Calix COO and Former Salesforce VP John Durocher | How Great COOs Disrupt Themselves (Podcast 599)

I see myself not as a manager, but as a coach, and I want to get the most out of all the players on the team. And the only way you can do that is if you give me feedback. In sport, you don't wait until the end of the season and say, hey, you know, back in game 3 of a 100-game season, you should have done this. You're like, well, that's not very helpful. It's best to go look at the video right after the game and say, what could we have done better? And I think that's how you should treat all employees, right? It's like, come out of that meeting, what could we have done better? What could I have done better? How did that land? Did you tell the story the right way? Were you prepared? It's this idea of continuous being better, and the only way you can do that is get best-in-time feedback or get people reacting.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Second in Command Podcast. My name is Lindsay Smith, and I'm your co-host. I'm very excited to bring to you today our special guest, COO of Calix, John Durocher. John is the Chief Operations Officer of Calix overseeing customer success, commercial operations, supply chain, IT sustainability, and partner relations. He brings a proven track record of planning and executing growth initiatives, along with a passion for delivering innovative solutions to customers. Before joining Calix, John was the vice president of customer success at Salesforce, where he led global teams focused on helping customers succeed with Salesforce products. Earlier in his career, he spent 17 years with Accenture's financial service practice, building deep expertise in customer relationship management. John is recognized as a thought leader in customer relationship management, or CRMs, with multiple published articles and papers featured in industry and academic publications. He has contributed to the development of software solutions for the financial services industry and He holds several patents that have been deployed globally. John earned a bachelor's degree from Clarkson University. I'm very excited to bring you to the show today. Welcome, John.

Okay, a quick note before we continue.

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So John, it's really great to have you today on our show. Thank you for making time to be with us.

Thank you for having me. Exciting to be here.

You're very welcome. I'd love to understand, John, how you ended up as the COO of Calix. Talk to us a little bit about your career journey.

Yeah, I would call myself an accidental COO and probably an accidental chief customer officer before that. You know, my career, I started out in consulting, started out with what was Arthur Andersen at the time, uh, spent quite a few years there and then took a leap to this company called Salesforce that people were saying you shouldn't go there. It's not going to end up being anything. And I'm like, I don't know. I feel pretty good about that. And, uh, had a very long run there. And again, when I went there, I was a partner in Accenture, and I left to become a single contributor without really a specific role. And the role that they hired, I actually never did. So you'll see in the course of my career, I've never been really that worried about landing in the perfect seat and then just looking for opportunities. I feel like we can make a contribution, opportunities can happen. So, you know, 17 years at Salesforce, and then I was ready for a new adventure. And, um, the CEO, Michael Weenie, is somebody that worked for me at Salesforce, and I kept in touch with him over the years and saying, hey, Michael, call him one night. Hey, I'm looking for something new, you know, and he, he jokingly said, well, you should join us. And I'm like, and we both laughed. And they had called me back 2 weeks later and he said, no, I was serious. You should come and join us. And I'm like, well, tell me about the company. I knew a little bit about it, but I really explored that and came on board as the Chief Customer Officer. And that's what I thought I was going to do. I thought I was going to be that for a long time. And that was my passion about bringing the customer point of view to everything we did. And I got a call one day from Michael and he said, hey, I want you to consider becoming the COO. We didn't have a COO. And I'm like, why? Why would you want me to do this? I'm like the chief customer officer. And he said, well, the chairman and I were really talking about it. And we think your background is the right background for this job. Somebody who has a consulting mindset is going to be continually looking at our org and thinking about reinvention, how to make us better. You know, you're always questioning everything that we do, but generally it's in your space. And we just want you to apply that kind of progressive thinking to the whole organization. And I'm like, well, I don't know if I want to do that. I really enjoy what I'm doing. And I said, let me give some time to think it over. And, um, thought, you know what, this is what the company needs. I should, I should go and do that. Uh, and get excited about it. Now, look at, I've never been a CIO. I've never run supply chain. I've never run commercial operations and think of all the teams that are going to be reporting. And I'm like, why do you want me to do this? I have zero experience in those areas. And they, and they said, that's perfect. We have good operators there. What we really need is you to think about that territory and say, what can we be doing differently? How do we rethink it? He said, you're not going to bring a mindset of this is how you do it. You're going to ask a lot of questions, especially with this age of AI. Which I think is a huge opportunity for reimaginations. And that's what we, that's what we, that's our mission, right? Is to think, reimagine the businesses. And then when you reimagine, there's a really opportunity to get more out of your AI strategy when you do that versus just thinking about AI from a technology standpoint. So an accidental COO, I've loved it. I've been in the role for almost a year. And it's, and it's been fantastic. It's been, for me, it feels like one long consulting project.

