Data Science Hangout | Sandy Steiger, J.M. Smucker Co. | Setting Expectations for Your Team
The Data Science Hangout is a weekly, free-to-join open conversation for current and aspiring data science leaders. An accomplished leader in the space will join us each week and answer whatever questions the audience may have. We were recently joined by Sandy Steiger, Director, Integrated Analytics, Pet at The J.M. Smucker Co. Here are a few snippets from our conversation: 1:06 - Start of session 5:29 - Transitioning to the mindset, "Data science leader for the people" 10:48 - Setting expectations effectively on a data science team (Turning point as a people leader) 20:11 - Developing data science talent profiles 28:21 - Getting data scientists more exposure across the company 30:00 - How to encourage data scientists more comfortable sharing their work 35:05 - Taking up your space, being confident 57:39 - Create better team environments to challenge each other ► Subscribe to Our Channel Here: https://bit.ly/2TzgcOu ► Add the Data Science Hangout to your calendar: https://www.addevent.com/event/Qv9211919 Follow Us Here: Website: https://www.rstudio.com LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/rstudio-pbc Twitter: https://twitter.com/rstudio
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Transcript#
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Welcome, everyone, to the Data Science Hangout. And of course, welcome back to all familiar faces and anybody that's joining for the first time. Just to kind of let you know how these go. There's really no agenda at all. It's basically just a place for data science leaders and aspiring data science leaders to connect and ask questions to one another. So you can put questions in the chat, or just jump in and ask live. We also have a Slido link for any anonymous questions you want to ask too. And Rob can help me by putting that in the chat window if you don't mind.
But I'm joined by my co host for today, Sandy Steiger, Director of Integrated Analytics, PET at the J.M. Smucker Company. And Sandy is passionate about community building and driving data and analytics usage across the organization. So really excited to talk to you today, Sandy. And we'd love to have you introduce yourself and maybe share a bit about your team and the work that you do.
Absolutely. That was my first thing here. So my name is Sandy Steiger. I am the Director of Integrated Analytics at Smucker. This is a new team, actually, that they're building. So I'm gonna, it's kind of helpful, I think, to get a history of why I landed where I'm at. So I'm going to kind of talk through that a little bit for you. A lot of things in my life, I feel like happened because I took a chance and someone suggested I do something and I was like, you know what, yeah, I'm going to try that.
So I had a math and business degree when I was an undergrad. And when I was graduating, I was like, you know what, I don't really know what I want to do. My personality is kind of big. What type of work can I do with math that's going to allow me to be me? And my professor was like, I think you should go on to learn more. And I said, I'll try that. So I went on to graduate school. And I was going to go, I was going into applied mathematics. And a friend of, someone, my mom was sitting next to a graduation, went to the same graduate school I did, Miami University, and said she should do statistics that aren't many females there. And I said, okay, I'm going to try that. And so I did. And I earned my master's in statistics in 2004.
And then I went on to, I was really fortunate because Dunhumby USA had just come to the US. Well, I guess they were Dunhumby, started their joint venture with Kroger. They came to the US and I met them and I was like, that fits my personality. They're analytics consultants. That's what I felt like they were, which I didn't want to be in a back room. I wanted to be out there meeting people, understanding their business problems, and then figuring out how can I use, well, at the time I was thinking statistics and to solve those problems. And frankly, I tell people now when I'm interviewing and hiring that I was so excited when I left school to apply every model I had learned. This was going to be so much fun. And then I didn't do that. You do, right, but not right away and not most of the time, because the thing that's most important is keep it simple. And I learned that diagnostic and descriptive analytics was actually how we need to start and especially with organizations when they're in infancy with respects to utilizing data.
And back then, Kroger absolutely was there. So then I spent a lot of time on the keyboard. I was the, I know it's super hard to believe, but I was that nerd who got super, got excited when I got a program to run and I got output and I knew how to analyze it. You have an error in your code and why is this happening? So I'd cheer when things would run in process. And one day I was asked if I'd like to take my hands off the keyboard and that was like the, I just couldn't even believe someone would ask that question. Why would I ever want to take my hands off of the keyboard? So I said, no, probably not fully. And I was kind of half people leader, people manager, and then half still doer of the work and scoper of all the work.
