hardship.
00:17:18:07 - 00:17:43:14
Robert Duffy
Etc.. But I think that's like one of the things that I think is a big trend in in leadership and technology is normally been a bit like, you know, a vocal proponent of high IQ workplaces, but a sad implementer of high IQ workplaces. Right. Like I think that's.
00:17:43:14 - 00:17:47:12
Lisa Thee
A as a marginalized group intact. I think I get that for you.
00:17:47:12 - 00:17:48:17
Robert Duffy
This is the most.
00:17:48:20 - 00:17:53:07
Lisa Thee
Good intention, really good intention. But sometimes execution is a little wonky.
00:17:53:11 - 00:18:11:19
Robert Duffy
But, you know, I think like that's a tech industry thing. And I've started to see that that dialog change over the last 12 to 18 months. I've started to see things get better and people to start listening to each other and, you know, meetings on as contentious as they might be. So I'm inspired by that. I am excited by that.
00:18:11:19 - 00:18:34:17
Robert Duffy
I think we're all learning how to show up more as ourselves in the workplace and especially at the executive level. I've seen, you know, much more willingness of executives to kind of drop this pretense of executive presence. Right. Which really just means like being someone you're not like I've discovered over the years, executive presence being means like trying to be someone.
00:18:34:20 - 00:19:03:21
Robert Duffy
Yeah, I would just like, you know, show up in this very, like, you know, dominant like, dominating way, you know, executive presence because you talk about like, you know, having the right posture and the right outfit and like, you know, all this sort of stuff. And I think in the last 12 to 18 months, people have been much more willing to like, you know, be on the sofa in a t shirt, having, you know, a bad head a with kids yelling in the background and figured out that they can be much more genuine and connect more deeply with their staff in those moments.
00:19:03:24 - 00:19:18:00
Robert Duffy
And from an industry term perspective, I mean, I think I'm excited to see that trend of humanity being brought to the tech industry and and it is having an impact today. I hope it has an impact in the future.
00:19:18:03 - 00:19:51:28
Lisa Thee
I mirror your enthusiasm for that because at the end of the day, when we can expand to the number of people in a room that are making some of the decisions that will impact technology development, we need to recognize that maybe that would have impacted a small amount of society ten years ago. But as new technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality and artificial intelligence and data driven solutions with data science come to the market, it's not only affecting business, it's how we buy our groceries.
00:19:51:28 - 00:20:07:17
Lisa Thee
It's how we get transportation. It's how we educate our children. It really needs to represent more fully in the design and implementation and the broader community. And having that point of view of how it affects different groups of people. Right.
00:20:07:20 - 00:20:14:19
Robert Duffy
And I think that's that is that's good. I think we're all still struggling through almost all learning. Right.
00:20:14:20 - 00:20:40:27
Lisa Thee
But that's the hard part. Ethics at it is soft. You can't measure it fully and you can't always anticipate where things can fall off. And it's just a matter of creating a safe enough space where people can learn from failures and innovate and do better and not be villainized or canceled for making a mistake. Because in my experience, I've never learned a single thing the easy way.
00:20:40:28 - 00:20:44:26
Lisa Thee
I had to make every mistake myself. How about you, Rob? Do you have that temperament as well?
00:20:44:26 - 00:20:54:20
Robert Duffy
Yeah, I you know, I was. And so a kit that you could tell a thousand times, the stove was hard, but until I put my hand on a bird myself, I wouldn't believe it. So yeah.
00:20:54:22 - 00:21:06:25
Lisa Thee
My mother said the exact same classic no joke. So with that in mind, do you mind sharing one of your bigger failures and how you navigated through it to make sure you don't lose the lesson?
00:21:06:27 - 00:21:38:23
Robert Duffy
Yeah, I think I don't. You know, I think a big failure. I've had lots of values, like I've had lots of points where like, I've got things wrong or like not succeeded or, you know, either at a macro level, you know, like a large change or a daily interaction that role. And I think that I take this kind of continuous improvement approach where, you know, you just kind of like pause and take stock and try and think about what went wrong or what didn't.
