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Key Takeaways

• Versatility and Adaptability Are Key to Success: Paulie’s journey from growing up in a small town to becoming a successful enterprise transformation coach underlines the importance of being versatile and adaptable. Her varied experiences, from managing community projects to welding, equipped her with a unique set of skills highly sought after in the consulting world.
• Background and Experiences Shape Professional Capabilities: Paulie’s early life and diverse job experiences have significantly contributed to her ability to navigate and implement change across different organizational cultures. This underscores the value of a varied professional background in enhancing one’s ability to drive enterprise agility and transformation.
• Overcoming Setbacks and Challenges: The podcast highlights how personal and professional setbacks, such as car accidents and job changes, can be pivotal in shaping resilience and adaptability. Paulie’s story exemplifies how overcoming challenges can open up new opportunities and perspectives, enhancing one’s ability to manage and implement change.
• Building Trust and Relationships is Fundamental: One of the critical themes of the podcast is the importance of building trust and relationships within organizations. Paulie emphasizes how understanding and connecting with people on a personal level can facilitate change and improve outcomes, suggesting that the human aspect of transformation is as critical as the technical or strategic elements.
• Continuous Learning and Growth: The podcast demonstrates the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement in both personal and professional contexts. Paulie’s commitment to acquiring new skills, such as becoming certified in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), and her approach to training and coaching, highlight the need for continuous development to stay relevant and effective in one’s field.

1% Better Episode 12 Transcript

[00:00:00.000] – Craig
Hello, I’m Craig Thielen, and this is the 1% Better Podcast. I’m very excited to have our first employee of Trissential on the show, Paulie Skaja. Once you meet Paulie, you can’t help but like her, her perspective, her story, and her energy, all of which will leave lessons for all of us in 1% Better. Welcome to 1% Better Paulie.

[00:00:25.850] – Paulie
Thank you.

[00:00:27.240] – Craig
All right, well, this will be fun. So, Paulie, you and I have worked together for the past two, three, four years… I’m losing track of time, it’s been a lot of fun. Paulie is part of our Enterprise Agility team, where she helps our clients understand and implement better ways of working, driving change for better outcomes. And this sounds easy, but it actually requires a wide variety of talents and skills, including strategy, leadership, learning development, dozens of different techniques, and coaching at all levels of an organization. The first question that one might ask in this field is, how do you gain the knowledge and experience necessary for such a broad set of skill sets required and a very demanding role at times? So first I’d thought maybe, Paulie, you could just walk us through your background, from how you grew up to your early career, because I think that tells and leaves a lot of clues as to what you’ve become today.

[00:01:25.540] – Paulie
Thank you. I was just telling my mom the other day about how, in 1995, I was telling my dad, I got a new job. And he said, Really? What are you going to be doing? I said, I’m going to be a consultant. And he said, What does that mean? I said, All those jobs I’ve had all these years before? Yeah, everybody wants those skills now in one person, and I’ve got that. It was just really funny because my dad’s like, What do you do? I said, I am a jack of all trades and master of none, and companies need that. I think that that’s where it all came together.

[00:02:06.010] – Craig
If you figure out how to answer that question, I still get that question. What do you do? What’s consulting? What’s management consulting?

[00:02:15.210] – Paulie
Yes, exactly. It’s really funny because I grew up in a small farming community in Southwest Minnesota. I was born in California, and my dad brought us here for his job. It was just my mom, my dad, my sister, and myself. Small town of 311 people. We were very engaged in the community, and we helped run a lot of town celebrations and different things like that. That was my introduction to project management. Didn’t know it at the time, but I helped start my first nonprofit when I was 17. I had been crowned the Queen of my hometown. There were eight girls that ran, and I was the winner.

[00:02:54.470] – Craig
You need to get the pictures out for that.

[00:02:57.890] – Paulie
It’s pretty funny. But I helped start a nonprofit. And also, instead of riding in the normal six parades, I think my dad lined up like 18 or 20. And so that’s how I got to…

[00:03:12.680] – Craig
Dad was an overachiever. So now we know where you’re at that trait.

