Digital transformation is underway in every major sector of the economy, including the consulting industry. How are these global, highly influential firms reinventing themselves to better serve their clients?
Tune into the Let’s Workflow It podcast to find out.
This week, co-hosts Alan Marks, ServiceNow’s chief marketing officer, and Kathryn Minshew, founder of The Muse, are sitting down with Dan Helfrich, CEO of Deloitte Consulting.
In this episode, Helfrich talks about agile, inclusive work environments that can empower individuals to challenge the status quo.
Episode transcript
Dan Helfrich [DH]:
The magic comes from when the “tone from the top” merges with a bottom-up swell of empowered people challenging the status quo.
***
Kathryn Minshew [KM]:
Hey, everybody. From ServiceNow, this is Let’s Workflow It, a podcast about the workflow revolution. I’m Kathryn Minshew, founder and CEO of The Muse.
Alan Marks [AM]:
And I’m Alan Marks, chief marketing officer of ServiceNow.
KM:
In every episode, we’re going to pull back the curtain on how businesses today are driving transformation and growth with digital workflows.
It’s obvious that everything about the way we work is changing. But we’re noticing some really interesting contrasts.
For example, we live in an age when so much arrives at the press of a button. But at work, most of us are still putting up with clunky, outdated systems. Turns out, businesses are hungry to solve this problem.
AM:
So it got us thinking. Who are the organizations out there who are bold enough to embrace this change? It’s time to hear from them. Let’s workflow it.
KM:
Let’s workflow it.
***
KM:
Alan, it’s great to see you today.
AM:
Great to see you, Kathryn. You know, we’ve got an extraordinary guest today. We’re going to be talking with Dan Helfrich.
KM:
Yeah. Dan Helfrich is the CEO of Deloitte Consulting. He has an incredible amount of insight around digital transformation and leading change. I’m also really excited to get his take on innovation in work culture, I mean especially given the radical shifts of the last year.
AM:
That’s for sure. And you know at Service Now, we believe that people in technology is what drives great experiences, and it’s what’s driving digital transformation. So it made sense we would connect with Deloitte.
Deloitte is a 175-year-old company. So they’ve seen a lot and been around a long time. And today they’re at the forefront of the trends that we care about and will be talking about today with Dan. And Dan has such a fascinating perspective. I’m looking forward to hearing from him.
KM:
Yeah, me too. Well, let’s bring him in. Dan Helfrich, welcome to Let’s Workflow It. It’s really great to have you here today.
DH:
Kathryn, Alan, a pleasure.
AM:
All right, Dan. Good to have you here. Let’s do it.
KM:
So one of the reasons that we were especially excited to have you on the show is that you’ve really been at the helm of re-inventing the consulting industry. What’s been the biggest challenge so far and how have you thought about that?
DH:
I will tell you, it’s been way more opportunity than challenge the way we look at it, and the way I look at it is we can take the whole consulting profession and transform it over the next couple of years. But what’s hard about it, people have these very hardened impressions of what consulting is, and you have this picture, Kathryn, probably of the kinds of people you see at your favorite airport on a Monday morning that you can pick out and you say, “I bet they’re a consultant.”
KM:
Well, and you may not know this, but I started my career in consulting, so I was that person at the airport every Monday to Thursday.
DH:
Yeah. And you have this view of this person that comes back on Thursday, and you’d probably say that person probably has an MBA or a computer science degree or something like that, and you can kind of typecast both who a consultant is and the rhythm of their work.
Well, I say and we say, that is a vestige of the past, and the rhythm of work can fundamentally change and the “who” is changing radically. Do I still need some really talented MBAs and some really talented programmers? Absolutely. But I need scientists and nurses and anthropologists and engineers and all of those different types of skills to meld into a firm and a team that can take this profession forward. That’s super exciting.
KM:
Over the last several years, you’ve built a really significant government and public service business at Deloitte. I’d love for you to talk us through a little bit about how the experience has been transformational or has it been?
DH:
Totally transformational for me personally, for our firm. The theory that we had when we decided that we wanted to scale a government and public services business was pretty simple.
There were capabilities that existed within the broader world outside of government that we could import into the government world. But what our theory also was, is that there are amazing innovations happening inside the government that can be exported to other clients around the world.
So that was our theory for building the business: is we could be an importer and exporter of solutions, of ideas, of people in that not having incredibly high walls or barriers between “the private sector” part of our business or the government and public services business was going to be a strength for everybody. And that has certainly played out. And so we persist with that theory today because it’s unlocked so much value for everybody.
