Does the “I don’t know how we’re gonna do this?” feeling ever fade? In large-scale transformation, Megan Williams, VP of Global Technology Strategy and Transformation at TransUnion, doesn’t think so. Leading global, multi-year transformation programs continues to prompt the major questions: What is our vision? What is the approach? With over 20 years of experience, the initial intimidation remains, but Megan and her teams persist. 

In this episode, Megan shares how guiding TransUnion’s transformation from on-premise data centers to the cloud has evolved over her four years from a “lift and shift” to a modernization transformation. Growing up in South Africa, Megan’s career has spanned three continents giving her an exceptional glimpse into the work cultures of different countries. Megan highlights the similarities (think: personalities) and differences (think: daily schedule) that she’s experienced and the importance of relating to teams across the globe. 

Diving deeper into leadership, Megan discusses how her approach can be summed up as vulnerability and transparency. How can she make thousands feel like six people in a garage? She embraces public conversations and welcomes a challenging question. Megan offers a glimpse into her leadership style with a story of how her continued presence at a daily call had a surprising result and how adjustment is necessary when your intentions fall out of alignment with your impact. Megan shares how effective communication can lean on conversation and support from different ways of connecting.

• (01:40) – Joining TransUnion
• (05:05) – Journey to technology
• (10:52) – A career across three continents
• (15:00) – Large transformation programs
• (18:57) – Vulnerability and transparency
• (24:51) – “Overcommunication”

Megan Williams is the VP of Global Technology Strategy and Transformation at TransUnion. She has over 20 years of experience spanning software development to leading global, multi-year transformations and implementing large, complex program delivery in fast-paced technical industries. Megan earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

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Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Patrick:

Hello fellow innovators. This is Patrick Emmons.

Shelli:

This is Shelli Nelson.

Patrick:

Welcome to the Innovation and the Digital Enterprise Podcast, where we interview successful visionaries and leaders, giving you an insight into how they drive and support innovation within their organizations.

Shelli:

Today we're welcoming Megan Williams to the show. Megan is currently the VP of global technology strategy and Transformation at TransUnion. She's an innovative leader with over 20 years of experience leading global multi-year transformations and implementing large complex program delivery and fast-paced technical industries. Combining a hands-on forward-thinking approach with an extensive background in strategic alignment, process re-engineering, budgeting and forecasting, and translation of regulatory requirements to drive success.

Her approach to transformation is to promote a culture of innovation focused on the continuous improvement of delivery processes, team collaboration, and the IT organization as a whole. She encourages a strategic mindset centering on adding high value to the organization through transformation and its execution. Megan believes that great leaders unceasingly lead by examples and should create a learning culture where associates can expand and grow their skills without fear or judgment or retribution. Welcome to the show, Megan.

Megan:

Hey, good to be here.

Patrick:

Megan, if you don't mind, please share with our listeners a little bit more about your current role at TransUnion.

Megan:

Yeah, so as you said, I joined TransUnion four years ago. And initially I joined because they had started a large cloud transformation program, and that program was centered really around getting off of our on premise data centers into the cloud across the globe. So predominantly TransUnion our highest revenue and largest revenues in the US but we also operate in over 30 different countries, and the real value driver for that transformation was cost savings.

So by getting out of all our data centers, we could save money by being in the cloud, although you're moving from a CapEx to an OpEx model, there were still significant savings that we could realize as an organization. So my role initially was to drive the global cloud transformation, really looking at how we were going to refactor the applications for transformation into the cloud. And our main focus with that transformation was around really lifting and shifting.

So the key was getting out of the data centers and into cloud as opposed to, were we going to then leverage the opportunity to possibly modernize those applications? We pivoted our transformation two years ago. We did get a lot of applications into the cloud. We're running in the cloud successfully, both in GCP which is Google Cloud Platform as well as predominantly AWS. We pivoted about a year and a half ago to really modernize those applications.

