Ep. 37 Daniella Burns, Product Director of Nintex – The Honest CEO Show

The Honest CEO Show, Episode 37: Daniella Burns, Product Director at Nintex

Caroline Kennedy (00:02.83)
Welcome to the Honest CEO Show where we explore journeys of influential leadership in the future. I'm your host Caroline Kennedy and today I have with me Danny. I'm going to call you Danny but it's Daniela Burns and she is the Director of Product Manager at Nintex which is a global tech business worth turning over about $750 million a year in annual revenue and she's just about to take on a new role with Uptick which is a scale up whereby it's backed by private equity and in the last 12 months they've started to go globally and Dani is going to be the head of product for Uptick which is really exciting. Now she's a dynamic product leader is a word that I would use for Dani and she's focused on process automation, low code app development and with her new role she's also taking on UX as well and she's been driving the strategy with her product team for Nintex for quite a long time and they have a lot of innovation, they're the forefront of innovation and Dani has been the one leading that

But before Nintex Dani co-founded S-Money, an e-commerce startup in foreign exchange where she led product vision, the strategy, mastering the art of product market fit, particularly from a consumer perspective and looking at high-paced, high-growth environments. Now her career also includes key roles at Sony, Entertainment Group and BT as well where she's looked at customer driven, I suppose, solutions at a global scale. So welcome to the podcast, Annie. It's great to have you here.

Daniella (02:08.35)
Thank you. Thank you for the introduction, Caroline. It's lovely to be here.

Caroline Kennedy (02:12.045)
Yeah, so your career spans entrepreneurship, digital transformation, product leadership. What initially sparked your passion for building and leading innovative products?

Daniella (02:28.14)
It's a good question and it's a hard one because it's not quite a linear path in that regard. I didn't go into business thinking I'd love to be a product manager. I don't even think I knew the word product manager when I joined my first business. Agile wasn't really a thing. Everyone was in waterfall. It was all about prints too. But ultimately, if I'm really, really honest, about where it started. It started with Richard Gere a long time ago where I'm like, how in pretty violin, how do you make so much money? That's genuinely where it started. I had M &A and as a young kid, I I could say looking at where I wanted to go in my career with M &A, that's where you make money, M &A.

So did a business degree and I looked at mergers and acquisitions and I started off a career looking at an interesting corporate strategy, would say. Got onto a graduate scheme, got a placement in the corporate strategy division in Germany with my first big role, which was with NPower on their graduate scheme, which was Energy in the UK, one of the big four at the time. And their parent company, RWE, I went there in Germany to do corporate strategy and learn from head office, which was very impressive experience in that sense. I was the only graduate that got that opportunity. But what I did realise was a lot of time is spent coming up with these amazing strategies and doing so much research and really backing where it was that you were going and then presenting them to the board, you know, and really the focus there was like finessing the PowerPoint slides, making sure every word counted, you know, that you were really getting your point across about these options.

And you get very passionate about it. And then you have the session, they give their feedback, you go further with some of these ideas, you look at where you could go, the new world of energy, are we going to do DIY solar or battery powered solutions? And then all of a sudden, it's not focused anymore, we shelve it and we move on to something else. I found that really difficult because I felt like I didn't get to see any of the things that I was thinking through about really big hits and areas of impact and seeing results from it. And I moved into digital strategy next, same kind of concept, but, you know, back for NPower and looking at digital, was where we were going, everything was going online. And that's where we started moving to agile and having product owners and having, you know, scrum delivery. And this role just started to appear where you were looking at the strategy, but you were also then seeing it through to delivery. And I just found it. I just fell into it, and I loved it.

Caroline Kennedy (05:17.365)
Yeah. And I also think that's the critical element. It's not just about the strategy piece. It's about the execution, right? And making sure that the strategy piece is being followed through, is being executed and whether you need to adapt based on what you're actually seeing, the changes in the market conditions, et cetera. And one of the things I know from working with you is that you're very good at the strategy piece, market fit, and then the execution piece, and then the outcomes and delivering on those outcomes. And I think that that's a skill that's quite unique in being able to deliver that whole holistic approach, but it is critical particularly in this day and age with the pace at which technology and just the market changes.

Also too, think with the strategy piece is getting a sense of what does the future hold? It's not just about now. You're looking at where is the market shifting? Why is it shifting? And actually forecasting that into the product development as well, which is really critical too. And not just product development, but also to business development holistically looking at how we remain relevant and what does that look like for the future and then bringing that into the strategy and the execution base so that you stay ahead of the curve too.

