Decision Vision Episode 110: Should I Pivot my Company? – An Interview with Helene Lollis, Pathbuilders

Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:23] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owners’ or executives’ perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:44] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast, which is being recorded in Atlanta per social distancing protocols. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator and please consider leaving a view of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:12] So, today’s topic is a topic that we’ve visited before. We had Brandon Cooper on talking about pivoting a company. And today’s topic is, Should I pivot my company? And as I mentioned when we crossed the 100th episode threshold that, I decided that I wasn’t going to be afraid to revisit topics, because, you know, a lot of people approach the same problem or decision with a different fact set with a different fact set, with a different set of priorities and with, frankly, a different set of circumstances.

Mike Blake: [00:01:50] And, therefore, I’ve decided and the listenership seems to agree given the rise of numbers we’ve had, that it’s okay to kind of revisit a problem again and again. We’re not going to make this the pivot our company podcast or it’s all pivots all the time. But, nevertheless, I do want to come back and revisit these conversations.

Mike Blake: [00:02:12] And, of course, we have this thing called coronavirus, which as of March 25th, when we are recording this podcast, it looks like we are at least in a position where we’re seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re not there. We’re not post-pandemic. I call it trans-pandemic. But we’re certainly getting there. And as many of us know, COVID has presented us with decisions we would not have ever imagined we would have needed to make. And probably if we did make them, we had to make them in a way that would have been different in the pre-pandemic environment.

Mike Blake: [00:02:50] And Brandon’s conversation was more about – or was about a circumstance where a pivot was required in a pre-pandemic scenario. But our guest today is going to come in and talk to us about the decision to pivot a company during the pandemic as a result of the pandemic. And I think a lot of companies can recognize this.

Mike Blake: [00:03:16] And even though we are emerging from the pandemic at this point, it’s still going to be instructive because we don’t know when that next external shock is going to happen. We don’t know when the next pandemic is going to happen. I mean, frankly, you know, if we’re honest about it, we don’t necessarily know that we have COVID licked. I mean, I think right now we have the upper hand, but there are mutations out there. You know, we just don’t know. So, I do believe that this is going to be somewhat of an evergreen topic for good or ill.

Mike Blake: [00:03:46] And helping us with this is my long time friend, Helene Lollis, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Path Builders. An organization focused on moving women forward and increasing gender diversity in leadership. Extremely active in the community, Helene is a past chair and on the executive board of Junior Achievement of Georgia – she’s been doing that forever, I know – and as a trustee of the Woodruff Arts Center, where she is the chair of its Women’s Giving Circle. She serves on a bunch of other boards, too, it’d take out the program to list all of them. Just take my word for it, she does a lot of stuff.

Mike Blake: [00:04:21] Helene was also recognized as one of Atlanta’s Most Admired CEOs by the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2020. She received the Gold Leadership Award from the Junior Achievement USA Board of Directors for her service to Junior Achievement. And she was inducted into the YWCA Academy of Women Achievers and was recognized as the Guiding Star by Emory’s Executive Women of Goizueta, which is their school of business. She was trained as an engineer – which I did not know. And I’m embarrassed that I did not know this. I never asked.

Helene Lollis: [00:04:49] Why don’t you know that?

Mike Blake: [00:04:49] But she was trained as an engineer and received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State and Purdue University. And spent 12 years at the Amoco and BP Corporations in plastics, process design, product development, marketing, strategic planning, and company mergers and acquisitions.

Mike Blake: [00:05:08] For 25 years, Path Builders has focused on advancing top tier talent through high impact mentoring, professional development and consulting with senior executives to create cultures where women thrive. Boy, do we need that today. And Helene guides strategic decision and program development, consults with key clients, and represents path builders in the community. Helene Lollis, welcome to the program.

Helene Lollis: [00:05:30] Welcome. I wish I sent you a shorter bio.

Mike Blake: [00:05:34] No, I’m glad that we got that out there. The cool thing is, I mean, I’ve had a lot of friend whom I’ve known for some time, and it’s uncanny how many things I learn about them when I actually have to go and do the homework and learn about the bio. Fortunately, I haven’t found that somebody was like a convicted felon or anything, that might be kind of awkward, or a traitor to the state. But, you know, I did not know that you have that long background in engineering and material science before you moved into this. And at some point, I hope our conversation will come around to how does that background give you, maybe, a different perspective on the things that you do, because I suspect that it does.

Helene Lollis: [00:06:19] It does. Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:06:20] As opposed to what I would expect a more kind of human resource background, for example.

Helene Lollis: [00:06:25] Yeah. I would tell you, my team knows every single day that I’m an engineer. You know, it’s a way of thinking. It’s a way of framing. There’s no question. And even in the processes of the things that we do at Path Builders, there’s engineering all around.

