OYP Episode 29: Chris Halligan

Chris Halligan, Director of Business Operations at Publicis Sapient, tells us about the importance of defining your desired outcomes and facilitating advocacy for your own growth by others.

Interview

 Adrienne Graham  - Welcome to the Own Your Potential Podcast where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe about how they've taken control of their career growth and lessons on how you can too. I'm Adrienne Graham.

Ashley Snow  - And I'm Ashley Snow.

Adrienne Graham  - And this is Episode 23 with Chris Halligan, define your outcomes. Hi, Chris, and welcome to the Own Your Potential Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about your career journey, title and current role?

Chris Halligan  - Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, so I've been with Publicis Sapient now for quite going on 20 years, actually more than 20 years, 20 years of anniversary this year. So I've, you know, seen seen quite a bit over the over those number of years. So today, I'm in the client, finance organization, kind of Director of Finance, working closely with the PS international biz ops team, and in Europe and in India. So most of my time is spent doing that these days, early morning calls, working with the team working with everybody across the pond. So it's a, it's, it's quite interesting. Been a fairly interesting time at Sapient. For me, and right when I joined the company was right at the internet.com height of the bubble. And soon after that famous one, it kind of went, you know, it kind of kind of blew up, I guess. And, you know, being at Sapient at that point, there was some layoffs and there was actually two rounds of layoffs within the first year that I was there. So it was quite a quite an interesting experience. But after that, I was in the, in the finance teams in various shapes and forms over the years. Working with Ryan Walsh, and Bill and others over time, did a small stint as a client finance lead. And then, you know, as things progressed in time, as we grew again, and we created a business operations team in the late 2000s, I guess it was at the time, then I've been basically most of my time has been within that group since we since we started it up.

Adrienne Graham  - So Chris, just recently celebrating 20 years here at publicist sapient. How has your brand evolved over the course of your career? And alternatively, in what ways has your brand in the workplace remained consistent and full disclosure for our listeners? Chris Halligan was one of my bosses for a good many years during my tenure here at Publicis Sapient.

Chris Halligan  - Yeah, it's it's a great question, Adrian. And yes, we have worked together for many years. So it's, it's good, obviously chatting back with you again. And one of the things that I guess I've learned over time has been, you know, what are the key things that makes everybody effective. And some of those kind of keywords are whether I think about it is sort of, I think about outcomes. And I think about obstacles to get to those outcomes. And I think about the process itself that we all work in and, and have in our daily, daily work. And then obviously, the people that I and we interact with? And it's kind of all of those things together that kind of over time, is, I guess, where I would see my brand evolved into? Like, it certainly doesn't happen overnight. It certainly takes a long time. It certainly is for me, I guess I thought it did. Because you know, you have to find your way within a company and find your way about how, how you navigate through through things at a particular company. And but I learned a lot about these things from a fellow we both know, and worked with a lot, Seth Bartlett, he taught me a lot about thinking about thinking about how you go through your, your, your day, your week, your month, you know, in these in these forms, and, and especially in recent years at Publicis Sapient, we've all we talk a lot about outcomes, and what are the outcomes we want? How do we want to get there predefine our outcome know who we want to get to? So that's one of the key things that I sort of instilled with my team and the people that I work with is always kind of be thinking about the outcomes we want to achieve. And then it's then it's a case of how do you get there, and what are the things you need to do. And then the people that you work with, and that I in all of us work with. And it's just, you know, getting everybody aligned around around those outcomes. So, to me, that's how I've kind of thought about it over the years. It's, you know, be very clear about your outcome. And then you'll kind of work backwards from that and you you end up getting you don't always get there in the timeframe perhaps or in the way you might have thought but at least if you have a goal and you have a desired finish, then it's, it's easier to plan backwards.

Ashley Snow  - Chris, I have a follow up question. So to have clarity on the outcomes you want to achieve, you have to be kind of a big picture thinker. Right. And I think there's, there's a quote that I really like about, you know, being able to see the cathedral even when you're laying bricks? And do you find that it's always easy to see the cathedral or to know what the outcome you're trying to create? Is? And if not, how have you helped to kind of build that mentality for your own self?

Chris Halligan  - Yeah, great question. Um, I think you don't always see if you, I guess I think about it in, I think with the outcome looks like, Alright, I think I know what the outcome could look like. And then it's, it's stages or steps to kind of to kind of get there. You know, there's lots of examples that you could kind of talk about. But if you're introducing a new process, or introducing a new piece of the system, or you're doing a technological enhancement to a, to a particular application of the company, you always think about what are the what are the benefits you want to get, and you can't wait, you can always see it. And you can bring people along that along the road on, on Okay, we'll do this piece first, we'll get there, we'll do this next piece second. So kind of sequentially Think about it, but and your outcome is getting clear. And then as you go along, so it's kind of a clarity thing that you you kind of think you know, what you want, or you believe you know, what the outcome could be? And then the stages and steps, at least the way I think about it, gets you there.

Adrienne Graham  - So I'm interested to know how self advocacy has played a role in your career. Can you tell us about a time that you seized an opportunity? And what was the outcome?

