April 21, 2025 • 47 mins
In the race to address climate change, technology often steals the spotlight—solar breakthroughs, carbon capture, electrification, and AI. None of it scales without the right leadership. Green progress depends on the people who can fund, integrate, and lead technology-driven organizations to success. Meet Colin Smith and Kahlil Dumas, co-founders of Execnow, an executive placement firm focused on building leadership teams that can scale climate innovation. They connect mission-driven companies—from emerging startups to established companies—with leaders who can grow sustainable operations and adapt to fast-changing markets.
Execnow often places fractional executives, giving companies flexible access to high-levelIt'sent. It's a model that aligns with the pace and complexity of climate tech and helps growing firms stay lean as they grow. Colin and Kahlil's work spans cleantech, regenerative agriculture, biotech, and AI industries, which are being transformed by leaders who can execute and achieve impact. We explore what makes an effective climate leader, how founders can attract the right talent, and why treating people with dignity is more than a personal preference—it's essential to competing in a global, interconnected market. At a moment when the government is erasing climate language from websites and regulatory systems, Execnow is helping companies double down—not pull back—on building the leadership that can navigate uncertainty and drive lasting change. You can learn more about their work at execnow.co
Execnow often places fractional executives, giving companies flexible access to high-levelIt'sent. It's a model that aligns with the pace and complexity of climate tech and helps growing firms stay lean as they grow. Colin and Kahlil's work spans cleantech, regenerative agriculture, biotech, and AI industries, which are being transformed by leaders who can execute and achieve impact. We explore what makes an effective climate leader, how founders can attract the right talent, and why treating people with dignity is more than a personal preference—it's essential to competing in a global, interconnected market. At a moment when the government is erasing climate language from websites and regulatory systems, Execnow is helping companies double down—not pull back—on building the leadership that can navigate uncertainty and drive lasting change. You can learn more about their work at execnow.co
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Tracliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today because it's going to
be an interesting one. Leadership may be the most underdiscussed
(00:30):
lever in the response to climate change. While we often
focus on breakthrough technologies like solar innovations, carbon capture, electrification,
all of the technology that we imagine can take us
through the climate crisis, the reality is that none of
it moves fast or as far as it needs to
without the right people at the helm. Climate tech is
advancing rapidly, but innovation without the leadership to scale it,
(00:53):
to fund it, and to embed it into systems that
actually work, that's the recipe for stalled progress. Today we're
going to talk with Colin Smith and Khalil Dumat, co
founders of exec Now. It's an executive placement firm that
aims to build the leadership core for climate innovation, offering
companies access often to fractional executives, not full time people,
(01:14):
but people who work across multiple projects. They've worked with
startups and established players in green tech, clean tech, and
emerging sectors like artificial intelligence and biotech to find and
retain mission driven executives who can scale sustainable operations. So
we're going to get into what makes an effective climate
tech leader in the conversation today, and how early stage
(01:35):
founders can attract the right talent, why diversity isn't just
a nice to have but a necessity in any market,
and the ways that traditional corporate models are failing fast
growing climate tech companies. There's a lot to talk about,
and you can learn more about exec now and their
work at execnow dot co. Exec now is all one word,
(01:56):
no space, no dash, execnowecs dot com. We're going to
get to the conversation right after this brief commercial break.
Welcome to the show, Colin and Khalil.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
How are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, well, we're gonna we're gonna work out how we
all talk at one time. First, Khalil, where are you?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, I'm located in beavers and Oregon. The founder, co
founder of exec now and all that call introduce himself
as well.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, base here in the Bay area and also the
co founder of exec Now.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
How did the journeys that brought you here leading to
focus on green tech leadership? That's not something a lot
of firms are currently focused on.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, Mitch, great question. You know how we started our
firm is we saw a massive opportunity and gap in
the market when it came to next generation executive leadership
firms as well as advisory firms. We saw across both
green tech, biotech and AI there was a lot expertise
(03:01):
when it came to building teams from zero to one,
also building executive leadership and strategy on mischieg driven companies.
And so we saw a lot of old guard out
there that frankly had old methodology, old connections, and stale methodology.
And we are leveraging AI. We're leveraging community building to
really create a next generation advisory and executive search firm.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We'll talk about how you're using community building in particular
to bring this expertise together in such a way you
can deploy it on behalf of your clients.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
When we think about legacy execs search, I'm from the
Bay Area, no stranger to how that was legacy ran.
It was an old boy club, right if you didn't
know or didn't get indoctrinated into that small group of
elite founders. You necessarily didn't have access to what they
thought was top talent. We're flipping that on its head.
(03:53):
There are a plethora of talent. There isn't a talent problem.
There's really an access problem, especially in the world of AI.
When we start to think about how HR functions run
right and we're starting to think about AI being embedded now,
that's only going to double down on byees. So that's
really what we're seeing and why we're approaching community building
this way is we have top flight executives from all
(04:16):
walks of life, from Fortune fifty companies that are coming
to us now saying hey, I actually never engage with
a recruiter because I never really felt seen or heard
in those engagements. And I also never really felt like
they really cared about mission and value alignment, which is
something overwhelmingly not only millennials are now starting to look for,
but gen Z demands they will not join a company.
(04:37):
They're forty four percent less likely to join a company
that doesn't have a woman in leadership. They're fifty percent
less likely to join a company that doesn't have any
form of diversity in their leadership. And we also know
that from a McKinsey study, companies that have diversity above
average diversity actually drive revenue from innovation forty four percent
more than those that don't. So there's a huge case
(05:00):
in community building not only for exposing and giving talent access,
but for diversity, equity and inclusion. In this conversation and
the way we systematize that and HR is going to
make or break the future of how your company is
able to drive innovation.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Now you say there's not a lack of this talent,
but is there sufficient volume of green tech, clean tech
and sustainable operations experience out there for people to tap into.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, that's a great question, Mitch.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know, I think when we think about the green
tech space and renewable space, this is a generational opportunity, right.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
So it's just as in a sector like biotech or AI.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
There's an opportunity to do mission driven work and there
is talent coming in from different fields, whether that's fintech,
whether that's AI, whether that's biotech that want to participate
in this generational shift we have towards climate tech and renewables.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
So you know, the talent is out.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
There, and if you've worked operations at one company in
a different field, you know your ability to come into
clean tech and bring those skill sets and experience can
be really, really impactful.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
So it's not a talent.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Issue, but it's making sure that to close point, we're
building teams that are adverse and inclusive, so you have
those friction points where that magic happens at companies.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
You know, you think about it this way.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
When you want to bring the best product or service
to a global market, it turns out that your team
needs to reflect society in order to have the best
products and services.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
That is so true and and in the midst of
this ridiculous war on THEI, it's the recognition that we
need to know the people that we're going to serve,
and that you can't do that if you're a monoculture.
That's the end of the one economy that we're moving
out of and into another. But do I hear you
(06:50):
also saying that there isn't necessarily a fundamental difference between
being a green tech leader or being any other kind
of business leader.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
No, I mean, I think there's attributes, right, and skill
sets experience that you can bring from one position or
job to another. Of course, there might be regulatory positions
or supply chain issues positions where you want to have
that experience specifically in green tech, but I think there
are a lot of experiences and applicable skills that you
can bring and we're seeing being brought to clean tech
(07:19):
as renewables grow, there's a bigger demand, and it turns
out a lot of workers want to work on mission
driven at a mission driven companies that are making the
world a better place.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So what would you say the most overlooked qualities of
a successful a green tech leader are what kind of
background should they bring to these roles?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I mean I think there's when we see the marketplace
right now, there's a huge demand for commercialization for example, commercialization,
supply chain COO are top positions that we're filling regularly
for renewable and clean tech companies right now, so that
seems to be an in demand position.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We're also seeing a bigger demand.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
In fraction work and consultative work, and I think Khalil
has some insights there that might be helpful to share
as well.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know, when we're looking at kind of
this industry agnostic type talent. It goes to everything, you know.
Colin said, I think there's a huge opportunity right now,
specifically as we're watching federal agencies get gutted, there's all
this great talent now on the market who's actually looking
at the private sector, looking at that startup world and saying,
how do I take the green technology that I've accumulated
(08:28):
and really entrench it in these big company Lisa Jackson's
one of my favorite people in this lane. She started
fractionally at Apple and she's one of ex Obama's EPA directors,
and so when we're really looking at what she's doing,
she is the one leading and driving the initiative environmental
initiatives at Apple. You know, Apple's ready to be carbon
(08:49):
neutral for its corporate operations and it's committed to an
entire product, lifestyle, life cycle, culture and neutral by twenty thirty.
So really looking at this big opportunity right now, especially
with you know, news that may not be great, but
this is how we're taking some of that maybe what
folks would see as a challenge in really turning it
into opportunity in the green tech space. And again, not
(09:11):
only leaders that were in green tech. You know, again,
when it comes down to building companies, it's really comes
down to emotional intelligence and your soft skills, and those
things are translatable across all industries. And that's really to
Colin's point needed today, Right, we have to listen, and
not only listen, we have to show that we're going
to act on what the folks were saying and bringing
(09:32):
in the executive talent. They have to be in a
space where they're able to sandbox and test things that
will work and maybe won't work. But again that's how
we chart forward.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, Agility, it is key. I mean that you're describing
is just simply the willingness to do a lot of
experimentation and not necessarily successfully, but to learn.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we coach
our clients on is that when we're looking at leaders,
we need system thinkers, we need deep collaborators, and we
need people emotionally intelligent. Those are the three attributes are
really mission critical when we're looking for leaders at early
stage companies or companies that are starting to scale.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You've talked about fractional roles a couple of times already.