And then lo and behold, time went on and I found myself as the head of data science for 8451. Now, clearly that didn't happen overnight. I purposely made strategic decisions within my career to get to that point. But I had a lot of fun with it. It was all about a lot of team development, talent development, retention strategies, also setting the strategic vision. But the one thing that I would say that I was the most passionate about at 8451 was remembering that our team was made up of people and people leadership community building was what kept people there. That's when we didn't lose as many analysts. We didn't have a matrician problem when we met people where they were at and when we listened to them. So that's what I spent a majority of my time doing.
Becoming a data science people leader
I was the one who put together all of the team activities. And what I'd find was in meetings and when we'd have big broad share out. So when 8451 was going through the transformations from fast to cloud and to open source programming, I remember sitting in the room and we had all of these brilliant engineers up talking to the team and they had what looked like to me outer space on the screen in a whole bunch of languages that didn't make any sense. And there was like little dots moving around on the screen. And I started to look around me and everybody who also was brilliant data scientists. And I saw fear. And I saw worry. And I saw concern.
So I just hopped up. And I started talking to the team. And I started talking to them about, you know, this is end state. And yes, I have no idea what's up on this screen either. We're going to figure that out together. We're going to take this slow. We're going to take that step back. And what happened after that meeting was people came up to me and they said, thank you for figuring out what was going. Thank you for seeing us. Thank you for reading us. And it was in those moments and not just that one, many others while I was there that I realized the thing that these brilliant people needed was a data science people leader. They needed that person who would be their voice, who could tell the business what they needed, who could just provide them with the support that they needed and they wanted when they needed it and when they wanted it.
When I actually made the decision to leave 8451, I had some of the data science experts in the business come up to me, very concerned that I was leaving. And I said, I don't know why you all are so worried about me leaving. I can't teach you anything. You know the world of data science and what they said to me, it wasn't the fact, it's not what you can teach us, Sandy. It's what you can do and how you can lead us. And that's the thing that's missing. That's the thing that not many and not everybody brings to the table.
It's what you can do and how you can lead us. And that's the thing that's missing. That's the thing that not many and not everybody brings to the table.
So anyway, I realized I've kind of gone off on a tangent, maybe not a tangent. This is what I'm passionate about.
Okay, good fun. And so anyway, so then I went to Miami University and I was leading their Center for Analytics and Data Science for two years. I enjoyed it. I took that time away, full transparency. I had had my fourth baby and I realized I don't have the time with her that I like. And so I had this great opportunity to build up the center, which was very much focused on driving data and quantitative literacy to across different groups of thinkers. So every field, every industry of study needs to know data and understand data and how do I make decisions off of it? So it brought me back to that. Plus it brought me back to talent development, closer to this group of people, these young people who are going to be leaving university.
So I tried to think through was what were we teaching at 8451 to upskill people, to get them ready to be analysts or data scientists with an organization? How do I bring that to a college campus prior to these students leaving? And then I met this guy named Doug Jenkins at Smucker and he was asking me to help find some junior talent at the university. And I did. And he explained to me this team that he was building. It was a new concept. Well, analytics was a new concept for Smuckers, but the idea of having people really focused on driving the usage of data and analytics across their sales organization, it just wasn't at the caliber they wanted it to be. And they were looking for the right skillset, the right thinkers to bring into the room and bring to the table to help drive these initiatives forward.
And I had told him about some work that I had done at 8451 and also around talent profiles that we had built, which I'm also super passionate about if anyone is interested in that. And they were so this concept of team building. I was always told at Miami that I should come up with my own consulting company because that's what everyone does. And I said, I don't know what the heck I would even do. The one thing I thought maybe I would do is consult on creating and developing highly effective analytic teams. Holy moly, here's what they were delivering right to me at Smucker. Perfect opportunity. So I raised my hand and said, hi, I might be interested. And that's where I've been for the last three months.
But one question. Yeah, no, I feel like there's so many great parts in that. And I love the human centric approach that a lot of these talks seem to focus around. And just like that fact about like your role being about the people and being able to help them communicate their work. How would you recommend that some of us start to do that? Like as we think about moving into leadership roles?
Setting expectations effectively
So I went to a leadership training, I guess you could call it. And if I'm being honest, I'm not sure that I usually take one or two good things out of some of those types of sessions, right? It's not like a whole full day, of course, you're going to get everything is as impactful as you'd like it to be. But this was, I think, the turning point for me when I was as a people leader was they asked the question of, does your team know what you expect of them? And everyone in the room said, yes, our team has objectives for the year. And this facilitator said, I'm not talking about their objectives on a day to day basis. Do they know what you as their leader expect of them and what they need to do in order to be successful within your team, within your organization?
