This episode of The Eh List features a thoughtful conversation with strategy leader Jordan Schwartz, who shares how leadership, growth, and human connection shape successful organizations. With more than a decade of experience at the intersection of technology and business, Jordan reflects on his journey from university to his current leadership role at Caylent, explaining why following instinct and staying open to opportunity can be more valuable than rigid career planning.

Jordan discusses the importance of building strong relationships, investing in personal development, and creating cultures that support long-term growth, especially in fast-changing business environments. He also highlights why hiring for cultural fit matters and how leaders can balance strategy with execution when expectations are high.

Drawing from his early career experiences, including his time at Traction on Demand and its acquisition by Salesforce, Jordan explains how an exploratory approach helped shape his path. He introduces the idea of delayed gratification, encouraging young professionals to focus on long-term development rather than short-term rewards.

Throughout the episode, Jordan emphasizes the role of company culture, the value of meaningful connections, and the impact of finding leaders who challenge you to grow. He reminds listeners that every organization has its own subcultures, and understanding them can play a major role in career success.

Overall, Jordan’s story is a reminder that careers are rarely linear. Success is driven not by job titles or company names, but by the experiences you gain, the relationships you build, and your willingness to adapt as opportunities arise.

Takeaways:

1. The journey of career exploration often involves making instinctual decisions rather than following a predetermined path.
2. Fostering relationships within an organization can lead to unexpected opportunities and growth in one's career.
3. Delayed gratification is a vital principle for younger generations to understand in their career development.
4. Building teams with the right cultural fit is paramount for creating a successful and cohesive work environment.
5. Leaders must act decisively when faced with underperformance or challenges within their teams to ensure continuous improvement.
6. Investing in oneself and prioritizing personal growth over immediate gains can yield long-term career benefits.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Traction on Demand
2. Salesforce
3. Caylent
4. Live Different

Books mentioned in this episode:

1. Good to Great by Jim Collins

Welcome to The Eh List. Today we're joined by a strategy leader, Jordan Schwartz. He spent over a decade working at the intersection of technology, business and leadership.

He's led large scale transformations inside global organizations like Traction on Demand, which was later acquired by Salesforce, as well as SAP. Today he's building and scaling product and strategy at Calent.

What makes Jordan especially interesting is not just the work that he does, but how he approaches leadership, growth and impact.

From building teams and organizations, volunteering in cancer research and international development, he brings a rare combination of business insight and human perspective. Jordan, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Excited to be here.

So, looking back, like we've known each other since university, did you feel like you had a clear path when you were wrapping up your university program or was it more of an exploratory path?

Definitely exploratory, I would say.

Even going back to what I used to make my decision of what program to go into in university, I mean, I ultimately chose business because I felt like it was going to give me the most optionality as I went through my career.

And starting out in university when I graduated, I had worked a little bit in the tech space, but my education was more actually on the finance side and then in the entrepreneurship and innovation program at sfu.

And so when I was first starting to look for opportunities outside of university, I really thought I wanted to get into consulting at one of the large firms.

And as I went through the process and the hiring cycle with those, ultimately kind of got a good feeling that that probably wasn't going to be the right fit for me and ended up connecting with a few folks at Traction on Demand, which was a, at the time, very small but fast growing services company based here in Burnaby.

And the more times that I talked to people at that organization, just the better feeling I got for the culture, the fit, the opportunities that they were going to provide to me in my career as I was growing. And that's ultimately what made it a pretty easy decision for me in terms of what, where to get started.

And I don't think that I've ever really had a long term view on career planning. It's always been more instinctual. Trust my gut, make decisions based on what I feel makes the most sense in the moment.

And I don't think leaving university was any different than that.

I think that says a lot, right, Because I think when students are wrapping up their program, they're anxious, they're scared, they don't know what's coming next. You know, you enter a four Year program, you know, what classes you're going to take in the next semester, whether you're going to do exchange co op.

But your path is really interesting because you started with a company that got acquired that landed into your next opportunity. What's one thing that you wish someone would have told you before you wrapped up your program that might have changed or improved your path?

Something that I wish somebody would have told me. Yeah, it's a good question.

I mean, I think we definitely had the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of people in our degree that gave us some great insight from mentorship perspective, from industry leaders and also just people that have gone a long way in their career.

I don't know if there's anything necessarily missing from insights that I could have got from them, but at the end of the day, I think one of the best pieces of advice that I got from a mentor was to delay gratification. So this was a mentor that I had while I was in university and he's a local entrepreneur based Internet Vancouver.