Chris Halligan 

Yeah, good question. There was one key example that really, when I saw this question that kind of resonated with me. We were in India, I don't know many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, now, maybe around about that time. And we had introduced 360. And we were using it and beginning to use it for more things. And one of the key business problems that we we talked about was how do we use a system to help the business teams, do their pricing, and approve their pricing and get alignment with everybody around pricing our projects and pricing our work. And we didn't have a good way to do this. At that moment we were using email, phone calls, excels offline activities, and we needed a way to document it. So we decided to bring people from various disciplines together to sort of construct it and make it. So we had people from the 360 theme team there, we had people from the IT team, we had folks from the finance team, we had folks, on the marketing side, we had a lot of people in the same room together. And we basically just spent the afternoon kind of designing with all of these multidisciplinary people there together. And, but it was kind of a an idea out of the sky, because I had been thinking about it for a while. And then we had this opportunity in one afternoon to say ok we needed, we have time to to, to give to you to have designed something quite as a business problem we need to solve. And this was the first one that I thought of. And so we ended up creating something it wasn't, wasn't amazing at the very first time, but we iterated on it and evolved and, and made it better over time. But it was the genesis of the pricing process we have today where we were all together in that room in India, and we just said okay, let's just take this moment to, to do that. And it's, it's kind of just fed into other things around how we do our processes and how we think about our things in the business. It was it was everybody was very happy with the initial outcome. And we knew we had a lot more work to do. But it was a it was a kind of a eureka moment in how we were going to use our systems going forward to to make things easier for the business teams.

Ashley Snow  - Chris, that's a really great story. And it leads me to a question that's been sort of top of mind for me, which is that, in my own experiences, and it seems in the experiences of many people I've spoken to these opportunities for self advocacy and self advancement tend to come up when we're in those situations, you know, in the room collaborating with teams, whether it's locally or maybe we're abroad at the time and I wonder how those experiences are different now that we are all remote. Do you think it's harder to be a strong self advocate from behind a screen than it was before?

Chris Halligan  - Yeah, I do. The the ability to be in front of people and to be with people and to be with peers and to be with with folks from different teams. Not that it necessarily happens very often when things were normal, if you will. But those moments when it did happen, they were they were quite collaborative and could be could be quite groundbreaking A times? Yeah, look, when we do video calls now, and it's all good to a certain extent, but it's just there's still a, there's still a human component missing. And I think it's, going to change things for sure, I think. And so we have to think about it differently, right, we have to think about how you can, I guess self advocate for oneself and for for your team and other things, right, in a different way. And I, I've only recently begun to think about that a little more, just very recently, obviously, it was, it was new for, you know, six, the first six months or felt new, the the different way of working. But now that we're coming to our end of year, you know, review process or impact discussions, all of that it's going to, I just have to think about it in a different way. Because it's, just changed. For for now. Now, again, fingers crossed, we have good news next year, and things change, and we have potential vaccines and whatnot, but and we get back to some form of similarity that we had before. Again, assuming we can do that, again, I think there's, you know, we're going to learn a lot from it. But if we don't, or it's going to be or if it's going to be not in the same way it was before, I think it's, it's a new way of working in a new way of, of career growth for everybody. And both as leaders and managers, and, you know, associates and senior associates, it'll be a different way of interacting around that whole topic.

Adrienne Graham  - Seeing that you've been at the organization for 20 years, and you know, taking into consideration this time for reflection, with, you know, impact discussions coming up? And what ways do you think you've actively contributed to your career progression?

Chris Halligan  - There's two ways I think I've, I look at it, and one is, the work itself, right. One is how you're working with the teams working with people working with your supervisor, working with your boss, you know, listening to wash, you know, they're asking you to do and be very proactive about taking on anything they might ask you to do, that they either kind of don't want to do or can't do or whatever, but be very open to exposing yourself to all sorts of different things, you know, raising your hand when different things come along, be that sponge to take in all aspects of, you know, working, working with teams, in a way our work isn't that super complicated, where we basically engage with clients to get them the technological or marketing outcomes that we want, that they want. Sorry, but how we all do that, and then how we deal with that, internally is, is is in Kanga complicated, so I think the work itself just to be open to all aspects of it and to be to be willing to kind of do anything, and then to learn and to be a sponge and take all that in. So that's that's one side of it. And then the second side of it, obviously, there's then you, you own your own growth, then with your supervisor, as you as you as you go along, right? And how do you how do you do that? You, you and he or she are very connected on your yearly objectives, right, so you've got a very open dialogue around how you interact in that, how you how you write them down at the beginning of the year, how you think and talk about them throughout the year, you know, how you're trending against them, if you will. And you've a very clear expectation with them about where you're going, right, your, your, you know, how you're trending in the given year, or overall, like you're have an open dialogue with them, with them around that. And, you know, you you you you drive and push your supervisor to be that advocate for you when, you know, yearly conversations on "Am I ready for nomination? Am I ready for promotion?" but you have a very clear understanding that you're both aligned on readiness. And I think that's, that's when I think I've learned over time is that we have a good, we have a good sense of readiness. And that's something we have to learn. And we have to we have to get used to. And we have to be able to be clear about but a greater alignment on your readiness and the alignment of your supervisor or boss's readiness that you're there. And being being on the absolutely on the same page about that is is the other part of it. One of the things that I've sort of learned from my bosses over the years was, you know, you kind of have to be in that next level that next role. And we're just just just over the cusp of it if you will, each time, you know, the your readiness for the next level comes about. And, you know, once you're kind of over that over that line, then it's really easy for everybody to advocate for you and it's really easy to to to in those promotion meetings to be very clear about x person or y person who's because everybody feels that they're in that role and they're doing that role in the performing. They're performing against that. So, it's, that's also a thing that I've, that I've taken, as I've, you know, grown people over the years is, you know, you just got to be right over that cusp of that, and then you're, you're absolutely there. And then then, you know, you're, you know, you're, you're ready for it. So to me, that's the those are the two kind of things that I've that's kind of helped me is the work itself and how you're interacting with the teams and the people and be willing to take everything on but then also the, the alignment with your supervisor about how you're doing yourself against your own objectives and your growth that year.

Adrienne Graham  - Chris, you've given our listeners some food for thought, good advice and insights. Thank you for spending time with us today and sharing your stories with our listeners. Really appreciate your time.

Chris Halligan  - Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure to thank you