Daniella (06:48.302)
Exactly. And that is never more fundamental than it is in tech. you know, previously when I was at Empower, when I was at BT, when I was at Sony PlayStation for a while, more probably so with Sony. But at the beginning of my career, digital was an experience, right? Really the product was energy and you were managing your, you were calling at the beginning and eventually you were managing it online or through the app, right? The same with British Telecom, which is looking at your phone or looking at your TV subscription, same thing. The product isn't the tech. The product is the hardware, right? And so for the energy consumption, it isn't about that digital experience. But when you move into tech, what you're selling is that software as a solution product. So it's never more critical than when you get into tech, I find, understanding the strategy, where the market is going, because that is what you're selling.

And if you don't get that right, then your business ultimately suffers heavily. Your customers are tied to that. You won't find often, well, you will find it, but it's just less frequent that customers will leave a company because of their service online. Back in the day when I was at BT or NPower, because really it was all about the value that they were getting from the actual product. But in tech, if they don't get the value from your product, they're moving on and they can move on like that because it's a subscription a lot of the time.

Caroline Kennedy (08:14.711)
Yeah, and there's also a lot of alternatives out there as well. It's a very competitive space and it's constantly evolving.

Daniella (08:22.35)
Very competitive. Yeah. And getting that moat or getting that competitive advantage in tech can be really challenging for those reasons. It's not often that you have a patent in your hardware or a certain skill that someone else can't develop. If you see something that a competitor is doing, it can be a number of years. So you can get up to speed with them and overtake them. So it's definitely a very competitive environment.

And that's something that I think is unique maybe to my journey. I'd like to see more of it actually, but it's really important to me in the way that I manage my team and lead is about giving commercial and strategic context and helping develop my product managers to be able to do that as well. A lot of the time it's a really common path in product management that you will come through being a BA or having been an engineer or having been in UX, something kind of lateral or something related to the field, but it's not often that someone comes in from the strategic lens. And so it's often the gap that's found in the team. And I really like to build up their knowledge in that space because it's fundamental in.

Caroline Kennedy (09:35.949)
How do you go about that? Because I'm really interested in that because they're great at those hard skills that they've got those technical skills, those engineers, etc. How do you then open them up to and build their capability in that strategic thinking space?

Daniella (09:57.901)
Yeah, it's a hard one. soft skills are a difficult one to build up. But it takes time and energy. You have to spend time coaching your team around these things. And so I spend time with my team giving them the commercial context, building dashboards with them, sharing data with them regularly, talking through what trends you see. One of the things I was really, at Nintex, very passionate about was having my product managers actually run the quarterly business reviews and do the research about what was happening with their products in the market and then coaching them on actually, you you've got some great information here, but you might be missing a data point over there.

Why do you think that might be? And just getting them to think about the wider context. Have you talked to customer success? What are they seeing? Have you talked to sales? What are they seeing? And just trying to pull the pieces together to bring that bigger picture to life. So it's more about developing their skills through, I guess, learning. Learning and opportunities to learn, bringing the data to them and helping them explore how to make sense of that information.

Caroline Kennedy (11:10.987)
Yeah. And I think what you've just said is really critical because it's authorship creates ownership, right? And so you're saying to them, present, and then challenging their thinking and their critical thinking rather than just directing them or giving them the answers. You're actually pulling that information out of them and coaching them because they've got no choice but to level up and go and find the information where there's apps.

And that's, know, and we talk about this a lot too. That's around neuroscience and how the brain works and stimulating those neurons. Because when we tell someone something, they're generally not in our minds and haven't categorised the information like we have. So they're searching for how that lands for them. But when you're able to ask them a question or orchestrate them to that outcome, their brain is stimulated and therefore their neurons are wiring differently and they're firing differently and that lands and that lands as a skill that is anchored for the future too not just a I've got to go and I've been directed to go and do this because they it's a skill that they can carry then for life and what I love about what you just said as well too is that then you coach them prior to the actual meeting. Do you know what it means?

So that they're set up for success when they go into that meeting, as opposed to just sending them away to develop the strategy, bring it into the meeting, and you don't necessarily know whether it's hitting the mark. And therefore, we're kind of somewhat if we if we don't help them prepare, setting them up for failure, we're kind of kind of saying I'm giving you some rope. Let's see what you do with it as opposed to I'm setting you up for success, which is really critical when elevating teams and high performance.

