In this fifth episode of ASUG Talks: Candid Career Conversations, season 2, we talk with Kris Cowles, senior vice president of IT at Topcon Positioning Systems and a member of the ASUG Board of Directors.
A full transcript follows:
Laurel Nelson-Rowe:
ASUG Talks welcomes today, Kris Cowles, who is senior vice president of IT at Topcon Positioning Systems. Welcome, Kris, to ASUG Talks.
Kris Cowles:
Thank you, Laurel. Thank you.
Nelson-Rowe:
We're happy to have you. We always like to take a step back before delving into the details of your career, past, present, and future. So, the first question on this session of Candid Career Conversations is: where did you grow up and do you think that that affected you, in any way, in terms of the professional that you are today?
Cowles:
Great. Yeah, I think that's important to go back to the beginning. I think it's fairly unique. I was born and raised in California on the edge of Silicon Valley, and there's an interesting demographic that I'd love to shout out to my family about. My great-grandparents were immigrants, and my grandparents were the first generation that managed to finish high school or eventually finish high school, and they raised four daughters, and my mother and her sisters in the ‘60s and ‘70s all went to college and all got technical degrees.
So if you look at my family, we have a preponderance of females, but also a family, in general, that has pursued science and technology in the various professions. And one of the fascinating things for me as I reflect back is just because there were so many women and it never occurred to me that there was a qualification of things that gender would prohibit you from doing. So all of my role models, even the men in my family, have been in technical fields, have really given me a sense of the art of the possible. And it was only after the fact that I stopped to wonder, "Oh, was that something that was a typical thing for a young girl growing up?" Looking at chemistry and computer science and math gave me a sense that all of these things were on the table for whatever it is that I wanted to pursue.
Nelson-Rowe:
The pursuit was possible. And speaking again of when you were a child, what did you want to be and did that influence you, in terms of your professional pursuits?
Cowles:
I had various stages where I thought I wanted to be in leadership roles in charge of a business or a political role or somewhere where I felt I could affect change. I had a brief period when I was about five where I wanted to be dictator of the world.
Nelson-Rowe:
Dictator?
Cowles:
Sounded good at the time. No, as I got older, you start to realize that there's a tremendous burden of responsibility with all of that and you recalibrate. I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the world, and I sort of pursued things that I felt would give me the best access to see what was out there in the world in terms of profession. And eventually, I ended up studying international relations and economics with a goal to end up in some type of global business role.
Nelson-Rowe:
What values and principles from your childhood have contributed to your career and the person that you are today?
Cowles:
I think a sense of independence and a sense of belief that all problems, if you break them down, are solvable. I was raised in a fairly independent way and as an only child, a lot of the scenarios involved me thinking through how I was going to get myself out of a tricky situation. And I do think that that builds a sense of resilience, of belief that once you get through the emotions of a situation, you can process, "Okay, now that I've finished being upset about it or when I was younger, panicking about a situation, once you're through all of that, the problem's still there," right?
So, process the emotion quick, start to break down your choices. Even if some of the choices are bad to worse, there's still a choice and one of them has to be picked and that's how you get yourself out of a situation. It's a little bit of an intrepidness, an unwillingness to concede in the face of some pretty obvious headwinds. You might take a step back. You might come up with choices you don't like. But there are choices and I think that's carried me all the way through careers that have highs and lows.
Nelson-Rowe:
Okay, thank you. Well, now, let's get into that career experience component of the conversation. Given that upbringing, did you always want and see yourself in a career in information technology?
Cowles:
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's a fantastic question. Because I grew up around a lot of science, and particularly chemistry and biology, that was exactly what I didn't want to do. That's what kids do is they pick the opposite. But I did gravitate towards analytical things, and as I pursued a lot of my initial dreams about business, I ended up at a technology company, which certainly has influenced my overall career in a completely crazy way because I joined Cisco Systems in 1992,
Nelson-Rowe:
Good time to join.
