North Star Leaders Podcast

Lindsay Pedersen

The world needs what only your business can bring. And as a leader, it's your job to deliver. But where do you focus? Where do you direct your time, your team, your budget, and your emotional energy? We're learning this together on the North Star Leaders Podcast. In this podcast, I talk to purpose-driven leaders about the choices that they make to create audacious economic value while also realizing their distinctive purpose. I'm Lindsay Peterson, brand strategist, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand, and host of the North Star Leaders Podcast. Let's get to it. Today, I am really happy to be joined by Todd Owens. Todd is CEO of Kevala, the healthcare scheduling software that connects facilities, staff, and agencies all in one place. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Owens

Hi, Lindsay. Great to be here with you.

Lindsay Pedersen

I'm so glad to have you. Todd, to start us off, what is your favorite thing about what you do?

Todd Owens

I think if I was to net it out, I think it's creating. That's what I ultimately wanted to do with my career is create. It's why I've always landed in startup environments where we can do that.That's obviously a complicated equation of having a vision or a dream and building the team and bringing it all together.

Lindsay Pedersen

I didn't mention in the intro, but Todd has been the CEO of other companies as well. Todd is a very seasoned CEO. I'm curious. There’s creativity, there's creating, there's building something with your bare hands, and then there's leading it, being the leader of this thing that you've just built. What keeps that fun? After the early creation is complete or as complete as it's going to be for a while, how is leadership fun?

Todd Owens

It's a good question. I had the good fortune of becoming a CEO at a relatively early age. That's where we met talent-wise. Honestly, after having that experience, I never wanted to go back. I think it really boils down to defining and shaping the culture, the people, the values. Yes, for sure, setting a vision and strategy and all that. Maybe I'm a control freak. I don't know. There's probably a little bit of that. Maybe I'm impatient and I want to move just as fast as I want to move. Ultimately, I think leadership to me, it's just so rewarding to be able to define a common vision for what we can accomplish together and then to bring the team and do all the things that make that team flourish. If I look back at some of my proudest accomplishments, it's the fact that people that have worked with me and for me have gone on to do bigger and better things than I've done. They're all succeeding and winning in their own various ways. A number of them are now CEOs of their own. Some have gone off to start businesses, TalentReach and Jeff Sears. I’m proud of that. I think part of it is I'm a little bit of a hands-off leader. I take strategy and vision very seriously, because fundamentally, we need to point the ship in the right direction. Then the rest is about the people. If it's the right person that has the right skill set and desire and that's the inner flame, they can thrive. That is fun to see.

Lindsay Pedersen

Is that the defining of the things, the mechanisms that are important? How conscious and deliberate is that versus going with the flow and defining as you go?

Todd Owens

It's incredibly deliberate for me. I think this is actually a little bit of a survival tactic. I've started out in the Navy. I was a submarine officer. You got to know where you're taking the ship. Otherwise, you're drifting aimlessly and it grounds you. It is true north. That's actually a term that we used to use back in the day. I know you've used that on this podcast in the past. Having a very clear true north reduces the natural noise and confusion and misalignment that happens in a startup, especially in my startups where I try to assemble the right people and I don't govern them and manage them in a very top-down way. What brings it all together, honestly, is the clarity of the strategy and the mission we're on. To me, it's mission critical. Right now, we're in the OKR process for the quarter for Q3. We went through the exercise and their OKRs and we took them top down. Ultimately, the one missing piece that we've got to work on until we lock them down is the true north statement on the top of every person's OKRs because again, that is so important. It's just as important as the objectives and the key results that follow them.

Lindsay Pedersen

It's interesting because you mentioned earlier that you're kind of a hands-off. Your style as a leader is to let people have space to make decisions and grow. You're also very deliberate and forward-leaning in defining what is true north. Is it an accident or is it equal and opposite? The more you're willing to be hands-off, the more clear you have to be about true north?

