The cavnessHR Podcast

A talk with Laurie Litwack

CavnessHR

The PDF version of the show notes to include the links to the the YouTube are at this link.

Laurie Litwack is a problem solver, a mother of daughters, a compassionate geek, and an expert coach with a passion for leadership and creating greater impact for women in tech. Her business is called Today Is Your Day. She provides inspiration and accountability coaching, helping women in tech find more time, solve life & career problems, and set themselves up for success.
Laurie’s degree in Electrical Engineering came from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her problem-solving and organizational development skills served her well in her career from IBM and Bell Northern Research, to Merlin Guerin in France, and through two decades at the Microsoft Corporation.

During her tenure at Microsoft, Laurie designed networking features and operating systems across divisions, as well as helping craft version one products. In a company-wide role, she created and led training for technical employees.

Building on her experience with diverse customers and employees, large cross-team efforts, and complex objectives, Laurie is intensely dedicated to guiding people and projects to success. She listens deeply and brings analytic, communication, and strategic planning skills to the mix.
Her mission is to make the culture and decision making in tech leadership more inclusive and more innovative. Laurie loves to keep learning, work with motivated people, and make an impact on the world around her.

The cavnessHR Podcast can be found at the following places or you can just type in cavnessHR on the respective app.

iTunes: https://rebrand.ly/thecaf9b8
Stitcher: https://rebrand.ly/theca68dc
Soundcloud: https://rebrand.ly/theca2e61
YouTube: https://rebrand.ly/youtu1603
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/clipper
Google Play: https://rebrand.ly/e75f
Spotify: https://rebrand.ly/theca18f1
Pocket Casts: http://pca.st/44p4

Social Media links for Laurie below!!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurielitwack/
Laurie@TodayIsYourDay.biz.

Below is Laurie’s book recommendation:

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr Seuss

Below is the link to purchase the book.

http://amzn.to/2C4iFGD

Jason: 0:02 Hello, and welcome to cavnessHR Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Cavness. Our guest today is Laurie Litwack. Laurie, are you ready to be great today?

Laurie: 0:10 I am!

Jason: 0:12 Our guest on the cavnessHR podcast is Laurie Litwack. Laurie is a problem solver, a mother of daughters, a compassionate geek, and an expert coach with a passion for leadership and creating greater impact for women in tech. Her business is called “Today Is Your Day”. She provides inspiration and accountability coaching, helping women in tech find more time, solve life & career problems, and set themselves up for success. Laurie’s degree in Electrical Engineering came from the Universal of Waterloo in Canada. Her problem-solving and organizational development skills served her well in her career from IBM and Bell Northern Research, to Merlin Guerin in France, and through two decades at the Microsoft Corporation.

Jason: During her tenure at Microsoft, Laurie designed networking features and operating systems across the divisions, as well as helping craft version one products. In a company-wide role, she created and led training for technical employees. Building on her experience with diverse customers and employees, large cross-team efforts, and complex objectives, Laurie is intensely dedicated to guiding people and projects to success. She listens deeply and brings analytic, communication, and strategic planning skills to the mix. Her mission is to make the culture and decision-making in tech and leadership more inclusive and more innovative. Laurie loves to keep learning, working with motivated people, and making an impact on the world around her. Laurie, thank you very much for being here today. So, what is Laurie working on right now? What's keeping you busy?

Laurie: 1:44 Oh, well I’ve got a number of different clients in different areas who are keeping me busy and giving me new challenges – both people, technical and work team leadership challenges. So, I love to work to motivate people who are ready to take the next step and move themselves and their businesses forward.

Jason: 2:08 Laurie, so, with your company, how do you help women get more done in tech?

Laurie: 2:13 Oh, well it's not hard to say, but it's hard to do. So, there is a whole bunch of work that I've had to do in my own career and that I help others with negotiating for what we want, figuring out what we want, prioritizing thing. So that we're able to say “no” to the things that don't lead us to where we want to go and say “yes” and make time for the things that are most impactful for us. I also work a lot with gratitude and resilience and “being the best I can be” in the situation I am. So that I focus really intensely where I am, solve problems and then turn my focus to something else. All of those are skills we can all learn of a service well with moving us forward and giving us a sense of accomplishment and reward when we are working on something challenging.