Cowles:
the beginning of a couple of decades of craziness. And it suited me in a way that I could never have predicted in the sense that I love challenge and I love change. And yet, even at that, for somebody like me, that was a chaotic environment. It was really both amazing and a little bit difficult at times. But there was a sense that if you could learn one thing, you could learn something else. And we needed people and talent and just sheer stubbornness in those early stages that I was given a tremendous amount of opportunity to do a variety of things and I ended up working with IT people. And I ended up working in the front end of some of the process work with systems, which led me to similar roles down the path.
A number of iterations later, I was in an organization that had a joint mission, but it had a business side and the IT side. And my CIO, who I knew quite well at the time, came in one day and said, "Well, I need your IT partner to go do something. You're now in charge of all of it." And that's how I became an IT director.
Nelson-Rowe:
Over all of it.
Cowles:
Over all of it, yeah. You're not getting a replacement for him. It's you. Thanks. Bye.
And I'd worked enough with the front end of systems that it wasn't a complete deep end of the pool, but I have a lot of admiration for some of my leaders on the technical side in the first couple years and their patience with me as I tried to learn and delve into and acquire the knowledge to be able to support them in their roles. And then subsequently, just expanded from there into a variety of different types of IT leadership participation; eventually took a rotation in engineering, so just to kind of balance out the perspective of a finished good go-to-market set of systems and tools and processes versus the innovation side of the house. After a good four or five years in Cisco engineering, I took a break and then I joined Topcon in a more traditional IT role, and I've grown up through the chain here.
Nelson-Rowe:
What was your first job related to IT and SAP solutions? When, where, how did it come to be?
Cowles:
So the first time I got the combination of IT and SAP is when I came to Topcon, so it was about nine years ago now. And it was an interesting conversation because they had implemented SAP a couple of years earlier and it was a difficult transition and they'd kind of come out of that period and were now stable, looking to build for the future. And I was very transparent, and I said, "If you're looking for somebody with deep SAP skills, I wouldn't hire me because I don't have that. If you're looking for someone who understands IT functions, capabilities, and how to align them with a growing business and drive change, then I think there's a potential great opportunity here for both sides." And that's how we got started.
The initial SAP was pretty much limited to ERP. But since then, we've deployed a variety of cloud applications and a number of other SAP products. We've also got cloud ERP. We've got kind of a solid diversity across the SAP product landscape. So we built that partnership into something fairly significant.
Nelson-Rowe:
Okay. Would you characterize yourself as an active career planner, a responsive career opportunist, or something of a hybrid?
Cowles:
I think I am a hybrid, but in a slightly specific way. I love learning and I've always focused on being good at the job that I have and learn all the surrounding functions because the surrounding functions allow you to positively impact upstream and downstream functions and people and processes so that you and your organization can have a bigger impact. That has led me to some very orthogonal knowledge elements.
I've done a stint in mergers and acquisitions integration. I've run an entire e-commerce portfolio. There's a whole set of outcomes that maybe are not specifically planned, but your behavior of learning and being involved in helping other organizations be successful has led me to the ability to change organizations. And some of it has been super opportunistic. When Cisco was growing, somebody tapped you on their shoulder and said, "Today, you're going to be sales operations." And one day I got tapped and they said, "You're going to be an IT director."
But all of those things have enriched my, at least, superficial knowledge of an area which has then allowed me, I think, to be collectively more responsive and more aware of what all the different elements go into how to make a company successful. And I also look at roles and say, "As you learn the nature of who you are, right, what things make you happy? What things give you job satisfaction? What things drive you crazy? What things are you not good at?"
I always ask people, "When you go home at the end of the day and you talk to your significant other or your dog or your plant or whoever's in your life and you say you had a good day, what kinds of things come up?" Right? What stories do you tell about what makes your day good or bad because that teaches you a lot about yourself. What things satisfy you? What things don't satisfy you? And then you look for jobs that have those characteristics.