Todd Owens

I think there's truth to that. It'll be out of balance if that's not the case. But I also fundamentally believe that leadership and hierarchy, they're just different positions on the team. One of the things that everybody that does work for me knows, I get frustrated by just management. I think that everybody has a primary function and job when it comes to building the company. I think that one of my primary jobs is to make sure that we've got a very clear mission, which is always a work in progress, a very clear strategy as to how we're going to somehow survive all the turmoil that's going to happen along the way, and then, in all honesty, build the right culture. I take it seriously. I've read it, and I am far from perfect on this, but the culture of a company is defined by the worst behavior that the CEO allows to exist. That's where I spend my time. I want to assemble the right people. I want to shape the culture, recognizing that you cannot control it, and then make damn sure that we've got a clear, defensible mission, vision, and then strategy to get there. That's my job. Yeah, it is purposeful that I go deep on that because you can't really delegate that. Of course, there's a team and a collaboration that happens, but you can't delegate it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Right, because the buck stops at you. You're the one who needs to provide air cover to everybody to carry it out, and so you can't delegate air cover. You said the word clarity a few times, and it came to my mind. It's almost like my job is clarity. My job is not to do other people's job. My job is clarity so that everybody can do their job well.

Todd Owens

Exactly. The people that have worked for me know I'll create that clarity in that airspace, and I need them to meet me halfway. I am a lousy manager, and I tend to think there's a difference between management and leadership. I think I tend to be a little bit stronger on the leadership side, weaker on the management side, and so I need that vacuum filled. Otherwise, I start coming down and managing, and it's not always pretty.

Lindsay Pedersen

What is the difference between management and leadership as you see it?

Todd Owens

Well, I think management to me is very hands-on. It's sort of like pulling. There's tension in the rope as opposed to sort of leadership, which is difficult. It's like pushing a rope. You won't get very far. You have to sort of inspire those around you to be their best, to do their best work, to feel comfortable and confident that this is not an environment where you will ever be judged for something you do or fried for something you fail to do or fail doing. It's a place that, quite frankly, the only thing that is expected is that you bring it every day and you make continual improvement, progress. It almost doesn't matter how fast you go. I have never seen a company that is making progress fail. The only companies that I've seen fail are the ones that start to go sideways or even backwards because of a number of things. It could be lots of reasons that happen. I think leadership really is about sort of coaching and encouraging and inspiring versus sort of like hands-on, okay, where are you at with X, Y, and Z? Let's make sure you've got your plan for next week done, but we can't miss this one-on-one because it's the only time we talk, right? Those sorts of things are not my core competency, but I do them. I do them.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it's not 100% or 0%. It's a proportion. A word that came to mind as you're describing this is scale, that the thing with leadership is that it scales, whereas management scales less. This is really dorky that I'm going to say this, but the Latin roots for manage is to act with hands. So acting with your hands, you've got two of them. They don't scale a lot, and so you can manage and have things go well, and it won't scale. I'm really only just thinking of this as we're talking, but then if you're somebody like you who veers more extreme on the leadership to management continuum, it's even more important that there are tools in place that prevent the need for management, like mechanisms, stated values, what's your true north. If you're managing, like if there's a scenario where there's somebody who's a very effective manager, maybe they don't need those devices as much. It's probably, it would benefit them too, but maybe they don't need it as much. They're just not going to scale.

Todd Owens

I totally agree with that. It's the physical scaling, and it's probably also the creative scaling. So one of the things about, I think, great leaders is they're somehow able to bring the best out of their teams, right? And so bringing the ideas to the table, it's expected. People feel comfortable again. It's one of those things where I love meetings where you get five people around a table, an idea is initiated, and then another person builds on it, another builds on it, and then at the end of the meeting, you've got sort of this clarity, and nobody can remember where it came from. And that to me is, if you can run meetings that way, where there's enough structure to kind of get the job done, but enough sort of room to sort of unleash that collective creativity, you go farther. I mean, it'd be interesting, but I would imagine that companies that have that space and freedom and inspiration to behave that way are the ones that really create breakout products and solutions for the world. Whereas the management side, it's very important, but we've all been part of that. We've all been part of sort of the machine, and then we've also had the opportunity to sort of create the machine and change the future. And that's one of the byproducts of the two. Of course, I don't want to like ever come across as downplaying the importance of management. One of my favorite books actually is this book that my former boss at Sterling, Claire Hart, amazing operator, asked me to read. It's called Execution. And it really is about managing and getting deep into the details, right? And not just sort of being superficial. So it's very important. I just tend to skew a little bit the other way, right? Which is partly why I skew towards CEO jobs and not COO jobs.