That actually took me back. I was taken aback by that question because I thought to myself, I don't know how long I was into my career. And I realized, I'm not sure anyone had ever had that conversation with me. I don't know that any manager I'd ever had, any leader had ever sat me down and said, here's what I expect of the people on my team. Here's what I want from you on a day to day basis. So I sat down and I put that list. I started to think through that. What does that mean? So I was thinking about all of the different people that I admired, that I felt like an inspiration to me and that I would look out for as those are the types of people in their careers that I want to be like at some point in time. And what were the characteristics about them? Why did I think they were so successful? So I jotted down a list and then I started to build that whole list out. And I've been ever since then, even to this day. So at least 10 years now, I've been sharing this list with everyone that I work with. I shared in interviews and I actually wrote a blog post about it for Miami. So I'll potentially put that in the chat in case anyone's interested in seeing that.
But those areas, it's kind of cheesy. I know a bit, but the first thing I said was I expect everyone on this team to be passionately curious. And the only reason I say that's not super cheesy to say is because Albert Einstein said it and he's brilliant. So of course that would be something. The reason it's cheesy is because at the time, Dunhumby's two of their values was curiosity and passion. And I thought, well, this is super cheesy that I've combined them. But what did I, I started to tell stories about each of these areas and I bring it to life. And I remember there was a woman who used to work for me. It didn't mention, or it didn't matter to her what project I gave her. Everything excited her because she saw it as an opportunity to learn something, whether that meant she was learning about a new category, a new product. She was learning about a new part of the business, or it was how to work with a difficult team, how to work with a difficult personality, somebody who was very different than me in their operating style. She just took it all head on. And so from a passion perspective, that's what I wanted to see.
And then curiosity around, I just want to know more and I want to dig deeper, but also recognize when I've gone far enough, right? Because there's always still creep that you need to be watching out for. So that was the first thing that I would tell people is that's what I'm looking for. You're not going to love your job every day, right? And so as a leader, I would talk about those days with my team and I would tell them about days that I wasn't as having the best day, or this project wasn't the most exciting thing that I got to work on, but I was going to do it because it was right for the business. So I made sure that they saw that, the both sides for me as well, the stuff I loved and the stuff I didn't care for as much because they needed to know that was okay to feel as well.
Another thing I would say to the team is I have really high expectations of people. I expect you to do a lot and you're probably not going to like me all of the time because I'm going to push you pretty darn hard. But I promise you at the end of our relationship together, you will be in a far different place than you were when we started because I'm going to get to know you. I'm going to understand your strengths. I want to know your boundaries. Where's your breaking point? Not because I want to break you because I want to get us to that point and then we'll back up and then we're going to push against that breaking point a little bit later and you'll see that you've grown and that you can take on more. But I said I need you to be honest with me when we've gotten to a breaking point or when you can't take more.
One woman who worked for me, one day she just broke down. I said what the heck is happening right now and she said I just I can't get all this work done and I said how long have you felt this way? I don't know about three weeks and I said well for three weeks I've been asking you to keep doing more and you kept saying yes. Let's stop. Let's look through your calendar. Let's start figuring out what we can be pushed back and what can we not what can't we do or what should we say no to? And then another aspect of honesty is hey when something breaks when something's going wrong I need to know about it. I will be your biggest advocate. I will take the fall. I will take the blame for everything but I need to know you're fixing it and I need to know about it. I don't want to be surprised. I don't want to find out in a meeting that I'm in. So like they they also saw that I was there to have their back and I played that out several times in meetings. I'll be bad guy. You be good guy. And so they could see that in action too to know that I actually meant it.
Another thing I would say is I expect you to be challenging one another. We can do that respectfully so we should be respectful. I always hated that I had to say that. I never feel like I should have to tell someone that they have to respect everyone on the team but you do. But from a challenging perspective I'd say you should be questioning the data. If something doesn't look right, if it doesn't make sense to you, ask a question about it. Do you think that there was a potential different way to solve the problem? Mention it. Bring it up. Someone doesn't have to take your advice or take your suggestion but it's good for us to be thinking differently and challenging the thinking of one another. So I said it's our job to always be challenging ourselves, challenging one another and I even said please challenge me. I'm not right all the time even though I jokingly tell you that I am. I know that I'm going to make mistakes. I make mistakes every single day and I'll assess up to it. I'll tell you when I've made a mistake but I want to know like I need you guys to like we need to be pushing and challenging one another. That's what we're here for.