Jason: 3:06 I remember reading somewhere (I don't know how true this is), but it says if a man’s given a salary amount and he doesn’t agree with it, he negotiates where females are more often like, “okay, thank you,” and they take it. Have you heard that to be true?

Laurie: 3:20 Absolutely true. Particularly, when I coach young women just graduating and interviewing for their first or their first real job in the industry they want to work in. I say, “if you get an offer, and it's mostly what you want, figure out something to ask for more,” because in all of my years. Most men that I interviewed and hired asked for more and not a single woman did. Then by the end of a year, two years, five years, they're getting, if they're working comparably, because they’re technical strong people contributing to the team. Their salary increases as percentages are the same but because the guy started at a higher salary or had some other major compensation piece that was slightly higher, they end up in a disparate place. That doesn't serve anyone very well.

Jason: 4:17 Then that’s a problem… Right?

Laurie: 4:22 Right. Absolutely.

Jason: 4:23 So, question for you. Let’s suppose there’s a founder out there, he has a tech company and he wants to recruit women software developers, what advice would you have for this person?

Laurie: 4:33 So, a whole bunch of different advice. But one is make sure that you talk to successful women in tech to see what were the key things that attracted them to the positions that they’re in. We can each have our ideas of what makes a perfect job for women. But really getting the information from the women themselves and asking them, “how did you become successful. What did you have in your field set up for success. What were the key factors in accepting a position over another position,” gives you real data. The other thing I would say is to look a little more broadly than just the tech schools or the Ivy League schools because women come in from a number of different areas and they bring skills and they bring initiative. They bring potentially a more holistic set of skills. So that you want to interview and look around more broadly and ask for referrals from women and men who are invested in the success of women. So, those are two mechanisms that I would suggest.

Jason: 5:41 Yes. From experience, have you seen a difference in a developer that comes from a four-year college or one of the coding academies? What’s your thought on those?

Laurie: 5:50 I don't have a lot of experience with the coding academies. I know I am a big fan of community colleges and programs that take people who are being motivated and give them the skills to start up in the tech industry. Because, again, I think that there's a need, there is open jobs and there's a need for diversity and inclusion across those things. But I haven't, personally, hired people with coding academy experience versus four-year. Typically, the people that I've got to interview, first, and then hire were from four-year universities.

Jason: 6:27 Is there a difference between a four-year degree computer science fulltime study from the University of Washington from a lesser-known school, or is it pretty much all the same?
Laurie: 6:40 So, a lot of schools have a bunch of great degrees. The things that I look for when I interview is both the technical skills – but technical skills, if you've got the right mind-set and the right initiative to learn, can be learned on the job. You have to have the basic set of skills and then there's a whole mess of stuff you're going to have to learn on the job. The things that I also want to see are team fit – how well did you work with a team. Did you understand how teams work together, how do you deal with complexity and complications. How do you deal with conflict, how do you make other people great in a team? Because there are very few jobs in large companies, even small companies. Where you’re not intimately working with teams and working on top of other people's code and understanding how to bring these things in and understanding the impacts on customers. So, you want to have a sense of a variety of those skills; not just the technical skills. I think those can be learned in community colleges and four-year degrees, and that is why I say cast a wider net than just highly-rated technical degrees.

Jason: 7:58 Yes. So, I was in a LinkedIn conversation a little while ago and the basic gist was it was some new software developers who graduated from college and they were talking about how hard it was to find a job. Because places want entry level positions to have 2 or 3 years’ experience. How do they work through that?

