Agility requires more than just quick reactions; it demands a proactive understanding of evolving customer needs and emerging technologies. It also means building adaptable processes and systems that can flex with market demands.
Today, we’re going to talk about navigating the complexities of modern business strategy in a world of constant disruption. Specifically, we’ll explore how Chief Strategy Officers can balance long-term vision with the need for near-term execution, particularly in the face of external pressures like economic shifts, competitive dynamics, and the transformative power of technologies like AI.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome JD Carter, Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion. JD, welcome to the show!
About JD Carter
JD Carter is the Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion. JD joined Vasion in 2013 as employee number five. A self-described “jack of all trades” executive, he has served during his tenure as the company’s VP of sales, CMO, and chief experience officer. In his current role, he helps develop the company’s strategy and works with his executive peers to drive performance across the organization. JD also oversees Vasion’s mergers and acquisitions function and plays an active role in defining the culture and values by which the company operates.
JD Carter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdcarter/
———- Resources ———-
Vasion: https://www.vasion.com
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Transcript
[00:01:30] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of The Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. To keep up in a changing market, are you building a responsive brand or are you constantly playing catch-up? Agility requires more than just quick reactions. It demands a proactive understanding of evolving customer needs and emerging technologies. It also means building adaptable processes and systems that can flex with market demands. Today, we’re going to talk about navigating the complexities of business strategy in a world of constant disruption. Specifically, we’re gonna talk about how chief strategy officers can balance long-term vision with the need for near-term execution, particularly in the face of external pressures like economic shifts, competitive dynamics, and the transformative power of technologies like AI.
[00:03:00] Greg Kihlström: To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome J.D. Carter, Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion. J.D., welcome to the show.
[00:03:06] JD Carter: Hi, Greg. Thanks for having me.
[00:03:07] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Vasion?
[00:03:14] JD Carter: Yeah, so I’m the chief strategy officer and chief of staff here at Vasion, and w- we’re a global SaaS company that provides a solution that helps customers to be able to really tame the chaos of d- document-heavy workflows, through leveraging intelligent automation around print and documents.
[00:03:35] Greg Kihlström: Great. Great. Well, yeah, let’s dive in here and we’re gonna talk about a few things, but I wanna start by… L- let’s start with one of the things I teed up in the intro and the, the, navigating the external pressures. Certainly, there are unique ones, at, right now, but, you know, things, things change and, and new ones seem to pop up, a- as well. So, you know, we’re seeing volatility in the global landscape. Everything from, you know, there’s geopolitical instability, supply chain, economic, other economic factors. How can a chief strategy officer effectively factor these external pressures, as well as un-, you know, u- unknown or unforeseen ones into strategic planning processes?
[00:04:21] JD Carter: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a great question, and I think one of the things that, it really stands out for me right now, especially as AI has become more prevalent, there’s… Things are changing very rapidly.
[00:04:32] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:04:32] JD Carter: And so, what’s changed is that strategy used to happen, you’d revisit it, you know, quarterly or annually, but now it’s much more of a continuous assessment process.
[00:04:43] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:04:43] JD Carter: So, all these external volatilities that you described doesn’t necessarily fundamentally change the role of a CSO. We’ve always monitored, you know, markets, geopolitical things, technology shifts. But that cadence by which we have to monitor and assess has increased dramatically. And so, what we’ve done at Vasion is we started to really shorten our strategy review cycles. So, not rewriting our strategic playbook every month or anything like that, but we’re really stress testing our assumptions and gathering data in a much faster way that helps us to understand if the, the strategies are playing out in the way that we’d anticipated, and if there’s opportunities to either enhance or shift those strategies
[00:05:29] JD Carter: to meet the changing demands around us, right?
[00:05:32] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:32] JD Carter: And so, I think that as we look at it, it’s not about being reactionary, it’s really about being resilient and building a strategic resilience around understanding what’s going on, and how we can alter our strategies based upon those external factors.
[00:05:48] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and that resilience is also, I assume is, is based on balancing… There’s long-term objectives, which to your point, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna pivot every quarter and change long-term strategy, but then there’s things like short-term cost optimization and, and other, other things that need to be balanced with, with those longer term, uh…… investments. How do you look at balancing those, again, with, with all this uncertainty, as well, kind of under- underlying it?
[00:06:22] JD Carter: Yeah. So for us, we’re, we’re a bootstrap company, and because of that, we don’t have the luxury of, you know, stopping and betting the farm on a five-year moonshot.