You know, I really love the thought of an accidental COO, and I even more so love the fact that your true operational experience wasn't linear, right? And you weren't coming from a spot where you were managing supply chains or you were managing information technology, because what innately happens is you bring, well, this is how things were done, this is how things are supposed to be done, right? And coming from the consulting world, And coming from that little slightly untraditional background, you really were able to question everything in the best way possible so that A, you could learn, but B, you could also make people think like, huh, maybe this guy's bringing something to my mind that I hadn't considered in the past. So I really love that and think that that's an excellent position for you to be in and for the company to have you in.

I, I always tease, we were, I was in on all hands for the, the marketing organization is reporting to me now as well, 'cause we're, uh, in transition. And I, somebody sent me this book and it was like the Art of Being a Chief Marketing Officer. And it's like this big thick book that's quite informative. But I said, this is everything I know about being a CMO. I'm like, I'm, you know, look, I'm going to be honest. You're going to look at me and say, you're going to question, you know, why I should be hiring this organization. And I said, but look, you have, we have great operators in the company who know that space. And so what I'm bringing is just as I just said, is questions about can we do it a different way? By the way, had our strategy that we actually put in place actually working? Meaning, is it getting the results? So, um, I think the chairman and our CEO saw it in me before I saw it in myself, is this innate questioning everything. Um, and, and just, I, I feel like that's something I learned to ask questions as a consultant, and then at Salesforce, in the journey there, um, you know, it's a fantastic journey. I joined, we were doing $250 million. When I left, we were doing $30 billion. We were not the same company.

Sure.

Every 5 years it was transitioning. And when I looked around, I was the only one still on the team. 10, 15 years later, the whole team had changed. And I think I asked myself, why, why was that the case? And it was around adaptability, meaning I wasn't wed to doing it a certain way. Mine was always about, okay, what's the next horizon that we have to be ready for? How do we change what we're doing? So something that just was accidental again, in terms of the strategy, has really proven to be very beneficial to my career.

Well, I think adaptability is critical to an organization, right? If we didn't adapt, you spoke a little bit about AI and the AI world, if we didn't adapt, No one would actually implement the things that came and we'd still be doing the same way things were done in the 1920s, right? If we didn't adapt, we'd all still be in the proverbial horse and buggies outside rather than the, you know, all the technology that exists. So I think that's important, but it's very difficult for people to adapt. It's very difficult for people to change. So having the ability to do that certainly sets you apart. And helps the organization. And so Calix right now, today, you are in a continuous growth mode. Yes?

Yes.

And so I would imagine that similar to Salesforce, every couple of years you're changing and you're, you're emerging and you're developing. Right.

Absolutely. We went from being a pure hardware company, it's all we did was hardware, to becoming a software company, and that's not an easy transition, right?, right? If you think about the mindset of building a, you know, a durable product to creating software and having your whole sales team understand the software motion is very different than the hardware motion. And frankly, how do we support that? So again, that's a, that's a pretty significant change. And now we're really thinking about some new markets that present opportunities and how do we reimagine that? Uh, we've been, I, I think even with our current customer base, Anybody that's been very successful doing something for a long time, those are the ones that are very, had the hardest time changing, right? Because they know what made them successful. They lean on that and they're very, you know, they're very comfortable with that. I also think they're very worried or concerned or nervous about, you know, upsetting what's working. And I've never been worried about that. I've always been a bit of like, no, no, no, we can do this better. I think there's a better way. I think there's an angle that we haven't thought of, uh, even how we're doing it today. Uh, and so I, I thrive under those conditions. Uh, a lot of people don't though.

Well, it's like you're disrupting yourself rather than waiting for someone to disrupt you.

Lindsay, you, you just read my presentation I was working on last night. That was literally what it was about. It was just saying like, You know, if you wait to be disrupt, you know, to, if you wait in reaction to somebody disrupting you, you're behind the eight ball.

Yeah.

We, we always wanted to be, whether it was, you know, Accenture, Salesforce, or now Calix, we always wanted to be disrupting ourselves. In fact, the directive I was given was, you need to think about what a competitive company would look like that would to beat us. That's what I want you to go invent. That was the directive from our CEO. He said, you know, think about if we wanted to beat us at our own game, what would we look like? And go and build that. Which is—

sounds like your CEO has a lot of faith and trust in you. Talk to us a little bit about your relationship. What does that look like?

Yeah, it's fairly unusual because in most places the CEO didn't work for you. So the CEO worked for me for probably 8 years at Salesforce and we had a fantastic relationship and I asked him to do something very hard. He picked his family up and moved it to Japan.

Wow.