Daniella (13:20.768)
To your point, Caroline, I see the development that they get from that, building that skill set up in other ways too. I find my team become more more curious because they understand the context and the background of what they're doing. They become less biased. They're more capable of pivoting because they understand why and they're not bogged down into the details so much. They're more interested in what about this approach? Maybe we could do that. Have we tried this?

So it gets them really thinking about alternatives. And the other thing to just say around setting them up for success is to a degree also letting them fail, but fail safely, if that makes sense. So yes, we go into that session. Yes, they've done the research. But at the same time, they might not have all the information. Or another team might think something different from the data they're feeding. It happens a lot, especially in big businesses, because realistically, the older businesses or businesses that have move to large enterprise very quickly tend to have less data than you'd expect or to consume. And that's always a surprise I think people find coming into these big businesses that there isn't always the answers to everything.

And people can get real paralysed by that, right? Like, can I make a call? Can I say something out loud if I don't have complete certainty that this is accurate? But I say to my team, data is indicative always, right? It's always indicative. If you take it that way, then you have room to move. So if someone is in that QBR and says, you know, to one of the team, hey, that doesn't ring true to me. What I'm seeing in my area is this is this instead of crumbling, they go, thank you very much for that feedback. That's really good to learn. Can we chat about this after the meeting? I'd love to understand more about it. And then they can refine it and say, hey, last time we talked about this, it was a good hypothesis, but now we know more. actually think this. That's okay. You know, we evolve, we learn.

So teaching them it's okay to not know everything is also a really hard, skill to kind of embed with the team, but really critical.

Caroline Kennedy (15:22.763)
That in itself is hard to teach, right? Because innately as humans, particularly in a corporate environment, we generally want to appear as if we are competent, as if we have all the knowledge and we are that knowledge center. And then to create environments where it's okay that we don't have all the knowledge and no human does. What we're actually doing is creating an environment where we're saying we're not the genius but collectively we are we can have a genius and there are other perspectives and I'd like to hear other perspectives and particularly what you said about the data is you know it tells a story but it's not necessarily a hundred percent true because you can look at a piece of data and you can tell the story that you would like to tell with that data if you're not necessarily putting it all together and it's not indicative of it's a hundred percent accurate and I say this to my clients that I work with all the time because they're trying to find a hundred percent truth at times and I say take a step back and just look at the story look at the story it's telling you it doesn't always have to match up a story. And that's the real, that can be a difficult skill to develop too.

But when you're in that group environment and you're curious, then you're looking for the different stories. They're saying, that you've got a different data point. So what does that tell us? Right. And, and it creates that safety for that curiosity, which is critical.

Daniella (17:19.502)
Yeah, and that's where I think the blend with product management and business strategy can be very nicely complementing in some regards because in product we spend a lot of time prioritising. What are we actually taking and what are we saying yes to, what are we saying no to? The only ability to say no is that you actually know where you're going. You can say yes and no to this. It's not in the direction that we're going in. So you have to be really clear in your direction.

But to prioritise, realistically, I tell my team this all the time, which is that it's art and science, right? It's more art than it is science. Ultimately, we're looking for a consensus that we feel comfortable that we're focusing on the most important things, right? We do things like write scoring, we might do effort value matrixes, whatever, Kano theory, whatever it is that you're using to prioritise, know, shortest-weighted job fair.

Whatever you're using to prioritise the framework that you're using, it ultimately boils down to how do we reduce risk and find ways to increase impact. And you're finding data points and discussing with your team, OK, which ones do we think of this is really going to be the way that we can make a big difference here and that small enough and clear enough that we can go forward with it. And so we prioritise regularly to say, this is what we think is the most important thing to go after. We're doing this and we're not doing this. But we all know that we're doing that based on indication and we'll go with, know, agile in our approach to try and reduce risk as much as we can going forward. Are we confident this is the right approach? Let's test and check. Let's test and check. Let's release more. Let's test and check. But what it teaches you, which works well, I think, when you lay it over with business strategy is you're not going to get it perfect. You don't, the answer isn't just glaring at you like, well, this is the only way to success. This is the only option, the only solution we can go for. Everything else is a bad idea. It teaches you that with the data and information that you have and the resources that you have and where you are going as a business, this makes the most sense.

And it might not be if you were to look at them and play all of them through. The most successful if you were to play every single option through, you might find something else slightly more successful. But you're never going to know that. And all you can do is go with the most appropriate and best decision at that time. And so it kind of removes a little bit of that need for finding the perfect answer and knowing that movement is better than nothing, right? Going forward in the right direction is better than just paralysing yourself, looking for answers.