Why is a fractional leadership system the right approach for
many companies today. The idea that somebody might have two
jobs would have freaked out people of my generation, for instance, Yeah,
why should that the right way to go?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
You know, Fractional leadership isn't about you know, being everywhere
at once. I think that's a really easy point that
people latch onto. It's really about being intentional, embedded where
it matters, and moving quickly. It's about bringing that senior
level expertise into critical moments of transition, whether that's productization, commercialization,
like Colin mentioned, go to market, fundraising without over hiring
(10:53):
too soon. That's the biggest piece that fractional brings, which
is different than a consultant, right. Consultants tend to be
really expensive him and do a whole lot of strategy
and not a whole lot of implementation, whereas fractional workers
do just the opposite. And so, you know, for example,
with the client of ours recently, think about the journey
of hiring a COO CPO at a renewables company and
figuring out six to eight months in that they actually
(11:16):
can't bring the innovation that you're looking for, yet you've
paid you know, two to three to four hundred thousand
dollars in salary as opposed to paying you know, sixth
of that and starting to test and being able to
go contract you know, in some cases month by month,
But we really advocate for you know, three to six months, right,
being able to find and interview that leader. I always say,
fractional work is the best interview you can ever give.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Well, as a longtime fractional worker, I concur I mean,
let's dig into this a little bit more. Elon Musk
seems to be the ultimate fractional leader, but it's clear
that he's a little bit over extended. Let's just put
it that way. The fractional nature of his work has
actually diluted the value of several of his companies as
(12:00):
a result of his continuing diversification of effort. To put
it mildly, what can we learn from the rise of
someone like Elon and make improvements on what we've learned
from that process?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, you know, let's let's be honest. Asking if Elon
Musk is the ultimate fractional leader is like asking if
a lightning storm is the future of electricity. Right, It's entertaining,
It's an entertaining comparison, but it's not super useful. I
think really the Musk model is personality driven, not sustainable
or really collaborative leadership, which is what we've been kind
(12:35):
of talking about for the first ten minutes. Again, it's
it's really about folks like Lisa Jackson, who really are
those visionary leaders that can balance not only innovation, not
only ecosystem building, but also use their impact with integrity,
which is what I really think fractional leaders do really well.
But call them, I'll let you. I'll let you continue there.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
No, I think I think you nailed it.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, I think there's there's better leaders to point to
who are doing great work, not cutting funding for biotech
companies or cutting funding for scientific research or renewables itself.
I think there's better leaders we can point to. But
that being said, you know, I think of two leaders
right now that we are are clients of ours. New
(13:19):
and Energy. They're renewable company based in Mountain View. Founder
came from NASA work on the Mars Rover battery, and
then co founder came from Wall Street where she did
quant trading. Team is very large and on the engineering side,
they're building a long duration renewable battery that takes carbon
and then creates energy, So some really revolutionary technology.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And why point to them is what they've done. We've
been with them for a.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Little over two years, building both their leadership team as
well as zero to one team on the technical non
technical side. What is really special about their kind of
leadership is that they built a mission and values driven company.
So they had an idea, they're bringing it to market,
raiding it, but they're focused on values. What are the
(14:03):
core values of the company to make sure that we
can all do our best work and get to our.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Mission and goal.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
And so when we think about leadership, and especially at
earlier stage companies, we should be setting that foundation of values.
That's where the best magic happens for companies and a
lot of older a lot of companies that we work
with that might have been around for five or ten years,
have their Series C or might even be public. Sometimes
having a refresher on values and how those are implemented
(14:30):
at the company can really change how the workforce works
within the company, helps with retention and also attracts new
talent as well.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So what would you say are exemplars of that kind
of value system that you're describing, What do we need
for a green tech success where we want to go.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I mean a few values that we make sure to
suggest to companies, but this really has to be organic,
something that comes from bottom up and the leaders port
and drive that vision home to attract talent and again
to retain the best talent.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Some of the values I think are really really helpful
creating safe environments for people to do their best work.
That's one area. Also having a value of innovation and
failing quickly. It's okay to fail, right. I think there's
this tendency where everyone is scared to fail. The best
clients we work with create environments where it is okay
to fail. You want to fail fast, and you want
(15:26):
to learn from it and iterate and so you know.
I think that creating an environment where people can do
their best work and feel safe and heard, and then
also that ability to create innovation through failure are two
key components that I really enjoy hearing about when our
clients are building. But I'm curious, a clo from your
vantage point, what are some values you think are important.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
One value that I think doesn't get enough attention is connectivity,
especially in the AI space where you know, I was
on a previous show just talking about how I think
AI is going to force the hand in more person
to person interaction. I think that's just naturally going to happen.
People are going to doubt email messaging, digital messaging, so
they're going to say, you know, is this real. In
order to really break through and drive innovation, you need
(16:09):
to be able to leverage relationships. You need to be
able to cultivate and catalyze that network effect. And I
think that is something within a company that really needs
to be there. I mean, I think all of us
sitting here have been in a company where we were
withholding our genius because we didn't like a leader. We
were withholding our genius because we weren't getting along with
our manager or coworker. We were kind of quiet quitting,
as you know gen Z likes to say now and
(16:30):
so I think that connectivity piece is a real challenge,
especially for established companies. I mean, to Colin's point, we
go in and have to make these seismic paradigm shifts.
There are people who were there who actually liked that
old way of operating. So we see a lot of
churn as opposed to those folks we get in at
the preseed level where we're able to actually set their
(16:51):
foundation up to have that connectivity, to have that inclusion,
to have that innovation, to have those values that Colin mentioned.
So yeah, I would say I've been really at vocating
for connectivity because I doubt how much connectivity truly exists
in more established companies today. And I'm talking more on
the Fortune five hundred side.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Let's flip this around, not from the executive perspective, but
if I'm an employee, what am I looking for in
a green tech leader?
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I mean, I think the one thing that immediately pops
in mind is open line of communication and transparency.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
So, we've been really fortunate to work with some awesome
startups that have gotten to their goal, have sold their
companies and created a lot of value in the market
and made impact. There's certain attributes that we see time
and time again, and part of that is we should
be looking for open lines of communication, transparency and the
ability also for everyone to have a say.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So, leadership has a vision, but throughout that vision it
needs to be supported by management and by everyone in
the workforce. So I think at the end of the day,
it's really unified goal and open communication is really a
game changer, and also that insparency. Companies tend to get
in this maybe older style of management where they want
to high data and that is certainly not the way
(18:08):
that companies that are successful in today's market tend to perform.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, for me, it's cut and dry and groundedness. I
think one of my favorite analogies is, if you know,
reality is the poll that keeps us grounded. A vision
is what can cause us to kind of float away.
So leaders need to have that good tension that keeps them,
you know, grounded in reality with the difficulty and where
we actually are in green tech and what actually needs
(18:33):
to happen as opposed to what we think should happen
or where we want to go. So that's something that
overwhelmingly when I engage with executives or even employees, they
don't want a leader that is too visionary, that doesn't
understand where they're at today. That's something that's really critical.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
I think you nailed it. I mean, this is something klil.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You and I have the luxury of engaging with a
lot of founders, early stage and later stage founders and
you know, what's mission critical for leaders is being able
to connect the dots between technology and narrative.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
What is that.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Ultimate story here? What is our ultimate vision? And certainly
with technical founders, that can be really hard where they're
so caught up with amazing IP that's been created, but
they're not necessarily connecting the dot with mission and then
the overall arching story.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
What you're talking about that poll, Khalol you just described
is what we all hold on to in the heavy
winds that are blowing us this way and that in
this both rapidly innovating and increasingly prices driven economy that
we live in right now, this is a really interesting conversation.
We need to take a quick commercial break. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Let's get back to the conversation with Colin Smith and
Khalil Demas. They are co founders of exec Now, an
executive placement firm focused on clean tech, green tech, and
advanced technology markets. Gentlemen, what are some common leadership pitfalls?
What are the shortcomings that you see amongst early st
green tech startups that are trying to scale?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
In particular, I'll start with two and then I'll see
you O. Colin, I think the number one thing that
I come across is delaying your revenue strategy until series A.
It's something that I've seen over and over again and
again they'll blame it on a multitude of things. They'll
have a multitude of excuses for investors, but you can't
(20:23):
find that again, that grounding the reality of the situation,
which is you're a business and you need to have
a revenue strategy even though you want to do good. Right,
We're not a nonprofit and some may be no, not
on nonprofits, but really in that for profit space, that's
something that I see overwhelmingly and we touched on it
already in the second part, which is hiring too quickly
(20:43):
for optics. I mean, I can't tell you how many
founders I've run into who want titles over substance. They
want to be able to say they have an exact team,
and they want to be positioned that way, not only
for investors but going into into fundraising. But it ultimately
always leads to that first point I made, which is
this delay or or crippling of your of your revenue strategy.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, it's a great question, and you nail the klill.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think you know two other things that we see
commonplace are hiring too late or too junior. So there's
this idea that we have a great company, we have
great IP, we have a great team, people are going
to want to work for us. Well, that might be
the case, but there is likely other great mission driven
companies out there in the marketplace that top talent can
go do. So that's something to think about. If you
(21:28):
want top talent in the market, they're not going to wait.
So there needs to be a strategy in place when
we're thinking about hiring, whether this is executive level level,
mid level, or on.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
The engineering or non technical side.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You know, the average days to hire on a fast
end is going to look about sixty days. And that's
like perfect alignment on timing, schedules, all that stuff, you know,
when it comes to leadership and executive level you're looking at.