And he talked a lot about how throughout his career he had many moments where he could have cashed in on his opportunities in whatever form that was, whether it was financial or otherwise, but decided to continue investing in himself and in his future.

And I think that's a good advice that I would share with younger generations as well is, you know, if you really feel like you want to invest in yourself to reach your potential, don't look for the quick, easy gains that you can get, don't feel like you've made it too early and continue to kind of invest in that career growth and potential.

It's really insightful, I think, because in this instant gratification world with social media likes and it almost feeds that instant gratification. But you're saying the delayed gratification actually will lead to likely better outcomes.

And in your career, I think that's been pretty interesting in that when you joined Traction, you probably didn't assume it was going to get acquired.

You may not have assumed that you'd end up in an even more influential role following, but that likely all came down to the relationships that you fostered over those years and the fact that you made those relationship deposits over the years.

Yeah, I think I would say what Traction taught me was it's really hard to plan a year out, you know, when you're in an organization that's growing as quickly as we were growing. I think when I joined Traction, we were about 250 people.

We were well over a thousand when we Ended up getting acquired by Salesforce and the organization changed drastically every single year. And so there wasn't really any point in trying to plan further than a year out down the road.

You know, whether it was new practices, new roles being created within the organization, there wasn't really a point in time where you would create a three year or five year plan for yourself. And I think that's true in general within the world today.

I mean, trying to help even a customer create like a three year plan or a five year plan is a bit of a fool's errand.

And so I think that just kind of leads back to how do you just build the right behavior approaches and, you know, kind of continue to build in the same way that an athlete would build their, their career. You know, how do you just do the small things and get in the gym and get up shots and kind of let the rest of it take care of itself.

And then when you see that opportunity, when the door opens, you know, don't be afraid to walk through it. I think that's the other side of it. Right.

You can have a short term mindset in terms of keeping your head down and grinding and building for the future, but don't miss those opportunities when they come open. Whether it's for a new role, a new opportunity, something that is going to push you outside of your comfort zone.

I love that because the harder you work, the luckier you get.

But when that opportunity to make that next jump is there, you need to actually have the confidence in yourself to jump on it, which clearly you've done in your career. So, Jordan, you talked a bit about looking at the consulting path and then ended up going into the sort of technology path.

And, and it was really the relationships and the vibe you got with the people that ultimately helped you pursue to perhaps some of our folks that are working within organizations that they don't necessarily feel like the culture is well aligned to them. What advice would you have for them?

Yeah, I think ultimately there's lots of opportunities, I would say, to explore within large organizations as well. You're gonna find lots of different, smaller pockets of culture.

You know, I've worked at SAP, I've worked at Salesforce, two of the largest technology companies in the world, both of which have, I would say, positive cultures. But at the end of the day, the culture is very much dependent on what team you're in within that organization.

And so it doesn't have to necessarily be that you go outside of the organization you're within. It might be just looking for opportunities to find leaders that you ultimately feel like you can learn from.

I mean, one of the main reasons that I stayed at Salesforce for two years after we got acquired was the culture of the team that I was within, and frankly, the leader that I was under when I landed at Salesforce, that made a huge difference for me. And so I think it's too easy to kind of paint a broad stroke across a large organization and say, it's not the.

You know, it's not the culture I'm looking for.

Or, you know, I don't necessarily agree with all the decisions that are being made at a senior leadership perspective, But I think you also have to look at it from the perspective of who are the people you're working with every day, who's your leader, and what projects or what initiatives are you working on within the organization that you can learn from and ultimately make the most of it.

Yeah, ultimately, we make the most of the experiences. And if you look inwardly, that generally can help you assess the circumstances better than always.

Expecting that the world needs to morph to me as opposed to you need to morph to your environment. When you did transition into consulting, what surprised you about the.

The cultural dynamic and how decisions are made in large and kind of smaller organizations?

Yeah, I think one of the. I mean, I joined Traction at a really fun time. Right? Like, we were growing really fast. Every project that we worked on was something new, and.

And frankly, we were stretching ourselves as an organization. I remember my first day at Traction back when we were all still in the office five days a week.

We had a financial services customer coming to the office to do a discovery session on site, and they were like, hey, you want to jump in? You want to be in the room with the client? Day one says, sure. Like, why not? Might as well jump right in, kind of headfirst.

And the team that I landed on within Traction was one that was a lot of recent grads, and we kind of wore every hat you could wear on a Salesforce implementation. That's what Traction was focused on.