So what we realized through the cloud transformation was not necessarily that many cost savings, and as I mentioned earlier, you are moving from a capital expense to operational expense, and we realized that a lot of our applications actually needed to be modernized more than lifted and shifted into the cloud because we weren't going to benefit from economies of scale by being in the cloud. So our modernization effort is around looking at our application tech stack, and we've got a lot of applications that do the same thing.

TransUnion has grown through a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and that means we've got very similar applications performing very similar services. The idea now is to take the best services from all of those applications and use a platform to deliver those services to our customers across the globe. So the way I think of it in very simplistic terms is Microsoft Office, and having the key that allows techs to be available in all of your applications whether it's Excel, word, PowerPoint, but then having very specific customizations for each application where PowerPoint maybe do animations and Excel does wonderful formulas and calculations for us. So that's what we're working on now in our modernization transformation.

Patrick:

Megan:

A little further south, but at least you're getting there, right? I grew up in a small town in South Africa, a small university town, and my father was actually a professor of journalism, but he's always loved gadgets and things and very early on bought home a computer from the journalism departments to our house. This computer did absolutely nothing. It flashed a cursor and that was pretty much it. And for months, I kept staring at this thing asking my father, "Can we play TV games on it?" Which in those days, TV games weren't that great anyway.

I mean, I don't even think there was Frogger yet, I think it was maybe blocks or whatever the bouncing ball was that slowly-

Shelli:

Pong.

Megan:

Pong, there we go. There we go. This computer didn't even do that, but he then did bring home another computer that was actually had a Microsoft DOS operating system, and I wrote my first Hello World application, which was literally the prompt of say hi and hello world, and I was just blown away. I absolutely loved it, and that's kind of where my journey into technology began. So I went to university, studied computer science and economics.

Again, my father insisted that I did economics because he said it would make me really good at my job. I think it has as I've got later in my career, because as you kind of get into leadership, you suddenly do have to understand the difference between CapEx and OpEx. Very early on I was like, I don't know what the old man was talking about. I'm just writing code and having fun. But yeah, when I graduated, I was really fortunate because at the time in my early 20s there was a reciprocal visa that the UK had set up. It was late '90s.

Even though I watched a lot of my friends make a lot of money over the next two years as we went into the year 2000, and I stood outside Big Ben when the millennium happened and saw the fireworks and waited for everything to turn dark as we expected it to, and nothing happened.

Patrick:

No planes fell out of the sky planes. There wasn't... No.

Megan:

No planes. Yeah, we were all good.

Patrick:

It's kind of crazy. We're having more issues with planes currently. As this recording's happening it's a little bit less Y2K a little bit more internet there, a little bit more cloud.

Megan:

Right? Totally. Yeah. So that's kind of where I went and started. I mean, my career was Visual Basic initially and wrote tech software for a tax software company. Those were the days also when we delivered releases in CD-ROMs which is pretty cool. Because you kind of had a very tangible asset once you'd delivered your code and then you'd see them package up the CDs and you'd see the marketing team go out with the flash looking CDs and brochures of our tax software updates.

So yes, spent 10 years in the UK which was marvelous, mainly in the insurance and banking sector, doing a lot of coding and slowly moved more towards program management and leadership. There was a point where I think it was like, do I become an architect or do I become a program manager? I would say in those days, technical people found it much more difficult to talk to business than now a lot more technical people are through training, and I think university degrees have changed. It's easier for them to bridge that gap. When I was there then there were a lot of people that found it really hard to move between the two. IT people are IT people and to be in dark rooms writing code. So I kind of bridged that gap.

Patrick:

And having fun. You said that before.

Megan:

And having fun. Yeah, right? A lot more fun.

Patrick:

Not that economic stuff. That's not fun.

Megan:

Not that economic stuff. No, no. They're in the basement with lights and gaming chairs and stuff. So yeah, that's kind of how I fell into program management. Yeah. And then long story short, went back to South Africa for seven years. Actually, that was for my husband's job. He wanted to work on World Cup in South Africa. Sky News said, "Great, go ahead." So we moved back to South Africa. It worked for me. My kids were really young. I was happy to be back with sunshine. It rains a lot in the UK, which I only realized I think more when you come out of it, you're like, "Wow, it really rained a lot there."