And, you know, he and I would, we'd talk at least once a week. You know, first of all, cultural assimilation, doing business in Japan is very different, right? Taking his whole family there. Uh, and so we formed a really tight relationship because I knew what he was doing was very hard and it was, he was being asked to disrupt Japan. And that is not, you know, he had to change the team there and that is very difficult to do anywhere. It's especially difficult to do it in Japan. So we built a very trusted relationship. Um, so I had no doubt that if I was working with him, that he would have my back. And I think the, the, the really key thing is we can be brutally honest with each other. There's no kind of like dancing around. It is just straight ahead. And, and I know that he, whatever he's telling me or I'm telling him is in the best interest of the company and the outcome and feel very safe. Being able to give him that feedback. And to the point of like, sometimes I have to get his attention. And that may mean, um, being a little animated in discussion. And, and that's generally not me. That's not my personality, but I, I occasionally need to get his attention. And we were, uh, in the office and we're not often in the office. We were there for a big meeting and I was just like, he was, he was distracted. And I was like, listen, you gotta pay attention to me, Everbeast. Looking around as I'm raising my voice. But you know, the thing about the relationship is we can argue, you know, emotionally, and then within minutes it's back to normal. I mean, we've said our piece. We don't, you know, it doesn't take it personally. I'm not worried about, is he going to fire me? Um, you know what I'm saying? It's, it's that deep trusted relationship. And that's probably the most fun you can have when you can be honest and move forward and really focused on those outcomes.

Well, the, the fact that you have that deep trust and there is that safe place and that you both understand conversations and, and decisions are professional, they're not personal, right? You're not attacking him, he's not attacking you. You're attacking a situation to move the forward, to disrupt the market and to change the company.

Yeah. I, I mean, you wish you could be in that relationship everywhere. Like, uh, all the, you know, positions you've ever been in where you can really just speak your mind. And I think as a leader, That's something I try and do is just like, tell me what I'm always asking for feedback or tell me something that you want to tell me that I haven't asked about. Right. Cause it was, it was something that when I was coming up through the ranks, I'm like, oftentimes I wish the boss would say, well, you know, ask for my opinion on something. Sometimes you just, you know, you're a little bit reluctant to give it, but if someone asks you, you feel like you've been opened the door, right? About, you either the situation or about how they're leading. So I always say, how am I leading? What's working for you? What's not working for you sitting across the table from me? And I really wanna know why, 'cause I wanna be better. 'Cause if I think that my leadership style or approach or directive is landing and it's not on the other side, then we're not, we're not being productive.

Right. And so you use those conversations to learn about what you can do better. Yes. I imagine in the same breath, you also use them to learn about the team members and perhaps move them into spots where they might be better suited.

Yeah, I, I think that's one of the things that, you know, most people don't understand is as you sit in this seat, you're always thinking about, do I have, is this person may be an incredible employee and we have 'em in the wrong spot, right? And thinking about what their skills are, what do, and, and that's important when you, when you're continually reinvent and reimagining. Um, sometimes somebody's in the seat they're in is not the right person and you've got to decide, hey, is there another spot in the organization for them where we can use their skills? We know what they can do. We know what's necessary. We need a change person here now, right? This person is a great operator, but they don't have the kind of conditions to go and say, I'm going to reinvent this whole thing. And so you may say, you know what, I have this thing over here. You're going to be great at it. We're excited to have you there because we need a different skill set in this role to take us where we need to go. And sometimes it's just, there's just not a spot in the company. Those are hard decisions to make, but I think when you be honest with somebody about their skills, what they're good at, and what the company needs, it's a little bit easier, but it's never fun to let people go. But you need to do what's best for the company. Right.

And how do you have those conversations with them? Is it something that you have, you know, during a review period or is it something that just comes up organically?

You know, I'm making a point to never wait for a formal review because that's not very helpful. If 8 months have gone by, how will this person even remember the situation? What I'm trying to do is as Things happen, give them feedback. Here's, here's my reaction. Here's how I received that. Here's where I think you could have done better. I think that's more helpful. I think I see myself not as a manager, but as a coach, right? And I want to get the most out of all the players on the team. And the only way you can do that is if you're giving them feedback, right? You don't, as they say in, in sport, you don't wait until the end of the season and say, hey, you know, back in game 3 of a 100-game season, you should have done this. And you're like, well, that's not very helpful, right? It's asked to go look at the video right after the game and say, what could we have done better? And I think that's how you should treat all employees, right? It's like, come out of that meeting. What could we have done better? What could I have done better? What, how did that land? Did you tell the story the right way? Were you prepared? Uh, I think it's, it's this idea of continuous being better. And the only way you can do that is give just-in-time feedback or get people's reaction. Now, if somebody had a really bad moment, Now is not the time. You don't need to ask for morale. So there's a timing element there, but you don't want it to drift too far away. And yeah, like in my career, there's, I was like, oh, it's not the right moment. It's not the right moment. It's not the right moment for bad news. And I waited too long. I think as an early manager, you're just, you're just waiting to make a change or have that hard conversation. And you just have to have it like that. You know, I would say that's in the maturation of me as a leader. I've come to realize that you have to have that hard conversation now. You can't wait 6 months for the perfect moment. It's not going to come.