How do you actually like get people to do that? I find that difficult myself too. Like how do we teach people how to have those conversations especially if we're all working remotely as well?
So what I found is I have to meet people where they're at. In this new role that I'm in, I don't want to, I'm in a unique interesting position where I'm finding I'm asking questions that have never been asked before and so for what I'm I'm being asked to deliver things that I don't think I should be delivering. They're too rudimentary. We need to be elevating. We need to be escalating the work that we're delivering. So what I'm doing is meeting people where they're at. I'm going to deliver part of what you've asked me for and then I'm going to say here's what I think you really need. I'm going to add to it right and so I've start I've started out with the team of saying let's deliver what's asked and more. There are times where I say oh no we're not going to deliver that. That's not the right way to solve this problem at all. Let's sit down and have that conversation. Yes exactly it's the yes and right. That's the type of conversations that we're having.
What you find and what you run into is there's the ego. It's not even ego. It's more of the I'm so this is my work and are you trying to tell me my work is bad if you're challenging it and so I'm trying to coach my team to to suggest as well that let's always start with these are some really good insights. Have we ever thought about looking at the data or digging into this a little bit further? I remember there was a woman on my team and I tried to she was developing herself in her career. She was moving into more of a senior analyst type of position and I would she'd asked me to come sit in and observe meetings but not necessarily to play an active role and I so I was listening. She was offering up suggestions on how to solve the problem and I thought that's not I don't know that's the 100% accurate way to do it so I followed up but in the conversation with I think that's a really great place to start in solving this problem. I'd add on to this plan by adding these questions this approach so it wasn't a oh god no that's the most that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm more talking about let's yes I really think that's a great approach or and let's build from here yeah.
Talent profiles and data science DNA
Thank you. I'm starting to see a few questions that are coming in that window so I want to make sure I ask some of those too. Ian I see you asked a question around the talent profiles. Do you want to ask that live or introduce yourself?
Sure I don't mind. Hey Sandy my name is Ian Hunter. I'm data science manager for Quorum Health in Nashville and you mentioned and got really excited about talent profiles and so I was wondering if you could elaborate on what are these talent profiles that you're excited about? Are they based on data science skill level for hiring or upskill profiling? Just kind of elaborate on that for me.
So I'm going to tell you one thing too. Ian what people say about me is wow you get very excited about this stuff so that's one thing that I'm not lacking of is excitement and passion around anything in this space. So here let me explain a little bit about where the talent profiles came from and why we took the time to develop them. As you're probably aware of being in analytics roles and analytics leadership or data science we were getting a lot of questions from the team around. So I have my expectations that actually weren't technically related at all but the team would say I don't understand what I need to do to advance in the team. How do I get promoted? It always comes back to how do I get promoted?
What skill sets do I need to develop? And so what we did as a group the whole leadership team I brought us all together and I said we need to start writing down what are all of the skills that our teams require? Like what are the needs right? What is it that we expect of everybody? So we actually I think we had a list of probably 50 or 60 things. Now what does that look like? Communication skills, business acumen, so some of the business the more general stuff that you need to know just by being in the workforce right. Then we had things around storytelling. So data storytelling, data visualization, more technical skill sets around coding in R or Python. SAS as well was on our list. There's nothing wrong with SAS. I'm a SAS gal. And there was more engineering type of a skill set as well around the automation. So we had blown out this list of about 50 or 60 skills. I think we dwindled that list down once we started to look notice some overlaps.
Then what we did was we defined what each of those skills meant and gave a description of what it meant to be a beginner, intermediate, and experienced within that skill. For each one of our grade levels within the organization from entry level all the way up to a senior manager on the team, how advanced did we expect you to be? Were you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced or an expert? And you would notice that some of those skills would change right. So like as a beginner on the team or sorry as a more junior entry level on the team, I probably do need to have more of the technical skill set, be a more avid efficient coder. But as you evolve up into more senior people leader type of a positions like I thought that skill set could you know diminish a little bit for me. Not everyone that was just how my role actually played out.
Then what we did was got real nerdy and we clustered all of those skills. And we found that there were four main buckets or segments that actually started to emerge. And we use those to profile our team. And we came up with what we were called our data science DNA is what we called it. So everyone on the team would rate themselves against each of the skills. And you would start to see you could see how where you were right from I think we did like a one to five scale or something like that. And then you would find out what type of analyst am I.