KM:
Yeah absolutely, and one of the ways your team unlocked that value was making air travel feel safer for everyone. Can you tell us the story of how Deloitte was part of the team that helped form the TSA?
DH:
Well, we’re proud that our relationship with TSA continues today, and dates back to the moments in the wake of 9/11, when this new agency was formed to protect the homeland and our civil aviation system. And I would simply describe it as this, it was a group of leaders from industry from around the world, including those from Deloitte.
Picture sitting in a conference room in the basement of government buildings saying, “How do we create a responsive, customer-centric agency for the future?” And it was an incredible privilege to be part of those teams. It was the best of public-private partnership.
***
AM:
Dan, Deloitte is at the epicenter of customer and employee experience. At ServiceNow we believe so strongly in the power of workflow and the power of technology to enable great experiences—you know it’s something we’ve seen in our own partnerships and relationships with government agencies.
I’m curious about what you’re seeing happening as digital transformation accelerated so much in the past year. How have other companies really transformed the experience for their employees AND their customers?
DH:
Well, Alan, I love that we share the idea that the fusion of employee and customer is so essential, and you rewind the tape a couple years, very few organizations actually thought about the intersection of experience, the intersection of employee experience, of customer experience, of partner experience. And the organizations that we believe are leading right now see the fusion of all of those things.
So Alan, take an example like, cloud is ubiquitous, obviously. But the best companies are re-architecting work as they migrate to the cloud, so we’ve done this really cool work with one of the big insurance companies globally. And it started as, how do we get our legacy applications replatformed to the cloud?
And it turned into, how many different work processes that we have, can we look at fundamentally differently? And suddenly, you don’t just have a couple year ROI that’s based in cost. You’re unlocking the opportunity for tons of value for an indefinite period of time.
***
KM:
So Dan, were there any moments from your early years, childhood, adolescence, you pick, that are a key connector to what you’re doing today?
DH:
Yeah, Kathryn, I was probably one of the few people who, when they were coming out of college, was debating between a sports broadcasting career and a consulting career. And I ended up choosing the consulting path, much to the chagrin or against the advice of many of my friends and mentors.
But I will tell you that team sports is fundamental to me. I played soccer my whole life at a high level. And it has influenced the way I think about leadership. You’ll often hear me talking about the idea that I want to lead as a captain, not a coach, because captains gain their trust and respect not from authority but from the trust of their peers. And I may have some fancy title next to my name for this point in my life, but that will go away. But if I lead like a captain, then my ability to positively change the lives of my teammates over time, that won’t go away.
Look, this is a team sport and you have to have the experiences in life of being the star of the team, the benchwarmer of the team, the outcast of the team who came from out of town to a team that was already set up and you’re the new kid on the block, to work on a team where you think you should be playing but you’re not. I had all those experiences as an athlete, and I think that helps you empathize with people in very different situations on your own team and try to lead with humility.
AM:
I love that analogy, Dan. At ServiceNow, we very much believe in “win as a team.” And I like the sports analogy when you think about workflow because that really is about, workflow’s about orchestrating processes across an enterprise and getting everything to work together and getting people to work together.
DH:
It is, Alan. And the other thing it unlocks is an inherent ability to build diverse and inclusive teams. And I think those that have experienced a lot of team sports have experienced all different dimensions of diversity in informative moments of their life. And those are skill diversity and cultural diversity and personality diversity and gender diversity in all kinds of things that end up playing out as all of us navigate our professional lives.
AM:
Dan, you have such passion and conviction around helping people challenge conventional ways of doing things, why is it so hard for organizations and people to embrace transformative change instead of incremental change?
DH:
Particularly in larger organizations that have existed for a long time, you run into the status quo, every corner and every turn and people in general are really proud and comfortable of the status quo. And so it takes extreme intentionality to create culture that makes it comfortable for people at any level of your organization to be able to say, “I don’t know why the heck we’re doing it that way.”
AM:
Does that have to come from the top or can that come from anywhere in the organization? That advocacy.
DH:
Well, the magic comes from when the “tone from the top” merges with a bottom-up swell of empowered people challenging the status quo. So a top-down cultural change fails because there isn’t enough belief in the majority of the organization that it matters. Bottom-up-only cultural change struggles because it’s not tethered to the places in the organization where most decisions are made.