And I think the overall, like, the pace and learning how to operate in an environment that moved as quickly as Traction did. And then also, I think from a consulting perspective, you get it hardwired very quickly to value time.

And so when you're working with a client and they're paying for billable hours on projects that you're working on, you just inherently develop a really strong sense of time management.

And I think that was probably one of the biggest learnings that I had early on at Traction was just how do you make sure that you're making the most of every hour that you have on the job and that's everything from the habits that you're building within the office, outside of the office and how do you make sure that when you're, you know, you're showing up every single day, you're ready to put that kind of full day of work in.

So that was something as you know, someone with a background from sports perspective, I was able to kind of bring some of that same, that same mentality and mindset into it.

And that was one of the things that I enjoyed the most but was kind of the biggest change of going from a, an organization like SAP where I was in an internal role to being in a customer facing consulting role in a really fast paced organization.

Yeah, it's interesting being at the topic of billable hours.

My wife's in law and it's definitely a different mindset, especially in maybe the consulting world where you may be being paid in billable hours but valuing the impact to the organization, whether that's revenue or optimization for perhaps let's say younger people in their careers. If you invest a ton of time into an organization, you don't feel like you're getting well compensated for your time.

How can you turn that around and ultimately turn that to your benefit?

Yeah, I think at the end of the day it sort of goes back to that concept of investing in yourself. Right.

And so if you have sort of that longer term mentality for growth and realizing your potential, you might realize that early on in your career it makes sense to work in an organization where the opportunity that you're getting with them is worth maybe what you're going to be giving up in terms of compensation. And you know, I had that decision when I was leaving SAP and ultimately deciding to join Traction.

You know, a big, you know, the compensation wasn't really a factor in deciding where I wanted to start. You know, I was at the beginning of my career. I knew there was going to be lots of opportunities to grow and, and progress from that perspective.

But I was ultimately looking for what was going to give me the best opportunity to get exposed to as many different customers and challenges and problems and what leaders were faced with. And that's ultimately what I use to make my decision around it.

Now if, if I was in that same situation today at this point in my career, that balance as will probably have changed.

But I think ultimately when you're first starting out in your career, the value of the opportunity that you're going to get in an organization might might outweigh some of the short term benefits of chasing something with higher compensation.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think in my line of work, the time investment of people and the comp made on a lot of those early cases wasn't worth it.

However, the relationship building and the opportunity to be a part of the grander journey and having that deeper relationship plays such a major role in actually maintaining that client.

So, yeah, I think that for any younger listeners, big takeaway there is just make sure you're around people that inspire you and push you to grow and learn and be the best version of yourself. And whether you get paid now or get paid later, you will get paid now.

Jordan, you've been building out Kalent's strategy and product vision from the ground up. So what lessons has that taught you in comparison to some of your previous roles?

Yeah, it's been a ton of fun.

So we started this team a little over a year ago and really had the mandate to help bring that level of services maturity and consulting capability into what was already an incredible technical organization from an AWS consulting and engineering perspective.

And so without kind of getting into like the weeds around the roles and kind of how we develop them and how we built out the value proposition, you know, I think the biggest learning from it has just been that confirmation around how important it is to find the right people and get the right people on the bus. Right. I'm a big advocate of sort of the good to great model and have used that a lot to kind of guide my career.

But also the, you know, the capabilities that I've been a part of building within organizations. We talk a lot about building the flywheel within an organization to create value.

And at the end of the day, the first step on that is getting the right people on the bus as a leader. And so I've been incredibly humbled by the caliber and the quality of people that we've been able to get trust in.

Both Kalint, but also in myself as a leader as we've kind of built out the vision for something from scratch.

And I think it's really important as a leader to understand what your role is in being a salesperson, essentially, not only for the product or service that you're bringing to the market, but also to the people that you're trying to bring on board to your organization.

And that's not about trying to sell them on something that's not real, but it's about giving them and trusting people with Your transparency around what it is and what it isn't. Right. And helping people understand. When you're building something from scratch, there's gonna be a huge amount of ambiguity.

You're looking for people that want to be a part of building something and contributing to it and aren't looking to just kind of get in with, to a, you know, warm seat within an organization. And I think that with that transparency, you end up getting people on the bus who are the right people to get on the bus at that time.

And, and so I think everything else that's followed from that, from the strategic sort of approach that we've taken to build out the practices and then down to the tactical elements that I've learned over my years from a consulting standpoint, how to put in place. I mean, none of those are anywhere near as important as getting the right people on the bus at the start.