For example, we just placed a chief Commercialization officer and
a COO. Those search took four to six months each,
(22:02):
and so leadership needs to realize often they kind of
play catch up on hiring well because everything else is
so busy, when founders really should be spending about twenty
five percent of their time. The C levels should be
spending twenty five percent of time recruiting.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
What advice do you have for founders who you know
their mission driven. They've got this great vision, they believe
everybody should want to come and work for them, but
they really struggle to attract executives who have both scale
and green tech experience. How should they communicate what they need?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I mean, it's a great question. I think part of
that storytelling. But bring on experts, And this isn't just
a pitch for our firm, but this is a pitch
for executive search firms and advisories in general in the market.
The reason why we're valuable in the market. Talent is everything.
You know, what makes a company. It's capital, strategy, and people.
And to make sure that you have the best talent
(22:55):
on hand, there needs to be a set strategy from
experts that are coming in saying these are the targets
we should hit, these are the ideal candidates we should
focus on. This is what a job description looks like.
This is what market rates look like, these are the
interview questions. Is a whole system in place that is
really important when you want to find the best talent
in the market.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, I think you know Your mission is your remote,
so you have to lead with it. That's the biggest thing,
you know, making sure. Again I sound like a broken record,
but you're grounded in reality. I think fractional roles, advisor, equity,
strategic consultancies, those are all great starts. But again, you're
not just selling a job, which is what I think
a lot of founders think they're doing. They're trying to
(23:38):
say like, oh, this is so great, you're gonna love it.
Here you're solving humanity's arguably biggest challenge, and there's a
lot of excitement and a lot of opportunity for founders
to really sell that story. I'm ex Nike, so it's
all in the storytelling and then how you simplify and go.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So a lot of these organizations, however, lacked one of
those key components, and that's kap. How do you win
an executive to your team before you've raised capital? What
would you tell them about the opportunity?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah, I'm mean again to close point, this comes down
a mission at that stage where all you can offer
is a hope and prayer and then some equity, sweat
equity and maybe a little capital where that executive can
go in the market and get five x guaranteed more.
You know that mission and story is mission critical for
that to get done, you know. I think also the
(24:30):
fundraising part is really interesting. Some of the companies that
we work with that are are seed level who have
a might have some IP, might have their technology built,
but are still raising funds. You know, there has to
be alignment on storytelling strategy. There's certain things investors are
going to want to see, and COLO probably can talk
about that as well.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, I think there's this is my favorite space to
operate with think because there's there's so much here. I mean,
aside from getting someone excited about mission value aligned work,
we have to pay bills and I think that is
the biggest blocker. So if you're a company that is
struggling with funding, I think first and foremost, you know,
Colin and I created a fundraising methodology in our world
to really help preseed founders raise there. But aside from that,
(25:13):
there's a multitude of levers you can pull. First is
revenue shares. If this person is as good as they
really are, you can offer them a revenue share on
the first couple of deals to really bolster and back
end that agreement that you're trying to come to. I
think the thing that founder safeguard the most, and obviously
investors are looking for from a non deluded perspective is
giving some equity up and giving maybe a faster vesting cliff.
(25:37):
Those are one of the one of the two there.
But again, also there's a world where you skinny down
the engagement, you become fractional, right, where you can then
kind of drip that cash that you have out longer
and give a really refined scope of work. I think
that's where founders struggle is they don't necessarily know what
they need in that role, and so they pay all
this money to hope that this person's going to structure
(25:58):
and create something when that's really on the role of
not only founders, but if you have a really good
cap table, your cap table with you to figure out
what do we actually need to move forward and also
how do we align this in a way that will
actually align with the revenue share agreement if you have one,
to get money into that leader's pocket so you can
show them unique business.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I have had that strategy in place in a couple
of different organizations where we brought somebody in with a
revenue share opportunity. But what I found was that more
than half the time, that person is not really ready
for the startup world. They came from some big company,
are used to a three hundred to six hundred thousand
dollars a year base and are looking at you know,
(26:38):
within a month or three months of joining the project,
they're they're impatient for that payoff. And that's a failure
of startup thinking rather than a failure of executive expertise.
How do you vet people to confirm that they would
be successful in that kind of a structure for the relation?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Colin hears me say this at least once a week.
History is the best indicator of future performance. Show me
a case where you've been in a revshare environment and
crushed it. I think on the other side, I like
to take accountability and I like to be really direct.
What's going to happen if you don't get your revenue share?
How's that going to make you feel? Are you going
(27:22):
to be out really having honest conversations? And I think
this goes back to the paradigm shift in business. Folks
are getting really candid and transparent because hiding things only
is going to make it terrible when it comes to light,
and it's only going to make the hiring journey tumultuous
for your company given the long, higher times, etc. So
just getting really candid with your candidates, and I think
(27:44):
the last thing is and this is where folks bring
us in. It's okay to not have all the answers.
It's okay to say I have no idea how to
navigate this. I don't have a lot of cash, but
I have a great idea and I am confident that
I have a structure to get to cash. I just
need someone to stick with me. I've been that leader.
I've made exits and that's how those relationships started. I'll
(28:05):
give you a story. I had a company I really
believed in. I ended up making an exit. We sold
the company of fifty million dollars. We ran out a
cash for six months. I bit that bullet and I
said that in my interview. I said, we ran out
of cash. I'm still going to be here. It might
not be in the full capacity of eighty hours a week,
but I'll be here still. And that was enough for
(28:26):
the CEO on board to say, let's move. That was
a story that I hold near and dear, but I
also hold as a warning people are going to say
what they need to say to get a job done
because they have bills to pay. So that's where emotional
intelligence comes into play. That's when getting really candid and
creative with the questions you ask not to knock people
off balance, but to make it hard to wiggle out
(28:47):
of and give you an answer that you want to hear,
not the truth. And so I think those things are
looser metrics and require a lot of nuance in advising
to get.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Through well fantastic points.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And I keep thinking about the lure from early stage
founders to hire someone from a Fortune five hundred company,
and that can be it typically doesn't end well. Just
because someone's an executive has done amazing work at a
Fortune seven tech company does not mean they have the
skill sets to build at an early stage startup. So
(29:21):
you know, there's not easy answers here. But I would
be looking for that emotional intelligence that history, but also aptitude.
At an early stage startup, you got to play some
bets and there's certain attributes you're going to want to
look for.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
But I think we see.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Oftentimes when we're engaging with earlier Founders Series A maybe B.
They're still looking for that golden unicorn that is going
to be able to solve all their problems, and that's
just frankly doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, I think that's the important We do tend to
mythologize the potential for one person to transform something. You know,
and my questions about Elin musk earlier, a representative of
House society tends to think that way. But we look
for great mand to save us all, but that doesn't
actually exist and has never existed. Let me ask this question, then,
how does inclusive leadership tangibly improve a green tech company's
(30:11):
innovation or ability to innovate or create an impact? Do
you have examples of real world outcomes?
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, one thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I mean this also gets back to groupthink, right, I mean,
this is not rocket science. If you put everyone in
the same room who has the same experiences professionally and
in their lives, there's going to be gaps there that
friction point. To have diverse and inclusive team that has
different experiences, different professional experiences, different lived experiences in their lives.
(30:41):
That is where you get that magic where the best
ideas win. There's not always agreements, but you're going to
be able to see markets from a different angle, You're
going to be able to see and attack problems from
a different vantage point. And there's countless cases of this.
I mean, there's study after study that show companies that
embrace and build diverse and inclusive teams tend to have
a better bottom line. And this is not, again, really complicated.
(31:04):
I mean, just if we put ourselves in any situation
and we're trying to solve a problem, you'd want the
group that you're trying to figure out that problem with
to come from different vantage points and experiences.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
You don't want to be inside the box, you want
to be all over the market interface.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Absolutely. I Mean one of my favorite stories as a
series a fintech company. Their whole business model is helping
soul openers convert from LLCs to s corps. And they
came to me as a black B to B creator
and said, look, we're having a really hard time not
only capturing the black market, but capturing really anyone that
(31:41):
is non white, Like, why is that? And I had
to really sit them down and gently hold their hand
and say what you just described is not only an
education problem, it's an access problem. And a communication issue.
You have to really approach these conversations delicately because there's
a lot of trauma attached to this type of marketing
and you have to really meet that trauma where it's
at and give folks the tools right to come in.
(32:05):
So doing things like company off, doing things like marketing
office hours right, doing really educational you know, webinars that
have folks that look like your market really help invite
in entice. That was one of my more more recent examples.
But to for example, our new energy when we talk
about renewables right, there is rual energy access and emerging
(32:27):
market access and in order to engage in that, you've
got to go find non traditional people in those areas
to really give you the perspective of what's really happening there.
And I mean we were talking about Elon Musk, right,
we look a little bit at the political environment. That
was the issue the Democratic Party is they didn't really
do that. They didn't really fully have that communication prowess
(32:49):
and have that exposure to be able to be truly
inclusive of their full voter base. And we see that
at the startup level too, where you're not fully inclusive
of your consumer base that you're going at.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, it's ideology over narrative, where you think if you
just tell people over and over solubinantly, they're going to
get it, and without the story hooks that make you
enter the story, it's not going to be successful.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Absolute I couldn't agree. Mom Will said, what do.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You think the biggest leadership trends or skill sets to
focus on over the course of the next decade in
green tech might be what kinds of qualities are we
looking for in these.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Leaders I mean, we literally have two meetings a week
an hour long where we go over tech stacks that
are changing in a twenty four hour period when it
comes to AI. So I think nimbleness is going to
be one of the attributes that is going to be
something that we're all going to have to adapt to
at a higher clip rate moving forward. I think from
(33:48):
an executive side, also, we discuss emotional intelligence a lot. Frankly,
we work with a lot of really smart driven engineers
who might need coaching or in sites on some of
those areas that on communication and having that emotional intelligence
to share that story and mission and continue to drive
the team along. So when I think about things that
(34:11):
are going to continue to be mission critical for executives,
it's going to be emotional intelligence and nimblesm being able
to be nimble learn at a fast clip rate. And
then that AI functionality, Like you know, there's a saying
right now that AI is not gonna make people unemployed.