00:21:38:25 - 00:22:16:04
Robert Duffy
I do think that the the biggest failure isn't a particular failure, really. It's just it is a period of thinking that, you know, leading change in large organizations was done without you didn't need to spend a lot of time investing in the people side of things. You know, like the tech was the challenge and you could you could convince people to get to a destination by building a beautiful destination and, you know, putting a flag in silver and saying like, this is where we need to be.
00:22:16:04 - 00:22:28:10
Robert Duffy
Everyone come and join me. And I think I spent a long time learning the lesson of customer focus for internal platforms and how are.
00:22:28:12 - 00:22:36:28
Lisa Thee
Planning external platforms, right? Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day you're building to someone else's need and if you don't understand their need, you're not going to build the right thing.
00:22:37:00 - 00:22:54:00
Robert Duffy
Yeah, you're never going to build the right thing. But, you know, so I think it took me a long time to realize that platforms with people, problems like that are really interesting tech and you know, they're really great and we love building them, but they're really people problems, especially when you get into a large, large enterprise that you're trying to influence.
00:22:54:03 - 00:23:14:24
Robert Duffy
And you you could be the smartest people in the world and have the smartest engineers and computer scientists building this perfect platform. But until you actually go and reach out and speak to customers and involve them in the discussion, you don't have to like always do what they ask for, but you at least have to sit down and explain to them why you're doing things in a particular way.
00:23:14:26 - 00:23:30:29
Robert Duffy
And if you can do that and it doesn't take a huge amount of effort, that you just need to pivot the conversation a little bit and treat them with respect and and listen to people and understand that everyone's trying to do the job to the best of their ability. Then you end up with a much more successful transformation.
00:23:30:29 - 00:23:39:21
Robert Duffy
And my I guess my biggest failure is learning that too late in in my platform leadership like.
00:23:39:23 - 00:24:02:00
Lisa Thee
I think that you're being a bit hard on yourself. I think that everybody has to go through those evolutions and journeys to learn that treating people with dignity and respect doesn't cost you an extra penny, doesn't take a lot of extra time. It's just a mindset shift. And I think that we all have a continuous approach improvement approach to our our wisdom on how to interact with people.
00:24:02:00 - 00:24:27:16
Lisa Thee
And frankly, I, I caught myself doing a continuous improvement reflection yesterday with somebody I work with that I respected, admire greatly. But I also was under a ton of time pressure and we need to get something done. And I didn't have the patience to listen and I was interrupting and that did not get it done any faster. It just made it more tense.
00:24:27:18 - 00:24:53:24
Robert Duffy
And a lot sounds don't end up producing the outcome that you want. I was of like, there's another interesting thing, which I think is that I talk about phones all day, by the way. But I think another another thing that I think is a learning for me is that when you're building a platform, when you're on a platform team and you're you're you are generally leading some form of change, right?
00:24:53:24 - 00:25:13:23
Robert Duffy
There is generally like this the organization that is senior level has realized that something needs to change. So you're putting this position of being a change agent and being a change maker and like, you know, you can see yourself as the, you know, driving. You can get very egotistical about it and you can say we're the future of the company.
00:25:13:25 - 00:25:15:09
Lisa Thee
You're the disruptor.
00:25:15:11 - 00:25:15:23
Robert Duffy
Yeah.
00:25:15:23 - 00:25:17:16
Lisa Thee
Or lack of the right track.
00:25:17:18 - 00:25:42:07
Robert Duffy
Exactly. Or you can get less egotistical about it and be like, which is a critical initiative. And you know, we're building this platform and it's so but I think sometimes teams can be motivated by that, you know, and like elevated position in the company and you can sometimes find that that dialog that they use internally to speak about their internal customers is well-intentioned but very negative.
00:25:42:09 - 00:26:03:06
Robert Duffy
Like, oh, they don't know what they're doing, you know, Oh, look at this, you know, person over here, they've got what they just checked in. Like, I can't even use this software like this. Like, who would do that? Oh, my gosh. Look at how bad this is, right? Like, you can get in this internal dialog and it can seem harmless, but it's actually incredibly toxic.