So I've been not as planful about the title of a role, but very planful about the characteristics. And if you combine those characteristics with my sort of fascination for learning, all the roles that I've taken, even in cross-functional organizations, have had those characteristics. Even though on paper you're like, "Well, why would you go from job X to job Y? That doesn't make sense. Why did you do that?" And actually, when you think about it, it makes a tremendous amount of sense. It just doesn't follow a traditional path that most people follow.
Nelson-Rowe:
It doesn't.
Cowles:
HERE
So there's some "fill in for this job" type of rotations that I've taken. And it's like, "Okay, well, so and so's going to be out for a year. We want you to do this for a year." Some of that's been immensely valuable just to teach me what I don't like as much as what I do like, right? And I take all of that on board and just roll that into my understanding of where am I likely to learn and contribute and where am I likely to be successful?
Nelson-Rowe:
Do you ask yourself that question at the end of a day and do you ask that question of colleagues and people that you work with as well?
Cowles:
I do, yeah. And I've answered my own question many, many times. I like global complex problem-solving. I like helping people and making a difference if somebody looks at a situation differently. So when I've questioned the madness of management, I go back to remember all those days that you were able to help somebody. I like the merging of commercial and technology and business and strategy. I like being challenged on thinking about problems differently. There's all these components that you're like, "Well, I could do all kinds of jobs, given those characteristics," right?
I can tell you what also I don't like. I am a terrible finisher. I'm a great starter. I'm a terrible finisher. But if you can balance out a team of skills and there are people who are excellent at that and I admire them and they're part of my team, I hire people who finish because I know it's not something I would personally drive to, but it's immensely valuable to the organization.
There was one point in my career where, in the same organization, in the same job, one year I was viewed as excellent. In another year, I was viewed as problematic. And I'm like, "Okay, but I'm the same person. It's not like I had a personality transplant in the last 24 months," right? And I realized that it was situational, right? When I was viewed as performing well, it was when the organization was in crisis. They had some very difficult problems that they were trying to manage, and I was able to get in and constructively sort a path forward. And when things were stable and I was wanting to change things because I could see all the problems that were going to come in two or three or four years, that was viewed as being disruptive.
It's situational. I'm somebody who will take an organization from 30% to 92%, but if you're at 92% and you want to get to 95%, I'm not the person for you.
Nelson-Rowe:
You've mentioned some of your career milestones. Are there others that you wanted to mention?
Cowles:
Career milestones. I think getting into management at a very young age was very challenging. I think the sense of perspective that you get over time is immense. There's no way to go skip the hard first five years of management, right? We all have to do them and everybody's got to go through that learning experience. I think that that's a pretty significant milestone.
I think recommitting to leadership roles and the higher you go, the more challenging it is, and yet, the more critical it is to minimize the focus on your personal ego, that the higher you go in theory, the more pressure there is on your patience, and yet, the more important it is for you to be patient, right? Those inverse pressures in any growth path of an organization, I think, is critical. The carefulness and the sensitivity of your words having ripple effects in an organization are important milestones.
Recognizing when you made a good decision at the good time, but it's run its course and knowing when to recognize that and say, "Now is a good time to finish this phase and move on to a new phase" is also a really important milestone. Can you go through and stay aware enough of where you are in your career and what you wanted from a particular role to know that that's a conscious decision.
Because Cisco was going through such a massive change, I sort of made a commitment to myself. It's like every December 31st, I'm going to, in my head, I'm going to quit, and every January 1st, I'm going to sit down with myself and go through the mental process of why I should re-up for this next calendar year.
What role am I in? Does it meet my needs? Do I feel like I'm over contributing and under-recognized? Am I under-contributing and I need to do things differently? What do I want from this role? What do I want to learn? Is there a way to get those learnings from this current role? And it's become a really good mental practice for me to once a year check in and say, "Is the balance right? Is it healthy? Is it taking me directionally where I want to go? Are there things that I can do or change in how I'm performing my role or executing my responsibilities that would help that balance?"
Nelson-Rowe:
So you started that at Cisco and how many years have you conducted that, year-end, year-forward?