So came back to South Africa and then he got offered an opportunity to go and work in Spain. So kind of act first, think later we arrived in Spain with two young kids and we're like, "Okay, can't really speak the language, but hey, let's see what we can do here." And yeah continued to work really, I guess in large transformation programs. I think when we moved to South Africa that's when I really started to get into more these longer terms multi-year programs. I think by benefits of maturity and having worked in a lot of projects, but that we need someone who can manage this large program delivery, cross-functional lead delivery of this transformation that we're trying to do.

Started doing that in South Africa for an insurance company. And love the idea of chaos and putting order to that chaos, love the forming, storming, norming approach of seeing those things progress. I don't love it as much as I loved writing code, I'm going to be honest. I absolutely loved writing code and seeing the results of that. Going back to that tech software, it was brilliant to be able to write some code, get really stuck on a problem maybe even for weeks, and then seeing the results of that it's so tangible, but watching a program develop and seeing some of that stuff happen in a different way is still good. It's just a lot of PowerPoint presentations versus actually seeing the code that you've written develop into something bigger.

Patrick:

Well, I'm curious before we keep going. With all of that experience in going to different countries and different cultural and professional, has that helped you? Do you think that's given you a very unique experience on the diversity of different cultures? I know that they're mostly Western, right? London Spain, US, but I could imagine there's got to be something you've learned from pushing those things out to the edges.

Megan:

I mean, I hope so. I like to think it does. I'd like to think it gives me a perspective that's different. It certainly helps me speaking to different teams. We've got teams in 30 different countries, and I've always felt very comfortable being able to talk to people, whoever they are or whatever their background is. I think understanding where different cultures operate best as well.

I think, for example, when I was in Spain, the way that their work really kind of winds up during the day as opposed to in the US by 7:00 A.M. people aren't working really hard, but by 4:00 A.M. it tends to taper off. In Spain it was totally the opposite. And my boss who was in the UK would call me at 9:00 A.M. and go like, "What's happening Megan? How are we getting on today?" And I'd be like, "Dude, you're going to have to call me in a few hours because we're just having coffee right now." But at 7:00 P.M. everyone was still in the office buzzing, working really hard.

Patrick:

Wow.

Megan:

Yeah, I think that was fairly interesting. And then just being able to relate to different people, no matter what the culture is people have their personality types no matter where you live. And I think once you realize that he's behaving that way not because he's Spanish or because he's South African or whatever, he's just that kind of personality. So I've met Miguel in many different guises that I've met Lucy and the same sort of guises. So yeah, I hope it gives me a different perspective.

Patrick:

That's interesting.

Megan:

A positive perspective, not necessarily different, but positive.

Patrick:

I think anyway, yes, so I said diverse, right in form, right? It's just awareness of... And to your point of that, I always think when you say, "Hey, I've worked with this size of the company and that size of company." And the Miguel, the Lucy, the whatever, you start to understand that these people, they exist and that there's a reason why they are the way that they are. And it creates a universality. At least that's my perspective of like hey, this person's driven by this.

Megan:

Yeah, someone uploaded a file they shouldn't have uploaded on Thursday night. I'm just saying.

Patrick:

Somebody did. Yeah.

Megan:

I don't know who they were, but wow, bad mistake.

Patrick:

Hey Shelli, your background and the organization, you deal with a lot of different organizations as well. How many companies are underneath Madison?

Shelli:

We're up to 82 now.

Patrick:

Yeah. And they're all somewhat different. You guys don't try to standardize, regulate each one of those organizations.

Shelli:

Yeah, they run autonomously. Yep.

Patrick:

Yeah. So do you find that same kind of change, you see that universality in folks?

