Ep. 71: Jeremy Behler - Leading for Innovation and Change

Contact Jeremy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremybehler/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:00)
Welcome back for episode 71 of Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I will be previewing our conversation between my cohost, Adam and Jeremy Belhar, the CFO at Sargento foods. In this episode, Jeremy discusses the importance of leadership when seeking to innovate and facilitate change. He shares some of his personal experiences and talks about how innovation and change does not necessarily need to revolve around technology. As a matter of fact, a big leadership quality he emphasizes in this episode is trust. To hear everything else he shared with Adam we're going to head over to the conversation now.

Adam: (00:49)
So to get started, I just wanted to ask you what leadership characteristics have enabled you to climb to such a high leadership position within such a well known organization?

Jeremy: (00:59)
Well , I think there's a few things. First and foremost, you know, I think it's important to note that there's not a one size fits all approach to leadership nor to achieving career success. It's one of the things, when I came on board early in my career, I looked at some of the leaders that I aspired to be, and it was at times a little bit challenged in terms of differences of what I saw versus what I felt and knew my core, personality, and beliefs and, and overall approaches were. And so for me, I've taken it a point to really be authentic and sincere first and foremost, because you can't be someone you're not and be successful and be, consistent throughout an entire career. So for me, what I try to do is I try to one, always be open minded and, and I have a general view of abundance. I always believe that there's always newer and better ways of doing things about thinking things. While I would characterize my thought process is largely databased, I also recognize that if it was as simple as that, we wouldn't need, leaders in positions cause we could just write programs to interpret data, and that's not as easy as there. So it's balancing the data piece with the judgment and understanding how to navigate in the gray area, where, the more senior you get that tends to be more of where you play. And I think the other, the other area that's been important is as you move up in the organization, I didn't appreciate as much the need to stay connected to what's really going on. I like to think of myself as a pretty approachable person, and have a very open communication process with most of my teams, but even with that, as hard as you can try, there are a lot of times where information just doesn't make it to you, because of your level, regardless of how you approach that. And so I've made it a point to, have deep relationships and set up processes so that I can have better insight into what's really going on, and understand when that may be inconsistent with what I believe, or I'm being told it's going on.

Adam: (03:33)
You know, it's a really interesting insight to be able to find that connection between what's really going on and what you're being told is going on. And how do you, how do you cross those together? Have there been innovative ways that you've been able to do that, to make that connection?

Jeremy: (03:49)
Well, I certainly, from a reporting technology standpoint, the more democratize data is the easier it makes that, in, you know, if you go back 20, 30 years ago, when we didn't have the rich powerful, ERP systems that we currently have management and executives would rely upon reports that they get from their teams without a real efficient way of validating that. And that's not to say that people are intentionally mischaracterizing data, but certainly there is a level of interpretation that comes with communicating, results and data, and if that is done in a manner that is intended to frame it in a positive light versus a negative light, you may not know that. And so being able to have access to more data, more timely data, and data that doesn't maybe go through as many filters, certainly allows you to have a little bit more insight in terms of when the information that's being shared may not be the entire truth. It may be accurate data, but the information that that data is communicating, perhaps isn't consistent with what your objectives are or intents are.

Adam: (05:15)
That akes sense. So when you're, when you're a leader in any organization, it requires you to be innovative, to kind of come up with different ways to, to run the business better. Are there any innovative things that you've come up with that you can, that you've adopted to make your business more effective?

Jeremy: (05:34)
Well, sure. I mean, I think innovation is one where it's a little bit of this just magical word that means so many things, and a lot of times, I believe innovation is mischaracterized as being technology. And while technology is certainly an area that has seen, a very high level, of innovation, it's not the only area and, you know, innovation, if you get to the core of it, innovation is just a new idea and it could be a product, it could be a way of doing something, it could involve people, it can involve technology, it can involve process, and so for me, being able to embrace technology is really about being able to embrace change. And I think that in my career, one of the things that I've seen that really differentiate how effective, differentiate how much technology and innovation can have on a person or a group of people is very highly correlated with their openness to change. And, you know, for me personally, I've always hungered for new and better ways of doing things, and so inherently I have a very open mind to change, and I know that's not true across the board for everyone and it's not right or wrong. We're all right, you know, wired differently and their strengths and, and opportunities to each of those, but for me, it's never been a challenge because I, I really embrace it. And for me, how I've tried to utilize that with my teams is, to show examples of why that change is going to benefit all of us collectively, and in most cases, all of us individually as well. Certainly there are some new innovations that can have a negative impact on an individual, you know, maybe takeen to the extreme. Maybe there are certain roles that will be obsoleted by that, and I think that's why there's a lot of this inherent fear about innovation is. But what if you take the longterm view to that if you embrace that change, you're also going to embrace the opportunity that while your job may go away, your management team, your executive team, will see how you respond to that. And if you embrace the fact that your job is not going to be needed in a year, and you proactively identify that and work to resolve that, yeah, they may not need you to do what you're doing in the past, but what's more important is that you are seen as a thought leader that can lead future changes and future improvements and future efficiencies, and your team is going to want to keep you around for that. And you're going to have shown, that you have that mindset to be able to do different things and not look out purely for yourself, but look out how we can be better collectively. And I think that's something that, you know, throughout my career in the coaching and mentoring that I've done, has been something that's been, a really clear differentiation between those who are embracing of new approaches versus those who see them purely as a threat.

Adam: (08:53)
So you mentioned a little bit, some of the things you’ve done to help folks with change, embracing change, how, as a leader, do...