Lindsay Pedersen

Right. And I'll have to read Execution. If it's a book that you find valuable, I definitely want to read it. Is True North still playing a big role? Or is it, if you're in more of the mind space of managing, executing, is True North just as important? Is it less important? Is it neutral?

Todd Owens

I think it's always important, right? So it's not either or. In an ideal world, you'd be an amazing manager and an amazing leader with creative kind of wisdom and strategic vision and you can still sort of, you know, manage. It's hard to find that unicorn, you know, that can do all of that.

Lindsay Pedersen

It is in a single person, but in a team. I mean, I think like I was envisioning the hive mind scenario that you just described, where there's a small group of people who together create almost like a single entity that is generating something that alone nobody could have developed. And so as human beings, we're all asymmetrical. You can have a serve and volley game, or you can have a bat. Like, it just doesn't. In athletics, it happens this way. And so it's not about what I hear too, sort of a discernment about rounding out your own way of your cognitive style and your communication style and like life experience so that you come up with something that in a group sense is a unicorn, not a person, but a group.

Todd Owens

And by the way, that probably going back to the kind of the manager leader thing, that's part of creating a great organization is knowing where your strengths are and knowing where you're not as strong. And so yes, you've got this sort of like the brain hive or the creative hive, but you also have these like behaviors, right? And so how do you kind of very carefully construct the right diverse group of people who bring diversity of perspectives, of backgrounds, of ethnicities, of skill sets, not just their sheer brainpower, which is also important. So that's a big part of success, right? Is being able to kind of how you build the team.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. And the psychological safety that you ensure for them to bring everything to the table, like allowing both the structure and the space or providing the structure, but also communicating indirectly or directly that they're safe to let the ideas flow. A lot of which are going to be bad. A lot of which is going to be discarded. One of the things we talk about a lot on this podcast, because I'm obsessed with the topic is the intersection of purpose driven and economic growth audacious. And I'm thinking about the businesses that you've led and there's always been a purpose driven angle. First of all, is that true? And second, what makes it different to lead a business that is not only trying to achieve great economic valuation, but is also trying to do something that can never be measured by economic valuation?

Todd Owens

Yes, it's a good observation. And I think it's really informative as to why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. So if you think about it, like the first business was TalentWise and that was an HR tech business, big background check company. We got into onboarding. It was all about employees and the employee experience and they're at the core to everything is, you know, the team. And I just loved that, the impact that that business had, not just in terms of providing, you know, a safe workplace, literally keeping people alive, but it also touched employees and lots of them, millions of them. And so to me, that was always a strong sort of underlying mission that sort of was the foundation upon which we built this great culture. And that went off and I did two different ones. They were more economic. One was a data platform for marketers to help to predict churn. And then there was another one, which was an integration platform, moving data from one cloud application to the other. Those are really interesting technologies and quite frankly, had amazing outcomes and, you know, sold one to DocuSign, the other one to Okta and really amazing engineers and developing cultures, not perfect, but good. And I kind of missed the mission. And so when 2020 rolled around and I was on the beach and I had a chance to sit down with Greg Gottesman and the Pioneer Square Labs team and think about like, where can we make a difference in the world? I wanted to go back to workforce management and I wanted to focus it even further on a vertical market that needed it and frankly was consequential in terms of how you manage people. And so the intersection of workforce management and healthcare was like a bullseye to me. It's the largest sector of employment in the world. And if you think about it, name a workforce management platform, intelligent labor management, labor optimization platform that is focused on healthcare. I can't think of any. You're left to ADP, Kronos, Workday's in there, you know, others, and those are great companies, but they're not focused on healthcare. And so my thesis there was that you can never deliver a truly intelligent, seamless experience for a vertical market unless you focus on it. And so in a way, being mission-driven makes it so much easier to lead and to manage and to talk on podcasts like this, right? Like it's one thing to sort of talk about churn scoring or the power of like moving data between cloud applications. It's another thing to talk about how we can help healthcare organizations get greater levels of utilization out of their limited and frankly, insufficient supply of clinicians and staffers. And, oh, by the way, improve their experience and their retention because you're giving the clinicians more choice in when and where they work. It's easier when you have something underpinning your company like that, then sort of more the, you know, the technical really important feature set that might not have that human dynamic to it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes. I love the word consequential that you used earlier, like doing something that matters, doing something that's consequential. There will be consequences to the millions of people who are healthcare workers. There are human consequences to their day-to-day lives. And of course, to the companies that need these people to be present and engaged and giving care and also consequential, meaningful, important, and healthcare is a tough world to be in. I mean, do you think that earlier in your career, you would have been willing to tackle something as difficult as healthcare? I don't think so.