[00:06:31] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:06:31] JD Carter: Like, we’ve got to really work on balancing short-term versus long-term investment. And so, the way I think about it, it’s kind of like a portfolio, right? You need to be investing wisely and diversifying that. And so, what we really try to do is we create horizons, time horizons in, in our portfolio of investments. So 70% of what we do really goes to, you know, what I call, you know, drive and evolve the core business, right? It’s, it’s defending against the existing competitive landscape while building out and evolving our core. And then 20% of it is into building additional platform capabilities, so extending beyond where we are today to open up new markets for ourselves. And then 10% of it is kind of that exploratory, big-time, you know, moonshot
[00:07:17] JD Carter: thinking, technologies on how we can bring those into, to the platform as well. And so, I think with that diversified approach, it allows you to really focus on what you do well, expanding where there is adjacent opportunity that’s very read- readily identifiable, and then still creating room to invest into the long-term strategy as well.
[00:07:41] Greg Kihlström: And so, I know a lot of companies are looking at some of their investments involving AI. Certainly, we talk a lot about that on the show as well. And so, it, it’s definitely having… there’s some hype for sure, but it’s also having a meaningful and, and tangible impact on, on a lot of businesses. What advice do you have for other chief strategy officers who are trying to determine the right strategic approach to utilize AI in their, in their organization, you know? How do they avoid getting caught up in all of that hype, while still capitalizing on the real opportunities?
[00:08:20] JD Carter: Yeah. No, this is, this is a big one right now, because the hype is real. There’s a lot going on in AI. But the first thing I tell other CSOs when I’m talking to them is, like, “Before you assess what AI use cases to go after, it’s, it’s really important that you assess your AI readiness as an organization.” ‘Cause most companies are trying to transform into AI before they’ve got the foundation in place, and there’s really, like, this maturity ladder that you have to build as an organization to understand, like, “All right. Have I, you know, digitized and centralized all of my data and documents?” Because we all understand the power of AI comes from the context and the data underneath the models, right? So once you’ve been able to digitize all of that, and then you clean and structure that data, that really puts you in a place where you can identify, well, what’s happening in
[00:09:05] JD Carter: the organization, in a repetitive way, and we can start to automate some of that data capture and that workflow. And once you’ve done that, then that really puts you in an operational place where you can create interoperability across your systems to now normalize the data across that. And once you’ve done that, now you can implement governance across those pieces, which puts you in a really strong position to start to leverage AI into your organizations. And I think that a lot of companies, because of the urgency of AI, they’re trying to jump and skip some of these steps.
[00:09:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:09:42] JD Carter: But the problem is, it puts you in a really bad situation because you’re not actually going to get the promise of these AI solutions if you don’t have all of that context i- in your organization for it to pull from.
[00:09:55] Greg Kihlström: Right. Right. Well, and, and those were things that probably were always issues, right? I mean, data, data, you know, fragmentation and silos and all that stuff, you know, they were, they were always an issue. But I, I think, to your point, AI is just exacerbating that, right? I mean, there’s… you know, because everybody’s racing to skip ahead, you know, to your other point, they’re quickly finding that they didn’t have the right foundation in place in the, in the first place, right?
[00:10:24] JD Carter: Yeah, yup.
[00:10:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:10:25] JD Carter: And, and to your point, AI is proliferating that problem because it’s creating so much more net new data that doesn’t have the context, and it’s almost starting to build on itself while missing that foundational understanding of the organization-
[00:10:38] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:10:38] JD Carter: … and the existing data. So, it’s, it’s, definitely a problem people are trying to figure out, how do we, how do we solve this ahead of truly rolling out what I would consider, like, applied AI in mass to really gain the value?
[00:10:53] Greg Kihlström: And from, from a technology standpoint, what, what else are you seeing that really has the potential to significantly impact business strategy in the, in the years ahead?
[00:11:06] JD Carter: Yeah. So, the things that I, I watch closely are, number one, like, this continued maturation of cloud, native architectures.