So we have to just general bucket of skills. But then the three segments that really started to define our group, we have what was called an insights bucket. And this would be the analytic translator, that person who understands the technical aspects of the role, but is that great communicator out to the business. So I understand the business problem, I know the right approach to solving it. I'm not necessarily the one who's actively doing it, perhaps products or capabilities have been built, I run my analysis, pull the insights in the story together with the recommendations, and I deliver that back out to the business. We also then had a more of the machine learning, statistical theorists, as we work when we would call them, they were the people in the background thinking about the automated machine learning. So they're building the products and capabilities, implementing more of the sophisticated analytics, predictive, prescriptive, when you think about that analytics curve, that those of us who were more insights analysts could utilize in our day to day work, and deliver that out to the business.
Now, I'm in no way shape, or I'm not at all saying that those people who were the machine learning or the statistical theorists weren't actively engaging with a client, they were, but their skill set was utilized a bit differently, and we would collaborate on projects. And then our third bucket was our technologists is what we called it, but that role, it felt very engineering, but they were the ones who would think about our products and our capabilities, and how do we make them so, how do we automate those, so that we basically take that, you know, that repetitiveness out of our positions, and actually just feed it into a system that can run for us very quickly, and spit out those insights.
I started to do research after we had developed these as well, and found that other organizations were thinking about their people in a similar way, they had different buckets, but it really made us feel like, oh, wow, look at this, we are on to something here, and our people loved it too, because they could see where did they fall out with their skills, and if they were like me, an insights analyst, but wanted to push the boundaries into the statistical theorist, they now knew the very specific skill set they should go in and focus on learning, and could find that mentor. That was another really cool thing we did out of this tool, is when you rated yourself, if you could say, like, I want to be, I want to get more experience with, or I want to develop in automated machine learning, the system would send out to you, okay, well, here are some people who, along with their manager, rate them as some experts within the team, these might be good mentors for you to reach out to, so that was a fun thing that we did as well, utilizing R.
Can you chat a bit, or just speak a bit more about that tool? That sounds good. So, sure, but I didn't build it, and I was more of a user of it, but they really just built an R Shiny app that we could use, so all of the data was implemented, so you, I think for the, I think, don't quote me on this, originally we started it in Excel, so everyone would rate themselves, send it off to the person who would upload it, upload the data into R Shiny, and then, or R, they would run it through the R Shiny app, and then it would spit out the information, but I think by the time I left, they had made it a bit more sophisticated, where it all just happened within that app, versus having to do it in Excel, send it off, somebody load it, yeah.
Building community and mentorship
Wow, that's cool. Is that, so are you starting to maybe take some of what you did at a prior role, and apply it to this new role? How are you building the community now, and like mentorship programs?
That's exactly what I'm hoping to do, but I've only been here for three months, so again, I'm trying to meet people where they're at, and I'm not trying to overwhelm anyone with my ideas. I recognize that I am the new gal on the team, and I want to make sure that I am providing what the team needs, so that's the first thing I'm doing, is actually listening to the new analysts that we're hiring. There are so, we've just hired in the last three months, 25 people. That's overwhelming, and I am one of those 25, so I'm onboarding people who are new, and as I'm onboarding, so it's a, it's a tricky situation, but the first thing I noticed was that we weren't coming together as a group. And yes, we're virtual, and I understand that, so it's very hard to come together as a group, but this is coming together as a group, so I created what we're calling analytics learning labs. I know, like, we're all, 25 of us are learning something new right now. We're all upskilling in this business. There are some people within the team, like 15-ish, that were already here, but what I've heard from them too is there are still parts of the business I don't know enough about, so I've created these analytic learning labs, and we come together on a weekly basis to learn something new about, so part of the onboarding plan, but also an introduction to different parts of the business than perhaps we weren't necessarily in, or been exposed to in the past.
My ideal, my idea, though, moving forward is once we get some of this learning stuff out of the way, learning about the business out of the way, we're going to learn about the work everyone is doing, so it's showcases that the team can do, talk about their work. I need some peer review on this approach that I'm applying to this problem. Can you all help me figure out, is it the right model? Is it the right output? Is the right interpretation? Is this a good story to be telling? So I want to give that people the opportunity to get exposure that way, because we're continuing to be in this remote world. It's very hard to then meet people across the team.