Todd Owens

No, to your point, like it is challenging. Some of it is the fact that these healthcare organizations are so darn busy. They have very little time to think about how they're going to improve their situation. Many of them are struggling financially. And so for them to make an investment is difficult. You know, I think everybody knows that healthcare organizations are oftentimes run by clinicians themselves and they are not technologists. And so there tend to be late adopters. So everything about this is a lot of work, but it's one of these things where I think it, it easy come, it was less than I was saying easy come, easy go. And so in this case, this is not easy to come. It's also not going to be easy to go. So it takes a level of seasoned experience, dare I say, gray hair to get this one right that I didn't need in the other three. You just needed to have a good group of young people that knew how to execute. We're selling the C-suite now, you know, and relatively large healthcare systems. And so that's not something you can do coming right out of college. It just, you don't have the experience or the tenure to kind of have those conversations and the empathy to know where those people are and what will motivate them to move forward. So as I go along, I am definitely building better and better organizations in terms of the quality of the team. And in many respects, the experience that the team has, and that might be a by-product of growing a little bit more experienced myself.

Lindsay Pedersen

Sure. I mean, we're all humans. What right now is your leadership growth edge? What are you working on?

Todd Owens

Personally? One thing that I think happens as I get a little farther down the path is that I'm less patient. By definition, my runway is shorter. Now I am staring at my last one or two at bats here. And, you know, of course I have the benefit of sort of seeing a lot of the same patterns over time, right? So what is hard sometimes for me, and I'm sure other entrepreneurs who are notoriously impatient, especially CEOs, you've seen it before. And so it's pretty clear as day to us, whether we're right or wrong, we think it's clear as day to us, what's going on and what needs to happen. But you got to realize that a company is a combination of varying experiences. You know, again, if you want to create the environment where folks can grow and feel good and thrive, you have to make sure that you have the requisite amount of patience along the way. And so I would tell you, that's a big deal, you know, as far as leadership goes, because I want to go faster. Like I feel a sense of urgency. And I know that there is only so much velocity that you can kind of get out of an organization. Some of that is just leadership and trying to get the most you possibly can. And some of it's also just resourcing, right? Startups these days are not, in my opinion, not quite as aggressive as they were two years ago. And I think most would say you've got to growing efficiently is important. And so that means you have to back burner the things that you just can't bite off this year, and you've got to push it to next year. And that's hard when you've got this urgency and a desire to change the way healthcare manages labor. I say things I've got a little less filter than I used to. I'm more direct. But I try to do it in a, I really want to do it in a compassionate way. So radical candor. Another thing, I love radical candor. I want to do another class on radical candor. I want our whole company to be able to be radically candorous and like to be able to have those conversations, sometimes direct conversations because we care that much about each other. Those are some of the things that I'm working on.