So the way we think about it is: I’m going to create a cultural imperative. I’m going to show that we’re challenging orthodoxies and that we’re detonating the status quo, and I’m going to then give permission to everyone else to do the same.
AM:
Obviously in the past year, COVID was the biggest detonator we could all imagine. And so what’s changed and do you think COVID has created a permanent change now in the way people think about conventional wisdom and conventional ways of doing things?
DH:
Anyone who tells you they know whether there has been permanent change on things like the comfort level of people challenging the status quo is lying or confused, because has the change been permanent?
For example, are things that were once done in a non-streamlined, non-digital way that are being done now in a digital way, have those permanently changed? Yes.
But am I confident in telling you that all organizations are now going to be more comfortable for the fullness of time challenging the status quo and not recreating some of the challenges they had previously? No, I don’t have the confidence.
AM:
I think you see that now in the return-to-work debates. Do we have to go back to the office? Do we not? If we’re going forward or going backwards, what’s going on?
DH:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And we’ve, for example, navigated the return to workplaces. I don’t like to say return to work, because if we haven’t been working for the last 15 months, I’m not sure what the heck we’ve been doing.
But as we’ve navigated the return to workplaces, I launched practice-wide debates where any of our tens of thousands of people had the chance to weigh in on what their perspective was about co-location and travel and working together in our future, sharing why they felt that way.
And it was this incredible experiment of democratizing a conversation.
And what happened was, did we get a lot of insight to help us make decisions about the future? Yes. But what you also saw is people learning from each other. Oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way. And that happened organically because of the way we went about it.
AM:
So do you have any tips for when you have a client who’s struggling? A lot of companies in my experience, like we know we need to change, but to your point, really getting the leadership alignment, getting the cultural alignment to drive the change can be hard. And sometimes it’s high risk, right? To really drive transformative change. When you meet a client that’s struggling with that, how do you advise them? How do you give them the confidence to embrace more transformative change and challenge conventional ways of doing things?
DH:
The key from my view is finding the change catalyst at an individual client; playing to the motivations that are going to convince people to act. And the magic is that it differs, and there isn’t one playbook for that. For some people, and I do this all the time, it’s the strength in people who’ve done it before.
So I find myself a lot, Alan, introducing senior clients to one another and saying, “I don’t need to be part of this conversation, but Sally, why don’t you talk to Megan because she was in a similar spot that you were 12 months ago and let her tell you what’s worked, what hasn’t, et cetera?” I find that convening and connection to be pretty powerful.
KM:
Kind of building on this theme, I’ve been fascinated by the differences between companies that were more prepared for this moment versus those that were unprepared or less prepared. When you think about the companies you’ve worked with that really handled the last 15 months well, what sort of questions are you seeing them ask?
DH:
At the end of the day, those who are best equipped to deal with tremendous volatility and change have built an infrastructure. And, I don’t mean a technology infrastructure, though that’s part of it. But they built an infrastructure of decision-making, of ideation, and of the systems that underlie the way the business is run. They built those with agility in mind from the beginning.
And so instead of the debt that comes from legacy processes, legacy systems, et cetera, that are incredibly difficult to maneuver in real time, if you’ve built agility into who you are and how you’ve run your organization, you can change course and navigate the twists and turns. And if you’re not pre-built for agility, then you’re paralyzed because your ability to effect change and the velocity of the decisions you make or what we might call clock speed, you’re at such a disadvantage relative to your competitors. And that’s why there’s been a lot of growth, because it unlocks value in times of disruption.
KM:
Yeah, and the video series that you created, Everyday Equations, it’s been particularly relevant. In one video, you talk about how your well-being needs to be prioritized above your organization’s well-being, which is not something that every CEO has been saying. What does it look like to put your well-being above the needs of the company as an employee, and how have you thought about that in the context of the video series?
DH:
Yeah, these everyday equations have been great, and I’m, frankly, thrilled at the impact they’ve had internally, but we’ve been sharing them externally because we’ve gotten such great feedback about how they’ve helped people understand culture and understand how they can influence culture. The equations are really greater-than or less-than statements. The reason I do it that way is to tell people, “We do want you to think about A as more important than B,” and so it’s the existence of a comparison that makes them powerful.
So instead of just saying, “There’s a principle that well-being is important… ” right, because most organizations would be articulating that well-being is important. We’re actually going a step farther and saying, “Your well-being, your Kathryn’s, your Alan’s, well-being, I want you to feel empowered that it’s more important than Deloitte’s well-being.”