[00:11:14] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:11:15] JD Carter: Specifically, the shifts we’re seeing from on-prem to SaaS around large-scale applications, like ERPs and EMRs. What that’s doing is, that’s creating a massive gap in the marketplace. And one of the things that, as we look at our strategy, it’s, it’s what is happening inside of our customers, where we can go and help them transition, or, or that we can help them on their journey to fill those gaps. And this is one of those areas where, because we handle all of that legacy on-prem print infrastructure-
[00:11:46] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:11:47] JD Carter: … as… but we do it from the cloud, our customers, as they start to shift into these cloud-based solutions, it’s a natural progression for them. And so, that’s one thing that I watch very closely, is, where are things happening from a cloud maturation perspective, and how are things being shifted to the cloud in a SaaS-native way, versus just lifting and shifting old technologies? Another one is this, API-first and composable architectures. So, you see a lot of these, companies, where they have fragmented operations…… where you have SaaS applications that have been selected by HR, and another one’s been selected by-
[00:12:25] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:12:25] JD Carter: … accounting, and another one for sales, and another one for marketing. But those aren’t actually working together seamlessly. And so being able to create seamless end-to-end workflow across all of these systems is another really big trend that we’re seeing right now. And what that’s doing is it’s actually pulling in the technology groups into operations, where historically operations kind of was running independent. Now we’re seeing a lot of mandates come down saying, “No, technology needs to be involved in our operational decisions to make sure that we’re leveraging that technology to build the best-of-breed solution that works across the organization, not in these silos.” A- and the last one is agentic systems. Like, that’s everywhere, going
[00:13:10] JD Carter: on all the time, and it’s really, I think, a big piece, because it’s moving away from what was viewed as, like, a tool to assist humans into a technology that can now start to work independently and execute multi-step workflows autonomously for us.
[00:13:27] Greg Kihlström: Hm.
[00:13:27] JD Carter: And that’s another one that I think is a really important thing for us to be monitoring, and we continually are looking at it. but it’s all about, how quickly can we actually adopt these technologies? And a lot of times, it’s not dependent on the organization themselves. It’s dependent upon the suppliers. It’s dependent upon the market. And so as we’re watching this, we’re able to help provide assistance to our customers on how they can move forward in any one of these three different areas.
[00:13:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, and to that point, I mean, particularly the, the second item, the kind of fragmented systems, do you think that that’s also being… I mean, we, you know, there’s been silos within organizations for, you know, ever since there were organizations. But, but do you think that’s another one of these things that’s just, it’s AI and the, the, the needs, you know, AI works better with more good data and so more diverse data, all that kinda stuff too? So is, is that just being kinda brought to the forefront again because, of these AI needs, just, you know, all that fragmentation?
[00:14:33] JD Carter: Yes, 100%. Right? Like, i- if we’re siloing our data in these third-party app-, in, in all of these disparate applications and not allowing it to be able to be surfaced to the collective model, then it, it creates… It’s almost like bad data, almost, because it’s incomplete data.
[00:14:50] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:14:50] JD Carter: And so there’s this big push to be able to gain access to this data, structure the data, and make it accessible for AI. But I also think that there’s a- another ancillary benefit of doing this. It’s, how do we connect these systems together so that they start to operate and orchestrate across the systems-
[00:15:10] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:15:10] JD Carter: … versus operating independently? ‘Cause even that alone, when you’re operating multiple systems independently, it requires manual work. And really what the promise of AI is, is to gain efficiencies.
[00:15:24] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:24] JD Carter: Well, there’s other efficiencies from deterministic-type workflows that you can gain as well by knocking down those silos and starting to truly integrate those applications together to s- to be able to build end-to-end workflow. And so I think that AI is not only pressing this need, but the, the idea and concept around efficiency is starting to spark and say, “How do we do this all the way down, and even at, at, at a baseline workflow level, that can then build itself into where AI can leverage those applications seamlessly as well?”
[00:15:56] (instrumental music)
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[00:17:30] Greg Kihlström: we’ll hear from some of the best, and we’ll try to figure this out together. (instrumental music) So I wanna talk about this. Also, we- we’ve been talking quite a bit about the internal operations and, and aspects of this. I wanna talk about this from the, the external, so the, the customer and the, the partner views of this as well. And so, you know, I, and you’ve certainly sa- mentioned the importance of having a customer and a partner first mindset. How can a, how can a chief strategy officer ensure that a philosophy like that is truly embedded within an organization and not just, you know, something we say?
[00:18:12] JD Carter: Yeah, I, I think that’s a big one, ’cause everybody claims to be customer first and partner first-
[00:18:17] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:18:17] JD Carter: … right? But how do you act and behave? And I think where the CSO can play a big role in this is helping to set the strategy…. that dictates the actual tactical execution.
[00:18:30] Greg Kihlström: Mm.
[00:18:30] JD Carter: And what I mean by that is we’ve created a mantra here where it’s like, “At Vasion, we build with, not for,” right?