Mike Blake: [00:06:40] So, before we get into this, I’d like you to describe Path Builders. I mean, you really have been, as your bio reads, a fixture in the community. What does Path Builders do and what is the origin story of Path Builders?

Helene Lollis: [00:06:56] Yeah. So, our focus is helping companies to move women forward and to elevate their best talent every single day. And we’re probably best known for large scale mentoring programs where we match women with mentors and peers, and take them through experiential learning to really equip them to be better able to move into leadership roles inside their organizations.

Helene Lollis: [00:07:21] But if the company was actually an Anderson incubator business back in the 90s, I was a mentee, actually, in one of the programs. So, I was working for Amoco at the time. They placed me in the program as a mentee. The gentleman with whom I was matched as my mentor is still my mentor. I talk with him on Saturday. So, it clearly was rather pivotal in my own career. So, we’re probably best known for those cross-company mentoring programs.

Helene Lollis: [00:07:53] But I bought the company in 2002 after leaving BP. And, initially, kept the dynamic that the previous owners had in place, this model of mentoring women. I felt right away a couple of things. One, they were starting too late. They were kind of starting with director level women who could be officers. And if you’re serious about building a pipeline of female talent, you got to start earlier than that. And, two, we’re exclusively working with women. And to create environments where women thrive, you’ve got to be working with both women and men. So, the nutshell is, we work with organizations to move women forward. We work to really develop talent and leadership benches with both women and men inside organizations.

Helene Lollis: [00:08:40] And then, I would say, the last few years, what we have added to complement all of that is consulting at the C-suite on how do you create an environment where women can thrive and women can move forward. How do you change the dialogue in the C- suite to be around how gender is strategic to really building a great company.

Mike Blake: [00:09:01] So, you are doing that. I know you had a lot of very high profile clients. But the thing that struck me is, you’ve been working with the U.S. Military for a long time now, at least you had been. I presume that’s still the case. And then, one year ago happens, right? It was just around St. Patrick’s Day or a little bit before then, when, frankly, our world changed. So, you know, coronavirus happens. The next thing you know by, I guess, April, a lot of us are told to “shelter in place”. And what happened to Path Builders at that point?

Helene Lollis: [00:09:36] Yeah. So, I said the company is 25 years old, actually, last March was the 25th anniversary. And we had this fantastic plan that it was going to be a year of parties. And my leadership team had actually built this fantastic idea. Instead of having one big event, we were going to have a whole year of pop-up parties. And one of our clients, WesTrac, had already signed on to be the first pop-up party. And we were going to be inside all of our clients, helping them to celebrate their commitment to women. And then, a week later, we decided we’re probably not going to have at least that first pop-up party.

Helene Lollis: [00:10:17] So, long story short, I had no idea that what started out as a year thinking it was going to be celebrating an anniversary, two enormous changes. So, one, completely reinventing how we deliver. But I will also say, overnight, we shifted from being a sales driven company to being a marketing driven company. You already highlighted how much I do in the community. My whole team is out and about and it was very much being with people talking about what we do. That was one of the primary drivers of really where our clients came from. And clearly those opportunities were gone. So, I mean, not only were we shifting how we do what we do, but we were even shifting how we built the pipeline for what we do.

Mike Blake: [00:11:00] So, as coronavirus hit – and I’m curious where you kind of fall with this – my own perspective was, you know, I knew it was serious, but my own reaction was kind of incremental. Things are changing, but do I have to necessarily blow everything up to survive? I’m not there yet. So, here are five or six things I think are going to be kind of small changes and maybe we can kind of ride it out. Was that your experience, too? And if so, what were the small changes that you tried and maybe worked or didn’t work?

Helene Lollis: [00:11:35] Yeah. So, I’m fully transparent that there were four [inaudible], and I lived in each of those stages for a period of time. I mean, number one was the very simple denial, “Helene, this can’t possibly be happening. This isn’t the way we do things.” And I remember initially having that moment of paralysis of, “Oh, my gosh. We can’t do what we do in this environment.” And the reality of it was, you couldn’t survive that way, right? So, we moved to the, “Okay. If we have to, for a few weeks, do whatever.”

Mike Blake: [00:12:14] Thus bargaining.

Helene Lollis: [00:12:17] Yeah. Exactly. I can hang right with Elisabeth Kubler Ross right through this whole dynamic. Absolutely. But then, we thought, “Okay. We’ll do a couple of webinars from the basement of my house and it’ll be okay.” And it was talking about things that worked and things that did not work. We pride ourselves on flawless execution, and that means there are a lot of people monitoring different aspects of things. And so, we were doing what we deemed to be interactive workshops, but literally two of us in a basement. The rest of the team we were communicating with through Teams. And so, here, I’m trying to deliver a workshop while communicating with my team on Teams, while silently communicating with my – bless his heart – husband trying to manage the technology.