And that’s pretty powerful when you repeat that and you convince people that I want them to make a decision that prioritizes their family in a moment if they’re truly confronting a family versus Deloitte question.
And again, that’s my theory of change, culturally. You got some top-down direction that’s pretty clear. The equations aren’t fuzzy. You can feel them in a way they’re tangible, so top-down direction, but bottom-up empowerment, that people know how to translate that to decisions they make every day.
KM:
Yeah, I totally agree, and I loved how in this series, you also talk about how working from home doesn’t mean always working, which, again, has been so relevant to so many of us. How do you think about or how should a manager or a leader who’s listening think about encouraging that with their teams?
DH:
It is essential that every leader of a team understands individual motivations and circumstances of each member of their team. Does that mean that you have to have a customized approach to every single thing about every one of your teammates’ days, weeks, or months? No, that’s impractical because collaboration’s important, and at times, being in the same virtual room at the same time is important.
Then it should be a process of continuous improvement. It’s saying we’ve established these principles or these equations. Every month, let’s have a conversation about which of these we’re being really successful living and which of these we’re struggling with as a team. Then you take that input and you reconfigure the way the work rhythms are working. And this point about agility rises to the top. Again, work has to be agile. People’s lives are agile. Work needs to be able to be agile alongside.
***
AM:
Dan, I’d love to hear a little more personal insight about your own leadership journey. Clearly, you’re a very committed, passionate leader, very thoughtful leader, but how do you keep yourself fresh, how do you continue to evolve?
DH:
To me, the key is making sure that you have eyes and ears in all parts of your team. I do see so many people who the more, quote, “senior” they get in management, the smaller set of people that provide them insight, contexts, advice, and perspective. I work really hard every day to make sure I have direct lines into as many parts of our team, regardless if you’ve been here two months or you’ve been here 30 years, regardless if you’re a partner or you’re an engineer just starting your career. I actually work really hard to find ways to get your perspective because that allows me to make decisions with a more complete view of the world.
AM:
Well, that leads me to my next question, because it’s been my experience every time I talk to really compelling leaders and thoughtful leaders. They often talk about being a student and that lifelong learning and being a student of leadership. Obviously, you get inspired just by the work you do every day and how you go about your job, but do you have other sources of leadership that you look to and other ways you can get inspired and other outside sources outside your day-to-day job that you look to, to continuously learn about effective leadership?
DH:
I generally dislike business books, so I’ll start by saying that. I absolutely seek inspiration from lots of places, and when I read, I often read biographies because I love experiencing leaders’ decision-making and journey, not by someone analyzing or creating a framework that tells me how they did it, but by just experiencing it firsthand. Alan, you will see me—and this is a strange habit of mine—you’ll see me watching leaders at press conferences because I love seeing how people handle real-time tricky moments and saying, “How would I have handled that, and what worked in that situation and what didn’t?”
***
KM:
So, if I can shift us then to the future, I think someone like you sits at the intersection of so many trends, you get insight into so many different businesses and people. What scares you or what excites you about the future?
DH:
What excites me is the fact that the impediments to rapid progress, many of those are going away, and the agility and flexibility of technology to not constrain decision-making or constrain work, but rather, to unlock value is a perfect example of that.
The combination of the cloud and modern as-a-service technology and ethical artificial intelligence, the combination of all those things takes a bunch of the impediments to progress away. The thing that maybe I fear, Kathryn, is that the people who right now have maximum decision-making and influence in the world, in companies, et cetera, will they channel that for good? Time will tell, but I’m a far more than glass-half-full person, and the ratio of excitement to fear is far more weighted to excitement.
KM:
Now we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel post-COVID. A lot of people are talking about a return to normal, but I think we can probably all agree that whatever we arrive at in the next few months or years, it probably won’t be the same as where we were before.
What do you think companies need to be prepared for, or what are the most thoughtful forward-thinking companies doing or saying or working on right now to put themselves in the best position for whatever comes next?
DH:
The most important thing, Kathryn, you kind of revealed it in your question, is don’t assume that what the next six months look like are what the next five years look like. I believe the best organizations are going to be really thoughtful to realize that norms of society, norms of working, many of those things are going to be re-formed over the course of the next 6 to 12 months in ways that I’m not sure any of us can predict totally.
