Tag Archive: EOD

  1. Executive On Demand Feature: JoLinda Vega

    Leave a Comment

    JoLinda Vega is an innovative, results oriented leader. She has comprehensive experience using a consultative approach to gain an understanding of the client’s business needs. In doing so, she provides a strategic business perspective and technology-based direction to manage organizations into the next era. She is consistently recognized for achieving business goals, providing effective client relationship management, developing strategies and programs, delivering profitable solutions to attract and maintain accounts and customers, and propelling company growth.

    1. What sort of activities typically fill your free time?

    I enjoy golf. I started playing golf for fun and work-related and business reasons. Eventually, I decided it was time to work on my game and have been doing so since. My spouse and I enjoy the game, and since it’s such a great sport we can do it together or with friends. We reside on one of the most beautiful golf courses in Kansas with the most scenic views of our four seasons. When the weather gets wintery, I enjoy reading and sewing.

    I also give back by sharing my business-related experiences with the next generation. Currently, I instruct at the graduate level for International Business and Technology for Management at a local university.

    1. How long have you lived in Kansas City? What is your favorite part about living here?

    I was born and raised in the city of Westwood, Kansas. I started my career at United Telecom (which became Sprint) in Information Technology as a Computer Operator, advancing to Software Engineer, to, Strategic Planning and finally into management as an Executive leading major Information Technology Development programs for the company. I joined IBM in 2004 to continue my advancement in business, leveraging my information technology and business experience. I really enjoyed working with business executives across industries worldwide in adopting new technologies to advance their businesses. I have travelled worldwide, but Kansas City is home for me. I have observed the growth in the metropolitan area in many facets: art, music, restaurants, culture, and businesses. The Kansas City metropolitan area is truly one of the best small cities to live in, and for others to visit.

    1. What led you to pursue a role as an Executive On Demand?

    I have had various opportunities throughout my career that have afforded me experience and knowledge that often no one individual gets. At Sprint, I was able to transition to new opportunities in information technology and across the business divisions on average every four years. That alone provided me experiences for a lifetime. Sprint selected me as a high potential executive early on in my career and “groomed” me. Upon joining IBM, I had a desire to gain experience across a variety of industries, and I did. I worked side by side with the executive team at those businesses with various challenges facing them (revenue growth, competition, entry into new markets, acquisitions, organizational change, strategy. etc.). Real business scenarios that excited me. Both Sprint and IBM positioned me with business knowledge that I know can benefit other businesses today. That is why the Executive on Demand program is a good fit for me. I have in-depth knowledge and practical experience in various business situations to share with others.

    1. What type of clients do you typically enjoy working with?

    I really enjoy working with people who like to learn and are open-minded. Learning is lifelong. We know not one person knows it all. When I work with clients, many share that I am easy to get along with, pleasant in my interactions, and a good listener. I also like to talk with folks at various levels of the organization to get their perspective, which often provides me a real feel for the culture and work environment. I am brought in to establish a working relationship to provide ideas, direction, and both positive and not-so-positive feedback. For EOD to be successful in working with clients, they must value our insights and experiences to provide them guidance on a critical decision, direction and/or asking why they are doing something versus just letting that path continue. The key to a successful EOD engagement is working with a client together for mutual success. When a client has achieved what they have set out to do while I am there to direct and/or lead, in the end the experience is mutually fulfilling.

    1. How has your unique background prepared you to impact clients?

    I like to listen to the clients about their challenges, successes, and what is not working to gain an understanding about what is keeping them up at night. At the levels that EOD engages, there are a variety of challenges, priorities, and opportunities to sort through. Given my background, I can apply my knowledge of various business situations towards the client’s business matter and adapt a practical application unique to the engagement. Certainly, each client looks to the EOD role to be upfront in sharing our observations and opinions. Communications is a fine point here in interacting with executives in a professional, concise, and to the point manner. In a recent conversation with my former boss at IBM, he shared, “I refer to a lady from Kansas City who had the skills to communicate with people of all levels as a unique quality that she processed as one of our Senior Client Executives.” When training the up-and-coming IBM Sales Executives, he went on to say that the various client calls he made with me always impressed him by how I handled each person uniquely with style and professionalism. I do enjoy visiting with clients and teams across the organization to get a good feel for their culture and work environment, as well as the challenges the business is facing, to turn them into opportunities. Throughout the years of being in a client-facing role, I have also enjoyed building lasting professional friendships.