Helene Lollis: [00:13:06] And I will tell you, the morning of a huge program launch, I will never forget when the people across the street from us had one of those chipper trucks drive up in front of their house. And my husband and I are literally, like, putting together our cash. Like, could we come up with 100 bucks to make these people go away? We can’t so much of a run.

Mike Blake: [00:13:24] Wow, what a story.

Helene Lollis: [00:13:26] So, I mean, recognizing those moments – unbelievably they finished before so we didn’t have to pay them. But then, we had a client who just said, “You know what? We’ve been waiting and we don’t want to wait anymore. We’re ready to go.” And it was a client where we were working with developing all of their newly promoted managers and directors. And we had designed it as opportunities where they would be convening in one of their offices, so either in Chicago or Atlanta or New York. And it was as much about developing managers and directors to be great leaders as it was about them building a leadership team.

Helene Lollis: [00:14:05] So, the way we had designed the program was about being in-person together and relationship building. And so, we just kept postponing. We kept saying, “Well, we’ll wait until we can do that.” And they came back and said, “You know what? We’re ready to go. Figure it out, make it happen.” And so, we said, “Okay. Will you give us the space to completely redesign the program?” Because we can’t just pick it up and and pretend it’s the same online. And so, absolutely fantastic working with them. But we went back to the drawing board and we said, “Okay. So, instead of a monthly gathering, this now needs to be two week touch points.” And there’ll be certain sorts of breakout groups we do when they’re in session with us. But then, certain learning teams that they’re going to be connected to and we’ll build discussion guides and threads through all of that.

Helene Lollis: [00:15:02] So, phase three for us was, we can make – I guess that’s really phase two, we can make something that’s meaningful. Phase three, for me, was the, “Oh, my gosh. This might have some legs.” We’re actually creating connectivity, and relationship, and trust building that is not only positively impacting these people as leaders, but now they’re actually able to extend their network more broadly than they might have been able to otherwise. And then, finally, stage four for me was, this is probably something we should have done a long time ago.

Helene Lollis: [00:15:43] In the fall, we launched a program, a cross-company program completely designed to be in the online world. And first time coming out of the blocks are amazing. Clients trusted us so much. We had women from 11 states the first time we set it up to go forward. And, now, it’s such an interesting time to be having this conversation because now we’re really trying to figure out who are we going to be after, when we’re no longer trans-pandemic, as you said, but when we are perhaps actually post.

Mike Blake: [00:16:17] So, I’m going to go off-script here, because what you said and the way that you said it brings something that is, I hope, an important observation. And that is that, in all those sort of stages of grief, the one that I don’t think that you had, or at least if you did, it lasted for probably about 18 seconds, was the depression part. I think it sounds to me and knowing you as well as I think that I do, I think that this is right is that, you quickly recognized that just sort of things had to change. And you can be frustrated with it all you want, but at some point you got to solve the problem.

Helene Lollis: [00:16:57] Yeah. And, I mean, I think some of that is just a bent to the eternally optimistic entrepreneur, right? But I’d be a liar. I mean, (A) Elisabeth Kubler Ross would tell you, you don’t get to skip stages. So, clearly, I had to be there, and maybe it was a short visit point. But there were certainly moments right before going live with big offerings where that inner voice does this, “This can’t be happening to us.” But I will tell you, again, unbelievably loyal clients. Suddenly, the feedback we were getting after we got out of the basement – the basement, the feedback wasn’t too great, to be completely honest.

Helene Lollis: [00:17:43] But we were back in the office and starting to build out a Zoom studio in April and May. And I will say, largely because we had not done a lot of this, it was a brand new world for us. So, we weren’t tied to any mindset of what online delivery was going to look like. And so, I think that the creativity – and I mean, I can’t say enough positive things about the team around me – we had and the way we were redesigning to create experiential learning, we started getting such great feedback so fast that it pulled us through that curve pretty quickly.

Mike Blake: [00:18:25] So, I’m curious. I think a lot of us have had to, on some level, become amateur video and audio engineers, like it or not. Otherwise, I mean, you just can’t communicate. And as much as sort of Zoom and other platforms are interesting, one, they don’t all work the same. And number two, they are not the realization of AT&T’s video phone. You don’t just simply pick up the handset and you’re talking to somebody on video.

Mike Blake: [00:18:57] What was it like? Were you energized about the opportunity to pick up an entirely different skillset? Was your team energized about that? Were they scared? Were they frustrated? Was it a cocktail of all three? What was that like?

