Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
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A Passion for Growth: Storytelling and Interpersonal Skills with Joseph Griffiths (1/2)
How well do your personal and professional life align to your passion areas? For returning guest Joseph Griffiths, seeking mentorship helped uncover his core passions (service, honesty, faith, and growth) and fueled the decision to pursue people management. This week in Episode 327, Joseph details his transition from solutions architect to business solution strategist and why he sought mentorship along the way. You’ll hear about the impact of storytelling in executive conversations and job interviews as well as the concept of a value hypothesis. Joseph shares a perspective on management interviews, leading seasoned teams, and the critical nature of interpersonal skills for career advancement. Original Recording Date: 04-17-2025 Topics – Joseph Griffiths Returns, Storytelling and Conversations with Executives, Discovering Passion Areas, Management Interviews and Interpersonal Challenges, A Passion for Growth over Technology, Leading a Familiar Team and Progressing as a Manager 2:15 – Joseph Griffiths Returns Joseph Griffiths has worked in technical sales in some form for the last 10 years. Before that, he worked for a multi-tenant service provider and the state of Ohio as a systems administrator and enterprise architect. Joseph last joined us as a guest in Episode 18a and Episode 18b. At that time, we spoke to Joseph about his experience as a solutions architect. We wanted to learn more about what made Joseph want to pursue people leadership within technical sales. Full disclosure – Joseph was Nick’s manager up until about 4-5 months before this recording took place. But Joseph and Nick knew each other for many years before Joseph became Nick’s manager. Nick invited him to speak at Spiceworks user group events, for example. 3:55 – Storytelling and Conversations with Executives Going back to when Joseph was a solutions architect, his role was focused on understanding the pain and gain from a business perspective for customers. He would often run workshops to understand the current state (pains that exist) and build the future state (the gains a customer could get). As the company changed over time, Joseph’s role changed to business solution strategist. While the role was similar, it had a greater focus on speaking to C-level executives. Joseph recalls meeting some wonderful people on this team who taught him how to talk to executives and how to do value management. What was the biggest lesson Joseph had to learn in order to communicate effectively with executives? “You have about 30 seconds, and you better be talking about money. That’s the short version of it.” – Joseph Griffiths A good friend of Joseph’s is an assistant CFO at a large corporation, and Joseph decided to pick his brain on how and why certain IT purchases get approved, and others do not. “And he said, ‘it’s really simple – story and a spreadsheet…. You had better tell me a story that makes sense to my accounting brain, and you better have a spreadsheet that shows me how we’re going to make money, save money, or reduce risk with the spreadsheet…. Those two things put together…if the numbers make sense on the spreadsheet…I’m going to approve it. You come to me with a story about how you’re going to install some new widget, go find the money in your budget. You come to me with a spreadsheet, but the story doesn’t make sense, go find it in your budget. You want money outside of your budget? They better make sense in the form of dollars.’ And so, for me, the biggest thing to learn was I had 30 seconds with a customer to establish why they should keep listening to me, and it’s always dollars.” – Joseph Griffiths, on learning to speak with executives The executives Joseph would speak with likely would need to sell their ideas to a CFO or CEO to get new purchases approved. The business case has to be about making money (improving revenue or margin, for example) or saving money. Joseph had to learn to talk in dollars and understand how the money was being used. This is good advice even if you don’t work in technical sales. Anyone trying to get a purchase approved within their company needs to understand how to speak the language of the decision makers and make an effective business case. Listen to the example Joseph shares related to putting gourmet coffee machines in gas stations and why someone thought this was a good idea. “At the end of the day, businesses speak dollars. It doesn’t matter if you cannot convert what you sell into some sort of dollar metric. You’re going to have a hard time getting approval outside of budget times…. If you really want to accelerate a sales cycle of whatever you’re selling…you need to start to talk about to dollars and the impact to the business of the dollars.” – Joseph Griffiths Was there discomfort in needing to talk about money? Joseph says it was uncomfortable for him initially and for the team he managed. The challenge in these situations is we do not have all of the information. Joseph tells us about the idea of a value hypothesis and sharing this with a customer. “You have a hypothesis of what you think the value is, and it’s going to be wrong. That’s something that…I had to learn early on and sit in front of a customer with the wrong value hypothesis…. I had to be brave enough to put that number in front of them knowing that it’s wrong and having them correct me.” – Joseph Griffiths This exercise was difficult for Joseph. He wanted what he was sharing to be correct. But in sharing the detailed value hypothesis with a customer, Joseph was able to learn the real numbers. It creates a conversation and collaboration with the customer to adjust and correct the hypothesis. Outside of talking about dollars, Joseph has really embraced storytelling in his discussions. What made him put such an emphasis on this skill? Joseph tells us he’s in the middle of writing a book at the moment. One of the chapters is focused on storytelling. “Storytelling is elemental to humans as a race. One of the amazing things about storytelling is it allows you to learn something and be surprised, which are both dopamine hits. That’s really critical in our world where everything is centered around dopamine hits.” – Joseph Griffiths If someone tells us we are doing something wrong, we could be defensive, submissive, or react in any number of ways. It’s not going to motivate us to change. But, if we were told an engaging story about someone who went through something similar and have a realization while hearing the story, it would motivate us to change. “The real power of stories is you see yourself as the protagonist, and when you see yourself as the protagonist of my story, and I’m leading the journey along, you can come to some very interesting aha moments that are very powerful and motivating for you…. Instantly you want to take that story and tell other people so they can have that same aha moment because every time we have an aha moment we feel smart. We feel like we’ve discovered something amazing.” – Joseph Griffiths Most religions in the world and their teachings are based around storytelling. Joseph also tells us that stories have applications at different times in our lives. Stories allow us to use our intelligence to come to some incredible conclusions. Analogies (a close sibling to storytelling) are also commonly used by technical sales professionals to explain difficult concepts. They are useful to help with understanding but miss the aha moment that comes from using stories. Joseph would highly recommend using stories in any kind of selling (even if selling a project or idea inside your own company). After learning to tell stories with dollars, what kind of feedback did Joseph get on his approach from executives he spoke with? Joseph remembers one instance during his time as a business solution strategist involving the CIO of a company who was near the end of his career. This CIO became very interested in coaching people. After Joseph did a presentation with a value hypothesis at the front of it, the CIO looked at him and said, “That’s impossible.” This was a challenge, and Joseph had to make a decision on what he would do next. When Joseph pressed forward a little bit, the CIO stopped him and provided the same response. When Joseph asked why what he proposed was not possible, the CIO provided some of the most useful financial information about the company anyone on the team had learned to that point. It led to a number of sales. “We have to be able to stop and say, ‘why?’ His why was totally different than I thought it was.” – Joseph Griffiths After this specific incident, the CIO in question told Joseph he should have stopped the first time and asked why. This CIO continued to provide feedback to Joseph after future conversations. “That’s one of the biggest dangers…. We’re afraid of those yellow lights or the red lights that come, and we try to speed through them. Never a good idea…just let them talk.” – Joseph Griffiths, on discussions with executives and being challenged Joseph says some of his stories have not landed with people, but the only way to get better at storytelling is to practice. Joseph mentions a friend and co-worker of both his and Nick’s joined Toastmasters and improved his storytelling ability. It’s a great place to get some practice. 13:10 – Discovering Passion Areas Joseph’s role as solution architect and business solution strategist was more of a technical overlay. What titled him toward management? The answer lies within the things Joseph is passionate about – growth and change, for example. The business solutions strategist forced a lot of growth for Joseph. Joseph enjoys being of service to others. In his role as an overlay, he was able to serve account teams inside the company and customers. “I’ve always real
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