Episode 118: The Learning Process Is All About Curiosity, Hand Raising And Mindset With Liz Armbruester From Avalara
Change is constant, and management plays a significant role in affecting or influencing shifts in an organization. In this episode, Liz Armbruester, the SVP for Global Compliance at Avalara, joins Amy Vetter to discuss what it takes to innovate from the little things to big initiatives. They also go over what the process of learning is, and how to get everyone involved and excited when dealing with change management in an organization.
Did you know that 52% of accounting practitioners, large and small, still rely on spreadsheets and manual processes for sales tax compliance? Using Avalara’s award-wining technology, you can move your accounting practice to the 21st century and start or grow a CAS or tax compliance service line. The Avalara for Accountants automation platform helps accounting service providers of all sizes grow their service offerings with sales tax prep and filing, transfer pricing, tax research, business license management and more. Scale your practice efficiently, with award-winning automation that brings efficiency and accuracy to sales tax compliance, while reducing risks for your practice and your clients.
To learn more contact Avalara at Accountants@Avalara.com, or visit them at Avalara.com/Accountants.
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The Learning Process Is All About Curiosity, Hand Raising And Mindset With Liz Armbruester From Avalara
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I interview Liz Armbruester. She is the SVP of Global Compliance for Avalara. She oversees global compliance operations and brings more than 20 years of leadership experience from a variety of technology sectors, including software, media and services, and is known for her strong track record of innovative problem-solving, process optimization, and an ability to deliver automation for efficiency and scale.
During this interview, we discuss what it takes to innovate from the little things to the big initiatives. We go over what the process of learning is and how to get everyone involved and excited when dealing with change management in an organization. This episode is sponsored by Avalara. Did you know that 52% of accounting practitioners, large and small, still rely on spreadsheets and manual processes for sales tax compliance?
Using Avalara’s award-winning technology, you can move your accounting practice to the 21st century and start to grow your client advisory services or tax compliance service lines. The Avalara for accountants automation platform helps accounting service providers of all sizes grow their service offerings with sales tax prep, filing, transfer pricing, tax research, business license management, and more.
Scale your practice efficiently with award-winning automation that brings efficiency and accuracy to sales tax compliance while reducing risk for your practice and your clients. To learn more, contact Avalara at Accountants@Avalara.com or visit them at Avalara.com/Accountants. I hope you enjoy this interview with Liz and take away lots of learnings to build into your innovation process.
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Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs, where I am interviewing Liz Armbruester. Liz is from Avalara. Liz, do you mind giving a brief introduction of yourself before we get started?
Amy, thank you so much for having me here. It's awesome to be with you. I work at Avalara. I have been there for the past nine years. I love to say that I bust through the orange door every day, ready to solve people's tax compliance problems. A lot of folks say, “Why tax? It doesn't sound like it will be all that fun,” but the finance nerds and the tax nerds around here love it because it's something that everybody has to deal with. It's hard. It's complex. Every day I get to solve problems with smart people. I don't know what's better than that. It's pretty great.
I didn't grow up in tax. I didn't grow up in finance, but the whole concept of hard problems and trying to figure out how to do that with people has always been a thing for me. I started out thinking maybe I would go to medical school one day, and maybe solve some of those hard problems. Life took me on a left turn instead of a right, and that's okay. I got into a lot of software, technology, systems and scaling systems, and trying to bring about that use of cool technology and emerging technology, and applying that to places that can help people in their business lives. That has been the theme for me over the course of my career.
That's awesome. We're going to start right in the beginning. Maybe you can share with everyone where you grew up, what your parents did for a living and a little background on your family.
I was originally a kid in Middletown, Maryland. A small community of about 3,000 people, give or take. I have great parents, mom and dad. A lot of the family was from the East Coast as well. I feel fortunate in that regard to have traveled to that part of the country and seeing history. My parents decided they were better apart than they were together. There’s nothing like picking up and moving about 2,500 miles West to the State of Washington. I'm like, “You don't like each other, I get that but maybe it doesn’t have to be that far apart.”