Helene Lollis: [00:19:11] Yeah. I don’t know that any of us took the time to contemplate it as a wonderful learning opportunity. I don’t know that that one existed. I will tell you what the team says to me. The team says to me, there was just never a moment – and I guess they mean me – at which I wasn’t just saying we are going to do this. Like, it’s just we must, we will. The mission is too important, we’ve got to continue doing what we’re doing.

Helene Lollis: [00:19:48] I will say, though, you are absolutely right in terms of this team of people who were expert at making something happen in a big ballroom, suddenly becoming producers, and onscreen personalities, and learning so fast that, quite frankly, we were doing it before we even understood what we were doing because necessity drove us to do that. So, I don’t know, I mean, I think now in retrospect, it’s easy to look back and think, “Oh, my gosh. What a fantastic learning year it was”. In the moment, you just kind of feel like you’re living in the hell of, “Okay. I don’t know.” And I can remember any number of times where we would be getting ready to go live with a couple hundred people from all over the country coming on. And we would all just kind of look each other in the eye and say, “Here we go.” I lost you.

Mike Blake: [00:20:47] Yeah. We’re going to push this button and hopefully it works, right?

Helene Lollis: [00:20:50] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Crossed fingers.

Mike Blake: [00:20:53] So, I want to be clear, you know, comparing kind of pre-COVID Path Builders to post-COVID Path Builders, what are the big differences? Or if you had to describe the before and describe the after, what do those look like?

Helene Lollis: [00:21:08] Yeah. So, the bulk of our work was, literally, we have rented a tremendous amount of ballroom space in the Atlanta area and we have traveled to our clients. So, while we don’t have offices in other locations, we’ve always gone wherever clients are. And so, if I go back even just the year before the pandemic, I spent a lot of time in New York. I had clients in Texas, and California, and Chicago, and wherever clients needed us to be live.

Helene Lollis: [00:21:43] And we pride ourselves on part of the development experience is rich interactive peer exchange. So, what it looked like was, somebody facilitating a workshop, tabletop exercises, super thoughtful seating arrangements that propagated networking, teaching people how to have dialogue and conversation. But I will also say that much of our work is surrounding creating powerful mentoring partnerships. And so, we always met every single individual with whom we were working individually for what we used to call an hour long behind closed door interview.

Helene Lollis: [00:22:27] And so, Mike, I was skeptical if even the interview piece would be able to have the same integrity to it, to really understand what was making people tick, and what their opportunities were, and what their challenges were. But if I had to come down to one element that gave me the greatest pain, what we go through when we first introduced a mentee to a mentor, we have to be really focused on the fact that we don’t want people to have preconceived notions because we’re creating mentoring partnerships that would never happen on their own.

Helene Lollis: [00:23:02] And so, if people are prejudging their partner before they meet them, that works against us. And so, when mentee and mentor meet for the first time, the first couple of experiences that they have together was always pretty carefully planned in a live environment and recreating – I wouldn’t for a second dismiss how hard it was to get all the technology in place to do what we do. But when I think about the big lift, it was, how do we redesign moments of individuals interacting so that the same sort of trust building relationship can be there to create the vulnerability that we know has to be there or people just don’t grow.

Mike Blake: [00:23:42] So, as you say that, a thought occurs in that. I wonder if Path Builders in some respects is impacted even more than most because, not only is your service delivery impacted, but the downstream effects after your service delivery and how you’re training people to communicate and build relationships are now impacted, right? It’s not just that you have to deliver things over video, but, now, how do you be an effective mentor remotely? How do you build real relationships virtually? And that may or may not be the most desirable goal, but, you know, July of 2020 is all you got. And some of that is probably going to stay. I think most of us think that some of that’s going to stay. In what proportion? That remains to be seen. And so, I’m curious, is that also kind of a part of the calculus that makes that sort of extra challenging for you guys?

Helene Lollis: [00:24:52] Yeah. So, you’re absolutely right on that. The creation of a lasting relationship. I mean, I commented at the top of our time that I’m still connected to my mentor and that, 20 years later, is still my mentor. That emotion of, will we do enough for that to even be feasible? Again, I will tell you that what it took was being highly prescriptive. Like, where it used to be, we kind of celebrated how we put people together. But then, we gave them a little space to be natural. We couldn’t afford that anymore because, now, it’s the silence of before a conversation and after a conversation, which we all know creates a degree of awkwardness.

Helene Lollis: [00:25:35] And so, thinking about how we were using music and what were the first questions they would ask each other, I mean, all of that was so highly scripted to bring them to a point where we knew that they would go forward. But, now, in answer to the question that you closed with there, Mike, the thing that had us so getting out of bed in the morning right now is the more senior people we work with, we’re always going to be at a level where their companies would pay to put them on an airplane to go someplace. When I think of the work we’re doing with manager level individuals who now have an ability to build a national network, that was never going to happen without this.