[00:18:36] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:36] JD Carter: And when you think about that, it fundamentally change how- changes how you listen, right? Like, customer first is, is not just a marketing slogan. It’s- it has to be operationalized, and the way that we operationalize it is through customer advisory boards that are actually influencing the roadmap, regular one-on-one conversations, not just high-level surveys, but actual conversations through customer success, through product, even live in-person engagement, right? Scheduling time when in the field or at events and trade shows, being able to have that one-on-one time with customers to have that actual voice of customer coming to you. And then how do you take that voice of customer data and flow that into every part of the business? Not just-
[00:19:19] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:19:19] JD Carter: … pricing and packaging, but f-feature prioritization, the support structure on how you’re supporting the customers. As you can do that, it really becomes part of who you are and your DNA as an organization, and we feel like that’s one thing that we’ve done to be able to really take that voice of customer and infuse it into our day-to-day operations. And for me, that’s just a natural extension of the partners. If we’re doing the work with customers and surfacing that in our product and the way we operate, then we’re gonna attract the right partners because they’re partners that value that exact same thing. If you are- find yourself working with partners that don’t really care about the voice of the customer, then, i- i- to me-
[00:20:00] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:00] JD Carter: … I- it’s a cha- it’s to really assess and say, “Do we have the right partner that’s going after this for the same right reason?” Because I, I believe firmly if you’re delivering what’s in the best interest of the customer, everyone else succeeds, ourselves and the partner included.
[00:20:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, then how do you… Certainly, customers wanna feel like they’re being listened to and, and certainly, that’s, that’s a key part of, of what you’re saying. How do you, how do you strike that balance between, you know, a customer being felt listened to versus being felt like they’re, I don’t know, being wiretapped (laughs) or some-
[00:20:36] JD Carter: (laughs)
[00:20:36] Greg Kihlström: You know, like, in other words, how do you, how do you bal- you know, strike that right balance with, with privacy and, and things like that?
[00:20:51] JD Carter: Yeah. No, this is a really, I think, important tension point right now that we’re experiencing in the market because companies, companies in particular, like, they don’t wanna get into regulatory issues ’cause we’re seeing a lot more privacy regulation come into place. But for me-
[00:21:05] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:05] JD Carter: … even more important than that, it’s you don’t ever wanna lose trust with your customer.
[00:21:09] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:21:10] JD Carter: There’s nothing harder to recover from than losing trust. And so, I think where the balance comes in is it comes from transparency and control. So, the more transparent we are with the customers, the more willing they’re, th- they are to share their data with us.
[00:21:25] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:25] JD Carter: And, also understanding that when they do share data, there’s a value coming back to them, right? Like, it, it, there is a value in the data that they’re sharing, so what are we reciprocating by providing them, you know, the features that they’re looking for, providing-
[00:21:41] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:41] JD Carter: … them with the feedback that they’re seeking? And that’s how I think that we really try to balance this out. The other thing that we’ve done is really try to focus at a product level to get the certifications to validate it, not just by us, but by third parties. We just rolled out our FedRAMP certification or our FedRAMP Authorization High. we’ve got SOC 2 compliance. We’ve got ISO compliance. Like, all of these things are important to, I think, put your money where your mouth is as far as saying like, “We’re doing this at a privacy level between our- yourselves, Mr. Customer, Mrs. Customer, and us,” but-
[00:22:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:22:14] JD Carter: … also helping to protect your organization from third-party threats.
[00:22:20] Greg Kihlström: So, as we wrap up here, couple, couple things here. Wanna talk about, certainly, strategy is something that is, kinda like AI. It’s, it’s often talked about and, and yet, you know, I, I think that there’s definitely a gap between talking about a strategy, putting the deck together, talking it through, and the actual execution of that, right? So, you know, it’s one thing to, to create a strategy. It’s another to, to see it through. How do you, you know, as a, as a chief strategy officer, you know, how do you… What’s your recommendation to make sure that these things don’t just stay in, in PowerPoints and, that a strategy can really translate into tangible results?
[00:23:04] JD Carter: Yeah, that day-to-day work is so important. If you, if you aren’t able to translate that strategy into the task where that gap exists, th- then you’re not gonna obviously accomplish what you’re trying to do as an organization. And so, for us, at, at Vasion, what we try to do is we have, a system called m- missions of aspirational performance, or MAPS. They’re similar to OKRs, but we’ve actually taken OKRs and weaved that type of a system into our company values and aligned that to our vision, right? And so, here’s how it works. We, we assess where we’re at relative to our vision, and then we identify, what is the next most important mission that will help move us closer to accomplishing our vision?