Yeah, getting the right people on the bus is crucial. Right culture can be invigorating. It can also be toxic.

And as a leader, it's up to you to make sure you've got the right people on the bus and you can hire. And we talked about this before, hire for culture, train for skills.

So especially in a fast moving organization, the skills that you might look on a spreadsheet versus what you're going to need in six months or a year might be different. But if you don't have the right personality, that's not going to work because they're not going to grow into what you need them to be.

So as you built out, Kaelin, has there been folks that you may be brought from previous organizations and then were there times when you realized we don't have the right capacity in our sphere of influence, you needed to take a bet on someone who you didn't have that kind of deep experience with?

Yeah, it's a great question.

So, you know, as we've grown up this team and we've gone from, you know, essentially in the span of 10 months from four people to 25 people, we've grown a lot of that team through referrals, so through folks that were either in my, my network or were in the network of people that had joined the team. And I think that's really critical when you're building a fast.

You know, this isn't to say that you should only be looking inside your network to build teams, but ultimately when you're throwing people into an organization that's moving as quickly as we are, and when you're growing a team that is trying to define who it wants to be. Having people that understand and share some level of common language goes a really long way.

So we've had people that have joined us from the sort of traction on demand Salesforce lineage. We've had people that have joined through our team members, former colleagues that have joined as well.

But we've also made some really, really good hires from putting. Putting jobs out into the, into the market.

And so, you know, I think some of that has been the benefit of the, the brand that Kalance built, that we're able to attract, you know, incredible people to our organization.

But you also, to your point, like, you have to be, you know, willing to recognize when you don't have the skill set that you're looking for within your network, and you have to make that sort of bet on somebody who's coming from, from outside. And so, you know, I think we've been equally as successful with bringing some people in from outside of our networks.

But you do have a level of, you know, vetting and interview process to make sure that. I would, I wouldn't even say that they're a culture fit fit, but it's ultimately they add to the culture. Right.

I think if you're constantly looking for culture fit, then you end up with a lot of people that, that look and kind of think the same.

But if you're thinking about people, if you're looking for people that are going to add positively to your culture and add positively to the capabilities your team, that's how you end up with a, you know, a diverse and, you know, ultimately more powerful team. I love that.

And when you're hiring outside of folks, you. You have trust within the organization. Did you tend to use a recruiter or just sort of.

Did you source out, like, I'm curious how a company at your scale finds the right people.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately we have, you know, we have our talent sourcers, we have recruiters that will help us.

And just the nature, I'd say, of the job market today and the brand that Kalynt's built in the market, I mean, we can't really post a role without getting close to a thousand applicants in the first 48 hours. So just to give you kind of a sense of like the scale that we typically sift through.

But at the end of the day, like, I think it's just about making sure that you have the right, the right expectations and the right standards in terms of what you're looking for. And I think that goes both ways with the candidate as well. Right. I mean, Setting the right expectations for the candidate.

I have the pleasure of being able to connect with people from incredible experiences who have grown and built businesses far bigger even than K Lint is today, but ultimately just may not be the right fit for themselves or for us to bring into the organization.

But, you know, when you're able to have kind of open and transparent conversations, you end up giving those people, you know, a good experience, regardless of whether or not they ultimately end up getting hired.

It's interesting point, because in business, oftentimes people can take their previous experiences and that also can have them take ego. So how do you, I guess, check or manage ego when you're bringing people on the team?

Especially in an environment where perhaps someone may be older than you and now you're. You're leading them?

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a good question. I, you know, I, I've only maybe had, you know, less than half a dozen direct reports to me that have been younger than me in my career.

So I think I've, I've, I've gotten comfortable with that.

You know, I'd say, like, from a, you know, an ego perspective, at the end of the day, you're looking for people that want to be a part of building, building the team. Right?

And so I think when you build a culture around team first, you know, customer centric, so that we're ultimately there to build and deliver value to our customers.

And when you set that expectation kind of from the start, you ultimately end up kind of creating a filter on folks that you want to bring into that culture and into that team.

But at the end of the day, I think there is an element of confidence that you need in an organization that's doing consulting for other businesses at a large scale. And so you can't look at it purely from the perspective of, oh, this person's confident in themselves.

They have an ego, and I don't want them on the team. At the end of the day, you need people that are going to build trust with your customers.