Caroline Kennedy (19:52.022)
Yeah, yeah, that's the analysis paralysis too, right? I see that continually and we can keep digging deeper and deeper and getting in the weeds and then I always say, high level, what's the story? Let's get back to high level. You put it all together. What is the story that it's telling you as opposed to the analysis paralysis also creates chaos rather than clarity because it just people go down rabbit holes and they get distracted and it stops then the implementation or the action piece as well. It's important to have well-formed strategies that have an element of clarity. But when you're looking for a hundred percent, the answer's never going to get it and that's what I reckon creates chaos too because it doesn't necessarily have that clarity piece and I also want to ask you a question around this chaos and clarity right because one of the, I suppose, the key skills that I see in working with you is that you're able to get clarity quite quickly.

Initially what I would say is that you go out and you do research and you pull in quite a lot of data points and information points and then you work through it and you're right by working through it you're able to create that clarity. How do you then bring that back to a business environment that perhaps doesn't have that same level of clarity that you do and how do you then bring everybody on board with the direction?

Daniella (21:45.071)
Ooh, that's a hard one. This is topic we talk about a lot and at some point when you're in a business that can be going through a period of chaos, it can be easy to be swept up in it as well and lose your sense of direction because you're trying to follow where the company is going and that's what sets your product direction and when that can shift or be not available.

It can cause you to of scramble. One thing I noticed when we were going through some transformation when it came to our goals at Nintex was, you know, I did have that bump, honestly, where at the beginning it was like, what are all the data points? I need to understand where we're going. These are the kind of formulaic things that I need to be able to come up with a really clear vision. And when some of those pieces are missing, I know we had a lot of conversations around, you know, well, what now? And the reality is that using the data that I had, knowing where we wanted to go as a product division, I could move us forward anyway. And the big thing that was missing for me was buy-in with the team, which was just communicating that and saying, this is what makes sense. I'd love to have your input. What do you think? We're going through a period of transition right now. There is some uncertainty when it comes to the company gold and the OPR, they are transitioning. But what do we think makes sense there?

And I brought my team in and we rallied around what we believed was the best path forward and then communicated that story out, communicated that direction out to the wider team and then made progress towards it, shared milestones. And we did a summit not that long ago where we had a big session where we brought everybody in R &D that was working on the project together to back behind it.

And next thing I know, know, the ELT are all behind my strategy and where we're going. And do they know it's necessarily my strategy? They probably think that they came up with it themselves, which to me is a good sign. It means that I've influenced them to think that this is the way forward. And for a short period, I thought, well, this is my drive. Do I have the buy-in of leadership for this?

We don't know what we're doing, I have to hold fire. But that wasn't true. I could set the direction. I could bring it all together. We could collaborate around this shared goal. And that's what drove the influence to get leadership to buy into this direction. And so I think it's just finding your way through chaos rather than, I know they say to sit in chaos. And I see that in a slightly different way, which is you can sit in it, you can accept it's there, you can understand things will change, you can understand your vision and your strategy might change based on some of the decisions that might come out of it, but it doesn't mean sit still. Go for it.

Caroline Kennedy (24:36.865)
Yeah, and I'm not sure sitting in chaos is advice that I would give anybody. I would say sit in uncertainty, which is very different to chaos. Uncertainty means I don't have all the answers right now. I don't feel like I'm in control and therefore I've got to get clarity, right? Or what is within my control. That's the other element to it as well. But how can I get clarity on direction and what is within my control when I do have clarity? So for instance, with what you've just said is influence. I know that this is the strategy, this is the vision. I've got all of the, you know, the hypothesis behind all of the data, etc. I can go and present it and then I can take action on it. And even if that's, you know, the CEO thinks that, this is his idea or her idea, that's okay too, because that's exactly what influence is.

And that's what orchestrating is. And that's a skill that is extremely unique and hard to master, which we've been talking about for a while. And it is, but as you start to master it, it is so impactful, not just in how you show up as a leader, but actually the outcomes you deliver for the business, your team, the CEO. And it's about that influencing from a 360 perspective, right? It's about getting those outcomes and helping people to conclude those outcomes, even if they think they're their own. And that's okay because again, the neuroscience of that's why it'll land because they've gone through the process of stimulating those neurons around it. And for anyone listening, think, and I'm sure Danny, you would agree with this is that it is probably one of the most powerful skills you can have as a leader in delivering and creating those high performing teams and those high performing environments. Would you, would you agree with that?