But yes, I am, and then I also had some people on the team reach out to me and ask, we need, this is something that's been missing from the organization is women in leadership. How do we, can we talk to some of these younger women within the organization and talk to them about how to become women, a female leader in analytics? How did you get there? How did you make some of the career choices you made, sacrifices that you had to make along the way, and kind of sort of mentor and build each other up that way?
I love this community building piece. I'd say this is probably my favorite topic to talk about, and I know on a prior call, someone had brought up, like, how do we actually get people to want to share their work, or if someone thinks maybe it's too, like, entry level of an example, how do you foster that community and the sharing?
So, I did this thing in 8451, which is going to sound very similar to Analytics Learning Lab, but I called it peer review. I got asked there, Sandy, I just don't know how to think on my feet in a meeting. How do you know when you're in a conversation, someone asks a question, how do you not stutter? How did you just talk and answer the question? Well, part of that is experience, right? You've just been around the block a time or two, and you figure that out, and fake it till you make it sometimes, and I hate that. I hate that saying, and I hate saying that, but sometimes that's a bit of where you have to be, but also practice. Let's get up and pressure test you in front of a crowd. So, we actually made a rule that any project that was delivered had to go through peer review. Everything had to be shared with the project, with a group of analysts, and when you presented in this peer review session, you had to let the audience know what role you wanted them to play. Am I pretending as if I'm the client receiving this? So, you're doing a very formal presentation to me, or are you treating me as an analyst, and you want me to help you better assess whether the technique, pressure test that, pressure test how you've done that, the data you used, the model you've built, and then that output interpretation, or is this more of a, I just want to do a project share out, and make sure you're all aware of what I'm building, because I think it's going to be beneficial to the rest of this team down the line, and so looking for feedback in that way too. So, we kind of started to go down that path where a majority of the work actually did have to be presented in that way because it, I don't like that word for us, but like it encouraged the practice before the, before the formal presentation.
Thank you. I see there's a few anonymous questions coming in from Slido, so just want to let everyone else know if you're joining in a little bit later that you can ask anonymous questions there, and someone asked what makes someone a great analytics mentor?
I, so what, all right, I'm gonna say this, and I don't like to talk myself up ever, right, because I think that I actually have a lot to learn, and I don't know, so when Rob and Rachel reached out to me to do this, I was like, do you really think I'm the right person to do this? I'm just not sure about that, and they can attest that I actually said that, okay, but what I found is I've only been at Smucker for three months, and I have had three separate meetings, and I've had three separate people reach out to me and say, hey, could we chat? I'd like to learn more. I'd like to pick your brain about how to do this, how to be in this field, how to continue to grow myself, and how to stretch myself. And so a lot of what I do, again, it's just, honestly, I don't push my way into a conversation. I just look for somebody, what do you need from me? I'm happy to help you in any way. Some people, I said, if you just need someone to talk to, do you need someone to vent to about a situation? I'm happy to be that person, but you need to also let me know, do you need my advice? Do you need some thoughts on how you might approach this?
So I try not to overstep bounds in that way, and what I also have been, I try to share with people too, is a lot of times what's needed is they want a coach, right? They want something to just provide them with a few plays, a few drills, something to give them a kickstart. Here's how you might want to start this. Here's the right approach for taking this, or heck, yes, I decided that I needed to take a step back in my career because it wasn't working for my family. Are there parts of me in some days where I'm like, god, I hate that I felt like I had to do that because I couldn't get the space I needed at my job? Yeah, but it worked for me in the end, right? So like, I'm willing to give people, like I just, I share my stories. I share the successes, the failures I had.
I noticed that there are a lot of men on this call as well, and I'm not saying this to diss any of you because I think you're all very delightful, and I love working with men, but I've been the only, since I started my career, a lot of times I was the only woman in the room, and I said, take up your space. It took me so long to learn that, but like, I've tried to build in this confidence with people. Now, also, I'm making it sound like I can only, or it's like this only females need the support. I am an honest, transparent person, so I've had many, many men on my team as well look for, to me, for mentorship and support and guidance, and frankly, I've just told them how it is. They've asked me, why don't people want to work with me, and like, well, you come across as the know-it-all in the room, so perhaps we need to change that attitude. So like, I think that's helpful in a mentor as well, somebody who's willing to tell you what maybe you don't want to hear sometimes.