That was great because, in hindsight, it took me to a place of, "Get out of your comfort zone." That’s a lot of the stuff that we talk about and lean into curiosity and new opportunities. Everybody from my small community and a lot of my family hadn't been West and didn't know. I'm now a left coaster. I like West. It's so funny because a couple of my family members have since come West as well. I'm grateful. I love everything about being on the East Coast and a lot of the tradition and the history.” Having traveled that, I feel blessed, but now I know this different lifestyle and different ways of doing things. It's nice to be able to hop back and forth.
My dad was in a lot of different professions. He went from a professional wedding photographer to a lifelong educator to working in project management for commercial construction. He’s all over the place. My stepmom is a geologist by trade and did a lot of work for the government in the Department of Ecology and others. My stepdad was an electrical engineer and worked for a small company. Eventually, that took him and my mom West. He worked locally here outside of Seattle. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for the most part. In the early days, she was working in the earliest days of software, and then stayed home to be with the four of us as kids once work was out here. I have a stepbrother, a stepsister, and one sister.
How old were you when your parents got divorced?
Nine. Big impact.
That's pretty much what you've known.
Yeah, a lot of that. We've all lived through this mega period of change recently. We’re still in it. I think that was my early construct that things aren't going to stay the same. What does that look like and how do you deal with that? What do you do with that? God knows I didn't have the answers to that. Life taught me a lot of things along the way that has certainly helped me now.
Hand Raising And Mindset: Things aren't going to stay the same, but what does that look like, and how do you deal with that?
When you're a nine-year-old self and this happens, what did you do to resolve that in your head of feeling comfortable with a new way of life?
It wasn't immediate. A lot of that feels reactive and defensive and protectionist even. I'm the oldest sibling, even the oldest of the steps but older than my sister. That was the immediate, firstborn, protect, insulate, let her have her life regardless of what else is going on, and lean into ownership and responsibility. You can do it yourself. You don't need anybody's help mentality, which maybe at some point in this conversation, we'll get to later. That says, “Maybe that wasn't the best choice you made and here's why.” That's what I leaned into.
Part of that also came from my parents. It came by that naturally like you do what you say you're going to do. You're fiercely independent. Being responsible comes with a lot of empowerment but a lot of weight with that and it was important. Personal integrity is everything to me. I would say there was a balance of that. Even a skill well done can be an Achilles heel at some point. What I'm trying to say here is that while I leaned into that, in some ways, I leaned a little bit too far into that. That didn't help me career-wise.
Why do you say you leaned too far into it?
I think because you get to a place sometimes, and I hope people all get to that place, where you realize that the spirit of humans is to lean in and help one another. We feel great when we're on a team, when we have a mission and we're succeeding, and when we help others achieve their goals. When you lean too hard into independence and are like, “No, I got it.” It can be to the exclusion of people that want to join in your success. My example of that is with my youngest. Both of my kids are college athletes. One is now in semi-professional baseball. He's in the Minor Leagues. My younger one was struggling with that same mentality. I'm like, “I've created another one.”
It’s funny when you can see yourself in your kids. You're like, “This is a mirror.”
It was after his formative years that I realized that's not the best way. You should let people in because they enjoy that and it's good for you. You don't have to be the expert in everything. Having people who know more, do more, and can lean in with you makes an impact. He's a baseball player. He’s a pitcher. Feeling that weight of “I have to do it all” in an individual but a team sport kept him from leaning into others and learning from others even though he needed that and wanted it.
He was carrying that weight with him for a long time. I had to help him get over the hurdle of, “You are not weak in asking for help.” That's a strength when you can open up and say, “I'm not the smartest person in the room. I'm not the most talented athlete. I need to learn.” It triggers that whole growth mindset idea that when you lean into curiosity, learning, growth, and continual improvement, you are viewed by others as strong, not weak. We both learned that a little bit late.
Hand Raising And Mindset: It takes great strength to open up and say, “I'm not the smartest person in the room.”