    1. What do you think are some of the most pressing challenges that organizations are facing today?

    In today’s work environment, businesses must be dynamic in their leadership and management to compete. A business must remain competitive in how it operates daily by leveraging technology, people, and processes. When looking at new markets for instance, one needs to consider the landscape of where they want to go and assess how to get beyond the competition by thinking strategically. At times, that can be really hard when you reside within your company “bubble.” Getting an outside perspective to share ideas “from the field” often creates open-mindedness to truly view the potential.

    This year alone has demonstrated such open-mindedness. Who would have thought a high percentage of employees would be working from home? I know many businesses that were forced to take that route and are doing well. Schools and universities are embracing online learning, with a blended teaching model as the basis for instructing. The one industry that stands out is healthcare. With the pandemic, telemetry processes and technologies have existed for some time, but the health care crisis embraced this medium as a resource to continue to treat patients viable for this path for care.

    Granted, businesses that made such shifts in their operating model generated by the pandemic encountered challenges, but persevered. Such pressing challenges were the only means to remain in business. The “not-so-normal approach” generated some high risk, short-term shifts in how a business needed to survive. What a year this has been for all businesses. The freshest example is in less than a year, a vaccine has been created for COVID-19. One thing is for sure, 2020 will be in the history books and, I am sure, a few published Harvard business cases!

    1. What are some of the key principles that have guided how you navigate business?

    A few of the key principles that have guided me throughout my career are respect for one another, integrity, and open communications. Those key ingredients have built many lasting relationships in working with clients and colleagues throughout my career. Clients enjoy working and interacting with anyone that has those key principles, complimented by strong leadership and management know-how to provide coaching direction, thought leadership, and effective messaging within a business.

    1. What’s some of the best advice you have received?

    Always be respectful of one’s opinions and differences, honesty is golden, and be a good listener. When you do not know, go seek to find out more. No one knows everything and we can always learn something new. All voices should be heard. You never know when one of the greatest ideas for your business is going to present itself. All people contribute to the whole success of any business; value all. Be you, be personable, and be professional, as these qualities will take you far and to many places and opportunities. There is nothing better than working with a client who thrives on being real while having some fun too!

  2. Executive On Demand Feature: Marvin Motley

    Leave a Comment

    Marvin Motley is a senior executive leader driving Fortune 100 value through procurement, cost savings and operational process improvements across $10B global sourcing.

    Marvin draws on his legal and organizational leadership to optimize analytics and spend, while creating improvements across a wide variety of functions and commodities. His strong leadership has improved prices across 38k global vendors and multiple internal departments in telecommunications and manufacturing. He lowers the total cost of ownership by driving better contract terms, reducing cycle time for vendor selection and applying new sourcing technologies. His negotiation, contracting, sourcing and vendor management leadership has consistently resulted in millions saved on an annual basis and, at one point, he achieved a single-year savings of $1B.

    1. What sort of activities typically fill your free time?

    I’m a little more active in music – I play the guitar. Well, that’s an overstatement – I have a lot of guitars and sometimes I play them. My wife will tell you I have too many guitars that I never play. My children are all pretty good at music – I have a tuba player and a daughter that plays piano and sings. My oldest son does play the guitar; he really is a guitar player. So, when I started first playing and collecting guitars, he was the beneficiary of all my activity because he got to play all the things that I bought.

    1. How long have you lived in Kansas City? What is your favorite part about living here?

    I have lived in Kansas City probably since 1981. I was in a big law firm for a while and then moved to in-house at KC P&L and then went to Sprint, where I spent the bulk of my career. I think what I like the best about Kansas City is that it’s sort of a big-small town, if you know what I mean. It has a lot of the advantages of a larger city but avoids a lot of the disadvantages in [that] traffic isn’t nearly as bad [and] you can get around to places. The universities in Kansas City are also nearby, so you get a lot of the academic and cultural benefits of that. I do like Kansas City in [those regards]. I think being a Midwestern city is really a lot friendlier than some places you might go.