[00:03:16.000] – Paulie
There you go. Yes, indeed. And then this sounds really stupid, but that year they were promoting. So we had to ride in a fishing boat in all these parades. And we had to have fun with it. So we’re throwing candy from this fishing boat. And just those types of things where you put yourself in these strange environments, meeting all these people that you’d never imagined meeting in your life, let alone now you have to smile and be cordial and all that stuff. And all those skills, will lead to being a consultant and being able to fast forward to where I am today, looking at all these different environments that we’re working in and massive global company that’s my client right now. And each entity is like its own little town. And you have to be able to go into that town and get to know the town folk, right?

[00:04:09.750] – Craig
Right. The culture, as we call it, the big fancy word for it, right?

[00:04:13.680] – Paulie
Yeah, exactly. And so I learned how to do that, riding in a fishing boat around towns.

[00:04:19.910] – Craig
Gosh, Paulie, we’ve got a lot in common. So I grew up in a town of 150, I did the town parade and I wrote a unicycle juggling. I was just thinking when you were talking about that story about how I used to think that being a small town was so boring and I had to get out. But on the other hand, you’re absolutely right. You have to wear every hat. Every day, everyone’s doing everything. And so it does give you a wide variety of like, oh, you need help baking, or you need help building a garage, or you need help doing this. Everyone knows how to do everything. So it’s very interesting perspective.

[00:04:59.140] – Paulie
Which my very first paying job as an adult graduated from high school, I was a welder. And the irony is, and I’ve held so many different types of jobs through the years, but my current client, when I first went in, I went in for business agility, and there was this idea that you can’t help us because we’re not IT. Listening to the story, it was because they saw me in a certain light. When I shared that was my first job, all of a sudden, the defenses came down and they were able to see me as one of them. They knew I could at least start to understand where they were coming from, which was really cool. When I work with people in the teams or I coach people and I’m a trainer as well. When I do these activities and help people get outside of where they are today to see the possibilities, it’s really about looking at your past to see what are all those skills that you’ve forgotten because you now have this formal training. How can some of those past skills help you today? Because you learned and we forget that we opened doors and we thought it’s like coloring outside of the lines. What else can we do to create a new outcome or whatever? Anyways, it’s just fun taking some of the things that I’ve done in the past and showing how they actually are relevant today in this fast-paced world.

[00:06:26.150] – Craig
Yeah, give us a little insight into that. I was trying to keep track on how many different jobs and roles. I lost track at about 10 or 11. But just very quickly, walk us through the progression of your career all the way from when you said you were a welder, just all the different roles.

[00:06:42.570] – Paulie
I was a welder. I did retail. I was actually a manager of a fabric store. I wound up becoming a manager of a chocolate store, the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in California for a mall, then came back to Minnesota and got into more fabric retail. I was a bartender, did hospitality, so waitress and all the customer service, yeah. I actually worked at a hardware store. I had forgotten about that when we talked before I came to Minnes-.

[00:07:13.340] – Craig
You got a problem solved at a hardware store because everyone comes in with the problem, right? They do. I need to fix this. Or do you have this? And you got to figure it out, right?

[00:07:21.100] – Paulie
That’s right. That’s right. And then wound up coming to Minneapolis and worked for a bank that had the world’s first telebanking service. I got to do that. I did some more retail management, went to work as a temp. I got to work as the concierge for the Minneapolis Athletic Club. And then I wound up at a medical company and did duplicate data entry for a JD Edwards implementation. This was back in the day where you’d get a card handwritten by the CSR and they would enter it into the system of record and then they would give it to us and we would have to create a duplicate copy of it in the new system. Nowadays, we just data flow. But I was so great at breaking the system that I became part of their QA team. I was really great with technology in high school. I was the only girl in IT and I learned some programming and things like that. I wound up getting into QA, then became a business analyst for the company, then went on maternity leave.