Lindsay Pedersen

Are the deliberate definitions that you put in place of True North and the things that you care the most about, do those come to bear as you kind of navigate this tension of need a sense of urgency, but also need patience in order to allow this culture to thrive? Are there things that touchstones that you could be leaning on or are leaning on that support you? Because that's a very tricky line to walk, right? Like it is important that time actually is of the essence. So it's not wrong to be impatient. And it's also a value to allow people to do what they need to do. Like there's a long-term thing that needs to happen as well as a short-term thing that needs to happen.

Todd Owens

Yeah. So are you sort of asking like, what are some of the levers that can be pulled to be able to kind of thread that needle?

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, exactly. Like, how can this be something that's not just willpower or not just, Hey, let's try to be more patient. What are the things that are outside of yourself around the organization that can fuel that?

Todd Owens

Great question. Again, it goes back to sort of the alignment, probably not just what we need to accomplish and really feeling it, like feeling that opportunity, that pressure in a way that we owe it to not just our investors and ourselves and our families, but also the world like to go make this happen. There's that setting the stage and making sure that it's very clear. People are naturally probably going to work a little harder, right? They're less likely to, what do they call it? Silent quit, or maybe stop working at four in the afternoon and maybe get that last bit of code out or that last product requirement back out or make that last sales call. If they feel that and also see the continual wins, right? The good news about Cabala is we are winning and it's growing and that culture of winning, it's a cycle, right? It sort of feeds the same energy that allows you to win more. I think that's it. I also think, and you know, this is where Greg Gottesman is just so darn good. I think of myself as a relatively big picture thinker and then he comes in. He is such an inspiration to me to take it even one step further. I think there is something to, it's just as hard to swing small. You can step up and try to hit the bubble. It's just as hard to do that than to hit the home run. In a way, we have to swing big. We have to be a game changer that radically changes the way that healthcare manages, deploys, retains, engages labor. If we do that, we'll be able to go faster. We'll get more pull from the market. We'll get that budget that's so difficult to reach. It'll inspire the team to get after that. The natural sort of trap, I would say, is to become a me too. It's a different kind of person. You get the feature requirements one at a time from your end users. Next thing you know, you're a better version of your competitor versus a game changer.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love that. Well, first of all, we mutually adore Greg Gottesman. Also, he is someone who can zoom back even farther to just how important this is to not settle for parity. The world doesn't need another product. This actually really matters to the people who are using it. You've chosen a very consequential game to play. It's like, why are we here? Why are we here if not to nail it?

Todd Owens

It's easy to lose sight of that too in the day-to-day. This meeting or that meeting. There's a bunch of tactical exercises because let's face it, the operations happens at the 1,000-foot level. Whose job is it to make sure that you stay grounded at the 30,000-foot level? It's the CEO's job. Fortunately, I've got a board member who actually pushes me to think even bigger. Add that to the list of things that I need to work on and probably all leaders is to never take it for granted that your teams already know and remember and internalize on a regular basis the why. It's easy to quickly lose sight of it.

Lindsay Pedersen

Frank Mycroft was in last season's podcast. He said one of the best pieces of advice he received was you can never over-communicate your why. You might think that you're being ridiculously repetitive, but there's truly no such thing as saying it too much or too often or in too many contexts, which I love because it's over-correct and there's still room to grow with that.

Todd Owens

Yeah. I remember always being like, I don't want to be a broken record. I don't want to be on this bully pulp preaching as to the why. I don't want to beat the drum if it's not necessary, but I have to say a couple of things. Every time that I do it, I can actually see people leaning in a little bit to the conversation. They're really, really engaged with that, more so than the tactical stuff. A, got to do more of that. B, I would say that the one piece of feedback that I have gotten from teams across the board in every situation I've been in, whether I've been the CEO or not, is we don't know what the strategy is. We don't get it. What is going on here? We need a strategy. That just tells me that it's not that there isn't a strategy. Sometimes there isn't. I try to avoid that. It's that they need to hear it more frequently and it needs to be repeated in the same sort of the words you choose and the way you talk about it can't be changing every day. Beat the drum because that is ultimately what grounds the company.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah. It lights them up and inspires them and makes them throw themselves into it. Also, it's such a gift to them, to employees, to not only have the clarity, but the crispness. If you're saying it again and again, then it's probably not a two-paragraph summation of why we're here. It's probably a word or two or three. That is the gift, like the spark that it lights up in them to be spending their life force on building this company with you. It's generous. Okay. This has been so wonderful to talk to you. I have a few rapid fire questions to end with. Are you ready?