It's going to make people unemployed if they're not utilizing it.
(34:32):
So we see a lot of professionals kind of running
away from it at times, and it's actually something that
people should be embracing right now.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
You know, really at the first step we talked about
this a bit. You know that cross sector fluency is key, right,
being able to reach across the aisle in a multitude
of different industry to bring in innovation from other folks
that aren't in the green tech space. Coalition building, we
know this, right, regulators, community builders, capital providers, getting them
really bought in from a narrative driven leadership perspective. Right,
(35:02):
People need to understand what you're building because it needs
to be funded. But I think the thing you mentioned,
which is a major pain point and something I say
all the time is comfort with ambiguity. I mean, when
you go and you grab someone from a fortune fifty company.
Everything's set up and plugged in. What happens if nothing
come to an empty desk? Is that person going to
be comfortable plugging all the computers in, downloading their own apps,
(35:23):
hiring their own team, doing their own operations, setting up
their own AI automations, setting up their own AI agents.
Are they going to be able to do that level
of work or are they so used to delegating that
they no longer can implement? And so those are kind
of the four things I would say are really imperative,
not only for green tech, but really any industry at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Well, I think your point about dealing with ambiguity is
so critical because what I've seen is the transition and
I'm late career. Everything was written down when I started
my career, and you knew what you had to do
and it was a checklist. But now you adapt your
environment to your needs and the needs of the rest
of your team, and that it presents constant challenges of
(36:06):
ambiguity combined with complexity. Yeah, do you see that younger
workers are coming into the workforce prepared to deal with ambiguity?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I mean, I just I really see a lot of
functional freeze amongst our younger folks, right, they're coming into
these organizations. Everyone know, the conversations we're having are not
normal conversations happening in corporations. They're way more emotional, not
data driven. And so when you're young coming in trying
to find that example, it can almost be like a
(36:38):
deer in headlight situation where you're kind of like, oh,
where do I go? Which is why Colin and I
felt so called to do we do right? We want
to be that vocal leadership that's very clear and doesn't
move that needle. I was laughing when you mentioned you
wrote everything down because I also write everything down still.
But I had a really funny story where I had
a leader. Actually we had a document, a digital document
(36:58):
where we had all our tasks done, like my task
to do is, and they had changed the document before
my meeting, before we had agreed to what we had
agreed upon. It just shows you a little bit of
the guys into where that toxic leadership can seep in.
Now that we are in this digital age, moving that
goalpost becomes really easy. And so these young leaders, I
think have some functional freeze because they're not really sure
(37:20):
what to focus on. When they come in because the organization,
like many right now, are and huge paradigm shifts, which
again could lead to opportunity. What they don't realize is
it's leading to their resiliency. They will become more resilient. Naturally,
as a millennial speaking here, you will become more resilient.
You will find your lane. But yeah, I don't want
to look too rosy glassed at new folks coming into
(37:42):
the workplace because I want to really recognize how hard
it is at this very moment.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, those are fantastic points, and I can't help but
think about the advice I got when I first got
into corporate America, before we started creating our own company,
and it was, you know, saw problems. You know, instead
of waiting for your manager or someone to come to
you and say we need this fixed. If you had
(38:07):
a startup, solve it, get up, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Fix it, no, wait, just do it. And if you
get in trouble, okay, you try to come to Colin's point.
At my first startup, that was exactly what I did.
Was I had my job description, but I was like, hey,
see this is all broken. You guys aren't selling. You
guys aren't teaching people how to use our software, like
we need to build all of this and here it is.
That's the piece that I think new leadership and new
employees are missing. Is it's not just saying, hey, there's
(38:33):
a problem, it's actually taking a stab at solving it
and being courageous enough to present that in front of you.
Think you're smarter.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
If I were a younger professional just getting in, I
would build a relationship with my manager. And if you
had to start up, find out what the founder's problems are.
If you can a link it, a little of that
pain point and take it off their plate, you'll win
value and trust and you'll continue to be able to
build off of that. What else can I take off
their plate and handle for them? So what are their
(39:01):
biggest challenges and how can you help fix them? But also,
if there's a challenge to both your points, don't sit
on your hands, you know, and I get it. I
think at it as a younger profession you're trying to
figure out what you should do if you're supposed to
wait to be told what to do. If you're at
a great company, they should want you to fix problems
and not sit on your hands and wait to be
told what to do.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, well, if only it were always that way. But
here's another observation is that in the context of what
we're describing, that younger worker in these increasingly ambiguous environments,
there's a lot of in my view, a lot of
fragility that they bring to this. But what they need
to take and do with that fragility is translate it
(39:42):
into resilience by doing the kinds of addressing of the
unaddressed problems that they identify. Because if you shit back
and wait for somebody to say that's what you do next,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, or worse right, you be kind of come that
person in the culture that just has a lot of
problems with no solutions. And I've seen some of the
smartest folks at the junior level and senior level make
a swift exit because of that. Nobody wants someone around
who's just going to say there's problems, there's problems, like,
guess we're aware of what's your solution? And so absolutely, Mitch,
(40:15):
I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
It all comes down to relationships.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I mean, that's bottom line, and I think you know,
I also don't want us to fall in the trope
that I think senior level folks and professionals fall in
new We're like, oh, the younger generations or earlier professionals
are lost.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I think we all were there.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
At root, and I'm actually incredibly optimistic about the future
when it comes to the younger professional out there.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I think with access to AI, we see AI.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Adoption happening with younger professionals at a way faster clip
rate than more seasoned professionals, and so I think there's
a lot of opportunity there. So I want to make
sure we're also giving the flowers where they're due for
the younger professionals.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
With that perspective, think out ten years it's twenty thirty five,
Will the US and the world be on the way
toward a truly sustainable economy based on the kinds of
leadership that you see coming into the market.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Now, Yeah, I mean looking ten years out, you know.
I like to think, and this is my own opinion here,
I like to think we'll be further than I think
we think we are going to be in this current moment,
only if we keep investing in people behind the technology.
I think that's key in a world where we watch
(41:34):
people buy companies and then take the stage to become
the innovator or technologist. I think those days are rapidly
going to end as we start to fall behind, and
not only renewables when in technology to China, et cetera,
where the technologists are truly leading. You know, I think
I'll let kind of call and talk to like green
(41:55):
climate tech. But we've already seen huge shifts things like
energy storage for example, or even carbonization urban carbonization. I
mean I was seeing that a decade ago. I worked
for an impact investment firm who was trying to basically
retrofit Section eight buildings to be zero carbon right, which
was which was very innovative, but at the time the
market didn't really want that. But I know there's real
(42:17):
transformative solutions out there. But I think again, we need
folks who don't wait for that permission to lead, who
just go fearlessly forward and give us what we actually
need to move forward. So again, really investing in the
people behind the technology, I think is what will what
is giving the optimism for the future.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
You absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
I couldn't said it better myself, Khalil, So I think
at the end of the day, it does come back
to people, companies made or break on their talent.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
They have.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Talent is everything, and so you want to double down
on that, whether it's strategy or execution, attraction, retention. At
the end of the day, your company will be sixcessful
based off the talent you have.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
At your company.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
So, if somebody is listening to the conversation wants to
either hire or be hired, how do they contact you
and how do they follow your work?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Hey, you can find us at execnow dot co, but
most importantly come find us and ad us on LinkedIn.
We're really responsive. We want to have conversations again to
our earlier point, really want to establish and build those
relationships with you. So don't hesitate to reach out and
we'll make sure we have that link.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Mitch Helli, Colin, thank you so much for your time.
It's been a fascinating conversation. We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Mitch, thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
You've been listening to a conversation with Colin Smith and
Khalil Dumat, who are the co founders of exec Now,
an executive placement company working to provide green companies with
effective leaders who can, as we heard, bring a nimble
approach to solving problems with initiative, storytelling and emotional intelligence.
And you can learn more about execnow at execnow dot
(43:59):
c oh. Exec now is all one word, no space,
no dash, execnow dot co and right now. As the
word climate and environmental data is being removed from our
nation's government websites, industrial policies, and regulatory regimes, it can
be hard to take chances to make the mistakes necessary
(44:19):
to rapidly evolve a company, a product, or a marketing strategy.
But as tech investor Esterdison said decades ago, the key
to entrepreneurship is to always make new mistakes, and today
we have the tools to make new mistakes faster than
at any time in history. AI allows us to model
a variety of potential outcomes and see where we might
(44:41):
adjust our strategy to get there, and we need those
experiments and failures to find our light bulbs that illuminate
the way out of the climate crisis. The mistake that
our political leaders make is to characterize today's climate and
diversity challenges as impediments to progress. They are the catalyst
of the changes that will make American products and services
(45:01):
relevant and profitable in a warming world. That has connected
into a global conversation in less than two generations. Everything
is changing, and rather than get fixated on the acronym DEI,
it's time to recognize that having all the types of
people that you will sell to all over the world
around the table inside a startup or an established enterprise
(45:24):
lays the foundation for global relationships and relationships of the
basis for global sales, and that, folks, is how you
grow your GDP. Instead, we're closing our borders and our minds,
banning words that today's leaders find challenging, and consequently handing
the opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution, the one
(45:45):
that will be built on renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and
a raft of innovations we had not yet seen. We're
handing that opportunity to lead to China, India, and the
global South, where climate change will drive wholesale cultural and
economic transformations over the next decade. The United States cannot
take a seat and watch. We have to get into
(46:07):
this game and we have to lead. So I hope
you'll take a few minutes to share this podcast or
any of the more than five hundred episodes of Sustainability
in your ear that we produce with your friends, your family,
or coworkers, the people that you meet on the street.