Shelli:

I do. And I think to your point, Megan, there's certain types of individuals and it doesn't matter where they're at in the world. You have to understand, to Patrick's point, what motivates them, what gets them out of bed in the morning and what they're passionate about.

Megan:

Yes, totally.

Patrick:

Pretty cool stuff. Yeah. So I did cut you off. I do want to talk about the large transformation programs that you've gotten into. So if you could share some insights from leading those and then maybe some of your ideas on balancing the risks and rewards around that.

Megan:

Yeah. So I think most definitely the biggest insights, and when you talk to people, and every time I start a new one and I still feel like we're in that forming phase, and I'm like, "I don't know how we're going to do this." Every time you still have that feeling of this seems really big, and I'm not sure if this is the right approach kind of a thing when you're still forming. It's still number one, and you talk to people about what do you think it is? What's the most important thing? And it's totally people.

It's totally people and change management. Because if you can't get people to believe in the vision and where you're going with that vision, you're losing from the beginning. I think because it's also that if you've got your vision and you've got your approach and you understand what your vision is and what your approach is, and I mean this from a leadership level, it's not necessarily me, Meg, but the higher ups than me who've come up with, we're going to spend 500 million on cloud transformation. What is that vision?

Why are we doing it? And what is our approach to enabling that? Then you can bring anyone along, as long as you truly believe in that. And then how do you bring those people around? I think often when we talk about change management, it's like, "Oh, we'll send out some communication. We'll send everyone a little bit of swag and we'll do some training." But it's really putting all of that together. Yeah, totally the swag is great, totally the communications are important.

Patrick:

I flashbacked to the movie Office Space with the big banner, "Is this good for the company?" And having worked at some tech firms where I was having PTSD during that movie, just even the lady answering the phone, I'm like, "I know that lady. I've met her." But yeah, the swag, and I think it's a great point, Meg, I think this would be very helpful. I think there is a kind of pullback feeling when people hear change management of... Because I hear change management, and I think that is a soft word for leadership. We should be leading people and leadership, a tchotchke and a T-shirt that you are never going to wear.

Megan:

Right. And another email when I force it down your throat, right?

Patrick:

Exactly.

Megan:

Right. Because I think there's also is it propaganda leadership or is it, I don't know, servant leadership type of approach? And you're totally right. It is about leadership. How are we going to make 5,000 people feel like the six that are in a garage innovating as we start up? Because that's what transformation really should be. But it can't just be forcing it down their throats with another email and another town hall and another piece of swag.

Patrick:

Well, I think you bring up a great point. I mentioned a lot on here, but I do think for you to lead requires some sales skills because you are selling the vision, you've got sales and leadership both require influence. And so how do you get 5,000 people to feel like one, I care about you, right? Because if they don't, they're not going to go, right? So is there something that you've seen or you've done that you think is maybe one of the tools that you've developed that when you get yourself in some of these big transformation projects it's like here's what I'm going to do.

Megan:

So I think being very transparent and vulnerable is important with my team, and I've got a fairly large team. Obviously with my director, I'm very open and talk very transparently, but even with my larger team, I get them together once a month and they ask me anything. And one or two people that will ask really challenging things and then apologize afterwards to me like, "Oh, maybe I should have said that you one on one." I'm totally fine with that because I think it's good for people to hear it.

If you're really upset or frustrated about something then let's have a conversation. I generally don't think that it's inappropriate to ask challenging questions. To me, there's a balance, obviously, but I think being able to say to people during these transformations, this is where we're struggling. This is why, this is what we're doing to overcome it, this was unexpected, I think that's really important.

Patrick:

Yeah. I think my rule is just you can ask any question, be respectful. Let's be professionals. But to your point of, I always see it as a gift you're the one telling me what everybody else is saying. I can ignore it and stick my head in the ground, but I don't think that's going to help much, right?

Megan:

Right.

Shelli:

Well, and then your teams want to help you. I mean, it's all about building trust, and as soon as you open that up and you're vulnerable and they see that you're doing things about it, they want to come to you with ideas instead of keep all those to themselves.