Going back to being nine, your parents are divorcing, and you're about to move. What shift did you find in yourself? You said that you took on the responsibility and so forth. How did that show up for you? Do you remember a point where your brain shifted? I asked that question because I went through it as well. I remember when my dad first moved out. I realized I was going to be the last one up every night and I was going to check all the doors. I was going to turn on the alarm and not be scared. I was going to be the stronger one in the house and change that mindset. I can remember that moment of talking to myself through that. I wonder if you remember that switch point.
It's funny because you say those things and I’m like, “Yes, I remember all of that.” Let's go back. It's the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. That moment when one parent was at the airport and we were getting on a plane by ourselves flying across the country, that I remember. All of a sudden, you are the responsible person for another human. I was 9 or 10 years old. That was big for me. It started showing up in other areas.
Even when I got to the other coast and the parent was there, I didn't let go of that responsibility. It stayed. Is she up for school on time? Is she fed? Is she doing her homework? That transformed into you are the responsible one because you are the one that provides consistency and balance, regardless of all the chaos that might be going on around it. I don't want you to experience what I'm experiencing. You get to go have fun. You get to be a kid. It wasn't that I didn't do kid things. I did, but it was with that added level of responsibility.
It's one of those things that we see everywhere in life. I'm the oldest too, so I took on similar responsibilities as you too with my younger brothers. We put that expectation on ourselves a lot of times. This happens a lot in the work environment wherein I'm working with accountants and they're like, "I have to get this done or someone is going to be mad at me or upset." It's like, "Did someone say that or did we put that expectation in our heads?" We have the standard for ourselves or expectations for ourselves, but then we blame outside circumstances and not separate like, "If I didn't do this, would anyone care?"
When I work with not just women but men also, that's one of the things that I feel like you come packaged and you learn certain things along the way. Prioritization and making those decisions, I wasn't always great at, but I do have a natural skillset around that. I realize that not everybody comes with that. You asking that question, “If I don't do this thing, does the sky fall? What happens?”
We put so much of that on our shoulders. When I got asked that question about how do I find that impossible place of feeling balanced between what happens at work and what happens with the rest of my life, whatever that rest of your life looks like? That's one of the frameworks that I try to help other people through, which is what are those things? Who's asking you? Why are we doing them? When you say those things out loud sometimes, you get that a-ha moment of, “Maybe I don't have to do that thing.”
How do I let go?
The letting go part is the hard part. I got asked by another gal who was a professor of mine at one point in my career when I was in school. She said, “Number one, the question you ask is what happens when you let go of that ball? Number two, are you doing the things that only you can do?" This was happening as I'm managing more and needed to delegate.
I’m trying to balance that with this insane amount of accountability and responsibility that I carry and that whole, “Can somebody else do it as good as you? How do you help people do it as well as what you are doing? Therefore, am I doing only the things that I can do and letting others do the other things?” That took some time. It is not easy to drop balls and say, “Let me think about just those things that I'm best suited to do as opposed to the other five people in the room.”
When you look back at your sister, maybe you and your sister have discussed it, what is her perception? It's always interesting how we go through life with our belief systems, what we think we're contributing, and how we think we're helping. That's our perception. It's not necessarily reality because we each have our own perception. Has your sister ever said to you what her perception was and what she was feeling?
Yes, my sister and I are very close. We like to think of our families as a family of eight. I know that sounds a little crazy. We live separate lives but we are in proximity to one another geo-wise. She's got two kids, twins, who started high school. My two are 23 and 21. They’re out of the house, but we do a lot together. I think that the experiences you have can be so much of what you make of them. Despite the fact that my parents separated, I know they're better apart. They grew and so that's okay. We've accepted that.
Hand Raising And Mindset: The experiences you have can be so much of what you make of them.
I own the responsibility and accountability load that I put on myself. Maybe I wasn't so cognitive of the choices I was making at the time, but we've gotten to a place where we've talked about that. We’ve also recognized that some of the choices that each of us made in that going through our parent's divorce and moving across the country, and eventually, my mom going through quite a bit of counseling as a result of that benefited both of us. We now have this dynamic relationship where we can talk about these things openly and honestly.