No, and it's not fair to the employee if they think things are going well and they find out 6 months later that for the last 6 months you've been disappointed. Well, that ruins the trust in between you and the person. Have you ever had situations where people have self-discovered in your conversations and have asked, to being moved into different seats?

You know, look, I think people ask to be in different seats when there's opportunity, right? But I think I've seen relief when you've said, hey, I don't think you're in the right seat. And they knew it as well. And they were relieved to be taken out of that seat. They knew it was a big, big, a bad fit. And that just tells me that Gosh, I wish we could have had that honest conversation about their comfort level or this discomfort sooner than later. But, but it's hard, right? You have to invest. I mean, the smartest thing I ever did was I got promoted into a role and my boss was still highly involved in the role. And I said, you know, I think you picked the wrong person. And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, clearly you're still wanting to do the job. So you must not feel that I can do it. Because you're, you're making all the decisions, you're directing the team. And so if you don't have confidence in me to do it, I'm fine. I should probably, you should find someone that you're more confident in.

What happened?

Uh, it was, it was a breakthrough because she said, you know, I did, I didn't realize I was still doing that. I'm like, well, you are. And I'm like, I'm fine that if you don't think I'm the person, so let's not do that. Or you think I need training wheels. I'm okay with that too. And, uh, it was a great conversation. You know, it took a lot of courage to have it, but at the point I was so frustrated, I'm like, oh, who cares? Like, I'm ready to have this conversation because this is, this is not going to work for me. Uh, and frankly, it's not going to achieve what she wanted either, because if she's spending so much time in this role, she can't do what she needs to do over here.

Right. And sometimes that happens subconsciously. They're not even aware, right? You're doing it because it's something you've always done. And maybe prior to you, there was somebody who wasn't able to fulfill the role. And so it isn't a lack of trust in you, but it's just comfort for that person. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's good to have the, bring it out, ask the ground rules under what conditions, you know, what, cause she could have said, hey, yeah, you're absolutely doing a horrible job and here's why, like, I could have gotten some really good feedback now, but thankfully that wasn't the conversation we had to have. Um, but, but it was more about how do we work together?

No, it's a good reminder though, for our listeners to have the conversations, to ask the questions and then use the information to make your next decision, right? And to learn and to grow and to, you know, either let go as a leader or step in as a team member, whatever the case might be, or step out if it isn't a right fit for you for whatever reason it might be.

Yeah. One of the things that I do, um, when I inherit a team is do a full reset with the team.

What does that look like?

Well, we, we do this survey. What matters to us as leaders? What matters to us to being like, what, what's a great team look like? What are the behaviors that we, that are just unacceptable within a team? What is your goal? Like, what's your career aspiration? I don't think we know enough about some of our teammates' career aspirations.

Strengths.

And I think that's an important thing to understand. What, you know, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And, and we put that out so that we all understand where we're coming from. And frankly, I do as well. It's like, you know, what, what is, what do you guys see? I'm coming into this role. Why do you think I got hired? Why do you think I'm in this job? What is your biggest concern with me in this job? Why would I not want to know that going in? And I say, you know, my, mine, I ask them and they can do it confidentially. Like, so I don't know who it's from, but I know what the group feels. And that's really important because the dynamic, you know, and we, and we do a reset. If we add a couple of people to the team, we have to do a reset. But it, but it gives us permission to say if somebody is behaving in a way that is against what we all agreed on, because we, we then come up with our conditions for what's being a great team and what's not acceptable. Now we have permission to call out that behavior because we all committed that that behavior was not good. And if we could see it in each other, that we would be, it's okay, right? The safe place is to call it out when we think somebody's exhibiting that behavior.

That's a really great way to foster trust early on inside of managing a team and also have buy-in to the expectations because you're not pushing them down. Right. You collectively identified what was going to be important and how that was going to, how that was going to shape the company.

Yeah. I mean, I think this is like, it'd be building a culture of a team. You think about building a culture of a company, but you do have to build a culture of a team. And, you know, I asked a lot of questions like, how well do you know each other? Some of you worked together for 7, 8 years. And I, we do a, we do a, there's a, the business part, but then there's also the personal part. And so we do this little quiz. It's a, it's a game. You put up somebody's profile, what they filled out about them. And then we have to guess who's the, who is it? Do we know? And everybody I ever talked to, you know, they like, what do you think we'll get? You know, what's our success ratio? We're going to be able to determine whose profile this is in the room. And everybody's highly confident. And these two, you know, one of the teams had worked together like for a decade, 30% success rate. It just tells us we don't know each other that well, right? We know on the surface, but to really know each other, because in order to have a synergistic team, you got to really know each other and knowing each other is a way to build trust, right? Know what you care about, what you don't care about, who you are as a person., is, is very important. So I think it's a big, it's a big investment of time, but it, it's paid off. And, and you, and you do have to think about when the team dynamic, when you introduce new people into the dynamic, that resets the culture. And so you have to kind of go do it again.