Daniella (27:09.838)
100%. I think in my perspective, ego doesn't have a place in business. It doesn't help us. And I think that's what can sometimes trip us up, this idea that it was my idea, that I put it forward, that I drove this forward. But actually your success is everybody else's success. And once you kind of part yourself from that need, I found myself a lot more successful. You know, even not that long ago, someone in my team tried to influence. They're working through their influence skills and we were going through some of the practices there and they were very disheartened when it didn't go to plan. They'd gone in and I think we did a classic thing that we all do maybe a bit earlier when we're learning these skills which is we go in and we bulldoze because let's not forget setting a direction it doesn't mean you just go go go and everybody has to like come along for the ride. Collaboration is key and making people feel part of that journey and that's the influence.

And, you know, this person in my team, they had gone full pelt. They wanted to get it done. They wanted to get the answers. They wanted to get this project up and running and they went. And it didn't work because the buy-in wasn't there. People didn't feel like they were along for the ride. And we had a retrospective a little bit later after it because they were disheartened because not only did it not work, but then the same outcome and the same thing that that person was driving happened.

But it happened a few months later and there was no recognition that that person had been the one coming up with that approach. It had been their idea in the first place and they were really hung up on it. And really when you think of it, okay, you were the catalyst for that. That happened because you started it off. It kind of got halted because the approach had some bumps. They came back to it and you had got them thinking and they thought it was their idea. And that's great because you've got the outcome you wanted, you still succeeded at the end of the day. And if you can remove the need that it's like so and so was the person that made us think this way, then you get so much further because actually the recognition is there when people think back on it, right? When they, not in the moment when it's like, oh, this idea came from so and so, but when they think back on it, since that project got further along and saw some success.

Just before I left there was actually a meeting where they were like we just want to thank so and so for leading on this activity. And so the focus is less on I did this specific thing and more on I have a feeling that this person is leading me to success. That as a leader is the most powerful thing.

Caroline Kennedy (29:49.228)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And I love the analogy to whereby it doesn't necessarily happen in the moment, but it over time it happens. And then from a career development perspective, how your executive presence is perceived, that's where it actually impacts, right? And to develop this skill takes a lot of trial and error.

We've all been there, you know, where we initially start to learn this skill. And, you know, the four levels of learning are the first one is where we're unconsciously incompetent. So we don't know what we don't know. And then we move into conscious competence where we know that actually we need to do this influencing, but I don't know how to. And then we move to conscious competence where we have to keep focusing on it, keep showing up, keep trialing an error and keep developing the skill and reflecting upon what worked, what didn't work, what would I do better? And using those situations to actually build the skill for the future and analysing to be able to then, I suppose, redefine what you're going to do next time or realign what you're going to do differently next time. And then all of a sudden it's organic and you're unconsciously competent.

You're just influencing and delivering those outcomes and your executive presence is established. It's powerful and people see it. And I think for you too, that has been a critical factor for you. Even in the discussions within the organisation around you and what you've delivered for the business and what you've achieved and being that kind of high performer is all because of these skills that you've developed over that time. It's not necessarily the technical stuff. You're really good at that. You know, and you can do that with your eyes closed, but now it's that well-roundedness that I think you have mastered and you will continue to master, no doubt.

Daniella (32:14.126)
I mean, yeah, to your point, it's not an easy journey. Learning is hard. And these soft skills are really difficult to learn. And take a lot of reflection and assessment and time with yourself really thinking about what you've done, what you would do differently next time learning from mistakes. It's not easy. And I think if you take the easy road, yeah, you don't necessarily learn these types of skills. And that's another thing where I really I'm keen as a leader on building confidence within my team and confidence is not from just, of course we pat each other on the back for doing a great job, but it's also about challenging each other to do more, to try something.

And I think that's the biggest, I would say that's the biggest proactive thing that you can do to increase your presence and your network in that sense is to just go out and try, put yourself in those uncomfortable positions and go out and try. There's so many things where even like for a period of time where I was running social media, I'd never run social media, know, there's this doggy daycare and all that stuff. I had never done social media in my life. And I thought there are people that's is this. Like this is a skill in its own right, right? This is its own industry. This is so difficult. I don't have a clue how I would go about this. I can't do it. I can't do it. Can't do it. And then like, actually, I have a friend that works in social media. Why don't I just sit down and say, know, buy lunch, can you talk me through some 101 how to do this? And then I tried to do it. was like, oh, actually, yeah, I can put a little video together. Oh, yeah, I can post it. Oh, I can schedule it. Oh, I can do this. Oh, I know how to like work out my target audience for social media now. And I got to a point where I had some really, really successful posts and I set up a whole wait list for this doggy daycare, just based on building social media for free basically. I didn't have any money with it, so it was for free.