Helene Lollis: [00:26:19] We launched a program in three weeks, it’s one of our programs for women new managers. It’s got women from 15 states in Canada. And the thought that those individuals, on a monthly basis, are building close trusting personal relationships with women from all across the country, that was never going to happen for them at the manager level before. So, it absolutely informs where do we go from here?

Mike Blake: [00:26:46] That’s fascinating. That went in a direction I did not anticipate. But you’re right, I mean, to me, what you’re really talking about is that, it enables you to scale your impact in a way that just simply would not have been possible in person. The benefit of digital today is scale.

Helene Lollis: [00:27:04] Yeah. Yeah. And I will tell you, I’m in a CEO peer group. We just, in the first quarter, did our go around the room and tell each other what we do well and what we suck at because we’re peers and that’s what we do for each other. And to a person, my whole group said, “Fantastic watching how you pivoted. Hate that it took a pandemic to make it happen.”

Mike Blake: [00:27:31] It’s that classic necessity being the mother of invention, right? But it also created the conditions, too. Because, you know, in the start of this thing, many of us are resistant. We really resisted Zoom. You know, we talk about Zoom fatigue and I got to do Zoom calls. And I can’t speak for other people, but for myself, I’ve gotten used to Zoom now. I’ve gotten used to seeing my mug on camera. And become more comfortable that it’s not nearly as emotionally and mentally draining as it once was. You know, the pandemic also created the conditions, I think, for a market that was receptive to this kind of delivery.

Helene Lollis: [00:28:13] Agreed. Yeah. I will tell you, though, you asked earlier around learnings and things that we extracted from things that were challenging. One of the things we never saw coming was, we need to be brokering very different conversations with our clients about the expectations that they are putting on their people. And so, what I mean by that is, like, we just assumed if we have an event, people show up and they listen. And the downside of what you just said with that comfort is, I have watched far too many people start to move into a mode of audit. That, quite frankly, the work that we do, where we’re focused on experiential learning, doesn’t play well in audit mode.

Helene Lollis: [00:29:03] And, quite frankly, it causes us to be very provocative with participants in our programs about, if you’re auditing today, how much of your career are you auditing? And, literally, recognizing now that when we go inside a client, we’re having to have conversations with the client around, “We need you saying to your folks this is a cameras on experience. This is a get into breakout groups and have dialogue.” Because one of the things we have learned looking over the past 12 months is, you having your camera off in a breakout room doesn’t only negatively impact you from the lack of exposure. It’s impacting the other people in the room.

Helene Lollis: [00:29:43] And I’ll tell you the quote one of the women shared with us. She go into a breakout room and somebody’s got their camera off, “It’s like there’s this big black creepy box sitting there. And I wonder if the big black creepy box is listening to me or if it’s going to speak.” And I think we’ve got to be really clear, especially as we start to move into hybrid mode now, we’re talking a lot with our clients around what are the norms that you’re putting in place so that folks don’t live in audit mode?

Mike Blake: [00:30:12] Yeah. That’s interesting. And the one thing, I think, the technology has not yet fixed in-person and maybe virtual reality will be the thing that crosses that. But, frankly, it’s just knowing that the people in the room are paying attention. The downside to virtual is that, it’s too easy to pretend that you’re paying attention when you’re not. And, yeah, I can imagine that. In particular, if a leader looks like they’re “in audit mode” what a disastrous message that sends to the rest of the group.

Helene Lollis: [00:30:50] Well, and as somebody who’s been accustomed to working with large groups in ballrooms, I always had the ability to walk over to a table and stand near someone and make them uncomfortable. I don’t have that ability any longer. And, you know, when you’re in the space of developing people, people have to want to be a part of that. But I’m also going to be super frank, one of our biggest challenges is, there’s a lot of really lousy online stuff out there. And if you’re entering with the mindset that this is going to be another lousy online thing. And then, we’re bringing you together, tossing you into a breakout, and telling you to go on a scavenger hunt in your house as a way to get to brainstorm what it’s like to work with people, and you’re in a mode of thinking you’re going to show up and have your camera off were a little bit of a surprise.

Mike Blake: [00:31:50] Yeah. So, I want to ask you a question that may be blatantly unfair, but I’m going to kick myself if I don’t ask the question. And your response to the last one sort of led into it. And that question is this, is a digital relationship perhaps even better for women with the challenges they face? And I mean two things. One is, for good or ill, women still bear primary responsibility for home management and child development. And that, in my view, unfortunately, has not changed materially. And you can’t fix that. But at least the digital world, I think, in some cases gives a woman a fighting chance to balance some of that or at least levels the playing field where you’re not present, where some of your other cohorts are also not present for certain things. And you know as well as I do, that lack of presence, whether consciously or unconsciously, can be a barrier to career development.