And a lot of our customers in this space, they're C suite executives and they're looking for people that have a level of authoritative voice around a topic in an area.

Being able to differentiate between somebody who has an ego and is looking to progress their own interests and their own career and balancing that with people that want to be a part of growing the team and growing the business and ultimately making customers successful. But it is a fine balance. And that's part of why we have lots of conversations with our candidates throughout the process.

And, you know, ultimately a lot of it is about expectation setting once they start as well.

So how do you balance strategy with execution when everything is moving so fast and adjusting on a regular basis and expectations are high with customers, with employees?

Yeah, I mean, I think the ability to shift gears is a skill set and I think that goes back a little bit to experience working in consulting and working in those roles and being able to context switch effectively. Right.

So going from working on one customer to another to working on a large hairy strategic problem for the business, to working on a tactical operational task. And how do you manage your time? How do you chunk out your hours within a day to be able to tackle those things? There's no perfect answer.

I mean, ultimately it kind of continuously takes refinement, whether it's, you know, changing things in your calendar and structuring your time differently throughout the day, bringing the right people on who can support and take things off of your plate and being comfortable, delegating.

You know, I think some of the leaders that I see that I've seen in my career that struggle the most with that shift between the strategic and tactical, it's because they're, they're frankly exerting too much control over the tactical elements that maybe should be handled by someone else. And you know, I do think there's a lot to be said about a leader that understands the nitty gritty details.

And the best leaders that I've worked for can go from the 30,000 foot level to the 1,000 foot level and operate when they need to.

But if you're constantly making that shift throughout the day from a highly strategic to a highly tactical, you're ultimately going to burn yourself out and you're going to exhaust a lot of the people on your team as well if you're constantly making that switch.

Yeah, no one likes a micromanager.

So if you've done a good job of training your people, then hopefully you can trust them to make some of those more tactical decisions so you can stay focused on strategy.

Now, you've worked with a number of different direct reports, you've had different leaders, you have some mentors that you've referenced earlier in the, the talk. Now, if you, if we were to ask someone who's been on your team, how they describe you as a leader, what do you think they would say?

It's a good question. What I would hope they would say is that, you know, I do think I give a lot of space for, for autonomy.

You know, at the end of the Day like the, the team that I've built, you know, the teams that I've built in the past have been fairly senior in terms of like, they come with a lot of experience, they come with a lot of expertise. Expertise. And you know, I kind of like to say, like everybody on my team is a better expert in an area than I am. Right.

So everybody on my team has an area of expertise that I don't have. And I really see myself as a facilitator and a connector within the organization. You know, I'm there to help my team navigate the organization.

I'm here to support and jump in when I need to, but ultimately I'm not there on a day to day basis telling them how to do their job.

And so I think that goes a long way, especially as you have high performers in your team of how do you unblock them, connect them with opportunities and support them in navigating maybe some of the complexities of the organization or of the challenges you're working on with the customer. But ultimately when things are going well, get out of their way and let them do their work. Right.

And I think that's, you know, I think that's kind of like the culture that I've tried to instill within the team and also being somebody that's willing to, you know, ultimately hand over some ownership and control of things to people within the team as well. You know, I think we see in general within the industry a flattening of organizations.

We know that management levels are being eliminated in organizations across a variety of different industries.

And I think what's going to happen is the leaders who are successful in this new wave, where you have larger teams and you have more flat hierarchical organizations are going to be the ones that are willing to hand over elements of leadership to people on their team.

Yeah, that's interesting. There has been a lot of white collar attrition in the last few years with, with AI making some organizations more efficient.

Now, I know your team is remote.

How do you balance the culture of talent development, maintaining close relationships with the fact that we've got all these digital tools that are making our lives easier in some ways?

Yeah. I mean, I won't lie and say it's not challenging. I started my career in in person roles at both SAP and Traction on demand.

And it's a different culture. And I think recognizing that it's a different culture when you're remote, I'd actually say that being 100% remote is easier than being hybrid.

I think when you have half of the team in person and half of the team trying to be remote and be a part of that same culture. It's actually more challenging than having an entirely remote culture.

We do a lot of things to invest to bring people together at certain points, points throughout the year in person. And so I think those moments go a long way to building that cohesion.

And one of my proudest moments as a leader was back in October we had our entire team together and I had multiple members of that team come up to me afterwards and talk about just how easy it was to get along with everybody else on the team and that they were honestly surprised that it wasn't harder.