I was six weeks into maternity leave and my boss said, We have an opportunity. I came and interviewed and I wound up getting hired two levels higher than I was interviewed. It was for a position to be an analyst to help solve some of the insurance and billing issues. Then I wound up in customer service, got promoted into inside sales, handled the northeast region of the country, did some pretty cool things there, and then wound up going into a manufacturing company, high-end furniture. I did training and I did sales and then went to a consulting firm. I became part of the HR team and I actually built resumes. People would send in their resumes and I would put them in the format for the company. I did all the reference checks, and I was so great at turning reference checks into more business for the company and into more candidates for the company. They wound up putting me into a recruiting position. I was really great at connecting people with jobs. The resume looked great, but the people didn’t understand and they wouldn’t close the deal. It’s like, What happened? You’re perfect for this. They’re like, Well, they just didn’t like me or they just whatever. Then when I dig deeper, it’s because of their limiting beliefs.

That’s how I actually got into coaching was by helping people get rid of their limiting beliefs. Then I went on to, I ran my very first project. I had three computers and I went in and I asked the owner of the company to get me another computer, or could we upgrade to Windows?

[00:10:05.150] – Craig
I’ve heard of people saying, I need one keyboard for each hand, but four?

[00:10:11.230] – Paulie
I had already talked to the IT director and I said, Here’s the deal. He said, Here’s your choice. I went in and I talked to the owner and he agreed. The IT director was on board and I ran a project to upgrade from DOS to Windows. I trained all 32 employees in the office how to use the new technology and the applications. That was… That’s how I got into project management. The consultants had heard about what I did and they wanted me in the field. I was making too much for the company as a recruiter. I actually left and went to another firm and became a consultant and got to do some pretty cool stuff. I did some marketing editing for the governor at the time. I was working as a lead in the Y2K efforts for the state of Minnesota. I worked on one of the world’s largest data trends, so not duplicate data, but actually world’s largest medical company data transfer projects for a large firm that they literally, a couple of companies merged. We had to get all their data synced up in one system from all the other systems. That was a huge effort. That was pretty cool. But yeah, I think I’ve held somewhere around 28 different jobs and can’t even tell you how many roles.

[00:11:26.240] – Craig
I feel less bad that I don’t remember all of them because like I said, after about 11, I lose track. So many people in their career… I mean, many people have had one change, two changes, maybe three, but to have so many, it’s almost like you’re probably forgetting some of them, right? What do you think the common thread? I mean, is it that you just get bored and you’re always looking for something new? What would you say is a common thread throughout all of those roles?

[00:11:55.760] – Paulie
I think it’s a combination of I’m always looking for continuous improvement within myself and the companies that I work with. And if things start to become status quo, yes, I get bored and I want the next challenge. And not all companies are ready to go there. And as a consultant, it’s cool to be able to be at a client site for six months a year where I’m at right now over two and a half years. And that’s literally the longest I’ve ever been at any one employer. Literally, I’ve never worked…

[00:12:30.500] – Craig
I was just thinking as you were going through all these jobs, man, we’re lucky to have you for as long as we have because it’s about time for a new job. But you’ve had a lot of challenges. That’s one of the things about the space that we call agility is that it’s incredibly… There’s been so many different challenges and so many different groups and so many different areas and techniques. There’s literally probably 10, 12, 14 different techniques. So it’s almost like you said, the whole accumulation of your career and everything you’ve learned from childhood, it’s like you can use some of that and you need it all. And that’s one of the challenges with this term called an Agile Coach, which is probably one of the most overused terms on the planet, is it really means 100 things to 100 people. And you really need so much if you’re really going to try to coach at all levels. You’ve got to be looking at that going, I need all that, right?

[00:13:29.930] – Paulie
Definitely. Definitely. Because you never know what piece of your past is going to help you today and help others get forward to move into their future.

[00:13:39.230] – Craig
Yeah. And one of the things I want to talk about a little bit is I think you’ve also had some setbacks along the way. It hasn’t been all great roses and Super Bowl, so to speak, but you had a medical challenge that set you back for quite some time. So talk a little bit about some of those setbacks that you’ve had and how that’s altered your mindset as you’ve had to overcome them.