I think what's interesting about this is in a world where everybody is so connected through social media and all of the things, people feel like they know each other. They feel like they're connected. You know, they saw your dog, they saw your trip, they saw, they saw what you put out there. But there's less and less people taking time to really connect and form that relationship and understand one another and find out really what's below the surface, what's below the, the beautiful picture view.

Right.

And I love that you do that with the team because it does, it builds trust. And when you're going to be with a team and working with a team and working towards a common goal, it's helpful to know what's underneath the surface. What's really making people tick and really where are their heads, right? If they have a good day, a bad day, if something happened, you need to be there to support one another. And if you don't have that relationship, you can't do that authentically.

Yeah. As you said at the beginning, it all comes down to trust. We wanna build a really high trust, high functioning team. Frankly, we spend a lot of time together, a lot of time, probably more time than, you know, even your spouse, right? Or significant other. And you want that to be the most productive work relationship that you could possibly have and not have people misunderstand, like, oh, I just didn't know that about you, right? Until it's too late, right? Where, and you know, look, I said to my team, this is another kind of philosophy I have. What I want you to be able to do is you no longer, like, we're one team, okay? So you may own a function. But you need to understand every function in this department, in this group, because our goal is to be good as a group, not as a series of side-by-side functions. That's not going to cut it, right? I, what I'd like to be able to do is say, next year, you're going to run that team, you're going to swap teams. Why? Because it, by bringing a different perspective, it changes the dynamic in the team, it keeps it fresh. I think sometimes, like, we all fall in this trap. You do it a certain way for a long time. You don't question anything. You just operate. You put somebody new in there and they have no idea. So they're, they're, you know, inspecting everything and it's a, it's a natural way to do it. Now, it also creates versatility in your leadership team. So you can actually move people around because they're developing skills in other areas. Um, and take more interest in, by the way, you're also creating a more integrated team.

All right. If you're the COO of a company that does at least $2 million or greater in revenue, or you're the CEO of a company and you're in the United States or Canada, if you would like a copy of my book, The Second in Command, for free, go to cooalliance.com/freebook. That's cooalliance.com/freebook, and I will mail you a copy for free. I will even cover the shipping. Jump on that one today.

And one of the unique things about the COO role that you accidentally fell into is that you have this bird's eye view of the entire organization. So, you can see the different pieces that the individual teams aren't able to see. How do you work to bring them together and to make sure that the left and right hands know what the other is doing?

Well, and that's just it. Like, you, I'm, I'm inviting them to make sure that they understand these, I shouldn't be the only one in the company that sees the seams, right? What I want is everybody to do is step back and understand, oh, this is what it looks like when you look at all the pieces together. Wow, we have a lot of, um, opportunity for synergy that doesn't exist, right? And I, in, in my old role as the Chief Customer Officer, I feel like in this journey we got support closer to success, closer to services. Closer to renewals and you would have thought, well, those are all adjacent businesses. They should be tightly integrated and they weren't. We were, you know, we had a lot of opportunities to create more efficiencies where we were doing something in services. We were doing this in success and we're like, like if I'm a customer, that doesn't make any sense to me. You call it this, you call it this. They, they seem very similar. I pay for this one, but I don't pay for that one. There, there's a lack of clarity in that. And then if I'm doing a service case, like you call the call on a ticket, shouldn't you be able to pass them on to the next thing that will bring them value? You can't do that if you actually don't know what happens after that. And, and that's what we're trying to do is, is really think about what does that end-to-end experience look like from a customer and have our teams understand that as well. Because it, it, it, there's a tendency to optimize my function.

Well, I think a lot of times businesses don't really consider what the end user experience in the organization is. They work through this makes sense here, and this makes sense here, and this makes sense here. But then when you've got a person, you know, bouncing around from A to B to C to F to Z, you're like, none of this makes sense. Why, why can't it all be connected? What do you do to ensure that it is seamless once you've had all these conversations? Is there any testing that you do or anything along those lines?