And so, that doesn’t mean you can’t make decisions now, for example, about how you architect your work or your offices, etc.—you obviously need to do that—but build in the agility into your infrastructure, of process, of technology, of HR talent policies because I can predict that things will look quite a bit different a couple of years from now. So give yourself the time for those norms to settle in versus declaring permanent policy changes or permanent decisions, because I think you’ll probably be wrong.
KM:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really smart. I know you’ve just said to be agile and prepared for a wide variety of outcomes, but if you were to make one or two predictions about the future of work, and you can take that in whatever direction you want, what do you think we might see, or what would you expect or want to see in terms of work and workplace in the future?
DH:
I think the future of work will be the single biggest positive catalyst of diversity, equity, and inclusion change in the world. Because I think we will create a future where, where you live, where you grew up, what your preferences are in terms of how you work, when you work, the different path that your career might take. The future of work is going to unlock talent that is dormant in tons of parts of the world. And I can’t wait to see that play out.
KM:
Yeah, you and me both. Dan, thank you. This has been such a great conversation, I really appreciate you joining us.
DH:
Kathryn, Alan, it’s been a ton of fun.
AM:
Thanks, Dan. It was great to have you here.
***
AM:
All right. Wrapping up today, it’s time now for our final segment, “Dream big with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott.” Bill, great to have you here today.
Bill McDermott [BM]:
Thank you, Alan. Good to be back with you.
AM:
So Bill, we just came off a great leadership conversation with Dan Helfrich at Deloitte. You know, Dan, he talked about the biggest challenge is that they really are the biggest opportunities. Can you comment on that from your own perspective?
BM:
Well, the world’s biggest challenges absolutely are the world’s greatest opportunities. We faced it, Alan. You were in a staff meeting with me in March 2020 when we decided to not focus so much on blue sky thinking because we didn’t think there would be a blue sky if we didn’t help the world solve for the COVID challenge. We worked day and night.
The engineers did a great job getting products out the door to respond to that emergency, returned people back to work safely, and turned vaccines into vaccinations on a global scale. COVID was a huge issue, a huge problem, but it was also a great opportunity to help millions and millions of people in the global economy. That’s an example of really thinking big.
AM:
Dan had a great metaphor about how the magic happens in an organization. He described it as the magic happens when you set the right tone from the top as a leader, but you empower people throughout the organization to get stuff done, to drive innovation, to challenge the status quo. How does magic happen for you in an organization?
BM:
To scale companies, you have to hire great people. You have to hire a management team that knows more about their domain, their role of expertise than you do. You have to get that hiring decision right because once you do, it’s easier to give them the empowerment so they can make decisions. They can lead big teams. They can scale organizations. Ultimately, that’s what drives everyone’s happiness and success. The world doesn’t need micromanagement. The world needs leadership.
AM:
Deloitte is operating at the epicenter of two things we care deeply about, transforming customer and employee experiences. Talk to us a little bit about what you see happening in digital transformation. What are the opportunities ahead of us for new ways of thinking about the customer experience and the employee experience?
BM:
Well, you can’t give the customer a three-star Michelin experience unless you first provide that to your employees. And your employees will judge you on, what did you do before you hired them? So are there very carefully curated recruiting techniques that you have? Is your hiring process and how you manage talent world-class? When you do hire somebody, are they onboarded properly? Did they have their phone, their computer, their networking gear, the tools that they need to do their job properly?
Have you segmented a training for them that is world-class and yet solely personalized to just them, based on their knowledge, skills, attributes, and needs to do the job? And have you completely enabled them, empowered them, where they can manage their work life at your company in a way that inspires them?
This then carries over into the unreal customer experience, so your customers don’t just like you, they’re raving fans. They want to promote you. They’re not just satisfied, they’re eternally loyal because you’re so dialed into their needs. It’s so personal to you that you’ve made it personal in the way you connect with them, and this is absolutely achievable, perhaps even more achievable and more scalable in a digital world than an analog world. And that’s the opportunity of this generation, Alan. That’s why I say digital transformation is the No. 1 opportunity for every business to get it right.
AM:
Well, what a great way to wrap up, Bill, your enthusiasm and inspiration and energy is infectious. So keep dreaming, big, Bill. Big dreams change the world, and as always, thanks for being with us.
BM:
Thank you, Alan. Let’s do it together.
AM:
I’m all in, Bill. Sounds great. Until next time everyone, let’s work flow it.
***
KM:
Join us next time as we uncover how business leaders are innovating to make work, work better. Let’s workflow it together.