And I think that that speaks to a, just that culture cohesion across the team that we've been able to build with bringing the right people on, but then also investing the time as you need to remotely to try to build connections both as a team and across individuals within it.

And so when we all got together as a team and it clicked and it wasn't awkward and it wasn't weird, that went a long way to giving me confidence that we had built the right, right group of people.

How often are you doing those, those face to face events with, with your team?

So our organization does, you know, monthly town halls regionally, within sort of local markets where we'll bring people together. But then with my team we've, we've done them basically twice a year.

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And of course there's conferences where you're attending and various team members are getting together more, more client facing in that scenario.

So Jordan, what's that leadership lesson that you had to learn the hard way?

I think one of the lessons that every leader learns as they're building out a team is the need to act decisively when things aren't going well.

And you know, I would consider myself in general a fairly decisive person, but there's always times when you can kind of talk yourself into something, right?

You can talk yourself into that things are going to get better with a certain, you know, team member that's maybe, maybe underperforming or just maybe in the wrong role for their skill sets and fit and you want it to work, right. It's a little bit of that bias towards. You made that decision, you thought it was the right decision and you want to see it through.

And when you're in a fast paced organization, a week or two weeks can make a really significant difference either on a project project or with just even how somebody's operating within the organization. And so, you know, I think if anything, it's actually going back to trusting your instincts around if you feel like you do need to make a change.

And I'm not talking about removing somebody from the organization. It might just be reassigning or reallocating somebody to different work that they're a better fit for.

You almost always feel better afterwards, and that person's almost always in a better situation after you make that change, especially if they there has been friction as a result of it. So, you know, I think that's a lesson that every leader learns.

And, you know, hopefully you don't have to learn it too many times, but, you know, ultimately you're faced with decisions on a daily basis of where you want to direct your team's attention, time, resources, et cetera, and being willing to cut bait on things that's not working, rather than kind of seeing it through. I'd say that's the biggest lesson.

Yeah, I think we all have to learn that one way or another, that we want to be flexible with the decisions we've made when the information changes, so you can be confident in your perspective, but when you get new information, you need to be willing to adjust.

Sounds a little bit like investing.

Yeah, we've made some positive and not so positive moves on that front, for sure. So, Jordan, you're working with many high performers in technology. When you walk into a new room of executives, how do you quickly build trust?

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think at the end of the day, it's about knowing your areas of expertise and knowing where to lean on others where it's not your area of expertise.

You know, I'm definitely blessed in Kalin to be surrounded by some incredible technologists. And then that is not my background. You know, I come from a business background. I would say I'm effective translator between business and technology.

I understand how to frame business problems to be solved by technology. But ultimately I'm not a technologist. And so when I'm engaging with.

Whether it's a customer or leader or even internally, I think one of the areas that. One of the fastest ways to build trust with new stakeholders is to focus on where you feel you actually have genuine expertise.

And I think those things come across and good leaders can see through it when you aren't being genuine about your areas of expertise. So from my perspective, that's understanding how organizations absorb strategy.

For example, how do organizations make change, build capabilities, absorb change? And those are the areas that I'll focus on when I'm in a conversation with A customer.

And now naturally, it may blend into a technology conversation, it may blend into a organizational change conversation.

And I think being willing to admit where you don't have expertise and then doubling down on the areas where you feel like you have a voice and experience that's going to resonate with customers goes a long way to building that trust.

Yeah, 100%. You only get first impression once and if you're BSing out of the gate, that's probably not a good place to start.

So when you're building out your team, how do you determine if someone on your team is leadership ready or whether they're just extremely technically proficient?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's. In any organization you have the individual contributor path and you have the management path.

And I think at the end of the day, everybody in the team needs to be a leader in some way. And so the way I describe it within a professional services organization is I think there's three paths to leadership.

And the first path is becoming an expert in a particular domain.

And so being the go to person within an organization on a particular topic or a theme or an area of capability where you are that person that anybody in the organization, if they have questions are going to come to you. And that's a really important aspect of leadership within a services organization.

The second area of leadership is being a leader within the business.

So when you're growing a book of business, when you're growing a portfolio of customers or a business unit, whether that's organized around a vertical, around specific set of customers, there are more than just the sales team who are responsible for helping grow that area of our business.

And so I think there's tons of opportunities for leadership from the perspective of how are you helping to grow our business and how are you helping us to scale our impact within our customers. And then the third path is the management path. Right.

So that's where you're taking on more direct reports, where you are coaching and guiding and providing that mentorship directly to them. But I really see that as one of those three leadership paths within an organization. And I'm referring to a professional services organization.