But it was something that if I hadn't have just tried, I would never have known I could do. Now I'm not going to say I'm equivalent to a social media guru or I can do SEO like any serious expert in that space, but what I can do is proficient and I understand it. And that's the important thing is like going out and trying. And so there's things like skills that you can go out and learn, but not only that, putting yourself out there. Come on to learn how to influence via creating relationships.

So, you know, a moment where I thought I'm really doing well with my influence was when I was having the ELT members sitting down with coffee with me, asking my opinion, asking what I thought about the situation. What would you do in the search situation? What do you think about this? That's when I knew, you know, I was being respected as an expert in the room. How did I build that? I think back, you know, how do I build that? Well, I built that because I wasn't afraid to say, "Hey, CFO so and so, you're doing an amazing job. I think you're a fantastic leader. I would love to learn from you. Can we set up a regular coffee date?" Right? Or so and so, I'm really impressed with your skills about storytelling. I thought the presentation you did the other week was amazing. I'd love to learn more about what you meant to me in that skill. I built these connections by reaching out to them and not being afraid to start having conversations with some of the more senior people in the room.

And I'd learned that when I thought back about it why I was quite successful in that phase. I learned that all the way back at my graduate scheme. I can't give enough props to a good graduate scheme. I learned the art of networking, how to present, how to act in a room with senior leadership, the importance of first impressions. These were all skills that I'd taken through my entire career. They're soft skills we forget to teach sometimes.

Caroline Kennedy (36:05.055)
Yeah, yeah. And we don't realise the importance of them either, I think we're so focused on the technical skills. But even with what you've just said to what you're doing is you're actually looking at cross functional departments and individuals that are heading these cross functional and you're learning how they function, which then gives you a skill to be more well rounded in the decision that you make.

Daniella (36:25.144)
Absolutely.

Caroline Kennedy (36:34.977)
Because I can tell you like a CFO or a head of sales that all feeds into product. They all need each other. They're all feeding into each other marketing as well. They're critical in the deliverables for the business outcomes, right? And if you know and have knowledge in those areas because you are sitting with these individuals and learning and being curious about how that feeds in your learning. then as you said before, it's not just about you learning. It's also about them coming to you for your advice because you've developed that relationship and they know your skillset now. They know what you're capable of and therefore they see you as that trusted advisor and you're positioning yourself as that trusted advisor.

And one other thing that just popped into my mind as we were talking is, and I talk about this a lot with the people that I work with is step up to that next level role organically. Don't wait to be invited there. Don't wait to be invited to the ELT. Go out and network with them. Go out and then eventually you're going to be seen as part of that group.

Or even if you're, you know, I recall, you know, one of my clients a few years ago, and he'd gone from CFO to COO, and he wanted to be a CEO. And I remember saying to him, when you're in that executive meeting, what stops you leading like the CEO would? What stops you asking those questions, whereby you can see that perhaps, there's an opportunity to be curious around the thinking of an individual or to help that individual think differently or critical think what's stopping you doing it? Well, I don't have the authority but you have the skill you have the knowledge you can see what needs to be done. Why aren't you doing it? And it was interesting for him to reflect upon that because he started to and then

I within six months he was the CEO of that business just by organically stepping up. And then he transitioned into that role with ease because everybody had already accepted him in that role and saw him as the leader of the business. And it was a much easier transition then. And because he was so strategic, he was able to then hit the ground running with transforming that business because he'd already established himself as that trusted leader and was organically doing that role too. And I think we hold ourselves back a lot of the time in our thinking, whereas we can just step up and help others as well. That's what we're doing. We're supporting others. We're not doing it just for ego. We're actually genuinely seeing opportunity to then to support other people and to gain something as in knowledge or learning as a result of that too.

Daniella (39:58.571)
It's such a common issue. so many of us have it, I have it. And, you know, we all go through it. I think in any part of our life, at some point, we go, my confidence is wavered on doing that. And it makes such a difference, right? Like, even when I mentor, I've mentored a few product managers who were starting earlier in their career, you know, they're now getting put into a room where they're with the UX, they're with engineering, and they're facilitating and leading the way. And

They're going, oh, but I'm relatively new to this role and I don't know if I'm ready to speak up. And it's like, you know, if they can put a poster on the side of your screen and it says, my next team meeting, I'm going to ask two questions, right? And it can be like the most smaller thing, but it can just get you over that fear of doing it. And it's like training you that you need to try. It's this thing, just try, just give it a go. You might not get it right the first time--great, you've learned what you didn't do well, try again, keep trying. And I think, you know, a lot of opportunities I've got in my career are from asking, not sitting back and waiting and going, people will recognise the skills that I have and invite me to that table. No, I've said, Dev, I want that, please. I've said, you know, that graduate role that doesn't exist in Germany, I want to go see if I can make that happen, please. Right? It's the ELT, the very first time I presented to an ELT.