Laurie: 8:24 Where I went to school, we had a work/study program. I recommend, if you're just starting university or in a technical community college. You look for places that have those work/study programs set up for you. So that you get technical experience as part of your education. That doesn't really answer the question of people who’ve graduated and say, “now what do I do with these entry-level jobs asking for two to three years of experience.” I would say look for places where you can add value; perhaps, there's a tech cooperative or a non-profit that you would love to work with and help them move their database forward. Or look for places that you and some colleagues can get together and make an app for the experience of doing that. Getting it through onto the Google Play platform, the iOS, the iTunes Store. Then also apply for things that ask for two to three years of experience, that you don't have, because all they can do really is say “no”. But you may also get some really good folks who look at what you've done and are interested in interviewing you.

Jason: 9:45 That’s some great advice. So, let's take this situation: of course, you know, diversity is a big thing now and has been has been big for a while. You're a founder of a company and you have 14 white males, and suddenly you’re like, “I have to hire somebody who doesn’t look like us.” How do you do that? Because, from my point of view, if I’m female and I see a company of 14 white males. I would be kind of hesitant to go there. How does one work through that?

Laurie: 10:17 So, if I understand the question correctly is, if you have a pretty non-diverse company, how do you recruit or make a more inclusive culture.

Jason: 10:31 Yes, and at the same time, if you’re a candidate, wouldn’t you think, “well, they have 15, do they want me for my skills in tech or just or for a “diverse hire” and they’re bringing me on because someone’s forcing them to.”

Laurie: 10:47 Right. So those are great questions. First, I would say that the evidence is coming in stronger and stronger with longitudinal studies across. Not just the US but in Europe as well. That diversity inclusion, when you get to a certain point, both in the upper levels of a company but also across the company, that they have stronger earnings. So there is a bottom-line reason to have a more inclusive, diverse culture. It is more innovative, it is more teamwork-oriented, and those things have bottom-line effects. So that is a good reason to go and do it. Now, in terms of both selling it inside your company that is all 14 white males and also selling it to some candidate coming in, I would say you address it head-on. For the team, itself and for the company, you say, “I know that we will be a stronger team if we have more ideas coming in, more diverse opinions and life experiences. That is what we all should want because it leads to better coding, it leads to better product design, it leads to better outcomes.”

Laurie: If people are not abiding, then you have to deal with that first before you bring somebody in who’s not maybe set up for success. Then, when you're dealing with candidates and they look around and go. I was just interviewed by four or five white guys and I don't see anybody else who looks or feels, or whatever, like me,” Again, diversity comes in a lot of different flavors – not just gender and race – but a whole bunch of different ways. I would say you address it with the candidate as well and say, “we have done this work just to educate ourselves and why it is good for business and good for the team to you set ourselves up for success and you up for success by including you and growing the inclusive culture in our organization.” Once you can do that, you can have a more honest conversation about what setting everybody up for success looks like and by that, you can then, as a candidate, say I feel more comfortable that you've done some of the work and it's not going to be all on me to “make this company more diverse.” You see that you recognize that there will be some potential bumps along the way. Some changes to the way things are done and I, as a candidate, feel, “wow, I can take a chance on these folks because they are doing the work along with me and that is going to set me and them up for success.”

Jason: 13:26 Thank you, Laurie. Laurie, next, talk about a time you were successful in the past, what you learned from this success, and what our listeners can learn from your success.
Laurie: 13:34 So, I think that with success, there’s always sort of failures woven into them. But I will tell you about one particular job within Microsoft that I was doing. At one particular juncture, I worked on some security products for Microsoft as we were shifting a lot more focus and a lot more personnel investment into making our products more secure. Helping our customers become more secure as the Internet exploded and malware started flooding into our customers’ computers. Once we had shipped a sort of first set of products, I was asked to take a look and do some strategic planning around what we should invest in next. It was huge – this area that we could invest in – it felt a little overwhelming. But I was just really excited to dive in. So I talked to stakeholders within the company, I talked to a bunch of customers who were sort of on the leading edge of potentially being attacked or having assets that malware wanted to grab. I looked at what competitors were doing in the field. I looked at some analysts and talked to some analysts. Working with folks across the team and across a large set of teams put together. It was this huge amount of data and I said, “okay, we've got to categorize and put down various things and what is going to be needed. Where do our particular talents and competitive advantages allow us to make the most impact for our customers and for our teams to work on.”