00:26:03:11 - 00:26:28:19
Robert Duffy
And it it's something that you really need to nip in the bud. And you need to as a as a leader of a any organization that has a team or a leader of a team within any organization that is trying to drive change, you have to break that down and bring some humility and humbleness back to those team members and just allow them to think if everyone else is doing a good job.
00:26:28:21 - 00:26:34:10
Lisa Thee
And yeah, I don't know many people that wake up, it's like I want to go phone it in at work today and do a terrible job.
00:26:34:10 - 00:26:37:21
Robert Duffy
Right, Exactly.
00:26:37:24 - 00:26:59:01
Lisa Thee
Sometimes it happens, but that's not what they're intending. And when you allow pervasive toxicity to coexist within teams, it a Pulitzer for everybody. It's not just the two people that are involved in the interaction. It's it's training the entire team that that level of safety is reduced and you're never going to get the best innovation and creativity when people don't feel safe.
00:26:59:04 - 00:27:19:26
Robert Duffy
Yeah, even behind closed doors, you know, like, I think I try I try very hard to not have that attitude. Even behind closed doors. I often feel like if you have a private channel like could I invite if you have a private Slack or Slack channel about your platform where you talk about your customers, could I invite your customers into that private Slack channel?
00:27:19:28 - 00:27:46:00
Robert Duffy
And like most, 99.9% of people would say no, but the degree with which they object to that tells you a little bit about the culture of the organization. If they're like, Oh no, I want to you know, I don't want to have to worry about, then you're probably okay if they're like, Oh God, no, then you probably have a problem.
00:27:46:00 - 00:28:00:12
Robert Duffy
You need to, you know, take a second look at them to see if we're ready to be respectful to your, you know, partners and internal customers in their private channels. So it's it's a good canary for if you have a burgeoning toxic situation within your team now.
00:28:00:15 - 00:28:16:11
Lisa Thee
Absolutely. So what do you do to recharge your batteries after leading these big initiatives? You've obviously been able to be an entrepreneur and interpersonally and constantly be driving change, and that can be personally depleting. How do you build yourself that back up?
00:28:16:13 - 00:28:43:00
Robert Duffy
You know, I do this crazy thing, which is I don't fly small planes, which requires an exact like an incredible level of cognitive load, right? Like you're just constantly under a huge amount of cognitive load. You normally in a very stressful scenario, there's normally some element of, you know, death, potential death thrown in and the environment around you is never 100% what you expect it was going to be.
00:28:43:00 - 00:29:07:07
Robert Duffy
So you have to constantly be re formulating your plan and then you kind of layer in a little bit of mental math just to keep you on your toes and like, you know, arithmetic that you have to do while flying. I think that's that's like how I am one, which is a really weird thing, but I think it just consumes every part of your brain in a in a what should be a very methodical and, you know, well-thought out thing and like that.
00:29:07:08 - 00:29:09:08
Robert Duffy
That to me is relaxing.
00:29:09:10 - 00:29:23:03
Lisa Thee
It sounds to me like it allows you to focus on being present and being mindful in the moment because you don't have the luxury of the mental drift. You have to stay right in one place and that helps you recharge your batteries.
00:29:23:05 - 00:29:29:08
Robert Duffy
Yeah, you have to like you have to myopically focus on landing the plane. You know.
00:29:29:11 - 00:29:31:01
Lisa Thee
You're not in the past, you're not in the future.
00:29:31:01 - 00:29:49:25
Robert Duffy
You and you're like half a mile away from the airfield on a windy day, you know, maybe with some rain, maybe the sun's going down and, you know, it's not the right time to be thinking about that strategy, PowerPoint that you that you have to put together for the board on Monday.
00:29:49:27 - 00:29:58:03
Lisa Thee
Yeah, I mean, I use the Headspace app, but, you know, if you want to put your life on the line, feel free one after the other. We all get to the same place.
00:29:58:06 - 00:30:09:09
Robert Duffy
I'd say that kind of joke, but I do think it does have all those elements of just being able to keep your brain occupied. And, you know, it's it's it's liberating in that respect.