Well, you know, there's gonna be friction, right? Because people are gonna have to change and people don't like to change. So we, ironically, in a, in a, and when I say people, our own teams, not the customer, right? We're gonna try and take pain away from the customer. And just saying, let, let me, By the way, putting yourself in the, in this, in the chair of the customer, go through this experience, try it yourself. Call this setup, go try and buy that product. Right? One of the guys on my team says staple yourself to the order form, right? And see what that experience is like. And I think that we just, we, we have to, and it's rare that companies want to do that, right? Because they're like, let me optimize my team, optimize my team. And I think this is incredibly important in the age of AI because agents are built to be end-to-end, to flow end-to-end, not to be pockets of knowledge. And so I think where people are struggling with AI is they apply it to a single use case in a single department. And so, you know, one of the things that we're doing at Calix is we said, What are our 3 biggest life cycles in the company? Let me think about product life cycle, customer life cycle, and employee life cycle. Those are the 3 biggest ones. And were they designed end-to-end? Now, our product one's pretty good because we, we spent a lot of energy on that and coming up with new ideas. And then how does that affect the field? And how does it get the sales and success in all the teams? But even then we saw an opportunity to make it better, but the customer lifecycle was, was not developed end to end. It was developed organically by function. And so we had to go in and actually reimagine that whole thing, which is not an easy thing to do, right? Is to go and look at the, look at that and then say, where can we apply AI to optimize? Where do we need to change process? Where do we need to change incentives? Where do we need to, to create new roles? Where do we need to kind of maybe change roles or, or eliminate roles? And, and so I think, you know, that is where real value comes, but it's, it's difficult. Most companies don't wanna do that work.

Well, it sounds like you're utilizing AI as a layer to help support your teams, your processes, your development. Would that be accurate?

Yeah, absolutely. We, we said, we want to apply AI to the lifecycle and we want to be very intentional about what we want people to be doing. Like they're a precious resource. Like there's thousands of things we want to do. And so what do we want our people to do? What's the highest value, you know, activities, work that they, that only humans can do, right? That only humans can do. And then what is the drudgery? That no human wants to do that has to be done that can be automated through agents and AI. And, and that's how we're really thinking about that equation, right? We're, we're not saying, oh, let's go and find 30% capacity by eliminating a bunch of people. Sure, you could do that, but at the same point, we, we want to be more intentional about what do we want our teams to be doing that will make the biggest impact for the company and where do we want them to focus. And then, and then determine, then, you know, AI is a tool. It's a, it's something that you use to solve a problem. It's not out there leading with, you know, AI on top of everything. It's in support of what we're trying to do from an intentional strategy perspective.

I think that that makes a great deal of sense. And I think that there's a little bit less fear, at least in my perspective, around AI because people are starting to realize it is coming. We need to embrace it. And It's not going to replace everything. It's going to help. It's going to support and it's going to take away those things that you said that no human being wants to do anyway.

Right. Or it's just really hard to do. Right? I mean, it can get insights way faster than you and I. We'd have to pour through data and, you know, that's hard drudgery work, uh, that it makes very easy.

Well, and then that gives you the ability to go fast. Because you have information quicker than if you and I sat there and went through the data and it took us 2 weeks. It might take AI 3 minutes. Right. And then you have that data and you're able to, to move fast. But fast isn't always a good thing. Let's talk a little bit about what moving fast can do to an organization.

Well, I think moving fast can put you in the wrong space quickly. Um, we, we launched some products that, that were quick to get out there and they were impactful, but we didn't go after that. They were like, the market opportunity was over here and we were taking this and going, the fastest way was to give it to our existing sales team into our existing market. And it didn't do as particularly well, or, you know, it was okay, but it wasn't the breakthrough that we wanted. It was, it was useful there, but that's because we were going fast. We didn't step back and saying, okay, what's the, you know, where's the market opportunity? Where should we really focus? Um, that meant that also means, um, saying no to things. It's hard saying no. People have a hard time saying no.

Right.

And, and that's one of the things in the transformation you could say is that we, we say, what are you going to stop doing? I, you know, I've told my team, stop asking for more resources. Because we're not going to get any more resources. So you have to be really analytical and thoughtful about what are you going to stop doing? And you need to stop doing things that are not delivering the value that we anticipated. And, uh, and that's a bit about like going slow to go fast, right? Making, taking time to make those decisions, to gain alignment, to develop your processes. Those all take time and I think in, in the haste to, to move quickly and seize a market when those are skipped, you, you end up taking 3 times as long because you did, you just didn't spend the energy on the necessary steps to go, to go and do that.

Well, I think sometimes you get hit with this adrenaline. This is such a great idea. This is such a great opportunity. We're going to make things happen. I'm confident of it. That you become a little bit blinded about what the realities of it are. I've been there. I, I totally understand what that looks like. Yeah.