    1. What led you to pursue a role as an Executive On Demand?

    I have all this great experience. One of the things I tell people about working with Sprint was I got “developed.” And that means that for some people who might have the kind of background I have in terms of the many different things I have done, you usually have to jump companies or move around a lot. I have a lot of expertise in supply chain, and I have a lot of expertise in contract negotiation. Those are really transferrable skills to almost any environment. That’s what I see as the real benefit of the Executive on Demand program. You spend time learning the company; you don’t spend a lot of time learning the expertise. So, you can apply your expertise pretty much immediately. That’s the big advantage because usually [an executive] can walk into most situations and figure out by asking a few questions what the critical need is.

    1. What type of clients do you typically enjoy working with?

    I enjoy people who will let you use your expertise but will also tell you what [their] primary, most important issue is so that you can help them address that issue. I mean, the reason people will hire you or keep you is [because] you can address critical needs they have in the business. If they’re honest about what that is and the challenges they’re facing, then it really does help you as the person coming in. You can help resolve that problem. I think what I probably enjoy the most is I always consider myself a problem solver and someone who enjoys figuring out how we can get from point A to point B and get it done. 

    1. How has your unique background prepared you to impact clients?

    In the short-term, I’m really good about trying to get to the bottom line of what [clients] need to do. I’m honest with them about what they need to address this problem. I don’t think I’d be doing any favors by not being straightforward and honest with them about what they’re going to need to do. And [then I] let them make a choice about how they want to approach it. [Clients] deserve the value of your expertise and knowledge, and you need to share that with them in a way that they understand what you’re telling them. I don’t think there’s a lot of value in not [giving clients] your opinion straight. If [clients] ask the question then [they] deserve an answer.

    1. What do you think are some of the most pressing challenges that organizations are facing today?

    There’s a number of [challenges.] I would say one of the things that surfaced early, if you think about the Pandemic situation, is people became acutely aware of how their supply chains were impacted by relatively small disruptions. It’s really hard to do business if you don’t have the supplies you need to operate. You can’t manufacture, you can’t do a lot of things unless you have your supply chain in line. There are strategies that can be put in place to address all of the things that happen or have happened as a result of the Pandemic.

    These things make a difference. And it’s not just the supplies themselves but you need to think about the transportation about getting those supplies to you because transportation is going to be disrupted as well. So there’s a lot of things that can be done around the supply chain space to help mitigate [risks], and many of those things need to be thought of and addressed before the problem exists. There’s a lot of planning that should be taking place. We call it risk analysis: knowing where the risk is in your supply chain and then the chance to mitigate them. If you don’t have a clue or don’t know [risks] until they begin to disrupt your business, then you have a little bit more of a challenge.

    1. What are some of the key principles that have guided how you navigate business?

    In terms of supply chain, it’s all about total cost of ownership. You really want to understand the value proposition for everything that you buy and what tolerances you need. If it costs an extra nickel to make sure your product isn’t going to fail, then you pay the extra nickel. You’re looking for total cost of ownership and for value, but you also need to discipline yourself that you shouldn’t be paying more than market price for anything unless there’s a good reason. The market price is driven by supply and demand. If you’re paying more than the market rate for something, you ought to be getting something that you really need that’s critical to your business. An example of that is you might be paying a little bit of a premium for a higher quality on an ingredient or something. [Quality] might be what’s really important to your customers.

    1. What’s some of the best advice you have received?

    Never act like you know something you don’t, and be honest and willing to ask people questions. I found that most of the time, if you ask people a question and they trust you, they’ll tell you the truth. That’s really valuable when you’re dealing with companies and you’re trying to get up to speed quicky. If you come in and say, “I know everything and you don’t know anything,” you will find out very quickly that people won’t share information with you. And nobody knows everything; everybody can be helped through additional information. So my approach to every job I have had is to come in and I talk to all the people up and down the organization. I talk to people at the top; I talk to people at the middle; I talk to people at the bottom of the organization. Now, often if they trust you, they will tell you what the problems are. Unfortunately, [most people] never get asked what they think the problems are, and when they are asked, you’d be surprised with how much insight they have about what’s happening. There’s value in that insight, and it’s always useful to gain as much information as you can. So [I recommend] talking to all levels of the organization. Don’t pretend you know something that you don’t and ask questions—lots of questions. Keep asking until you get an answer.