Cowles:
Almost 30 years. Yeah, long time now.
Nelson-Rowe:
Very serious practice.
Cowles:
It took me a couple years to figure it out, but yeah, and some years, things are going great and it's a quick check-in and it's no big deal. And then other years, you're like, "Okay, well it's January 1st" and then I realize I'm having a harder conversation with myself than I thought I was going to.
Nelson-Rowe:
What's been your favorite role, responsibility, job, and why was that your favorite?
Cowles:
There's been a couple. I love my current job, but I think I'm supposed to say that. So we're going to reach back in history a little bit. I led an enterprise B2B team at Cisco that was a combination of business and technology, and we were an in-sourced function for the whole company. And because of that, we ran kind of the last mile external end-processes that connected to all the communities that we worked with. And that was an amazing job from breadth--the breadth of topics, the degree of participation in such a broad swath of the company, the type of talent we had in the team. We had some amazing people, but everything from working with channel partners and customers to onboard their global procurement and supply chain to manufacturing and logistics and banking and service technician partnerships. I participated in industry forums. It was a fantastic job, and I definitely learned a lot. So that one was a great one.
My current job's just awesome because not just the team, but the nature of the company, the breadth of participation that we have. We're expanding into portions of supporting engineering and tech ops. I have security for the first time in my career for the last couple years. That's a tremendous opportunity for learning and lack of sleep. And also, participating in leading a company through a transformation at the stage that Topcon is going through.
And the other thing that's important to me at this point in my life is from a company mission standpoint, we produce a product that absolutely delivers productivity value and commercial value to the customers, but it also contributes to some of the green causes and reduction of waste, maximizing the use of scarce resources, things like that.
Nelson-Rowe:
So good purpose.
Cowles:
We have a purpose.
Nelson-Rowe:
In contrast, what's been the most challenging role or responsibility and how did that shape you?
Cowles:
So my rotation in engineering was a massive learning experience. I definitely don't regret it. It informed a really important change of perspective of what it takes to be successful in an innovation environment. It's very difficult for somebody who's an analytical systems thinker to work in an environment of, let's say, 80, 90% pure innovation. And so you know you're adding value by bringing some level of structure. Too much structure is going to generate both antibodies and a lack of effectiveness, right? And I think that was an important learning experience, but it wasn't always a pleasant learning experience. And so I'm glad I did it.
Nelson-Rowe:
What's been the best career decision so far? What went into the decision-making, and what was the outcome?
Cowles:
I'm going to pick two. I have always been very interested in global business. So when I first joined Cisco, I lobbied pretty aggressively for an international assignment, and I was like, "I'm going to do this job that I'm in 2000% until you guys trust me enough to know that I'm the right person to send on an assignment." And because I was persistent and I did deliver, I went to the Netherlands, initially, for a couple of years and that turned into becoming a local employee. And then ultimately, I spent almost nine years in Europe.
Pushing that hard for something that I wanted while saying, "Look, I'll be heads down doing any job you give me better than anybody else until I earn this opportunity." I think that was important, and it certainly shaped a lot of my future career choices, having had that global business experience and having lived in another country or actually, in this case, two countries to get you that global experience. And then from there, I ended up running a number of global teams and it just really informs a lot of the rest of your career.
And then when I left Cisco, I wanted to size down to a company that was in a growth phase, again, that was small enough that the decision-makers were all reachable in a fairly short period of time. I don't mind no's. I just want to get a no fast. I don't want to have to wait a month for a no. So that was part of my mantra and yet, still having enough of an international presence, a complex business model, all the elements that led me to Topcon have really played out, and it's been a wonderful experience.
Nelson-Rowe:
Is there anything in your career that you would like to do over, and if so, why would you like a do-over?
Cowles:
In terms of fixing or just going back and having fun again?
Nelson-Rowe:
Your choice. You can do both.