00:30:09:12 - 00:30:19:03
Lisa Thee
So you mentioned being an only child. You mentioned being raised by a single parent. What if she meant do you think they'd be most proud of that you've accomplished in your career?
00:30:19:05 - 00:30:58:06
Robert Duffy
I know it's my mother, right? Like so she's probably constantly proud of the achievements. And I think reason she's probably proudest proudest of her two grandchildren. But for me, you know, from a career perspective, I feel like whatever you do as a son, you know, you get the you get the love of your your family. But, you know, I know I'd always been into computing and, you know, you grow up in the UK with computers, but the real epicenter of computing is like you know, the west coast of the United States.
00:30:58:08 - 00:31:22:13
Robert Duffy
And I think, you know, for me to grow up in the UK with such an admiration for, you know, the world of computing as it as it was portrayed in movies and TV and all this sort of stuff as being this very sort of West Coast America and Silicon Valley and some ways about pursuit for me to actually make it all the way to Atlantic and over to the West Coast.
00:31:22:13 - 00:31:35:15
Robert Duffy
And you know what for at the time I was in, which was, you know, a lot smaller than is today, but a burgeoning, you know, dot com, I think I think I was pretty proud of that achievement. I think my mom was pretty proud of the fact that I sort of made it through that journey.
00:31:35:15 - 00:31:40:29
Lisa Thee
And yeah, it's like raising a professional footballer, right? Everybody says they want to be a pro, but most people don't make it.
00:31:41:02 - 00:31:47:02
Robert Duffy
Yeah, right. Like you don't make it to the like, you know, the dot coms.
00:31:47:04 - 00:32:08:24
Lisa Thee
You really happened. And I grew up on the Midwest of America and the heart of our country. Never in a million years did I see myself being a tech company executive. I'm still not quite sure how it happened. So with that in mind, I would love to share with people where they can find you and follow you in case they have platform needs and need.
00:32:08:25 - 00:32:12:15
Lisa Thee
Somebody with your innovation mindset or how they can support your work and what your.
00:32:12:15 - 00:32:33:03
Robert Duffy
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Like I'm not very active there, but you know, I am on May ten people can reach out and you know as many questions I'm normally really responsive to people reach out and if you if you connect me, I always connect back and I will be there and available for chit chat.
00:32:33:05 - 00:32:47:20
Lisa Thee
And I can I can vouch for people. Rob's a new person in my network, but he's very fun at chit chat and very respectful. So I encourage you all to reach out. Well, let's go flood Rob's inbox and do it. He lives up to his responsiveness.
00:32:47:20 - 00:33:05:24
Robert Duffy
So I once I visited funny stories, I always want to do this talk in Paris. Le Web was a big tech conference at one point in time, and as an experiment I said, Anyone who wants to, you can text me, This is my mobile number. And there was about a thousand people in the auditorium and I think I got one text.
00:33:05:26 - 00:33:16:03
Robert Duffy
So I'm like, I'm not after that moment. I am never afraid of inviting people to reach out to me on LinkedIn. So I challenge your listeners.
00:33:16:06 - 00:33:28:22
Lisa Thee
Very good. My mother, one of the words of wisdom, she passed down to me as if you think about if you realize how little people think about you, you worry a lot less about what they think.
00:33:28:24 - 00:33:29:12
Robert Duffy
That's a gift.
00:33:29:18 - 00:33:47:05
Lisa Thee
I think it's very liberating to realize even the people I care about most of my life, like I'm focused on them when I'm with them, and then 15 minutes later I'm off doing the next thing and your brains focus elsewhere. Right? And so it really is liberating to just be able to put yourself out there and be authentic and let people really see you.
00:33:47:05 - 00:34:00:20
Lisa Thee
Because I agree with you. I don't think you can be one person behind closed doors and one person in the workplace. We're integrated people and it's going to seep out in other weird ways if you don't bring your authentic self forward.
00:34:00:22 - 00:34:11:22
Narrator
Hey everyone. Thanks for listening to the Navigating Forward podcast. We'd love to hear from you at a crossroads of uncertainty and opportunity. How do you navigate forward? We'll see you next time.