Mike Blake: [00:33:00] And the second – and I have to ask this question, because it just begs the asking – frankly, is it safer for women? We both know – you know, I’m sure, a hundred times more than I do – the workplace can be very predatory towards women in certain cases, right? We have a governor in New York that seems like every day has got another allegation. And I don’t know if they’re true or not, but it’s bad optics at the minimum. At least in the digital world, do women feel safer? Is the digital world potentially a leveler of the playing field for some of the women that you’re coaching?

Helene Lollis: [00:33:42] Yeah. I mean, it’s an interesting question and I think it’s going to be something that we’re all challenged with as we start to think about this whole return to work, back to work mindset, and what that is. I will tell you, we’re working pretty closely with women to get them today thinking about the strategy of what return to work looks like for them. Because you’re absolutely right, and I’ll add to your list that women, in addition to child care, it’s elder care as well. So, I mean, it’s on every side of the spectrum, right, that women take the challenges on.

Helene Lollis: [00:34:19] I mean, I will say, I agree that there is an access element that is probably positive. There are no question women that, because of getting kids on the bus, miss and choose not to participate in things if I have to drive an hour someplace to get to an experience. So, no question that access element is there.

Helene Lollis: [00:34:45] I will tell you, we have mentoring partnerships where both mentee and mentor, especially in an environment where we’ve got about 80 percent of our mentors repeat from year to year, mentors are telling us that in some cases they actually feel like they’re getting to a degree of depth faster than they did when there was a lot of we’re eating breakfast or lunch and we end up talking about a lot of random things. Part of that is the online world. Part of that is what you just said, the comfort we’re all building with Zoom.

Helene Lollis: [00:35:19] I hesitate to jump into your thread of safety only because, at the end of the day, there is a real world and we need to be in it. And I do not think that the answer is just extracting ourselves from that reality as a way to advance in that reality. And I feel that we absolutely have to be really strategically thinking. I mean, Wall Street Journal had a whole section last week around this whole idea of what return to work is going to look like, what hybrid is going to look like. And one of the huge challenges managers are facing right now is figuring out, “How do I make sure that I’m continuing to create exposure opportunities for individuals to have informal conversations?” This world is particularly challenged in creating informality.

Helene Lollis: [00:36:17] So, I totally see why the depth of a mentoring conversation actually might be there online. What we are hearing so loud and clear from women, Mike, is, they didn’t realize how much learning there was from the, “I’m in the middle of a meeting and the senior leader turns to me and says one quiet thing and that becomes a launch point for something.” Or,” I hang around five minutes after the meeting and get to express my interest in being on that new project.” And the loss of that informal interaction, I think, from a long term standpoint would exceed the benefit of what you’re talking about.

Mike Blake: [00:36:57] Interesting. Okay. So, getting back to the topic at hand, we’ve talked about your service delivery having changed as a result of the pandemic. Has it impacted your business model at all? For example, it occurs to me there might be an opportunity for more modular offerings or things that are prerecorded. I don’t know if you’re pursuing that, but it seems to me there might be opportunities to have a more diverse business model as a result of the pandemic. Is that something you’ve thought about? And if so, what are your thoughts on that?

Helene Lollis: [00:37:36] Yeah. So, you know, it’s interesting, the video thing comes up a lot. And our model is so interactive. Our model is so driven by scripting what the conversation is that you’re going to have in a breakout, and mixing you into a different breakout, and having that experience. So, I will say, yes, there are absolutely elements of the model that are changing. So, in addition to the large scale programs that we run and the custom programs that we do inside organizations, we also have public programming.

Helene Lollis: [00:38:12] And maybe a week ago, it became evident to us, “You know what? Public programming is never going back to a ballroom.” Like, that will forever be something that is all around reach and making sure we are getting more and more, in this case, women focused on great content, great ability to interact. I will also say that, clearly the business model has changed in terms of the ability to work with global clients. And so, we have organizations now where, you know, we do each workshop several times and we pick up the team in Israel at one time a day. We pick up the team in Asia at another time of day. And in a world where that used to mean jumping on an airplane and now, absolutely, we’re able to design series for global clients in a way that we’ve never been able to before.

Helene Lollis: [00:39:08] I will also just say that, as we look at this world of not only the program execution, but the consulting, we work with C-suite leaders to really help increase their awareness around gender diversity, change their dialogue around diversity, get them to think about their talent plans. And one of the biggest hurdles that has typically been in place for us to have a great session with a C-suite is their ability to be in the same place at the same time. And so, absolutely, that is an added opportunity that now we’ve got an ability to convene those individuals and, I think, be able to have at least more frequent touches. It would be like, “Okay. They’re going to be together this day, pack it all in. We’re going to do a four hour session.” Where, now, we’ve got the ability to really thoughtfully think how do we move an executive team’s awareness because I can work with them for individual hours instead of a four hour session. Does that make sense?