Todd Owens

Yes, I am.

Lindsay Pedersen

Okay. One-word answers-ish, don't overthink it. What is your favorite meal? Pizza. If you had a time machine, what era would you like to visit?

Todd Owens

Gosh, I'd like to go back to the American Revolution when this whole experiment called America was beginning. Have you seen Hamilton? I have not, but that's- Shut up, Todd. Yeah, it's terrible.

Lindsay Pedersen

We are going to talk about this offline. You have to see this. Okay. If you could have any superhero power, what would it be?

Todd Owens

Oh, gosh. I think I'd like some sort of potion to take care of people that are just stuck. I was thinking about it the other day. Seattle has such a terrible homeless issue, and as frustrating as that could be to me, and sometimes my head goes to the city council and all the things that I think that they could be doing differently. Yesterday, some poor guy bent over, obviously on fentanyl. I'm like, that's some mom's son, and there he is. It's like, if I could figure out how to solve that, I'd stop everything I was doing, and I would kind of work on solving it. I want the potion to be able to give that guy a chance.

Lindsay Pedersen

That is the best superhero power I have ever heard of. That beats flying, creating fire, or spider webs. I love that. Okay. I want you to have that. How do you take your coffee or tea?

Todd Owens

With cream and a little bit of sugar, real sugar in the raw. I'm trying to avoid the NutraSweets of the world. I figure it's a better of two evils. Just take the sugar the straight way.

Lindsay Pedersen

Same thing. Cream, not milk, not half an ounce.

Todd Owens

Yeah, it's got to be good for I'm hoping there's some sort of hidden benefit in all that because I'm always drinking a cup of coffee.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yes, you are. I love this. The last rapid fire question is what is a song that you have recently had in your head?

Todd Owens

Oh, it's funny. So we had an unbelievable night out on a boat with the same guy we've talked about a few times Greg Gottesman and it was after a board meeting and we were on our way back and it was just such a beautiful night Mount Rainier was majestic. You know, it's nine o'clock at night and we're pulling back up to Greg's house. And you know, he asked what kind of music do we want to listen to? And given that we're all sort of in the 50 something range, we were talking Howard Jones, ABC, and then we're like, you know what about Neil Diamond? And so I am I said, Oh, I love it. And, you know, I must say that, you know, I did sing just a little bit on that boat last night.

Lindsay Pedersen

Oh, love, love. It's classic.

Todd Owens

And especially it was very fitting for that night. It was a great night.

Lindsay Pedersen

Yeah, it's so emotional. I find that song so emotional. Oh, thank you. This has been such a delightful conversation. Thank you so much for joining me. And I want people to be able to follow you online. Where should we send them? Do you have like a LinkedIn presence? Or should we send them to Kevala's website both?

Todd Owens

Yeah, no, I'd love to link in with folks. You can catch me there. I live on LinkedIn, just reference the podcast and let's set up some time to chat. This is a topic that I love. You know, follow us. Kevala.care has a marketing presence, obviously, on our website, which is Kabbalah, K-E-V-A-L-A dot care, and an emerging presence on LinkedIn. So it's one of the things that we need to get to is, you know, amplifying our message as we continue to chalk up some really great customer success stories and wins. So hope to connect.

Lindsay Pedersen

I love it. Thank you so much, Todd. Thanks for listening to this episode of North Star Leaders. Make sure you don't miss an episode by subscribing on your favorite podcast app. If you know of a North Star Leader whose insights would be valuable for this community, please message me on ironcladbrandstrategy.com. Also on that website are show notes, transcripts, and a way to sign up for our monthly newsletter. I hope you join us again for another episode of North Star Leaders.