We've got five hundred shows to choose from, so writing
a review on your favorite podcast platform can help your
neighbors find us. Folks, you're the amplifiers that can spread
(46:29):
more ideas, so we create less waste. Please tell your friends, everyone, family, coworkers,
like I said, the people on the street, that they
can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible or
whatever purveyor of podcast goodness that they prefer. Thanks for
your support. I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is sustainability in your ear,
(46:50):
and we will be back with another innovator interview soon.
In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care
of one another, and let's all take care of this
beautiful planet of our Have a green day.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Tracliffe.
Thanks for joining the conversation today because it's going to
be an interesting one. Leadership may be the most underdiscussed
(00:30):
lever in the response to climate change. While we often
focus on breakthrough technologies like solar innovations, carbon capture, electrification,
all of the technology that we imagine can take us
through the climate crisis, the reality is that none of
it moves fast or as far as it needs to
without the right people at the helm. Climate tech is
advancing rapidly, but innovation without the leadership to scale it,
(00:53):
to fund it, and to embed it into systems that
actually work, that's the recipe for stalled progress. Today we're
going to talk with Colin Smith and Khalil Dumat, co
founders of exec Now. It's an executive placement firm that
aims to build the leadership core for climate innovation, offering
companies access often to fractional executives, not full time people,
(01:14):
but people who work across multiple projects. They've worked with
startups and established players in green tech, clean tech, and
emerging sectors like artificial intelligence and biotech to find and
retain mission driven executives who can scale sustainable operations. So
we're going to get into what makes an effective climate
tech leader in the conversation today, and how early stage
(01:35):
founders can attract the right talent, why diversity isn't just
a nice to have but a necessity in any market,
and the ways that traditional corporate models are failing fast
growing climate tech companies. There's a lot to talk about,
and you can learn more about exec now and their
work at execnow dot co. Exec now is all one word,
(01:56):
no space, no dash, execnowecs dot com. We're going to
get to the conversation right after this brief commercial break.
Welcome to the show, Colin and Khalil.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
How are you doing today?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, well, we're gonna we're gonna work out how we
all talk at one time. First, Khalil, where are you?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, I'm located in beavers and Oregon. The founder, co
founder of exec now and all that call introduce himself
as well.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, base here in the Bay area and also the
co founder of exec Now.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
How did the journeys that brought you here leading to
focus on green tech leadership? That's not something a lot
of firms are currently focused on.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, Mitch, great question. You know how we started our
firm is we saw a massive opportunity and gap in
the market when it came to next generation executive leadership
firms as well as advisory firms. We saw across both
green tech, biotech and AI there was a lot expertise
(03:01):
when it came to building teams from zero to one,
also building executive leadership and strategy on mischieg driven companies.
And so we saw a lot of old guard out
there that frankly had old methodology, old connections, and stale methodology.
And we are leveraging AI. We're leveraging community building to
really create a next generation advisory and executive search firm.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
We'll talk about how you're using community building in particular
to bring this expertise together in such a way you
can deploy it on behalf of your clients.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
When we think about legacy execs search, I'm from the
Bay Area, no stranger to how that was legacy ran.
It was an old boy club, right if you didn't
know or didn't get indoctrinated into that small group of
elite founders. You necessarily didn't have access to what they
thought was top talent. We're flipping that on its head.
(03:53):
There are a plethora of talent. There isn't a talent problem.
There's really an access problem, especially in the world of AI.
When we start to think about how HR functions run
right and we're starting to think about AI being embedded now,
that's only going to double down on byees. So that's
really what we're seeing and why we're approaching community building
this way is we have top flight executives from all
(04:16):
walks of life, from Fortune fifty companies that are coming
to us now saying hey, I actually never engage with
a recruiter because I never really felt seen or heard
in those engagements. And I also never really felt like
they really cared about mission and value alignment, which is
something overwhelmingly not only millennials are now starting to look for,
but gen Z demands they will not join a company.
(04:37):
They're forty four percent less likely to join a company
that doesn't have a woman in leadership. They're fifty percent
less likely to join a company that doesn't have any
form of diversity in their leadership. And we also know
that from a McKinsey study, companies that have diversity above
average diversity actually drive revenue from innovation forty four percent
more than those that don't. So there's a huge case
(05:00):
in community building not only for exposing and giving talent access,
but for diversity, equity and inclusion. In this conversation and
the way we systematize that and HR is going to
make or break the future of how your company is
able to drive innovation.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Now you say there's not a lack of this talent,
but is there sufficient volume of green tech, clean tech
and sustainable operations experience out there for people to tap into.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah, that's a great question, Mitch.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know, I think when we think about the green
tech space and renewable space, this is a generational opportunity, right.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
So it's just as in a sector like biotech or AI.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
There's an opportunity to do mission driven work and there
is talent coming in from different fields, whether that's fintech,
whether that's AI, whether that's biotech that want to participate
in this generational shift we have towards climate tech and renewables.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
So you know, the talent is out.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
There, and if you've worked operations at one company in
a different field, you know your ability to come into
clean tech and bring those skill sets and experience can
be really, really impactful.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
So it's not a talent.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Issue, but it's making sure that to close point, we're
building teams that are adverse and inclusive, so you have
those friction points where that magic happens at companies.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
You know, you think about it this way.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
When you want to bring the best product or service
to a global market, it turns out that your team
needs to reflect society in order to have the best
products and services.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
That is so true and and in the midst of
this ridiculous war on THEI, it's the recognition that we
need to know the people that we're going to serve,
and that you can't do that if you're a monoculture.
That's the end of the one economy that we're moving
out of and into another. But do I hear you
(06:50):
also saying that there isn't necessarily a fundamental difference between
being a green tech leader or being any other kind
of business leader.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
No, I mean, I think there's attributes, right, and skill
sets experience that you can bring from one position or
job to another. Of course, there might be regulatory positions
or supply chain issues positions where you want to have
that experience specifically in green tech, but I think there
are a lot of experiences and applicable skills that you
can bring and we're seeing being brought to clean tech
(07:19):
as renewables grow, there's a bigger demand, and it turns
out a lot of workers want to work on mission
driven at a mission driven companies that are making the
world a better place.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
So what would you say the most overlooked qualities of
a successful a green tech leader are what kind of
background should they bring to these roles?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I mean I think there's when we see the marketplace
right now, there's a huge demand for commercialization for example, commercialization,
supply chain COO are top positions that we're filling regularly
for renewable and clean tech companies right now, so that
seems to be an in demand position.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We're also seeing a bigger demand.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
In fraction work and consultative work, and I think Khalil
has some insights there that might be helpful to share
as well.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, you know, when we're looking at kind of
this industry agnostic type talent. It goes to everything, you know.
Colin said, I think there's a huge opportunity right now,
specifically as we're watching federal agencies get gutted, there's all
this great talent now on the market who's actually looking
at the private sector, looking at that startup world and saying,
how do I take the green technology that I've accumulated
(08:28):
and really entrench it in these big company Lisa Jackson's
one of my favorite people in this lane. She started
fractionally at Apple and she's one of ex Obama's EPA directors,
and so when we're really looking at what she's doing,
she is the one leading and driving the initiative environmental
initiatives at Apple. You know, Apple's ready to be carbon
(08:49):
neutral for its corporate operations and it's committed to an
entire product, lifestyle, life cycle, culture and neutral by twenty thirty.
So really looking at this big opportunity right now, especially
with you know, news that may not be great, but
this is how we're taking some of that maybe what
folks would see as a challenge in really turning it
into opportunity in the green tech space. And again, not
(09:11):
only leaders that were in green tech. You know, again,
when it comes down to building companies, it's really comes
down to emotional intelligence and your soft skills, and those
things are translatable across all industries. And that's really to
Colin's point needed today, Right, we have to listen, and
not only listen, we have to show that we're going
to act on what the folks were saying and bringing
(09:32):
in the executive talent. They have to be in a
space where they're able to sandbox and test things that
will work and maybe won't work. But again that's how
we chart forward.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, Agility, it is key. I mean that you're describing
is just simply the willingness to do a lot of
experimentation and not necessarily successfully, but to learn.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we coach
our clients on is that when we're looking at leaders,
we need system thinkers, we need deep collaborators, and we
need people emotionally intelligent. Those are the three attributes are
really mission critical when we're looking for leaders at early
stage companies or companies that are starting to scale.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You've talked about fractional roles a couple of times already.