Mike Blake: [00:40:12] It does make sense. And it also, for me, raises the question then, has the pandemic with digitization or digital transformation, has that led to opportunities maybe for longer term times of engagements, too? Because I imagine in your world, you do a workshop and the way I’ve understood workshop – I’m not a workshop guy – you’ve had to basically get the unanimous consent of the UN General Assembly to get all the people at the same time. They’re going to commit. They’re going to be there in the same room, same time for four hours, go. And if you don’t do it in that four hours, it all blows up. And the plan is still in line for five years.

Mike Blake: [00:40:57] And on the one hand, I can see the value in the intensity of that. But on the other hand, it seems to me that it opens up now a vista or an opportunity of a different kind of instruction that can be delivered over time, which has some benefits over a one shot intense kind of workshop.

Helene Lollis: [00:41:20] Yes. So, we’ve never been one shot, intense kind of workshop people. But I will say, you’re absolutely correct in this environment aligning better with that. So, our model has always been those one shot things are great if you want to inspire people and charge them up. It’s not going to develop people. Development is a step-by-step process over time where you try some stuff and then you’ve got people you can talk about with what worked and what didn’t work. And then, you try some more stuff. And so, absolutely, this format allows us, I think, to be more impactful with that, because of what you said, it’s hard to get everybody to fly into the Chicago office to do that.

Helene Lollis: [00:42:04] My sense is where we will evolve to, is, there will be moments in programs that are like that. There will be a big kickoff where it is live and in-person. But then, the execution throughout the months that follow, the beginnings, endings, things like that. But, absolutely, this format lends itself to that ability to make sure we’re having that high touch connectedness that really allows development to happen.

Mike Blake: [00:42:36] Do you ever record any of those interactions?

Helene Lollis: [00:42:38] Yes. So, I will say that is different. It did used to be a world where, if you missed, you missed. And so, absolutely, now we’re recording so that if something does happen on that day or whatever happens, yeah. So, now, we’re writing into all of our contracts with clients that we will record and make that available for the term so that people can get up to speed. So, certainly, that’s a new add that wasn’t there before.

Mike Blake: [00:43:06] We’re talking with Helene Lollis of Path Builders. And the topic is, Should I pivot my company? Is there anything from pre-pandemic Path Builders that you’re still trying to figure out how to bring into trans and post-pandemic Path Builder? Something that still is a work in progress that you want to make sure carries over?

Helene Lollis: [00:43:27] Yeah. So, yes, and it’s funny because we were holding out and we weren’t going to do it. And folks came to us and said you need to do this. So, we’ve identified what we see as the four key stages in a woman’s career. And so, entry level women, women learning to manage, women learning to lead leaders, and then executive suite women. At the executive level, we have always hosted these intimate, small, invitation only dinners, where we bring together women that are all facing the same sort of issues. And it was always a lovely private club, nice dinner, nice wine opportunity to come together. But really to dive into really substantive issues that maybe you can’t talk about all the time. And almost in that vision of the officers club where you get to have some of those conversations. And we had just been avoiding it, Mike. We just were like, “Oh, we can’t do and bring you dinner.” And women came to us and said, “What’s up? Like, we’re ready to have one of these.”

Helene Lollis: [00:44:36] So, literally, a couple of weeks ago, we moved heaven and earth and worked with this fantastic little wine shop in Atlanta where they created these special little wine and cheese plates. And we had them TaskRabbit it all over the city. And then, oh, my gosh. Two people from Florida signed up. And, oh, my gosh. Somebody who just happened to be skiing in Colorado signed up and somebody in Richmond signed up. And so, suddenly, we were working with all of these different little shops, sending little bottles of wine and food.

Helene Lollis: [00:45:13] There’s still something so magical about creating those safe environments where we get to have conversation. And there’s a social element to it as well. And, you know, they loved the first one. I’m not so sure my team did. It was a little bit of a lift, maybe all of that happened. But, clearly, we’ve got to be able to come back to do something and maybe it evolves to where it travels from city to city.

Mike Blake: [00:45:42] So, as you look back at your transformation, are there any decisions you look back and said, “You know what? If I had to do that over again, I would have done it differently or sooner or later.”

Helene Lollis: [00:46:03] Wow. Yeah. You’d think I would have been prepared for that question.

Mike Blake: [00:46:09] I mean, maybe the answer is no. I mean, maybe you’re happy with everything the way turned out, and that’s fine.