Megan:

Yes. Yeah.

Patrick:

I think to your point, even in sales efforts, one of the most powerful things you can do to build rapport with a potential prospect is actually ask for their help. Obviously everything you need to do to create a strong relationship involves being genuine and earn earnest in what you're saying, but I do think so often we are afraid to ask for help. Then we wonder why none of our direct reports ask for help and why their direct reports ask for help.

And it's like, "I'm so confused. Why aren't they asking for help?" It's like, "When's the last time you asked for help?" Don't worry about that. That's not the problem. But the truth of the matter is, when we do ask for help from somebody if you just said, "Hey, I might need your help on this." It tells somebody that I trust you, I respect you, I value you, and I think it's a great thing to do when you're especially creating that vulnerability of I don't have all the answers.

And I think that's one of those things. Especially as engineers we get a lot of praise for being able to do things, create things, build things, and then we feel like our value is generative, but it's not. Now we're at that second, third. And your level, your two, three, four levels up where it's the disconnected from where the boots hit the ground and building strong teams it's a very difficult skill to build.

Megan:

Yeah, it is. And I think ensuring that they seeing you working, and I don't mean working hard late hours and sending emails, is when they have asked for help, I will reach out to the most junior person and say, "Let's have a chat because I hear there's this issue happening and how can I help? I know this or that or whatever." I think a lot of people who work for me will say, "Meg, the great thing about you is I know that you really understand what's happening and you're trying to help us."

I'm not a micromanager at all, I'm making it sound like I am, but that line of I know what's happening in your world and I'm here to help you if you want it, right? It's quite funny actually. I've been attending a daily call that we had set up because there was a part of the project that needed a lot of help, and we had to have these daily calls and project manager was running, it was doing a great job, but I was joining because there were a lot of people on the call and that we were battling to get traction with stuff, and as soon as they see a VP on the call, people just behave a little bit more with urgency.

And after about a week, the project manager set up a call with me and is like "There something I'm doing wrong?" And I was like, "No, not at all. You're doing a great job." He's like, "Well, why do you keep joining the calls? I feel like you don't trust me." And I was like, "Oh God, I was actually coming to try and help you, but I'm going to totally back out of the calls now, and if you want me to join a call just ping me and say, 'Hey, Meg, I need you to join this call.'" But I'm glad that he felt like he could say that to me, that he didn't feel like he couldn't. But yeah, what makes those mistakes as well where you think you're helping and people misinterpret it as micromanagement.

Patrick:

That is also a skill that I think good leaders have is the intentional absences, right?

Megan:

Yes.

Patrick:

I see stuff on Slack. I'm not jumping on it. Let's see who else grabs the wheel. Let's create opportunities for leadership. And don't get me wrong, I have a much smaller organization, but still I talk to other leaders, and I think that's a great behavior of intentionally absent of... And I've had it where people are like, "Hey, Pat, you're not talking in these meetings." And it's like the fact that you're asking me why I'm not talking in meetings tells me I was doing it wrong before.

Megan:

Right

Patrick:

And that's one of my rules is the longer I can be in a meeting where I don't have to talk, the more I'm winning. So I know as leaders we're like, "We're going to come in and tell everybody..." But don't get me wrong, like you said, we've talked about this before with the idea that over-communicating is critical. So you got to over-communicate, but then there's a time to see did the message get received? Do I have to keep going? So how do you practice over-communication and maintain that clear vision for your team during transition?

Megan:

That's a tough question. So I think it's the over-communication, not meaning continually send the same email. I think there's things like, "Hey, can we quickly connect? There's an email, maybe a message. Did you follow up on this? Were we able to connect on this piece?" So I think it's using multiple channels to communicate the same things. I think also having, and when I say in-person conversations, I just mean talking rather than emailing or just writing on a message, not necessarily being in the same room is really key.