Laurie: So, I got this done. I worked and I reviewed it with various people, made changes and presented it. We started working on some of the stuff; we cut down and said, “no, we can't do that. It's important, but it's not really what we're good at and there's other people in the field doing that, already taking care of the customers.” Probably eight months after I put this document together with the team and we were starting to work on it. A whole bunch of analyses came out from partners and other people in the industry that really validated what we had chosen to work on. It felt so good to both have done the work, done this broad, important thing and had people execute on it and then have it be shown to be the right set of things to work on. So, that is the story of it. What did I learn? I learned to take a chance on myself because my management had taken a chance on me. Given me a vote of confidence, and go and talk to all those people and ask all those questions. The other thing I learned was you have to say “no” to a whole bunch of stuff to be able to make a set of investments work. That if you're going to execute on something, you're going to say “yes” to some things and “no” to a whole bunch of other things. It's true in technical investment, and it’s true with my time and it’s true in my life that the things that I'm going to focus on, to say “yes” to them, I have to say “no” to other things.

Jason: 17:01 That's great advice – take a chance on yourself. A lot of people don't do that, they lack the confidence. People don’t realize how important it is to say “no” to things, you can’t do everything, you have to learn how to say “no.”

Laurie: 17:15 Yeah, and we know it, intellectually, but not we don't always feel it.

Jason: 17:20 We always want to please people and think that when we say “no” we will not please them and then we’ll be on their bad side. Next, on the other side – failure. Talk about a time you failed in the past, what you learned, and what we can learn from this.
Laurie: 17:32 Well, I have so many stories about failure. I'll start with a fun story. (it was not fun at the time) When I started at Microsoft in 1990 and I was what was called a program manager and I had responsibilities for a number of technical products and projects and features on an operating system. Coming in, I had technical skills but, again, going back to it, I didn't necessarily have the, “how do I say ‘no,’” or prioritize skills. So, I was given a set of things and, probably every month, I was given something else. Six months went by I thought that my management, my team, would have a sense of what does a full job look like. I assumed that if they were giving me more stuff that I hadn’t reached that full set of responsibilities yet.

Laurie: What I didn't realize was that I was supposed to say, “whoa, I have too many things to do. Which one of these is most important. As you give me something new, does that rank higher or lower than the things I'm working on.” Because at some point, of course, it all came crashing down and I had dropped what my management (without my knowledge) thought was the most important thing. I was weeks behind on delivering what I was responsible for because I had said “yes” to too many things. So, I learned some valuable lessons which I had to implement and had to really learn so many times. Such as asking for help and saying “no” and prioritizing. I’ve got a lot more time management skills than I did then. Every now and then when I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. It’s like, okay, now I have to step back and talk to the people that I'm supposed to give stuff to and say which is the most important. Both to me and to you and how are we going to get things done and making sure that I'm communicating the things that are not getting done. Because I'm going to have a lot of things on my list and a lot of things to do in my job and in my life. I need to know which are the highest and most important and most impactful things and what are the things that I'm going to hand off and not going to do. There’re just not important to spend time on.

Jason: 19:46 Yes. That’s great advice also. Next, talk to us about a person who has helped you in the past and how they helped you.

Laurie: 19:52 Well, thinking about a person I’ve helped, I’ve helped so many people in the past. But I’m thinking about the manager who gave me that strategic planning assignment. One, when he hired me into the team (because I was already working at Microsoft and this was a new team), he hired me to be a part-time group manager – part-time group program manager. It's like, “wow, you're going to hire me at part-time,” (because I was working twenty hours a week at the time to manage a team). I was very impressed and inspired by his confidence in me and his clarity on what he thought success was in the role that I was doing. I learned a lot from him about being clear about what success looks like. The other thing that I loved was his way of being – his management, his leadership style. I had been around a lot of good managers, mediocre managers; the good managers were often really outgoing and really wowed. I hadn't seen this particular leadership style, which maps better to mine of more quiet leadership. But really clear and really powerfully supporting and lots of great feedback. So what did I learn from him? I learned that you can be quiet and slightly more introverted and be quite successful in leading others. I love that he set really clear expectations, communicated really well and gave really great feedback.