Helene Lollis: [00:46:13] You know, I don’t know, that is not to make it sound like it was easy. That is not to make it sound like there weren’t things that we didn’t do particularly well. I’m just not one for regret much. I mean, things that didn’t go well, we fixed it the next time. Yeah. Now, if I think back to those first couple of webinars in our basement, I wouldn’t mind erasing that from my memory. I will tell you, the very first that we did out of the basement was a group mentoring program where there are three men. So, everybody’s from different companies, three mentees, one mentor. And I’m not going to remember, but maybe there were 40 or some odd groups. And I will never forget the first time we hit that button to go into breakout rooms. And I think it took us half-an-hour to get everyone in breakout groups, which now totally cracks me up since that’s now a 30 second activity.

Helene Lollis: [00:47:13] But, yeah, was there stuff we didn’t do well? Absolutely. I don’t have regret. I think everything we did, we learn from, and we may have changed it. But maybe we needed to screw that up to be able to figure out what it needed to look like going forward. And I hope that doesn’t sound too gratuitous. I’m not sure I would actually do it differently.

Mike Blake: [00:47:35] Well, look, I think if it’s true, it’s not gratuitous. So, you know, if you think it’s true, I’m sure that it is, so that’s fair. And you said yourself, the first few webinars, you know, that’s a learning curve. We’ve all had to learn how to present in this world. And, for me, you do much more presenting than I do because that’s what you do for a living. The first few webinars I’ve done over Zoom, where you have to generate all the energy yourself, there’s no audience to generate it from, they look like hostage tapes, man. Literally, it looked like I was kidnapped someplace and they just ripped the duct tape off of my mouth. And you’ve got to free some people out of a German prison somewhere or I’m not going to get let out by this people. They’re that bad.

Mike Blake: [00:48:29] Yeah. I will tell you, though, I mean, it’s caused us to think about – I mean, the bookends on a meeting are silent, which is such a different norm. One of the things we focused on a lot is sound and feeling and how there’s got to be music on the way in.

Helene Lollis: [00:48:47] And one of the things I was most struck by was, early in the pandemic, one of our participants said to us that she missed the energy of the room. And when we did a deep dive on that, what we really recognized was, when you’re surrounded by other people who care about what you care about, even if you aren’t hearing the words of the conversation, the energy of that conversation when everybody cares about the same thing, opens you up to listen in a way that isn’t there when it’s silent and you’re sitting at your home PC drinking a cup of coffee. And then, boom, it turns on and somebody is speaking.

Helene Lollis: [00:49:27] Like, none of that preparedness for embracing insight and knowledge is there. And you’re absolutely right, I mean, we’ve worked really hard how do we create mood and how do we really think about. So, I mean, this is perhaps a silly little thing. But now that we’ve done it, it’s another thing that we think we’ll probably never go back. We now create welcome kits for all of our participants, where a box comes and it’s a Path Builder’s box. And you’ve got your Path Builders pen, and your Path Builders coaster, and your Path Builders – now, we’re doing ring lights for their laptops. I mean, we need to do something for them to feel that sense of connectedness and togetherness that they might be getting if they were in a ballroom together. But, now, that I think of some of those elements, that’s some of the stuff that just won’t go away.

Mike Blake: [00:50:22] You know, it’s really interesting, that just gave me an idea I’m going to steal from my own practice. I mean, the move to virtual and digital does provide an opportunity to embrace a different kind of client onboarding. And who doesn’t love to receive a welcome kit? And it could be stupid. It could be one of those stress balls or whatever, and maybe a COVID mask or something – I don’t know. A little go on or some big ass mug or something like this. But, you know, it’s those those simple things. And even grown ups like to receive something in the mail that isn’t a bill. It’s something that they didn’t pay for. That just is never going to go away, right? I may steal that idea. That’s a great client onboarding idea.

Mike Blake: [00:51:10] Helene, you’ve been very generous with your time and I want to be respectful of that generosity. But I’ll close the question I always close with, which is, if one of our listeners or some of our listeners have a question that we didn’t cover, they like to go into more depth than we were able to today, can they contact you with questions about how you pivoted? And if so, what’s the best way to do that?

Helene Lollis: [00:51:32] Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you for asking. So, website, pathbuilders.com, I’m sure is the easiest. Not to be confused with Pathfinders because the car makes people think Pathfinders. We’re actually Path Builders. But I will say, not only about pivoting, but, Mike, I feel like we’ve gotten such insight into what could be holding women back right now in this – I’ll go with your phrase – trans-pandemic environment. And if that’s something people find value in talking about as well, I’d love to talk with folks about that.

Mike Blake: [00:52:05] Excellent. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Helene Lollis so much for joining us and sharing her expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune in so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review of your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.