Communicating with the business
So I just sent a note out yesterday to somebody within the business, and I was giving them my recommendation for how we should approach a meeting that's coming up, and I said, I would not go into this customer meeting and talk about us as a company. Don't. Go into that meeting talking about them and what they need to be successful, where their current wins are, their successes, where are they lagging, and then ideas that we have around how they could potentially win in those lagging areas, but don't focus it on us and our brands. And that's controversial, right, because most CPG companies, we want to go in and talk about, well, here's how we can help, or here's what we can do, and I said, I think we'll get invited to a second conversation if we focus on them. And I had two camps, right? There was one camp of, well, no, we need to make sure that they know that here are the things we're bringing to the table, and then I had the VPs in the room saying, no, this is what we need to be doing, right? We want to be strategic partners, and a strategic partner would talk about the customer. The strategic partner doesn't say, what about me? Here's what I'm looking for, and here's what we need out of this partnership.
I like that. Thank you. I see, Christian, that you had asked a question earlier that was kind of a bit about RStudio products specifically, so I don't want to, like, use it as a way to endorse RStudio, like, pro products, but Christian, would you want to kind of speak to maybe what you're going through or questions that you have about leveraging tools to drive growth at the business?
And I can read the question, too, if you want. Christian asked, are you using RStudio team, and if so, could you give an example of a time that your team has been able to leverage those tools to drive growth? So, teams as in Microsoft Teams, or? Christian's referencing RStudio pro products specifically, but it could be in general. So, perhaps that answers your question, then, Christian, when I say Microsoft Teams.
So, in my past life at 8451, there was the migration from SaaS to open source, so R and Python, and I was a part of the, I had to get the organization to really, truly invest in this space. They kept saying, why aren't we utilizing R more? You guys should be doing this more. Why is it taking us so long to move off of SaaS or to move off of these other products? And I finally went into the room, and I just shared with them this nirvana state, like, here's an example, a gold star project, do you guys all love how this went and how the output, and they're like, yes, absolutely, that's what we should be doing, and I said, great, we can do one of these at a time, and it takes about three months to do because we don't have the right infrastructure in place. And they're like, well, what do you mean? They said, you're not investing. You're not investing in servers. You're not investing in the training of the team to be able to use these products. So, there, we changed the, we were able to get the resources that we need.
I know I'm not answering Christian's questions specifically, but what I've been, what I tried to tell the team, too, as we were migrating was, I'm not, I don't care so much about the tool that you use. I care that we're using the right solutions and the right, we're solving the problem in the right way. So, if R is the right solution, if Python is the right solution, if, say, us or Alteryx or Tableau or whatever it might be, that's what we should be using if we have those at our disposal. In my team today at Smucker, we're hiring people with wide-ranging skills. So, there are some people on my team who've actually not coded before. They're very comfortable running syndicated data reports, panel reports, and then packaging those up to tell a really great story. And then, there are others on the team who, frankly, I would say are more data science-minded and skill set-wise who are very comfortable and familiar using R and other programming languages, and that's what they want to be utilizing in their day job. So, I'm not sure that I have 100% answer to that question other than we're trying to use the best resource to solve the business problems.
Leadership development and managing underperformance
Yes, yes. Kevin, I see you asked a question around leadership and was wondering if you want to introduce yourself and ask that live. Yeah, I would love to. So, I'm Kevin. I'm working at Braille as a statistical analyst, so having a great time there. Hi, Kevin. Hello. I was wondering, you've had so many, like, a very long path and a very, like, awesome, like, leadership path at so many different roles. I was wondering which role you found most rewarding.
So, this, God, I'm such a dork. I kind of get chills whenever I think about this, which, again, is ridiculous. People used to ask me all the time, what was your, what's your proudest moment when I was at 8451? And actually, what I would tell them was when I was working with somebody who was struggling and I'd see them succeed, I spent time in them, I invested in them, I helped them develop their skill set, I got them to the point where people started to say, oh, look at what they can contribute, because I saw potential in people, but oftentimes others maybe either were too busy to see or weren't willing to see. So, that's actually been my most rewarding, is just working with people and seeing them continue to grow in their usage of data and analytics and their ability to influence the organization because of those skill sets that I've helped them to develop and think differently and ask challenging questions. But those were some of my proudest and the things that I had the most fun with and enjoyed the most.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. And then in kind of building on that too, from a leadership perspective, I feel like a lot of my time and how I got to those roles was basically self-taught. I mean, you learn from some of your good managers and you also learn from those who weren't so great in developing you over time. And I remember there were all these, there were many different opportunities for training or even leadership programs that the organization was sending people to. And I kind of got mad once because I asked about them and I was told, oh, well, you're already figuring this stuff out. You're already doing it. We don't necessarily think you need it. And I said, you can't stop investing in me. I need it too. So I also would speak up for myself. So I think those were opportunities too, where just because I could figure it out on my own, doesn't mean I should have had to.