Why is a fractional leadership system the right approach for
many companies today. The idea that somebody might have two
jobs would have freaked out people of my generation, for instance, Yeah,
why should that the right way to go?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
You know, Fractional leadership isn't about you know, being everywhere
at once. I think that's a really easy point that
people latch onto. It's really about being intentional, embedded where
it matters, and moving quickly. It's about bringing that senior
level expertise into critical moments of transition, whether that's productization, commercialization,
like Colin mentioned, go to market, fundraising without over hiring
(10:53):
too soon. That's the biggest piece that fractional brings, which
is different than a consultant, right. Consultants tend to be
really expensive him and do a whole lot of strategy
and not a whole lot of implementation, whereas fractional workers
do just the opposite. And so, you know, for example,
with the client of ours recently, think about the journey
of hiring a COO CPO at a renewables company and
figuring out six to eight months in that they actually
(11:16):
can't bring the innovation that you're looking for, yet you've
paid you know, two to three to four hundred thousand
dollars in salary as opposed to paying you know, sixth
of that and starting to test and being able to
go contract you know, in some cases month by month,
But we really advocate for you know, three to six months, right,
being able to find and interview that leader. I always say,
fractional work is the best interview you can ever give.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Well, as a longtime fractional worker, I concur I mean,
let's dig into this a little bit more. Elon Musk
seems to be the ultimate fractional leader, but it's clear
that he's a little bit over extended. Let's just put
it that way. The fractional nature of his work has
actually diluted the value of several of his companies as
(12:00):
a result of his continuing diversification of effort. To put
it mildly, what can we learn from the rise of
someone like Elon and make improvements on what we've learned
from that process?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, you know, let's let's be honest. Asking if Elon
Musk is the ultimate fractional leader is like asking if
a lightning storm is the future of electricity. Right, It's entertaining,
It's an entertaining comparison, but it's not super useful. I
think really the Musk model is personality driven, not sustainable
or really collaborative leadership, which is what we've been kind
(12:35):
of talking about for the first ten minutes. Again, it's
it's really about folks like Lisa Jackson, who really are
those visionary leaders that can balance not only innovation, not
only ecosystem building, but also use their impact with integrity,
which is what I really think fractional leaders do really well.
But call them, I'll let you. I'll let you continue there.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
No, I think I think you nailed it.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, I think there's there's better leaders to point to
who are doing great work, not cutting funding for biotech
companies or cutting funding for scientific research or renewables itself.
I think there's better leaders we can point to. But
that being said, you know, I think of two leaders
right now that we are are clients of ours. New
(13:19):
and Energy. They're renewable company based in Mountain View. Founder
came from NASA work on the Mars Rover battery, and
then co founder came from Wall Street where she did
quant trading. Team is very large and on the engineering side,
they're building a long duration renewable battery that takes carbon
and then creates energy, So some really revolutionary technology.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
And why point to them is what they've done. We've
been with them for a.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Little over two years, building both their leadership team as
well as zero to one team on the technical non
technical side. What is really special about their kind of
leadership is that they built a mission and values driven company.
So they had an idea, they're bringing it to market,
raiding it, but they're focused on values. What are the
(14:03):
core values of the company to make sure that we
can all do our best work and get to our.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Mission and goal.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
And so when we think about leadership, and especially at
earlier stage companies, we should be setting that foundation of values.
That's where the best magic happens for companies and a
lot of older a lot of companies that we work
with that might have been around for five or ten years,
have their Series C or might even be public. Sometimes
having a refresher on values and how those are implemented
(14:30):
at the company can really change how the workforce works
within the company, helps with retention and also attracts new
talent as well.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So what would you say are exemplars of that kind
of value system that you're describing, What do we need
for a green tech success where we want to go.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
I mean a few values that we make sure to
suggest to companies, but this really has to be organic,
something that comes from bottom up and the leaders port
and drive that vision home to attract talent and again
to retain the best talent.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Some of the values I think are really really helpful
creating safe environments for people to do their best work.
That's one area. Also having a value of innovation and
failing quickly. It's okay to fail, right. I think there's
this tendency where everyone is scared to fail. The best
clients we work with create environments where it is okay
to fail. You want to fail fast, and you want
(15:26):
to learn from it and iterate and so you know.
I think that creating an environment where people can do
their best work and feel safe and heard, and then
also that ability to create innovation through failure are two
key components that I really enjoy hearing about when our
clients are building. But I'm curious, a clo from your
vantage point, what are some values you think are important.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
One value that I think doesn't get enough attention is connectivity,
especially in the AI space where you know, I was
on a previous show just talking about how I think
AI is going to force the hand in more person
to person interaction. I think that's just naturally going to happen.
People are going to doubt email messaging, digital messaging, so
they're going to say, you know, is this real. In
order to really break through and drive innovation, you need
(16:09):
to be able to leverage relationships. You need to be
able to cultivate and catalyze that network effect. And I
think that is something within a company that really needs
to be there. I mean, I think all of us
sitting here have been in a company where we were
withholding our genius because we didn't like a leader. We
were withholding our genius because we weren't getting along with
our manager or coworker. We were kind of quiet quitting,
as you know gen Z likes to say now and
(16:30):
so I think that connectivity piece is a real challenge,
especially for established companies. I mean, to Colin's point, we
go in and have to make these seismic paradigm shifts.
There are people who were there who actually liked that
old way of operating. So we see a lot of
churn as opposed to those folks we get in at
the preseed level where we're able to actually set their
(16:51):
foundation up to have that connectivity, to have that inclusion,
to have that innovation, to have those values that Colin mentioned.
So yeah, I would say I've been really at vocating
for connectivity because I doubt how much connectivity truly exists
in more established companies today. And I'm talking more on
the Fortune five hundred side.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Let's flip this around, not from the executive perspective, but
if I'm an employee, what am I looking for in
a green tech leader?
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Yeah, great question.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
I mean, I think the one thing that immediately pops
in mind is open line of communication and transparency.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
So, we've been really fortunate to work with some awesome
startups that have gotten to their goal, have sold their
companies and created a lot of value in the market
and made impact. There's certain attributes that we see time
and time again, and part of that is we should
be looking for open lines of communication, transparency and the
ability also for everyone to have a say.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
So, leadership has a vision, but throughout that vision it
needs to be supported by management and by everyone in
the workforce. So I think at the end of the day,
it's really unified goal and open communication is really a
game changer, and also that insparency. Companies tend to get
in this maybe older style of management where they want
to high data and that is certainly not the way
(18:08):
that companies that are successful in today's market tend to perform.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, for me, it's cut and dry and groundedness. I
think one of my favorite analogies is, if you know,
reality is the poll that keeps us grounded. A vision
is what can cause us to kind of float away.
So leaders need to have that good tension that keeps them,
you know, grounded in reality with the difficulty and where
we actually are in green tech and what actually needs
(18:33):
to happen as opposed to what we think should happen
or where we want to go. So that's something that
overwhelmingly when I engage with executives or even employees, they
don't want a leader that is too visionary, that doesn't
understand where they're at today. That's something that's really critical.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
I think you nailed it. I mean, this is something klil.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
You and I have the luxury of engaging with a
lot of founders, early stage and later stage founders and
you know, what's mission critical for leaders is being able
to connect the dots between technology and narrative.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
What is that.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Ultimate story here? What is our ultimate vision? And certainly
with technical founders, that can be really hard where they're
so caught up with amazing IP that's been created, but
they're not necessarily connecting the dot with mission and then
the overall arching story.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
What you're talking about that poll, Khalol you just described
is what we all hold on to in the heavy
winds that are blowing us this way and that in
this both rapidly innovating and increasingly prices driven economy that
we live in right now, this is a really interesting conversation.
We need to take a quick commercial break. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Let's get back to the conversation with Colin Smith and
Khalil Demas. They are co founders of exec Now, an
executive placement firm focused on clean tech, green tech, and
advanced technology markets. Gentlemen, what are some common leadership pitfalls?
What are the shortcomings that you see amongst early st
green tech startups that are trying to scale?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
In particular, I'll start with two and then I'll see
you O. Colin, I think the number one thing that
I come across is delaying your revenue strategy until series A.
It's something that I've seen over and over again and
again they'll blame it on a multitude of things. They'll
have a multitude of excuses for investors, but you can't
(20:23):
find that again, that grounding the reality of the situation,
which is you're a business and you need to have
a revenue strategy even though you want to do good. Right,
We're not a nonprofit and some may be no, not
on nonprofits, but really in that for profit space, that's
something that I see overwhelmingly and we touched on it
already in the second part, which is hiring too quickly
(20:43):
for optics. I mean, I can't tell you how many
founders I've run into who want titles over substance. They
want to be able to say they have an exact team,
and they want to be positioned that way, not only
for investors but going into into fundraising. But it ultimately
always leads to that first point I made, which is
this delay or or crippling of your of your revenue strategy.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, it's a great question, and you nail the klill.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think you know two other things that we see
commonplace are hiring too late or too junior. So there's
this idea that we have a great company, we have
great IP, we have a great team, people are going
to want to work for us. Well, that might be
the case, but there is likely other great mission driven
companies out there in the marketplace that top talent can
go do. So that's something to think about. If you
(21:28):
want top talent in the market, they're not going to wait.
So there needs to be a strategy in place when
we're thinking about hiring, whether this is executive level level,
mid level, or on.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
The engineering or non technical side.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You know, the average days to hire on a fast
end is going to look about sixty days. And that's
like perfect alignment on timing, schedules, all that stuff, you know,
when it comes to leadership and executive level you're looking at.
For example, we just placed a chief Commercialization officer and
a COO. Those search took four to six months each,
(22:02):
and so leadership needs to realize often they kind of
play catch up on hiring well because everything else is
so busy, when founders really should be spending about twenty
five percent of their time. The C levels should be
spending twenty five percent of time recruiting.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
What advice do you have for founders who you know
their mission driven. They've got this great vision, they believe
everybody should want to come and work for them, but
they really struggle to attract executives who have both scale
and green tech experience. How should they communicate what they need?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I mean, it's a great question. I think part of
that storytelling. But bring on experts, And this isn't just
a pitch for our firm, but this is a pitch
for executive search firms and advisories in general in the market.
The reason why we're valuable in the market. Talent is everything.
You know, what makes a company. It's capital, strategy, and people.
And to make sure that you have the best talent
(22:55):
on hand, there needs to be a set strategy from
experts that are coming in saying these are the targets
we should hit, these are the ideal candidates we should
focus on. This is what a job description looks like.