I would like to go and present this theory to an ELT, would that be okay? Like, I go and ask for the things that I want to go and do and yes, they're uncomfortable and yes, I'm scared to do them. But I know if I have the support of my manager, my team, if I go in there and say this is first time, me a little bit of leniency, people support you. No one's looking for you to fail. We put so much on ourselves around fear of failure, but actually, it's never as bad as we think when we these things.

Caroline Kennedy (41:57.869)
No, and particularly upon reflection, right? We step into it, lean into it, and then we look back and go, wow, if I hadn't taken that leap of faith or asked for what I wanted, I wouldn't have developed, I wouldn't be where I am today. And that is so critical. Alright, so I want to talk to you about innovation. And what your tips for organisations that want to be innovative? What would you recommend? How do they approach innovation?

Daniella (42:34.636)
Well, I guess it depends what you mean by innovation because it's such a broad word and means many things to many people. If you're talking around what I would say, you know, the classic product innovation where you're building new features and new products that take your business forward in ways that you haven't done before, it's about testing and learning. And I would say it's about not being afraid to fail, celebrating failure to a certain degree, and celebrating curiosity, which are really challenging ones to put in place. I mean, I still have like memories working at one of the previous jobs I worked at a while ago when you go into a team meeting and it would be, is your progress against your OKR? How are you doing? And if you weren't delivering, on your OKL, all people got such a dressing down in that Open Team meeting and people were petrified to come in. I remember the fear, the one I used to work with called Gaines and he was so good. But there were moments where the project wasn't going well and he was like, do I mention it? Do I not mention it? I'm, you know, I'm petrified. But that creates an environment where we just shift the trees, avoid things, take the easy path because we don't want to get into a position of getting it wrong.

And that's the opposite that you need to be in order to find things that you didn't know worked before. mean, in product that's really, I think, point easy to see in product space because we do a lot of research and testing and we go, my hypothesis is wrong. And no matter how many you'll be surprised by your hypothesis being wrong, it's unreal. There was one time I remember, Justin, when we working at Esmary where we had a little bit about doing an A-B test for the buses on like the currency comparison. And I was like, this is so low, like low level. We've got bigger fish to fry right now. Why are we looking at the wording of buy it now or compare now or this is so small. And we did it. Justin pushed me and pushed me off. We did it. And I discovered the words that I thought was the least impactful have like a seven times conversion rate on it. It wasn't the difference that that one word meant on this button on this CTA on the homepage.

And so I've had loads of moments like that in my career where you learn that the things that you think or the things that make sense to you don't actually fulfill, right? And so you lose a lot of innovation by not testing and learning. So my advice to any business would be take small steps, go in that direction, see the results.

Keep going, see the results. If it's not working, pivot. It's all about having clear goals and breaking them down into smaller goals and not doing any negative repercussion for trying. If it's done with effort, if it's done with thought, if it's done in a way that, you know, it's just thoughtfully executed, right? They always say you can fail on two things. The idea is not good or the execution is not good.

And so it doesn't mean just go and thoughtfully go and try things and oops, it fails. Because if you haven't done it with much foresight, then you don't actually know. There's nothing worse than in product when you do an experiment. It doesn't go to plan. And you haven't thought through how you're going to measure it well enough that you now can't see why it didn't work. That's one of the biggest failures. So it's like planning ahead, thinking about what success looks like, and being open to pivoting, and rewarding effort and trying rather than only on success.

Caroline Kennedy (46:31.573)
Yeah. And I think measuring it is critical, right? So, is this effective? Is it not effective in those smaller bite-sized pieces rather than the, you know, lead and lag, right? Because we don't want to get to the end to go, that didn't work. We want to know as we're transitioning, is this working? If it's not, that's okay. We pivot. And the other thing I wanted to say was, and what I'm hearing from you too is it's innovation is ongoing improvement, no matter whether it's tech, it's improving your business, improving your processes, improving your systems, automating, it's just ongoing process, also ongoing improvement. And it's challenging the status quo. It's saying we've done it this way, but actually could there be a better way? And that's it. It's simple. It's not complex and it can come in many different shapes or forms and it always isn't, doesn't always have to be technology, even though I know that that's the space Dani plays in. Yeah. Yeah.