And then continuing to have those conversations "Hey, can we chat?" As opposed to like, "Hey, did you follow up on blah, blah, blah?" I think that's really important. Sometimes you obviously need to follow up those chats with let's not forget we chatted about these three things because a lot of things are happening all the time, and sometimes I can't even remember what did we agree to do? And I'll have to look at my notes, et cetera. And also making sure that we're no misunderstandings about maybe what we've agreed to do, but I think over-communication is key, but using different channels to do it, not just continually using one single communication device.

Patrick:

Awesome. Shelli, is there stuff that you've seen that works at Madison when it comes to, say you're acquiring new business or whatever the big strategic maneuvers are? Is there anything that you've seen that's critical to making that successful?

Shelli:

We've got a team that will actually go in and assimilate, and they're just really there to support those businesses, not to hand them a playbook and tell them what to do. So I think right off the bat, we're setting the expectations that we trust you. You're part of this organization for a reason, and we're here to support versus to direct them. So that's been successful for us.

Patrick:

I think as long as you're simplifying it down. So it's something digestible where it's like... I have a son that goes to Alabama, so I've suddenly become a big Saban fan, so I'll just did not like Alabama growing up. Irish Catholic kid from Chicago, Notre Dame was our team, but I'm a huge Alabama fan now. But he talks about having a standard, and that's one of the things that I constantly reinforce with my organization about we're a services organization, we have to have a standard about what we do with our clients.

And it's just really setting a standard and being able to drive towards that. So that's the verbiage and then how we reinforce with stories outside of that about hey, this person did this. She's really upholding our standard, exceeding the standard, those types of things. And I find that to be helpful. It does lead to a lot of uncomfortable questions because putting a foot in the ground and you're saying this is what it is, and then some people are going to be. You're going to get some feedback on, well, why is that?

That doesn't seem right, which is great in my opinion, because getting real clear then of what's really of value and what are we trying to get accomplished. And if it leads to unfortunately people choosing that this is not the right place for them, it doesn't happen often, and it's very rarely, usually more along the lines of I'm going to need some time to think about what this means, but I think more times than not, strong leadership pays the bills that people, even if you don't fully agree with the mission, you appreciate the strong leadership, and I think that there's a huge opportunity there. I think we really have a real shortage of strong leaders. And I think that's-

Megan:

I think that's true.

Patrick:

That's something we really need to work on as a society. I mean that honestly. I don't think we're really creating the leaders of the future who are going to lead the charges in what needs to happen over... We got some challenging decades coming up. I don't think that's provocative by any stretch of the imagination. So we're definitely going to need some better leaders to pick up the baton and keep it moving. So Meg, I really appreciate you taking the time today and sharing your experience, and your humor, and your love for Visual Basic. You've got a friend and me.

Megan:

It was a great project.

Patrick:

I mean, event driven programming was revolutionary, and people just didn't on click. It's on click, right? I'm doing something. I don't need to think about this anymore.

Megan:

It was brilliant. I love it.

Patrick:

Well, maybe we'll start a new Visual Basic consulting firm and we'll-

Megan:

For sure. Totally. It's going to be-

Patrick:

Totally. I don't know who our customers will be, but maybe ourselves. We'll just hire ourselves. That'll be the end.

Megan:

That's enough. It's enough.

Patrick:

It's not a growth industry. I mean, KOBA still crushing it.

Megan:

I know. I know, right? Java as well. Java's been around forever.

Patrick:

Right. But I mean, who would've thought KOBA, right?

Megan:

I know. I know.

Patrick:

Yeah. 30, 40 years later still rocking it.

Megan:

Yeah, still rocking it.

Patrick:

So I really appreciate you joining us today.

Shelli:

Yeah, thanks, Meg.

Megan:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Patrick:

Our pleasure. We also want to thank our listeners. We really appreciate everyone taking the time to join us.

Shelli:

And if you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, you can subscribe by visiting our website at dragonspears.com/podcast or find us on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Patrick:

This episode was sponsored by DragonSpears and produced by Dante32.