This is what market rates look like, these are the
interview questions. Is a whole system in place that is
really important when you want to find the best talent
in the market.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, I think you know Your mission is your remote,
so you have to lead with it. That's the biggest thing,
you know, making sure. Again I sound like a broken record,
but you're grounded in reality. I think fractional roles, advisor, equity,
strategic consultancies, those are all great starts. But again, you're
not just selling a job, which is what I think
a lot of founders think they're doing. They're trying to
(23:38):
say like, oh, this is so great, you're gonna love it.
Here you're solving humanity's arguably biggest challenge, and there's a
lot of excitement and a lot of opportunity for founders
to really sell that story. I'm ex Nike, so it's
all in the storytelling and then how you simplify and go.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So a lot of these organizations, however, lacked one of
those key components, and that's kap. How do you win
an executive to your team before you've raised capital? What
would you tell them about the opportunity?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah, I'm mean again to close point, this comes down
a mission at that stage where all you can offer
is a hope and prayer and then some equity, sweat
equity and maybe a little capital where that executive can
go in the market and get five x guaranteed more.
You know that mission and story is mission critical for
that to get done, you know. I think also the
(24:30):
fundraising part is really interesting. Some of the companies that
we work with that are are seed level who have
a might have some IP, might have their technology built,
but are still raising funds. You know, there has to
be alignment on storytelling strategy. There's certain things investors are
going to want to see, and COLO probably can talk
about that as well.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, I think there's this is my favorite space to
operate with think because there's there's so much here. I mean,
aside from getting someone excited about mission value aligned work,
we have to pay bills and I think that is
the biggest blocker. So if you're a company that is
struggling with funding, I think first and foremost, you know,
Colin and I created a fundraising methodology in our world
to really help preseed founders raise there. But aside from that,
(25:13):
there's a multitude of levers you can pull. First is
revenue shares. If this person is as good as they
really are, you can offer them a revenue share on
the first couple of deals to really bolster and back
end that agreement that you're trying to come to. I
think the thing that founder safeguard the most, and obviously
investors are looking for from a non deluded perspective is
giving some equity up and giving maybe a faster vesting cliff.
(25:37):
Those are one of the one of the two there.
But again, also there's a world where you skinny down
the engagement, you become fractional, right, where you can then
kind of drip that cash that you have out longer
and give a really refined scope of work. I think
that's where founders struggle is they don't necessarily know what
they need in that role, and so they pay all
this money to hope that this person's going to structure
(25:58):
and create something when that's really on the role of
not only founders, but if you have a really good
cap table, your cap table with you to figure out
what do we actually need to move forward and also
how do we align this in a way that will
actually align with the revenue share agreement if you have one,
to get money into that leader's pocket so you can
show them unique business.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I have had that strategy in place in a couple
of different organizations where we brought somebody in with a
revenue share opportunity. But what I found was that more
than half the time, that person is not really ready
for the startup world. They came from some big company,
are used to a three hundred to six hundred thousand
dollars a year base and are looking at you know,
(26:38):
within a month or three months of joining the project,
they're they're impatient for that payoff. And that's a failure
of startup thinking rather than a failure of executive expertise.
How do you vet people to confirm that they would
be successful in that kind of a structure for the relation?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Colin hears me say this at least once a week.
History is the best indicator of future performance. Show me
a case where you've been in a revshare environment and
crushed it. I think on the other side, I like
to take accountability and I like to be really direct.
What's going to happen if you don't get your revenue share?
How's that going to make you feel? Are you going
(27:22):
to be out really having honest conversations? And I think
this goes back to the paradigm shift in business. Folks
are getting really candid and transparent because hiding things only
is going to make it terrible when it comes to light,
and it's only going to make the hiring journey tumultuous
for your company given the long, higher times, etc. So
just getting really candid with your candidates, and I think
(27:44):
the last thing is and this is where folks bring
us in. It's okay to not have all the answers.
It's okay to say I have no idea how to
navigate this. I don't have a lot of cash, but
I have a great idea and I am confident that
I have a structure to get to cash. I just
need someone to stick with me. I've been that leader.
I've made exits and that's how those relationships started. I'll
(28:05):
give you a story. I had a company I really
believed in. I ended up making an exit. We sold
the company of fifty million dollars. We ran out a
cash for six months. I bit that bullet and I
said that in my interview. I said, we ran out
of cash. I'm still going to be here. It might
not be in the full capacity of eighty hours a week,
but I'll be here still. And that was enough for
(28:26):
the CEO on board to say, let's move. That was
a story that I hold near and dear, but I
also hold as a warning people are going to say
what they need to say to get a job done
because they have bills to pay. So that's where emotional
intelligence comes into play. That's when getting really candid and
creative with the questions you ask not to knock people
off balance, but to make it hard to wiggle out
(28:47):
of and give you an answer that you want to hear,
not the truth. And so I think those things are
looser metrics and require a lot of nuance in advising
to get.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Through well fantastic points.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
And I keep thinking about the lure from early stage
founders to hire someone from a Fortune five hundred company,
and that can be it typically doesn't end well. Just
because someone's an executive has done amazing work at a
Fortune seven tech company does not mean they have the
skill sets to build at an early stage startup. So
(29:21):
you know, there's not easy answers here. But I would
be looking for that emotional intelligence that history, but also aptitude.
At an early stage startup, you got to play some
bets and there's certain attributes you're going to want to
look for.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
But I think we see.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Oftentimes when we're engaging with earlier Founders Series A maybe B.
They're still looking for that golden unicorn that is going
to be able to solve all their problems, and that's
just frankly doesn't exist.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, I think that's the important We do tend to
mythologize the potential for one person to transform something. You know,
and my questions about Elin musk earlier, a representative of
House society tends to think that way. But we look
for great mand to save us all, but that doesn't
actually exist and has never existed. Let me ask this question, then,
how does inclusive leadership tangibly improve a green tech company's
(30:11):
innovation or ability to innovate or create an impact? Do
you have examples of real world outcomes?
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, one thousand percent.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
I mean this also gets back to groupthink, right, I mean,
this is not rocket science. If you put everyone in
the same room who has the same experiences professionally and
in their lives, there's going to be gaps there that
friction point. To have diverse and inclusive team that has
different experiences, different professional experiences, different lived experiences in their lives.
(30:41):
That is where you get that magic where the best
ideas win. There's not always agreements, but you're going to
be able to see markets from a different angle, You're
going to be able to see and attack problems from
a different vantage point. And there's countless cases of this.
I mean, there's study after study that show companies that
embrace and build diverse and inclusive teams tend to have
a better bottom line. And this is not, again, really complicated.
(31:04):
I mean, just if we put ourselves in any situation
and we're trying to solve a problem, you'd want the
group that you're trying to figure out that problem with
to come from different vantage points and experiences.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
You don't want to be inside the box, you want
to be all over the market interface.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Absolutely. I Mean one of my favorite stories as a
series a fintech company. Their whole business model is helping
soul openers convert from LLCs to s corps. And they
came to me as a black B to B creator
and said, look, we're having a really hard time not
only capturing the black market, but capturing really anyone that
(31:41):
is non white, Like, why is that? And I had
to really sit them down and gently hold their hand
and say what you just described is not only an
education problem, it's an access problem. And a communication issue.
You have to really approach these conversations delicately because there's
a lot of trauma attached to this type of marketing
and you have to really meet that trauma where it's
at and give folks the tools right to come in.
(32:05):
So doing things like company off, doing things like marketing
office hours right, doing really educational you know, webinars that
have folks that look like your market really help invite
in entice. That was one of my more more recent examples.
But to for example, our new energy when we talk
about renewables right, there is rual energy access and emerging
(32:27):
market access and in order to engage in that, you've
got to go find non traditional people in those areas
to really give you the perspective of what's really happening there.
And I mean we were talking about Elon Musk, right,
we look a little bit at the political environment. That
was the issue the Democratic Party is they didn't really
do that. They didn't really fully have that communication prowess
(32:49):
and have that exposure to be able to be truly
inclusive of their full voter base. And we see that
at the startup level too, where you're not fully inclusive
of your consumer base that you're going at.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Yeah, it's ideology over narrative, where you think if you
just tell people over and over solubinantly, they're going to
get it, and without the story hooks that make you
enter the story, it's not going to be successful.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Absolute I couldn't agree. Mom Will said, what do.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You think the biggest leadership trends or skill sets to
focus on over the course of the next decade in
green tech might be what kinds of qualities are we
looking for in these.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Leaders I mean, we literally have two meetings a week
an hour long where we go over tech stacks that
are changing in a twenty four hour period when it
comes to AI. So I think nimbleness is going to
be one of the attributes that is going to be
something that we're all going to have to adapt to
at a higher clip rate moving forward. I think from
(33:48):
an executive side, also, we discuss emotional intelligence a lot. Frankly,
we work with a lot of really smart driven engineers
who might need coaching or in sites on some of
those areas that on communication and having that emotional intelligence
to share that story and mission and continue to drive
the team along. So when I think about things that
(34:11):
are going to continue to be mission critical for executives,
it's going to be emotional intelligence and nimblesm being able
to be nimble learn at a fast clip rate. And
then that AI functionality, Like you know, there's a saying
right now that AI is not gonna make people unemployed.
It's going to make people unemployed if they're not utilizing it.
(34:32):
So we see a lot of professionals kind of running
away from it at times, and it's actually something that
people should be embracing right now.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
You know, really at the first step we talked about
this a bit. You know that cross sector fluency is key, right,
being able to reach across the aisle in a multitude
of different industry to bring in innovation from other folks
that aren't in the green tech space. Coalition building, we
know this, right, regulators, community builders, capital providers, getting them
really bought in from a narrative driven leadership perspective. Right,
(35:02):
People need to understand what you're building because it needs
to be funded. But I think the thing you mentioned,
which is a major pain point and something I say
all the time is comfort with ambiguity. I mean, when
you go and you grab someone from a fortune fifty company.