Cowles:
The only time I would say I have any do-over inclination is when against your better judgment, you agreed to do something. And there was one time in particular where I already had a full load and my VP came to me and said, "I really need somebody to cover this other thing." And then, somebody talks you into it and you're like, "Okay, I can do three things well or I can do five things averagely and I don't want to be that average person. I think the company deserves better and I think I want to be better." And I got talked into it and then I ended up being average at five things.
I would go back and trust my judgment on those things. There's a few of them where you're like, "I really had a good sense of how this was going to play out, and yet, I didn't listen to myself maybe as much as I should have?"
Nelson-Rowe:
Did those come in your year-end inventory at all, at any point?
Cowles:
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. The fact that we're talking about this in a broadcast 20 years later, yes, absolutely.
Nelson-Rowe:
They're persistent.
Cowles:
The value in any of these situations, whether they work out well or not, is what's the learning, right? Take the learning and apply it. And those year-end inventories are part of that.
Nelson-Rowe:
You just talked about a job that you really wanted, and you said, "I'm going to do this job for two years. In order to get that job, I'm going to do it at 2000%." Was there ever an opportunity, a job that you wanted and did not obtain?
Cowles:
Several. No, I definitely wasn't always picked. Yeah, there's an element of coulda, woulda, should have. If things had worked out differently, a number of jobs that I applied for that I didn't get, and in hindsight, did they pick somebody who I was like, "Oh, that person was right and they made a good decision, or did they pick somebody who was like, 'Eh, I should have got that job.'" But it doesn't matter in the end because the path not taken is now in the past, right? Do I have equally good or better opportunities still in front of me? That's the question that you have to ask yourself.
So there's some that would've taken me on additional assignments. There's a whole bunch of them. I don't weigh that too much except for is there something in the interview process that I should have better understood to either qualify myself as not the right candidate or to have taught me that that maybe wasn't the right job for me anyway.
Nelson-Rowe:
What's the best advice that a mentor ever gave you?
Cowles:
Yeah, I would say most of my mentors have been involuntary in that I've sort of barnacled myself to them and I'm like, "I'm just going to watch you until I figure this all out."
But there are two kind of situational moments that really have stuck with me. One was a situation where I felt, and we all feel this occasionally, you get in a political situation or a situation where you feel like everybody's ganging up on you or persecuting you and you feel very sort of under the gun. And I had a pretty senior person at one point just look at me and very, very painfully and clearly say, "Is it a problem that that person lied or is it the problem that you overestimated their ability to tell the truth?" And that's a really interesting question because at the end of the day, one, you're a victim and, one, you own some level of accountability and you own some level of planning. And that person was 100% correct. I had not planned well for a lot of the subjective things that go on in some of these difficult situations.
Now, was I being treated fairly? Probably not. But okay, what's your plan for that, right? How do you risk mitigate situations so you're not in that eventual position? You have to catch up before you get there and you have to risk mitigate and plan before you get there and you can't get emotionally hung up in those things, which is the other thing that had happened to me at that point is I was very emotionally involved in this situation being unfair.
There's lots of unfair things in the world. So taking back some sense of control and re-empowering myself to say, "Okay, well, right now, there's two not good choices in front of me. What if I use the leverage of what I have to come up with choice C? Gets them what they want, but it gets me more of what I want." And reclaiming that sense of empowerment and really being careful and watching when I sound like a victim.
And I've carried that through my career. There's a lot of situations that have happened. Okay, but I'm not the victim. What do I want from it? Where am I going? What angles have I not pursued? What proposals can I make that aren't on the table, but that doesn't mean I can't put them on the table, right? That's a very empowering concept.
And then the other one was, again, a kind of difficult situation where I just wasn't keeping up and working yourself into a semi-coma every night is not the solution. And really having somebody say to me in very plain terms, "If you ever want to be anything but what you are now, you have to figure this out."
And that was a really kind of rough message in the moment to realize, "Yeah, I wasn't playing a game I was ever going to win."