But I think that applies across a lot of different domains and industries. And throughout my career I've bounced between all three of those.

And I think helping people understand that there isn't one path that you can pursue multiple of those paths, that you may shift focus as your career progresses, but that ultimately all three of those are incredibly important to the organization.

And you know, as a leader, my job, I think is to Help find what the right fit at the right time is for that individual to essentially realize their potential as a leader in any of the those three that was.

Very well laid out I think of like a company like Microsoft, right. You got, you got Bill Gates, he's obviously the technical leader.

You got a guy like Steve Ballmer and he's inspiring a group of people by speaking in front and probably not the most technically proficient, but both have different aspects of leadership. So it's great that you've laid that out and I'm sure your team appreciates that you understand that.

So when things are moving fast, things can go wrong. How do you handle perhaps mistakes that you have made and the impact that has in your team? And is there a particular example you're able to share?

Willing to share?

Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, especially in a fast paced company, things go wrong all the time. Right. And so part of being a leader is how you respond and how you react to those things.

And you know, I'd say if there's one, one thing that I'm proud of in my leadership style and how I show up for my team is I believe I'm very consistent in terms of how I show up day to day. Whether the sky's falling or whether it's everything's going well.

I try to be level headed and consistent for my team so that they know anytime they're getting on a conversation with me that I'm just going to be the same old Jordan. And that's whether or not we've had an escalation with a customer or whether or not we just won a large deal with a customer.

I think the way that you show up day over day over day means a lot to the people that are reporting to you. Because ultimately when things are going wrong, it's that uncertainty that gives people stress. Right.

If something goes wrong and you have to make a decision and that change is set, people will actually adapt to that change very quickly.

But it's the uncertainty of not knowing when the other shoe is going to drop, of not knowing how your leader is going to perceive something going bad within your domain. I think that's ultimately what causes people the most stress.

I think when something goes wrong, people own it, have a level of accountability and they're supported by their leaders regardless.

I'm not saying that you're letting people off the hook, hook, but it's, you know, you're consistent in terms of how you hold people accountable and how you guide them through that process. I think that goes a long way to giving people that emotional safety essentially to operate and fix their own problems in a sense as well.

Yeah, easier said than done, right?

Being consistent on a regular basis, that oftentimes requires as a leader that you're ensuring your personal life doesn't bleed into your professional, professional life so that you can continue to continue to show up and provide that, that confidence so that your team can move forward with whatever random thing the business has thrown at you that day.

Yep.

Now your volunteer work shows a very different side of your life. Jordan. How has service shaped the way that you show up for your teammates and for success?

Yeah, I think going back to even university, I've always, I think, had the mentality around giving back to areas that have had a meaningful impact on my life.

And so, you know, when, when I think about how I want to invest my time and energy outside of work, I try to prioritize the areas that I feel like I've received the most benefit from myself and try to find a way to pay that forward to the next wave of people that are going to be impacted.

So whether that's in the past, being involved through coaching students at university to more recently working with an organization, live different, that's ultimately about youth empowerment.

Those, the sort of consistent through line is organizations that I feel like I benefited from and that helps me feel like it's a, you know, a genuine relationship for me to kind of come back and give, give what I'm good at to an organization that I ultimately benefited from.

Yeah, I love that you've always been a leader in the community and continue to inspire the next generation. And I have to look into this. Live different. But youth today are influenced perhaps more by digital media than they perhaps are by their surroundings.

And so how can we as leaders show up better?

Or if you were going to provide a call to action to others, what might you say so that we can help inspire the next generation to show up better and be present?

Yeah, I think a lot of it and I would say what another, I guess consistent through line of the organizations that I've committed my time and resources to has been immersive experiences from a either, you know, a social or like a problem solving perspective. So you think about case competitions in university, right. Those are, you know, deeply interpersonal, relationship driven, team based.

Problem solving is ultimately what it is. Right.

Kind of strip away the, the business school element of it and ultimately it comes down to coming together with a group of people with different disciplines and backgrounds and trying to solve Solve a problem. The organization live different that I've done work with recently.

They have a few different programs, one being inspirational speaking and support and emotional intelligence programs for youth in Canada, but also for service trips to Mexico, Dominican Republic, Haiti and elsewhere.

And similarly, those are very intensive immersive experiences where you're working with a group of people to solve a problem which might be building a house or building a school. And you know, I think those types of experiences are just at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from an experience on digital media.