Jason: 21:33 Yes. Next tell us something about you that most people don’t know. Of course, your close family, close friends know this about you, but most people that deal with you on a daily basis don't know this about you.

Laurie: 21:43 Well, I grew up in a small family and so there is just my parents and my sister and me. I didn't really learn to cook growing up because I was really focused on a lot of other things. I love numbers and puzzles and all sorts of things that did not involve cooking and food. But I married into a large family and grew to love big dinners and having lots of family around. So now, thirty people come over, I can make a dinner just like that. We can have a full meal, we can gather around and talk and play. I do not get stressed when ten people show up, twenty people show up, thirty people show up, because it can all happen. So, that is something that not everybody who works with me knows that is true in my life.

Jason: 22:37 That's great. So, you talk about how you had a love for STEM early in life. I remember reading somewhere that 90% of young girls like STEM but by the time they get to high school, when it’s down like 25-30%. Do you think that’s societal pressures that causes that? Or what do you think that is?

Laurie: 22:56 Yeah, I definitely think that society is part of that. These are generalizations and these are my opinions, some of them are backed up by studies. The way that we talk to girls about their career aspirations are not necessarily as sort of pushy as we are with men. My parents told me that you never know what happens in life. You're going to have to be able to support a family and that changed my perspective on what I was going to go on and do and study and aspire to. Because having to support a family is the bigger responsibility and I wanted to put my talents to work. That was the other thing that I have; each of us has talents and I was encouraged to find mine and to go and pursue them.

Laurie: I know that when I was in engineering school. I reached out to the network of high school guidance counselors to tell them a little bit more about this creative day on a workshop on campus of the University of Waterloo in Ontario. To tell them more about engineering because they don't really know much about engineering. All the myriad ways it is responsible for solving human problems in the world. I wanted them to learn more about that, to be able to speak about it with a little passion to the young men and women who came through their doors. So that not only the people who are “good at math” would think about engineering. But a broader set of young women and men would go, “whoa, you’re saying that I could solve this type of biomedical problem if I go and study engineering. Or I can help with creating a world that deals with water pollution and air pollution better,” I wanted them to have those types of ideas and put those in the heads of a wider variety of people.

Jason: 24:54 Yes. Laurie, do you have a book you can recommend to our listeners?

Laurie: 24:58 Well, light-hearted but truly a classic book about the paths that we can take in life is how I name my company. Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr Seuss is how I got the name Today is Your Day for my business. So it talks about all the problems that can occur as you, yourself go forward in life and ways to get around it with courage and hope and support.

Jason: 25:27 Dr Seuss – such a genius. Laurie, can you share some of your social media platforms either for yourself or your company so people can reach out to you?

Laurie: 25:36 Well, I am Laura Litwack on LinkedIn and I have a number of things on there that talk about workshops and the ways I interact with people and some of the nice, wonderful things that people have said about me as my clients. Then you can find Today is Your Day, LLC on Facebook and I can be reached at laurie@todayisyourday.biz.

Jason: 26:06 For our listeners, we’ll have the links to all her social media platforms in our show notes. Laurie, we’ve come to the end of our talk, can you provide any last-minute advice for our listeners?

Laurie: 26:15 Well I think our power comes from embracing who we are with self-compassion confidence and asking for support along the way. I know that has been key for me. I know what challenge I need to take on next. You know what challenge you need to take on next and reaching out for inspiration and accountability makes climbing your next mountain much easier. But I really think that Dr Seuss says it best, “you're off to great places, today is your day, your mountain is waiting, get on your way.” Thank you.

Jason: 26:51 Yes. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you very much for being our guest today, you’re a really busy person, I really appreciate your time. To our listeners, thank you for your time as well, and remember to be great every day. Thank you.

The cavnessHR Podcast can be found at the following places or you can just type in cavnessHR on the respective app.