Everything's set up and plugged in. What happens if nothing
come to an empty desk? Is that person going to
be comfortable plugging all the computers in, downloading their own apps,
(35:23):
hiring their own team, doing their own operations, setting up
their own AI automations, setting up their own AI agents.
Are they going to be able to do that level
of work or are they so used to delegating that
they no longer can implement? And so those are kind
of the four things I would say are really imperative,
not only for green tech, but really any industry at
the moment.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Well, I think your point about dealing with ambiguity is
so critical because what I've seen is the transition and
I'm late career. Everything was written down when I started
my career, and you knew what you had to do
and it was a checklist. But now you adapt your
environment to your needs and the needs of the rest
of your team, and that it presents constant challenges of
(36:06):
ambiguity combined with complexity. Yeah, do you see that younger
workers are coming into the workforce prepared to deal with ambiguity?
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I mean, I just I really see a lot of
functional freeze amongst our younger folks, right, they're coming into
these organizations. Everyone know, the conversations we're having are not
normal conversations happening in corporations. They're way more emotional, not
data driven. And so when you're young coming in trying
to find that example, it can almost be like a
(36:38):
deer in headlight situation where you're kind of like, oh,
where do I go? Which is why Colin and I
felt so called to do we do right? We want
to be that vocal leadership that's very clear and doesn't
move that needle. I was laughing when you mentioned you
wrote everything down because I also write everything down still.
But I had a really funny story where I had
a leader. Actually we had a document, a digital document
(36:58):
where we had all our tasks done, like my task
to do is, and they had changed the document before
my meeting, before we had agreed to what we had
agreed upon. It just shows you a little bit of
the guys into where that toxic leadership can seep in.
Now that we are in this digital age, moving that
goalpost becomes really easy. And so these young leaders, I
think have some functional freeze because they're not really sure
(37:20):
what to focus on. When they come in because the organization,
like many right now, are and huge paradigm shifts, which
again could lead to opportunity. What they don't realize is
it's leading to their resiliency. They will become more resilient. Naturally,
as a millennial speaking here, you will become more resilient.
You will find your lane. But yeah, I don't want
to look too rosy glassed at new folks coming into
(37:42):
the workplace because I want to really recognize how hard
it is at this very moment.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, those are fantastic points, and I can't help but
think about the advice I got when I first got
into corporate America, before we started creating our own company,
and it was, you know, saw problems. You know, instead
of waiting for your manager or someone to come to
you and say we need this fixed. If you had
(38:07):
a startup, solve it, get up, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Fix it, no, wait, just do it. And if you
get in trouble, okay, you try to come to Colin's point.
At my first startup, that was exactly what I did.
Was I had my job description, but I was like, hey,
see this is all broken. You guys aren't selling. You
guys aren't teaching people how to use our software, like
we need to build all of this and here it is.
That's the piece that I think new leadership and new
employees are missing. Is it's not just saying, hey, there's
(38:33):
a problem, it's actually taking a stab at solving it
and being courageous enough to present that in front of you.
Think you're smarter.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
If I were a younger professional just getting in, I
would build a relationship with my manager. And if you
had to start up, find out what the founder's problems are.
If you can a link it, a little of that
pain point and take it off their plate, you'll win
value and trust and you'll continue to be able to
build off of that. What else can I take off
their plate and handle for them? So what are their
(39:01):
biggest challenges and how can you help fix them? But also,
if there's a challenge to both your points, don't sit
on your hands, you know, and I get it. I
think at it as a younger profession you're trying to
figure out what you should do if you're supposed to
wait to be told what to do. If you're at
a great company, they should want you to fix problems
and not sit on your hands and wait to be
told what to do.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, well, if only it were always that way. But
here's another observation is that in the context of what
we're describing, that younger worker in these increasingly ambiguous environments,
there's a lot of in my view, a lot of
fragility that they bring to this. But what they need
to take and do with that fragility is translate it
(39:42):
into resilience by doing the kinds of addressing of the
unaddressed problems that they identify. Because if you shit back
and wait for somebody to say that's what you do next,
you're done.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, or worse right, you be kind of come that
person in the culture that just has a lot of
problems with no solutions. And I've seen some of the
smartest folks at the junior level and senior level make
a swift exit because of that. Nobody wants someone around
who's just going to say there's problems, there's problems, like,
guess we're aware of what's your solution? And so absolutely, Mitch,
(40:15):
I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
It all comes down to relationships.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I mean, that's bottom line, and I think you know,
I also don't want us to fall in the trope
that I think senior level folks and professionals fall in
new We're like, oh, the younger generations or earlier professionals
are lost.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
I think we all were there.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
At root, and I'm actually incredibly optimistic about the future
when it comes to the younger professional out there.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I think with access to AI, we see AI.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
Adoption happening with younger professionals at a way faster clip
rate than more seasoned professionals, and so I think there's
a lot of opportunity there. So I want to make
sure we're also giving the flowers where they're due for
the younger professionals.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
With that perspective, think out ten years it's twenty thirty five,
Will the US and the world be on the way
toward a truly sustainable economy based on the kinds of
leadership that you see coming into the market.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
Now, Yeah, I mean looking ten years out, you know.
I like to think, and this is my own opinion here,
I like to think we'll be further than I think
we think we are going to be in this current moment,
only if we keep investing in people behind the technology.
I think that's key in a world where we watch
(41:34):
people buy companies and then take the stage to become
the innovator or technologist. I think those days are rapidly
going to end as we start to fall behind, and
not only renewables when in technology to China, et cetera,
where the technologists are truly leading. You know, I think
I'll let kind of call and talk to like green
(41:55):
climate tech. But we've already seen huge shifts things like
energy storage for example, or even carbonization urban carbonization. I
mean I was seeing that a decade ago. I worked
for an impact investment firm who was trying to basically
retrofit Section eight buildings to be zero carbon right, which
was which was very innovative, but at the time the
market didn't really want that. But I know there's real
(42:17):
transformative solutions out there. But I think again, we need
folks who don't wait for that permission to lead, who
just go fearlessly forward and give us what we actually
need to move forward. So again, really investing in the
people behind the technology, I think is what will what
is giving the optimism for the future.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
You absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
I couldn't said it better myself, Khalil, So I think
at the end of the day, it does come back
to people, companies made or break on their talent.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
They have.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Talent is everything, and so you want to double down
on that, whether it's strategy or execution, attraction, retention. At
the end of the day, your company will be sixcessful
based off the talent you have.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
At your company.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
So, if somebody is listening to the conversation wants to
either hire or be hired, how do they contact you
and how do they follow your work?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Hey, you can find us at execnow dot co, but
most importantly come find us and ad us on LinkedIn.
We're really responsive. We want to have conversations again to
our earlier point, really want to establish and build those
relationships with you. So don't hesitate to reach out and
we'll make sure we have that link.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Mitch Helli, Colin, thank you so much for your time.
It's been a fascinating conversation. We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Mitch, thank you so much. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
You've been listening to a conversation with Colin Smith and
Khalil Dumat, who are the co founders of exec Now,
an executive placement company working to provide green companies with
effective leaders who can, as we heard, bring a nimble
approach to solving problems with initiative, storytelling and emotional intelligence.
And you can learn more about execnow at execnow dot
(43:59):
c oh. Exec now is all one word, no space,
no dash, execnow dot co and right now. As the
word climate and environmental data is being removed from our
nation's government websites, industrial policies, and regulatory regimes, it can
be hard to take chances to make the mistakes necessary
(44:19):
to rapidly evolve a company, a product, or a marketing strategy.
But as tech investor Esterdison said decades ago, the key
to entrepreneurship is to always make new mistakes, and today
we have the tools to make new mistakes faster than
at any time in history. AI allows us to model
a variety of potential outcomes and see where we might
(44:41):
adjust our strategy to get there, and we need those
experiments and failures to find our light bulbs that illuminate
the way out of the climate crisis. The mistake that
our political leaders make is to characterize today's climate and
diversity challenges as impediments to progress. They are the catalyst
of the changes that will make American products and services
(45:01):
relevant and profitable in a warming world. That has connected
into a global conversation in less than two generations. Everything
is changing, and rather than get fixated on the acronym DEI,
it's time to recognize that having all the types of
people that you will sell to all over the world
around the table inside a startup or an established enterprise
(45:24):
lays the foundation for global relationships and relationships of the
basis for global sales, and that, folks, is how you
grow your GDP. Instead, we're closing our borders and our minds,
banning words that today's leaders find challenging, and consequently handing
the opportunity to lead the next industrial revolution, the one
(45:45):
that will be built on renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and
a raft of innovations we had not yet seen. We're
handing that opportunity to lead to China, India, and the
global South, where climate change will drive wholesale cultural and
economic transformations over the next decade. The United States cannot
take a seat and watch. We have to get into
(46:07):
this game and we have to lead. So I hope
you'll take a few minutes to share this podcast or
any of the more than five hundred episodes of Sustainability
in your ear that we produce with your friends, your family,
or coworkers, the people that you meet on the street.
We've got five hundred shows to choose from, so writing
a review on your favorite podcast platform can help your
neighbors find us. Folks, you're the amplifiers that can spread
(46:29):
more ideas, so we create less waste. Please tell your friends, everyone, family, coworkers,
like I said, the people on the street, that they
can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible or
whatever purveyor of podcast goodness that they prefer. Thanks for
your support. I'm Mitch Ratcliffe. This is sustainability in your ear,
(46:50):
and we will be back with another innovator interview soon.
In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care
of one another, and let's all take care of this
beautiful planet of our Have a green day.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.