And you know, I grew up playing sports.

I think that part of my desire to get into things like case competitions at university stem from trying to scratch that itch of being a part of a team in something deeply immersive like that.

And I think it's just how do we continue to provide those opportunities for not just young people but for everybody to connect with a community of like minded people in a way that is constructive and is aimed at a sort of a higher purpose than just themselves.

That's incredible, Jordan, and I think inspirational for all of us. I'm still trying to figure out which volunteer organizations I want to be involved with longer term.

We've both been involved in a few, sometimes at the same time. Now what's one mistake you see earlier career professionals make over and over again?

I think people get a little bit hung up on resume and brand of organizations on their resume.

Now I want to be cautious about this because I think like, you know, people make decisions to join organizations for lots of different reasons and I think some are better than others in terms of like why you're making that decision. And I'll speak to myself personally because I think it's, it's probably easier to provide my own example than try to.

You'll call out the mistakes of others.

But when I was first graduating university I was very focused on like I wanted to get a job at a big consulting firm and you know, one with the name brand.

And you know, ultimately I talked about going through that, that process and that recruiting process and kind of realizing that it maybe wasn't the right fit for me and frankly them realizing that I probably wasn't the right fit for them. Right. And I was ultimately sort of, I maybe was saved from, from myself on that decision.

I then also got interested in pursuing an MBA and whenever I would travel for work I would go and I would explore and do tours of different name brand universities.

And I think the more I challenged myself of asking the question of why I wanted to do was less about what education I wanted to get and more about wanting to be able to say that I went to this school for an mba. And it's kind of like when you dig into it, you kind of understand the motivation underlying just started to get really hollow.

And it was not, you know, ultimately, again, sort of maybe saved myself from. From making a poor decision in that space.

So, you know, I think at the end of the day, it's about being able to kind of dig a little bit deeper mentally to understand the motivation behind the decisions and the things that you think are important and ultimately try to get to the root of the experience and the opportunity that you want to pursue and then being open to more opportunities outside of, you know, the. The name that's going to look great on your resume or, you know, sound great when you're talking to your friends about it.

Yeah, I love that because there's. Yeah, I think during our cohort it was investment banking, consulting.

Those are like the cool places to be, and if you're not doing that, you're just not cool. And I went through a similar journey of, like, what do I want to do? I don't really know, but I knew I liked people. I want to spend time with people.

I want to help people get ahead. And this is the industry I ended up in. So that's really solid advice for people.

Early career or even mid career, if you don't feel like your why is being addressed, or if you're not excited to wake up and do what you're doing, then you probably should be switching gears. We only get one life.

Yeah.

When I first started at Traction, for example, I mean, nobody at SFU even knew what Traction was, even though our office was like, you know, two kilometers down the road at the bottom of the mountain. And honestly, I kind of loved that.

Like, I feel like the mentality I've had is trying to pick the sort of scrappy, upstart organization, and I think that's. That'll probably guide me in future decisions as well. Yeah.

Well, I've been fortunate to have the relationship with you over the years, Jordan, and we're scrapping through this together, but we'll see where things, where things end up. Now when we look ahead, what's next for you?

Well, aside from starting a family, which is probably like, the important one that I should mention. No, I think.

I wasn't sure that was public, but.

Now, yeah, it will be by January. Don't worry. I don't know.

I mean, I think it goes back to, like, what, what I said earlier, like, I don't really know that I've ever made a plan further than a year at a time.

And so my focus right now is just on trying to build the best team inside the best organization that we possibly can and kind of, frankly, let the rest of it, you know, take care of itself.

You know, I think I know I'm in the right place in terms of the type of organization, type of work, and really, it's just about trying to find opportunities to try to realize my potential as much as possible.

Yeah, well, you're certainly inspiring that next generation, Jordan. So thank you very much for sharing your time today. Thank you for being a solid friend and supporter over the years.

And if anyone would like to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do so?

Probably over LinkedIn, but don't expect a timely response. I probably fall on the end of the spectrum of being a little too off the social medias.

You know what, I'm probably on the other end. So I hope one day to be as active at conferences as you are to disengage like that.

Yeah, reach out to Brandon and then he can put you in touch with me. Sounds good.

All right, well, Jordan, thank you so much. Any final words for our listeners?

No, this is great, man. Thanks for having me.

Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to the A list. If you like this episode, please share it with someone who might benefit or find it helpful.

Also, please take a moment to rate or review the podcast so we can keep sharing meaningful conversations just like this one.