[00:13:59.330] – Paulie
Yeah, I’ve had bad luck with other drivers. I’ve had a few car accidents. That’s actually why I wound up in Minneapolis. I went through six months of rehab. And the beautiful thing was I got through that program, learned how to basically live again, and it opened the door for me being available to that telebanking position. I was working in that role as a tele banker, and I was trying to get on the bus, and the bus driver shut the door in my face, and I slipped on the snow and the bus rolled over me. I couldn’t sit any longer, which is why I went from telebanking back into retail because I had to be able to stand and move and change my positions all the time. Then I got pregnant with my daughter and then I couldn’t do the lifting anymore. Each one of these circumstances, you look at it as one door is closing, another is opening. That’s how I look at it.

2017, I had an opportunity to be t-boned as I was going through an intersection, someone ran a light. Literally, we were just talking about this this weekend because as that happened, you go into this fight-or-flight mode, and I just adrenaline kicked in. My first thought was, I’m okay, my car is not. How’s the other person? I went over there and her first words out of her mouth was, I wasn’t on my phone. Then I said, I don’t care. I just want to make sure you’re okay. Then I let her know. I’ve called 911. We were right by the police department. They showed up. They blocked off the scene. I got into the ambulance because I didn’t realize how hurt I was. They helped me over. I got into the ambulance, and when I sat down, all of a sudden, everything started to relax. I’m like, Oh. It was just pain through my body. They put me in a wheelchair. They got me into the emergency room, and they’re asking me all these questions. My husband walked in the door and all of a sudden I couldn’t process anything anymore.

I had scrumbled my brain. It was shock and it was also I wound up with a traumatic brain injury. I wasn’t even aware of it and went through six months of brain therapy. One of the things that I learned long ago was surround yourself with amazing people and never be the weakest link. I’ve done that ever since. When this happened in 2017, I had such a fantastic team around me that we were able to accomplish something that… I mean, as soon as our work was done, which was going to be in… That was in April and our work was scheduled to be done in August. As soon as our work was done, the very first day, we saved the company three and a half million dollars by flipping the switch. You don’t always get to make that impact. I was able to still lead my team and be there to help answer the questions and everything, even in my diminished capacity, because we worked so well together. And I think that’s what’s really important is building that team and that trust and that supportive network. And I attribute all of this back to my childhood, and that’s how you grew up on the farm.

[00:17:22.520] – Craig
Yeah, we’ve talked about this a lot on the show where in many cases, some of the best learnings, the breakthroughs, the moments where people took their life and personal or professional to the next level, so to speak, happened when they had tragedy or when they had some major setback. It could be getting laid off or fired or it could be a personal situation and it could be things that are even worse. One of the sayings that we’ve said is that learning doesn’t happen in a place of comfort. So do you believe that? And how now put yourself back in your corporate environment and you’re working with a very large organization, and there is a lot of comfort. There is a lot of we’ve been successful over the years. And how do you get people to understand? You certainly don’t want to put them in a car and run into them, but how do you get them in a place where it is very uncomfortable to get some new learnings?

[00:18:22.730] – Paulie
It is. Well, and most, especially when you’re an agile coach or when you’re working in this agile transformation space, people think you’re trying to come in and, in essence, tell them they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve done it all wrong all these years, and that’s not what we’re trying to do at all. We have to find a way to help them feel comfortable and build trust with us so that we can then help them be okay, like we’re going to be your life preserver for a while to help you feel comfortable with this change so that you can get uncomfortable, but still know we’re going to keep you floating. That’s the image that comes to my mind of what we do is just really the only way we’re going to grow and learn and transform is through when things don’t work. I just said this earlier to a group today that if it’s always status quo, then we’re just running on that hamster wheel. And that’s fine. But if you’re trying to do a transformation or if you want to get to that next level, you have to look at yourself and figure out what has to change, because if nothing changes, nothing will change.