[00:23:44] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:44] JD Carter: And then we break that mission down into cross-functional supporting missions, and this is very much a, a bottoms-up and collaborative process. Like, we set the vision at a strategy level of what is the next most important mission for us to accomplish, but then we open that up to the organization to understand, I see where we’re going. There’s clear alignment and visibility in where we’re going as an organization. Now, the creativity and the collective intelligence of the organization comes together to create supporting missions that allow us to put- push these things forward. And really, it’s all about mo- a few, a handful of things, right? Like, number one, we have to have clarity on the mission. The more clear it is, the better people understand, the more aligned they can be to that.But
[00:24:30] JD Carter: then, not only that, then we have to create accountability, so there’s an agreement that happens in that process between an, a mission owner and a contributing mission owner.
[00:24:38] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:38] JD Carter: That they understand what are they working to accomplish, and then we do regular check-ins. Like there’s a cadence on h- what type of progress are we making against this. And we’re willing to open and open to reassess that. So every, you know, month or so, we’re sitting down and going through this and seeing what progress is being made, and honestly, at the end of the day, if the progress we see is being made but it’s not in the right direction, it’s okay to actually change the, a- and reposition the mission to move us in the right direction. ‘Cause a lot of times-
[00:25:08] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:09] JD Carter: … you don’t know everything up front and you gather information along the way. So it’s not about perfection. It’s about really tight alignment and making the necessary adjustments to ensure that the execution that’s happening on the day-to-day stays aligned with the vision and the strategy.
[00:25:26] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that, to me, that sounds like an, you know, a- an agile process, (laughs) right? So it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, which from my perspective just mean, you know, it’s not reactive. You know, what you’re saying doesn’t sound reactive. It sounds like it’s based on an understanding and actually be- actually revisiting and measuring, right? I mean, ’cause I assume measurement is a, is a key component of this, right?
[00:25:52] JD Carter: Yes.
[00:25:53] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:25:53] JD Carter: Yeah, as we sit down, like y- you create, the, the missions need to have a component of, solid measurement into those so we can see are we making progress against that, and really, it’s about the ability for us to be agile, as you mentioned, right? It’s about planned responsiveness and how do we adapt as we find new information or things change in the process. And that’s what this whole MAP framework is all about. It’s, it’s because we operate in these cycles with clear metrics, it builds in a natural moment for us to course-correct.
[00:26:31] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:26:31] JD Carter: You know, we’re not locked into an annual plan that may become obsolete in March. If, if we’re in it and all of a sudden we see it needs to shift, we can make a change to that and adapt accordingly. And it’s … But building that into your culture is the harder thing. So that’s what we’ve learned is as you help to reinforce this behaviorally, saying like, “Look, as you get into this, it’s safe to make a change. It’s safe to fail.” That’s why we actually call these aspirational performances.
[00:26:57] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:57] JD Carter: We wanna stretch ourselves. These aren’t imperative things that must happen. These are goals that we’re stretching ourselves to achieve, and we need to understand if there’s a time that we need to adapt and move, we can do that very quickly. And what that stems from is this clear vision alignment and an empowered decision-making down the organization to be able to go and say, “Hey, this isn’t aligning with where we thought it would. We need to make an a- we need to make an adjustment,” and we go ahead and do that.
[00:27:26] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah, love it. Well, JD, thanks so much for joining today. I got one last question for you before we wrap up here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:27:39] JD Carter: Yeah, so for me, I think, ooh, continuous learning is super important. as you are organizing… As I organize my time, I should say, I really kinda bucket my learning into a couple of different types. Like there’s formal learning. Like I dedicate time to deep reading, books, podcasts, those tor- sorts of things. Then there’s also, like, informal learning, where, we’re having conversations. I- I’ve got s- some groups that I join, and we do, you know, have, some threads going around different topics.
[00:28:09] JD Carter: And then, another one is practical learning, so by teaching, like the concepts that I’m learning, being able to share those across the organization, ’cause as you think about this, strategy needs to be deployed across an organization. How do you think strategically?
[00:28:23] JD Carter: Every leader in an organization needs to understand that. So as I’m learning new concepts and ideas, I’m out there sharing those and teaching those to other leaders in the organization. And then i- i- i- practical is just taking those things that I’m learning and actually apply them into practice every day, and as I do that, it starts to become second nature, and I think that’s what allows … Or, or, or as I look at this, is that’s what’s allowed me to grow with our organization over time. I think that if you’re not building these learning moments into your day, then you’re going to eventually come acr- to a crossroads where either an organization has outgrown the skillset that you provide or there’s a new need that you might not have seen and prepared for. So that’s how I do it, is through continuous learning and trying to really stay on top of things and, like podcasts like this one, so-