You think then, sorry, as a follow up question, do you think then, is it more important to be, I guess, pushed into, like, I guess, leadership and, like, more teaching yourselves how to do these things? Or do you think it's more, or should industries be teaching you how to be passionate, if that's even possible?
Great, interesting question, because I learned some lessons the hard way. It took me a long time to be comfortable with who I was, what I was good at, and just to have the confidence that I felt I needed. I used to, like, it would minimize my space in a room sometimes, because I was just like, I'm not sure I have as much value to add in this conversation. I'd wait for others to speak up. And then I remember one training that I was in, I was probably the most quiet person in the room, which is, surprises people now to hear this. But I would answer, I had answered a couple of questions, and the facilitator was like, you guys need to listen to her when she speaks. She really doesn't, which was like, hello, that sounds terrible, like, when she speaks, listen to her. But she knows what she's talking about. Like, she's got really good ideas. And that made me, like, it clicked for me in that moment, like, stop doing these things. Be a voice, voice that opinion.
And in leadership roles, I remember, I do wish that I had been given opportunities, been assigned a mentor, I never was given, I had to find people myself, which actually I prefer to do, I prefer to find people who are in the same life stage, or about to be, you know, just past the life stage I'm in, so that I can learn from them. But at the same time, I wasn't given those opportunities to truly be coached on how to lead, and coached on how to have effective conversations with leadership, I sort of had to fumble through it. I did just fine, clearly, I got into a really great position at 8451. But there were times, and I even when I left, I said, you didn't invest as much time in me as I think you should have. Yeah, I learned a lot myself. Now, do I think people should be pushed into those types of positions? No, I said that with a question mark, because I've worked with some very technical data scientists at 8451, who had said to me, I don't want to be a people manager. If you need someone to tell, to be a technical mentor, or a technical manager, I'm all in. But if it's going to come to me having to manage them, their performance management stuff, just the conversations throughout the year, that's not what I want to do, that's not where I'm passionate. And so I didn't want to ever force someone into a position like that. Some people figured out over time, they enjoyed it.
Yeah, it is interesting that some people are like very driven towards just being technical, and just wanting to do, wanting to stay in the data analyst, or staying behind the keyboard, as you were saying before, rather than like, dealing with people and doing all of that arduous task, if that's their opinion about it. But yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you for answering my question.
And I see there's an anonymous question as well, that is related to this topic. So do you think that it's possible to really do both? Well, like the hands on development work and management? I know, you mentioned at the beginning that at first, you didn't want to be a leader, because you wouldn't get to actually do that, that hands on coding. I think it depends on the size of the team. So when I was originally put in the position where I had, I was managing a team and scoping and doing work, I probably had two or three people reporting to me. When I was the head of data science, I had 15. There was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to do work, do technical work, hands on technical work, while managing that level, or that amount of people. So, but I could have my hands in the different types of projects and offer up opinions on perhaps not the right approach, or the specific model to apply or the analytical technique. But I could offer suggestions around, here are some other questions that you might want to attempt to answer with that. Or here's another angle, a different way of thinking about it, or interpreting some of those results, right? So we could pressure test in that way too. So I think it's possible up to a certain level. And then once you have hit a certain point, you just can't possibly manage it all. Or wait, maybe you can. I just didn't think, I couldn't figure out a way to do that and have four kids.
Thank you. I think this is a really important question as well that came in anonymously. As I progressed in my career, I feel guided into people management roles. And they said, maybe because I am a woman, whereas I like and am good at technical work. Any advice for this?
Ask for what you want. Ask for what you want. That was the one thing, when I think back to my younger self is, I didn't speak up on my own behalf. I didn't fight for what I really wanted sometimes. And that was unfair. Once I finally felt comfortable with my own voice and my own skin, things started to happen. Okay, so I was asked to speak at another engagement. And I was telling my husband, like, you know, I don't know, someone so asked me, how did you get involved? How did you get asked to do that? They didn't ask it that way.