She is appreciative without a doubt of having that insulation from other things. At the same time, she doesn't carry guilt but she's like, "I wish I knew. I would've taken some ownership and accountability in that too." I'm like, "That's the whole reason I did it, so you didn't have to do that.” At the same time, because we can have that conversation, I’ve had it multiple times, and it has done two things. Number one, it helped us be better parents, and it helped us be better leaders.
She's a boss. She has got a CEO job. She's not a CEO but it's a CEO's job. She's managing a big group of people, lots of dollars, and lots of things at stake. What she has been able to take away from her youth and growing up, she has wholeheartedly said, “These are things I'm going to do and not do as a result of that, and being a leader and developing through that.” To the degree that you can be all those things at the same time for the life experiences that you've had, she and I have a great dialogue about that. I come back to it often and say, “Never did we wish we could do it differently, but I’m so grateful that we can have that conversation because we know how it feeds into our lives now.”
Thinking into that whole scheme of letting go, a lot of times, we are holding on to a need for ourselves. Not just helping them but being needed, allowing yourself to separate and being very honest with why you're doing what you're doing. A lot of times, we want to believe it's fully altruistic and everything we're doing is for somebody else. When we think about it, sometimes in a work environment, we're holding on because we're afraid.
It’s out of fear, “If I let go, would that threaten my job or would someone be smarter?” We want to be needed. We want people to constantly come to us and not completely be self-sufficient, or we might feel that way about our clients or whatever that is. That's a hard truth sometimes to look yourself in the mirror and say, “Why can't I let go?” Some of it is selfish interest. It's not necessarily for someone else. It's a personal need that we have.
You're spot on. The flip side of that is what truly matters to me. Number one, does that change over your life? Number two, I feel like the focus gets more narrow around truly what matters and therefore, the behavior of why I do the things I do. One of the things that I do know is true about me and that has been true about me for the entirety of my life is that my family is first. It's everything. I've elected to and needed to make choices based on that belief.
It doesn't surprise me at all that that's the mode I went into with my sister. Those are the choices I made around having children when I had children. I said, “I want to balance that with my life and this is how I'm going to show up.” When two things that I believed were true were running in opposite directions, i.e. family was first, and I wasn't showing up for dinner, I got hit with a 2 X 4 at that moment and needed to behave differently in order to do that.
When your values are running counter to your why and how you're showing up, sometimes it does take that moment of self-reflection. Do I need to do this? Do I want to do this? How am I doing this? All those great questions to ask. I always believe it's okay when you're authentic about your reason why. If I have a need to be needed, let me own that. It's not right or wrong. It's not a judgment call. This is the thing that I know about myself. For me, I'm the peacemaker. I'm the one that holds the family together.
I honor that about myself. I love that. Therefore, I need to show up in certain ways to do that. When I don't, I feel like I'm off balance. Not only does that fulfill a need for me but it also makes me happy when I'm doing that role. That's oftentimes some part of the question that can get missed. People might say, “I need to be needed.” That's part of it. When you feel that way, what does it do for you? Answering that second question can sometimes come back and say, “Maybe I don't need to do that thing when the why doesn't associate with the feeling.”
That’s part of life's journey that you always want to be reassessing. I've always said that it's helpful also when you have people in your circle who are your mirror champions. You always talk about you want to coach, you want to mentor, and you want friends, and those folks that are in your inner circle. The one that's the most valuable to me is the one that's willing to hold the mirror.
Hand Raising And Mindset: Part of life's journey is to reassess constantly. It's helpful to have people in your circle who are your mirror champions.
When you've got the willingness to go look at that mirror and say, “Not only do I look at it but I'm going to think on it. I'm going to do what it is saying to me.” The mirror person oftentimes is what can drive that conversation around, “Am I being needy? Do I need to feel needed? Why do I need to feel needed? How is that appearing to not just me but everybody else around me?” That’s an important part of folks that are around me. I have more than one mirror champion.
We all need those. We need the people that disagree with us all the time too.
Yes, we do.
As far as your trajectory and your career now, how did you end up doing what you're doing? Where did you start out?