And if that means I have to give away half of my work or if I have to create new roles to delegate to or if I have to step away from certain things that my name got associated with or if I have to restructure what I get involved in or restructure my commitments of what I get involved in. I mean, it was like, "Okay." Having somebody very clearly point out to me that I was headed down a path to nowhere was an interesting moment because, again, you realize, okay, the next job and the next job and the next job, with your next promotion, you don't get your special gift-wrapped extra hour of the day.
Nelson-Rowe:
There's a lot of passion and commitment and learnings that you've shared. Why are you, at this point, so passionate about what you do?
Cowles:
Because at the end of the day, technology changes business and business changes people. That I look at any situation and I look at even when, I don't know, go to the local bingo parlor or the ice cream stand or whatever, I just look at things. I'm like, "There's a better way to do that." I just do. I'm sure I'm annoying everybody. But technology is such a powerful way to do that. And the people who work in technology are endlessly fascinating and entertaining and quirky and I thrive talking to some amazing people in this environment. And also, then the impact that we have, "Yes, okay, I might make a process or a business or a system better," but at the end of all of that is a person. And having the ability to impact how people do their work, for me, is incredibly motivating. So it's partly the people in technology and then the people using technology. It's still about people.
Nelson-Rowe:
And what are you most proud of in your professional life so far?
Cowles:
Finding people who actually have amazing potential and helping them realize that they can be more than they thought they could be. That's huge.
Nelson-Rowe:
And does that take extra insights, extra listening and empathy and skills?
Cowles:
Oh, it takes a lot. First of all, people have to believe that you sincerely care. I think that's where it all starts, that you see them. You see their skills. You've noticed what they are capable of. You listen to what they say. You think and invest time and energy into going, "Okay, well, that person said they might want to do this and this is where I see their skillset and how can I help? How can I put this into perspective? How can I break this down into pieces that they can actually see what the path looks like?"
Also, I think early in my career, I had a lot of responsibility at a young age and I was very invested in proving that I was worth that, all of that responsibility and being trusted with that responsibility. And there was a sense of perfectionism that went with that, right? As I've gotten, obviously, more burned in my career, and let's not mention the O word, but a little bit older, I'm investing more in trying to be relatable because people get inspired by others that they can see themselves in their shoes. And I feel that way. I relate better to other people who are equally as imperfect as me. And so I spend time going, "I didn't always make the right choice, or I didn't always pull off the perfect situation, or maybe I've got my work life together, but I could go home and my house is kind of messy and I've got a dog that walks backwards."
My life is not perfect. And so the way you communicate with people and sharing with them that all of this is an evolution of each of our work experiences and life experiences, I think, is important because it makes people relatable. And if you can relate, you can see yourself eventually going down a path like that, if not the same path. It's about how quickly you learn and how quickly you get back up and how quickly you can apply that learning.
I'm no longer hung up on being right. It's like, "How do we get to the best solution?" And if you can do that, then other people can relate to it. And then, some of it is very specifically saying, "I think you're ready, even if you don't think you're ready. I'm going to give you this responsibility, but I'm going to be here to support you along the way."
Nelson-Rowe:
Push a little and support.
Cowles:
Yeah. And when I've had management teams, I've also looked around the collective management table and say, "All of you experienced managers, I'm holding you equally accountable for helping this new manager be successful. So really creating environments where it's okay to learn, to evolve, to ask questions, to be open with the things that you're not comfortable with, that helps a lot, I think.
And then in some cases, I've gotten to a point where I was like, "Look, you worked for me for some length of time and we've been through X number of development conversations. I can't teach you anymore because you can already hear me in your head. You know what I'm going to say. So you need a different job. It doesn't mean you can't eventually work for me again at some point, but I also have to call the ball and say, 'I don't think I'm adding a lot of value to you anymore. Now, you need to get value from other people.'"
Nelson-Rowe:
Tough, but necessary call.
What are the resources and experiences that have been essential for your success in IT?
Cowles:
So it does go back to people, but certainly, those people are part of organizations. There's several partners and specifically, people at system integrator partners, who I've worked with in this role who will point out connections and references. And if you knew this person or "let me introduce you" or "are you aware of..." all of that is tremendously helpful. That is originally how I ended up at an ASUG Executive Exchange event, by the way, which created a whole new community of people for me to share stories with and gain insights and kind of get preview information on certain topics.
