Ep. 108: Gary Piscatelli - Business Transformation for Today's Business Leaders

Contact Gary Piscatelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-piscatelli-5a64766/

Hunter Douglas: https://www.hunterdouglas.com/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and this is episode 108 of our series. Today’s conversation features Gary Piscatelli, Senior Vice President and CFO of Hunter Douglas North America. Hunter Douglas is the worldwide leader in custom window treatments as well as a major manufacturer of architectural products. Gary joins us to talk about business transformation and what kind of leadership is necessary to successfully complete a business transformation. Now let's jump into the conversation.

Mitch: (00:44)
What does business transformation really mean for today's business leaders?

Gary: (00:49)
You know, it's an interesting one. You probably ask, you know, 10 people, you get 10 different answers, but for me, it's pretty simple. It's getting better at delivering on your strategic objectives, you know, or whatever they may be. You know, in some companies they're, you know, financially focused, it could be sales, it could be profit, it could be market share. It could be market position. It could be long term  stability, customer acquisition, quality, product innovation, et cetera. Whatever those goals are, it's finding ways to accelerate, achieving those goals. It's as simple as that.

Mitch: (01:28)
That's a very clean cut definition and something much simpler than I've heard in the past, but definitely makes sense, and definitely the goal of a whole business transformation is improvement and acceleration. So, you know, when business leaders look to make these improvements and they hope to improve the organization, is there a  type of culture that is really needed for a successful business transformation, and in that culture, in implementing this, are there certain challenges that a business leader needs to be aware of as they're going through the process?

Gary: (01:58)
Yeah. I mean, certainly some cultures are, you know, more conducive to accepting change than others, but you can't control the culture.. Certainly, you know, when you're starting to make a change and culture change takes a long, long time. So you have to really work within that culture, but there, there is something even more important than culture when it comes to change and that's leadership, and you know, without, you know, buy-in from leadership, even if it's just a CEO, but you need someone with decision-making authority, but then it, you know, has the ability to control that change to buy in, and if you don't have that, it doesn't really matter what culture you have. And, you know, I find leadership to be 100% accountable for results, including change. And it doesn't really matter what that culture is. You know, and there's some common things, to driving change, regardless of the culture. And the first thing is, Hey, no one wants to be changed. You know, if I asked you, you know, Hey Mitch, do you want me to change you? You know, you would say no, and you know, I would answer it the same way. So you have to go into it knowing that no one wants to be changed. Everyone thinks everyone else needs to change typically as well. So what you have to do is you have to find a way to talk to people at a level that they want to be talked to, and everyone would like their problem solved. Everyone wants their life to get better, right? So the first thing you have to identify is what are the things that are really wrong in an organization that you can get some alignment around.  The people would generally agree that yeah, you know what, that's a problem. We need to make