[00:19:29.840] – Craig
Let me ask you this. How do you do that? Every human is different. And as we know, change is one of the hardest things for humans to do. We’re literally not wired for change. And many studies have proven out that it’s incredibly hard, even when people face life-threatening diseases and habits that they need to change to live. What are some of the techniques, some practical techniques? Let’s say someone in the audience is working, their job is to help drive some change, and they’re working with people that they’re not really getting it or they’re not really acting like they want to change.

[00:20:05.570] – Paulie
I think it’s about helping them. Everybody has their own why, and everybody has their own internal motivators. Someone just said to me earlier today in a meeting that the only way they’re going to change is if we make it hard for them. They’ve got to feel the pain. And pain is different. I mean, fear could be a motivator. Fear could be a demotivator. So it’s what I do, like for myself. I’ve already shared, I’ve done a lot of change through the years. And it’s really for me, it’s about continuous growth, continuous improvement. And when I put that lens on a situation and I try to figure out what could improve here, what is the pain? And really ask people like, Okay, so maybe things are going well, but if it could be better, what would you want to be better? And sometimes it’s I had one person say to me, My wife would like to see me, but they want me to work two full-time jobs because I’m good at both of them. I said, Well, then you have to figure out what your priorities are. I’m really excited to see more and more people are starting to promote what you’ll call work-life balance or just balancing life and all the facets.

Because for so long it was push, push, push, get that bigger job, get that bigger paycheck. Money is great. We can do a lot of really fun things. We can make a difference in the world. But we also have to pause and ask, if I’m putting all my time into making money, what am I missing out on? Making sure that those things that really jazz people and fill them up. That’s where that piece of getting to know a person and what motivates them for change, that’s going to be your biggest way of helping them become comfortable with the uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. It’s like you’re sometimes walking through quagmire or sinking in quicksand. Then you’ve got to know you’ve got someone there who can help you get out of that situation. That’s where that trust building and one of the things I really strive to do is build that trust with folks so that they know I’m there for them and I’m there with them, and then we do it together.

[00:22:15.700] – Craig
We’ve used this term a couple of times, agile coach. Some people on the call and the audience may be familiar and some may not. How do you define what is an agile coach to you?

[00:22:27.120] – Paulie
I tell people that I’m brought into companies who want to find better ways to work and who want to help their teams have more fun and they’re just not really sure how to do it. I come in with a fresh set of eyes and I observe people in their natural habitat and I learn what’s going on and then I talk to them about what would you like to do better. Then we start to look at where would you like to go and we create a plan together. As a coach, I just really help people get clear on if they could have things the way they’d like it, what would that look like and what can we do to achieve it? Now let’s make it happen.

[00:23:09.080] – Craig
When you ask those kinds of questions, you get lots of different kinds of answers and you learn a lot of things about people and teams. And some of those things you find are very personal things. Some of those things are vendettas or interpersonal relationships. Some are political, some are just fear, uncertainty and doubt, and I’m not confident or I’m worried. So where are you? And I know, Paulie, you have also really gotten into life coaching and outside of the business scope of things and helping people and understanding people and how they operate and how to live happier lives. So where do you see the line between, I’m here to help you with a process or a method, or I’m here to be a business coach, so to speak, and help you with business problems versus this interpersonal and life coach space? Where do you see those lines crossing?

[00:24:11.030] – Paulie
And it is important to see the lines because as agile coaches or business coaches, we’re not therapists. That’s not our job, nor am I in my consulting capacity, I’m not there to be a life coach. It’s really important to understand people are people and we can’t take our personal lives. We can’t say, Okay, I’m going to work now, so I’m going to set my personal life aside and I’m going to go do my day job, and then I’m going to set my job aside and I’m going to go do my family life. We can’t divide ourselves like that, even though some people like to think they can. It’s really understanding what’s going on. Often people at work will not tell you that what’s really got them agitated is whatever happened at home. Like, maybe the contractor showed up early and now I’ve got to find a new place to have my meeting and I’m running behind all the things. Well, that impacts you. Just let us know that that’s going on so everybody can be there with you and support you instead of trying to be so stoic.