I give SAP a lot of credit. They take feedback generally better than most companies that I've seen. They may have some challenges in how to execute a change associated with that feedback, but they're not inherently defensive. So that has actually, in many ways, colored the character of our relationship between Topcon and SAP. And that's been tremendously valuable.
I've had a few people that I know, either through community or through previous lives, where just continuing to build your network, continuing in a spirit of both learning and mentoring female technical executives, communities for people, female CIOs, things like that, women in technology. A lot of those organizations have continued, I think, to provide validation of career goals, tools, programs, again, for both for me to mentor to network within my peer group.
Nelson-Rowe:
And if you were to synthesize the three pieces of advice for someone that you offer someone who's contemplating a career in IT, what would those crisp three pieces of advice be?
Cowles:
Make learning embedded in your work practices. Nobody sets aside an extra hour of the day for just learning or strategy or whatever. You have to make it part of how you work. So that's one.
Communication skills. A lot of the challenges with technology, picking technology, implementing technology, making technology effective, it really goes down to the struggle that we have with communication skills and really building up your ability to distill information, to replay information that you've heard, to be able to navigate conflict is so critical because that's where many, many, many technology projects fail. Really, communication is critical.
And then the third one, there's an overused word of resilience, but it's just our ability to take a difficult situation and really navigate it and let go of some of those feelings of, "Well, I should have caught that, or why didn't I see that coming, or how come we missed this?" There's a lot of opportunity for us to beat ourselves up and I think we should spend more time propping ourselves up. And when we do that, recognize that everybody around us probably needs that as well. And a little bit goes a long way.
There's an opportunity to put a lot more positivity out in the world. It's easy to default to the negative or the conspiracy or why does everything go wrong? But letting go of a lot of that and bringing that sense of, "Look at all the stuff we got right and look at all the stuff that the people around us got right." The more we focus on what we got right and what we would do differently the next time we're going to get it right even better is really an opportunity to get yourself and your team and the people around you on a momentum that feels really positive.
Nelson-Rowe:
So resilience as an individual behavior, as well as a collaborative exercise and benefiting the whole.
Cowles:
Yeah. I have a saying I use with my team, which is when you're around really, really smart people, smart people generally get things right. But there's a scenario where we over-practice the muscle of being right and we under-practice the muscle of being gracious. And we have an opportunity to keep those better in balance.
Nelson-Rowe:
Okay. All right. Another good lesson and we've come to your final question for ASUG Talks. If you could have one superpower to be better at your job, to be better in your organization, what would that superpower be?
Cowles:
I always have a hard time with this one because I'm greedy and I want lots of superpowers. Patience, probably, is going to be the one I land on. Every day, I need to strive more for it. I don't think it's the one thing that you ever let go of. And then, I just want to know everything all the time. I really want to know everything and that's impossible and it's very, very frustrating. So it's somewhere between those two. Can I get like 50-50?
Nelson-Rowe:
Patience until you can know everything all of the time.
That wraps up this segment, this episode of ASUG Talks. I want to thank you, Kris, for your great perspectives and for the advice that you shared in this podcast episode. Thank you so much.
Cowles:
I really appreciate that. I'd just like to add, without naming names specifically, to put out a general thanks and appreciation for all the people who have taken a chance on me. This includes my current role and organization. I wouldn't have a professional story of the type of non-linear growth that I do if there weren't leaders and decision-makers that also made some leap of faith in selecting me and took a chance and then supported me while I adjusted and figured it out. These people are my inspiration for starting a lot of conversations, not with criticism or assessments or status, but with the idea of, "How can I help?" I credit them for all of their confidence in me, and I appreciate the chance that you've given me today to share that with everyone.
Nelson-Rowe:
Thank you for your inspiration and for the great support that you give to ASUG and to ASUG Talks.