And, and look, you also don't wanna be the one in the company that's always saying no, stop, slow down. Right. And even in the, in the best interest of, uh, the company, I, I mean, I've, I've found myself in that seat and I could sense this boss was getting super annoyed with me. And I'm, and he's like, I said, you seem really annoyed. Tell me more. He goes, because every idea I have, you tell me 10 reasons why it's not going to work. And I'm like, well, I'm trying, I'm thinking in my mind, yes, I'm trying to be helpful. And he's like, no, that's not helpful. What you should be doing is tell me 10 things that I need to do to go fast, you know, for us to go and to be successful, not about why it's not going to work. Tell me how to make it work. And it's a reframing of the problem, right? And I use some coaching in my team. It's like, don't tell me why it's not going to work. Tell me what we need to do to be successful. Put it in that context, right? Because otherwise you just seem like you're an anchor to the team. Like every time they kind of do something, you just put up all these roadblocks and nobody, nobody wants, by the way, you're never going to be getting very far in your career because they won't appreciate it. They won't feel like that's the right messaging that should be happening.

Well, Cameron Herold says often that the COO's job is to slow down the CEO, not to put a parking brake on, not to make them stop, but just to slow them down enough so that everybody else can catch up and it can be successfully launched or integrated or done the way it needs to be done, right?

Yeah. I don't wanna say, let me contextualize what Michael just said. And convert that into kind of how do we make this through an operating model work, right? Or how do we get people to buy in? Like, he's a very direct person. I love that about him. But sometimes that directness is too direct for our teams to consume. So I'm, I filter occasionally. I'll get in the chat and I'll say, let me tell you what he meant to say there. And it's a bit of a joke because we had that relationship. And so people, people, it's not awkward.

Right?

Um, they know what I'm trying to do is translate, here's what we're trying to do. Even, even in the strategy, where will there be competing ideas or there'll be ideas that seem unrelated? What my job as the CEO is, how do I bring these things together? So when I've 5 disparate things, we actually had 2 things that are, that are achieving something in a synergistic way.

Or you're his translator. Yes. You get to take the information, you get to filter it out and say, here's the good pieces. Here's the, this is what he really, what he meant to say. It's not what he, how it came out. And then you get to deliver it to everybody so that they can appreciate it and then act on it.

Or, or yeah. And translate it in a way that they, because everybody has a different ability to consume change or directed without getting, uh, confused or anxious or whatever else. It's just like, how do we create the words that allow Everybody to hear what they need to hear so we can move forward in a productive manner.

I love him. And sometimes when you go through all of that, what he's asking for might not be that drastic. It might require small changes, but the big words make people nervous that, oh my gosh, everything's changing. Nothing's gonna be the same tomorrow.

Right. Right. Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think, and that, I think that's what I'm trying to do as the CEO is bring in the right context for the audience that we're speaking to. Tune it a little bit.

How many team members does Calix have today?

We're about, uh, 2,000 people.

2,000 people. And so on your direct team, how many people are you managing?

Uh, there's probably about 500 people there.

Yeah.

Or, or so.

You don't have 500 direct reports. You have 500.

Oh, no, no, no. So I, I'd probably even larger than that. When I think about our whole India offshore center. Um, so, but maybe I, like, half the company is in my organization or—

and then how many people are you— how many people do you directly report— directly report to you, rather?

I have, uh, 8 directs right now.

What does your relationship and interaction look like with those 8 people?

Uh, daily one-on-one— daily one-on-one, or not daily, weekly one-on-ones. Or, you know, at least every 2 weeks. Uh, but, you know, messages daily, uh, checking in, asking questions. What I try and do is have a high degree of interaction, not in a distracting way, but just in a line way, right? How do I feed information? I have a Teams chat with the group, things I want everybody to see and hear and think about. I have a weekly,, leadership meeting as well. And then we have a, every 2 weeks have an extended leadership team meeting, which means my directs, uh, key people are also on the call.

Why?

Because I don't want translation to occur. I want them to hear, I want them to hear from me specifically and then be able to ask questions so that the group hears the questions, right? Because, uh, in order to go fast, you have to have, you know, go slow to go fast. In order to have that happen, everybody has to be aligned and understand that, right? There can't be pockets of knowledge. Oh, I didn't understand that. Oh, I didn't know that meant to me. So the more that we communicate and we understand and we can answer the questions in this bigger group, I think it's helpful from that context back. Also the adjacency. Do you understand what the business is doing next to you? And so we'll have presentations to the larger leadership group from each function. It's important and critical things that they need to understand. Otherwise they wouldn't know, like how would they know, right? They're in their function doing their day-to-day. And so it's a chance for exposure to the full set of the businesses. It's an opportunity for them to hear first from me, ask questions, and have that group discussion in a broader group.

What allows people to not have to create their own stories. When you're communicating to them, they then know what the reality of it is and they don't have time to think and say, well, could this mean this or does it mean that or what are they doing here?

Right.

John, when you're, your teams are all remote, correct? They're all over the place?

That's correct.

How often do they get together in person, if ever?