Daniella (47:33.199)
It could be anything and I think it also doesn't have to be revolutionary. Like incremental gains is a big thing and it's really important for us to think about the small things that we do to make big differences. Or if it's the most obvious path, take it. It's not about being, know, not everything we do have to be thought through of, well I want to be the person on the stage that says that I disrupted this entire industry and every decision has to be that bold.

I think it's also about understanding where sometimes you've got a light bulb moment where data is telling you something completely different, fantastic, use it. Sometimes it's telling you the thing you thought was true is true, just go do it. These things are all fantastic innovation. doesn't have to be like, wow, I've never thought about that for it to be impactful. So I think that's important as well. But yeah, innovation is a lifeblood of, to be fair, any role, it should be the lifeblood of your whole as a leader.

Caroline Kennedy (48:35.659)
Yeah. And, you know, ongoing improvement. That's all it needs to be. We don't need to say innovation because that can kind of infer that it needs to be something big and impactful. It just needs to be, as you said, those incremental gains.

Daniella (48:50.702)
was talking for a second there, Caroline, about a conversation I had with one of my team a little while ago. And one of the questions was, when are we going to have time for innovation? They felt like the area that they were working on was they had a project and they were getting to the end of it. And then there'd been some decisions made in the business that told the project, put it back on, pause it, whatever. And they were like, I just want to get on with some innovation. When can I innovate? And we spent some time talking it through.

Tell me what you're doing right now that isn't innovation. And they had to think about the fact that the work that they were doing was innovative, but their scope of what innovation was just so narrow. And so it's kind of helping people as well to understand truly what innovation is. Rather than waiting for it and thinking, it's this big, bold, one-off decision that I make that will handful the whole of the way our business functions.

Caroline Kennedy (49:47.275)
Yeah, all the way the world operates. Thank you so much for your time today. I know our listeners would have gotten a lot out of it, particularly around leadership and innovation and how you operate and your learnings. I've got one last question before we wrap up. Now we've been working together for a while now. What's it like working with me? Scary question.

Daniella (50:12.12)
No, it's a great question and I love that you're asking this. I really have thoroughly enjoyed working with you. I think we've been working together for two years now. Yeah, I have seen, even my husband said it the other day, you I love that you took the step to go out and find Caroline because I can see the difference that you have, the difference in you and how much you've grown when it comes to confidence in your own abilities. I think that's the biggest thing that I've learned from you is it's not about being perfect. It's about giving it a go. It's about thinking critically and it's about being confident to level up. And there's some of the skills when you get to a certain point and you think, I'm now a director. Where do I go from here? Who am I now learning from? Who's going to teach me?

I'm not in a room with another leader every day. Where do I get that confidence from? And actually you taught me, well, you get it from yourself. And it sounds very, very simple, but it's not at all. Really, really not. So you've really helped me to hone in on those soft skills over the last two years in a very meaningful way. Look at me, I've gone from director and I've taken on a new role of head of product. So I can certainly see the results of our engagement, that's for sure.

Caroline Kennedy (51:41.58)
Yeah. And I also think too, for you creating that high performing teams, you know, and being able to lead those people. even as you leave Nintex, the impact that you've had is quite significant. And so many people told you that, right? and, and I know that you were seen as the individual that was really strategic, commercial, delivering, but bringing people along on that visionary journey. And the work that you do is very important. And I'm sure our listeners will hear this even just through the podcast is how knowledgeable you are and how impactful you are. So you should be very proud of yourself.

Daniella (52:37.794)
Thank you. I am. I'm humbled by the impact that I've had and I'm very thankful and I'm very thankful to you too. This last two years has made a world of difference to me and maybe I would have got here without you but it would take a lot longer and I would say this, I'd be burnt out. I think what you really helped me do is understand where it's smart to spend time and that's really important because you can't put 150 % of effort into absolutely everything you do. And you really helped me think about how to work smarter. And so I really thank you very much for that because, I think I'd be burnt out by now.

Caroline Kennedy (53:19.679)
I think my question is always what's going to shift the needle? What's going to get you where you need to go? And that's my favorite question. Anyway, thank you so much for your time, Danny. I've really appreciated our chat and I have no doubt our listeners and the people watching are going to get so much out of this. for anyone interested, we talk to many leaders. Give us a follow on Spotify and all the places where this podcast and check out the website www.carolinekennedy.com.au where you can see all of the episodes.

Daniella (53:57.742)
Thank you for having me, Caroline.