What I mentioned before about the gentleman whose wife wanted to spend time with him, they had a brand new little person at home. Helping him get clear on his priorities and then helping him learn how to speak up for himself with his managers and getting that clarity around. It had nothing to do with me coaching him on his life. It had everything to do with me helping him figure out how to use the right mindset to have difficult conversations to speak up for himself and help carry things forward in a new better ecological manner for him.

[00:25:52.120] – Craig
Yeah. It’s not so much that you have to own all those different areas, but even recognizing that they exist, recognizing that your personal life exists and it shows up whether you think it does or not, and then knowing where to draw those lines and help them draw those lines is helpful in itself.

[00:26:10.660] – Paulie
Definitely. I think one of the biggest challenges some coaches have are boundaries. I know I’ve had to learn that one in many areas of my life because we want to help so much. You can only help people who want to be helped or people who want to help themselves. So the more that we try to push sometimes, the more resistance we get. Just like when you’re walking through water, you can’t run if you just go with the flow. And so I think as a coach, we get to just really figure it out along the way, just like everybody else is.

[00:26:44.700] – Craig
Yeah, I’ve never heard it described that way. That is very true. Sometimes the harder you push, the more resistance you get. So along those same lines, as a consultant, which on one hand you get to use a wide variety of all of your experience and knowledge, and it’s challenging. You’re always expected to be a step ahead of where the client is. And it’s not just a singular client, it’s dozens or hundreds of people. And we need to stay ahead and always learning and growing ourselves. So how do you do that as an individual? How do you challenge yourself to not get set in your ways? Now that you’re getting into year three, how do you grow?

[00:27:24.450] – Paulie
Yeah. So at my client site, one of the things that I do is I build a really great network. I didn’t realize this isn’t normal, I guess, but I just start to get to know all the people and how they interconnect and the engagements that go on, which allows me to see more opportunities. Then I continue to open doors and get to know more people. Doing good work, I think, has helped build a reputation that folks want our services, want my help, want to have my team of coaches working with them. I think that, plus that I’ve gotten some really fantastic support on the inside of my client where they believe in me and they trust that I have their best interest in mind. That support allows me to continue to open new doors preventing boredom. Then also on the outside, so I train at night, I’m continuously… I’ve recently taken a leading with SAFe class (Scaled Agile Framework), and I’m going to become certified in that, not to teach it, but just to have that education. I train classes professionally, and that lets me get to know people around the world from many companies and see what else is going on and learn from them as well. Plus, we’re very involved in our community, and so on a regular basis, going out and doing fun things like town celebrations and just getting engaged in the community and talking with different people and networking. All those are how I prevent myself from getting bored.

[00:29:05.460] – Craig
Well, you’re always doing something. You’re always very busy. It’s been said for a long time, if you really want to understand a subject, then teach it because you have to have a certain level of mastery to be able to teach it. I know you’re always taking on new courses and doing a lot of that. Well, the 35 minutes here has flown by, as it always does. We always finish with one question, and that is looking back at your very wide variety of things that you’ve done in your career… You’re sitting down with yourself as you’re 18, graduating from school or maybe a grandchild, which I know you have a grandchild that recently just celebrated kindergarten, so maybe a little early for him. But what advice do you give the young person about just life and how you can live a better life?

[00:29:57.020] – Paulie
I had an amazing dad who gave me a lot of really great advice that I never realized he was giving me until I was able to start applying it. I’m like, Oh, Daddy used to always say that. I call him ‘Cliffisms.’ The one that I tell people all the time is everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. I’ve had an opportunity to… I just have conversations with leaders, I have conversations with CEOs, whoever. I don’t care what your title is because we’re all people and we all go through the same circumstances. So when I’m talking to teams and they say, You went up and talked to who? I’ll say, But they’re a person and they can help. That’s, I think, the biggest thing that I tell everybody is just everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time.

[00:30:45.800] – Craig
So don’t be intimidated, right? That’s right. Step up. Well, very good. Well, it’s been a blast doing the show today with you, Paulie. Thank you for all the work you do for us and our clients and everything you do outside of work as well.

[00:30:59.070] – Paulie
Thank you for having me. Take care.