Um, well, we try and use it on a quarterly basis., get together in person. And so we'll schedule something around if there's a board meeting or there is an executive team meeting, we'll tag along. We think it's, we have to be really intentional because I think, you know, I think people have this belief that remote doesn't work. There was an article, a published study that they were saying development of people is not happening because of these chance meetings. Chance meeting at the water cooler. And I have a rebuttal to that. I'm thinking if your strategy is chance meeting at a water cooler for people development, you're going to fail anyway. It's like, that can't be your strategy. And so look, I think remote work can be very successful, but you have to be intentional about when do we need to be in person, right? How do we get our teams together? Because that togetherness is important. You can achieve a lot. You can get a lot done and you can, your relationships are going to be different when you develop them face to face, right? There's going to be downtime. So, you know, we try and be very intentional about people development, our own teams in terms of how often they get together. And it's always the biggest request. Everybody said, can we get together more?

Right.

And, and we should be able to do that more because we have less real estate costs. Right? And I, I, I think, you know, be intentional about people development, be intentional about, uh, when your teams meet, how frequently they meet, you know, what do your offsites look like? And you can do it around client meetings, you can do it around internal, other meetings. We, we try, try to be smart about that.

I think that the people asking for more goes back to what we talked about earlier, and you're trying to get these teams to know each other. They're connected, but they're not. And so when they have those opportunities to connect over a burger or whatever it might be, they can find out a little bit more, a little bit more organically.

Yeah.

Right?

But to give you a story, we had customers who were, uh, in-office customers and the teams that we were working with, and this was back when I was at Salesforce, we invited I brought all of the customer teams to a meeting, hosted it. It's the first time they had met in person.

Okay.

Ever. And that is an in-office culture. So they, so even with an in-culture opportunity or in, you know, in-office opportunity, it doesn't always happen. So in teams—

I think it has to do with the size of the organization.

Say it again.

I'm sorry. I said I think it has to do with the size of the organization too. If you have 10 people, oh, there's going to be a different dynamic than if you have 10,000 people, right? Right. In person.

Right. But you know, it was interesting in the growth, you know, I was probably 2000 when I joined Salesforce, there's like less than 2000 people. When I left, there was 80,000 people, right? So clearly the organization grew, but some of the things were fundamental to the culture, which is leadership meetings. It just got bigger. Like, you know, they got to a bigger size. Now that's, that can be a challenge in its own right from a cost perspective, uh, space allocation and everything else. But it, it wasn't like some of the concepts were abandoned just because it was logistically harder. I think you have to be smart about, okay, what groups need to be together? Who is that? What do you, you know, intentionality again. And being strategic about it. I think what happens is people saying, you know, remote doesn't work because you try and apply the same principles to an in-office experience. Of course it's not going to work. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. John, if we're looking forward to the next chapter for Calix and what's on the horizon, what should we be looking for?

I think we're really excited about our AI agents that we built into all of our software. And so we're on the cusp of deploying more and more there because what it's going to do is take away some of the drudgery. Uh, or, you know, look, our customers are smaller customers, right? They may have 100 people in their whole organization, so they can't possibly do all the things they want to do. And this is an opportunity where agents can now create capacity they never had before, which is exciting. So I think that's one of the big things that I'm excited for. And then, and the second is we're moving into the multi-dwelling unit space. And I think there's a huge opportunity for us to help transform and disrupt that industry. It's been going on for a long time and really bringing a customer experience perspective even to that. So we're excited about those two kind of big initiatives on the horizon.

I think that's incredible. And who specifically would benefit from those new products and services?

Well, I, I think, um, first of all, like, I have Young adults, you know, my children are young adults now moving out into their apartments and they're going out and they're like, this is crazy that I can't get Wi-Fi the day I move into my apartment. I got to go here and here. And, you know, why isn't that a service that the apartment offers? And so I think the benefit will be, you know, young adults, young professionals that are going out and getting an experience so that they're apartment building is they can go in, they can pull up their phone, scan a QR code, and be connected immediately to the Wi-Fi, right? And their Wi-Fi service, which is different than what you and I might have had to do, is go to the store, get a box, wait for somebody to show up, right? And now when they move around the building, a lot of these buildings now have amenities. They have a gym, they have a pool. They can be connected everywhere they go. And that's the experience. Throughout the whole smart apartment that they're gonna have an opportunity to have, which I think is exciting, right? Because everybody always wants to be connected.

Hey, we're getting one step closer to the Jetsons. One step closer every day, right?

Exactly.

John, it was an absolute pleasure to connect with you today. I really enjoyed learning about you and about the company, and I'm gonna have to reach out to some of my friends and let them know that they should be on the lookout for Calix in their smart Smart Apartments.

All right, thank you so much, Lindsay. I really love being on the show and chatting with you.

Thank you, you too.