I mentioned in this show that I thought I' would go Medical, which is not surprising given plate spinning and I like to problem solve. I’m science-minded. My degree was in Molecular Biology and now I'm in tax. That was a different road. I said at one point, back to this family value, that I want to have kids by a certain age. I want to stay grounded and invested in their lives. I want to be in a physical place to be able to do that in a way that I want to show up. That conflicted with Medical school. I was like, “No, that's not going to happen.”
What else can we do and apply our skillset? I had children and was working in the medical field, which transitioned to software because we're thinking of the late ‘90s, and software in the medical space was becoming a thing. I started working on understanding what that was and its implementations, and that transitioned me into a couple of other medical jobs that then took me into semiconductors. I just needed a change of job, but I’m learning process and technology.
I'll go back to things that matter to me, which have been thematic for my entire career. Those are hand-raising, curiosity, and lifelong learning. A lot of the jump in jobs that I had was, "I don't understand. Can you help me? Let me learn that thing. Can I be a part of that project?" That kind of stuff. I'm a doer and I value execution a lot. Back to give me a thing and I'm going to commit to doing that thing better than anybody else. When I say it's going to be done, it's going to be done right.
I went from that medical software technology and semiconductor, I’ve learned a ton about business in that particular role, to have a relationship outside of work through sports. It comes back to baseball. A lot of my life is centered around this 5-ounce ball with 108 stitches on it. I was coaching T-ball at the time and I met a family who is now lifelong friends with me. We connected later through business. He is the CFO of a venture capital firm and had invested in a company. He knew my skillset and said, “We need some help over here. I think this would be a great opportunity for you. Let's talk about it.” I'm like, “That sounds great. Let's go do that.”
That became a seven-year stint in a content company. Content is different from tax, but I say content intentionally because that content was about things that we now get on our phones and our TVs, streaming live content, and file-based content from point of production to us as consumers. If you think about tax compliance, all your CPA fans out there, it's content and it follows a process. It’s not different from TV or file-based movies and things that we consume on our devices.
It’s like we do at Avalara, we sit in the middle of that. A transaction happens or a TV show gets produced and it needs to follow a process of getting reformatted, and ultimately to a consumer or a taxing jurisdiction. Our company sat in the middle of that. I ran operations for that company. Taking lots of data in a time-compressed way, putting it into a bunch of different formats and getting it somewhere on time and accurately. When I realized that was a lot like tax, I'm like, "I can make this jump into tax," even though the only thing I know about tax is when I buy shoes at Nordstrom, they charged me an extra $10 on my first shoes.
It was about taking an idea that scales how do you do that, and how do you do that in an environment that is constantly changing? The one part that I left out in that story that I had foreshadowed earlier, I was working in this content company. It was called Veil Media, which later became Ubiquiti. I loved what I did. It’s the same thing, cool problems and smart people. I loved what I did and I wasn't showing up for dinner. That was the conflict of family.
For months and months, I was flying from Seattle to California every week. I took my kids to high school and junior high, and looked at them. I'm like, “When did you become 13 and 11 because yesterday, you were 5 and 7?” It was like a dagger to my heart. It was like, “No, we're not going to do this. I don't know what that looks like tomorrow but it's not going to be this.” When your child graduates from high school, the only thing I know is I'm not going to feel the way I feel now, which is not where I put my priorities.
That's what transitioned me into this opportunity at Avalara, and been there ever since and have been able to commit to that. I can tell you when my oldest walked across the stage at his high school graduation, I had been there. I had shown up. I remembered how he got from 13 to 17 and was off to college. I felt very whole and very good about that. That wasn't an easy transition. It wasn't like, “You found balance every day.” No. Some days you had it. Some days you didn't but generally, over the course of years, do you feel like you did it well? Yeah, I did.
That's important because you still have to fill your cup in it and find the right role when you make that transition. One thing that I'm seeing in you is you're not a maintenance person. You like projects. You like to keep the learning process going. Some people are good maintenance people. Once you get the project finished, they are good to stick with it for however long. It is important to know what those things are about you that keeps your interest and excitement as well so you don't have to keep jumping around.
That's why tax is so cool because it never stops changing, but you're right. I have so much respect for the folks that say, “I'm good at that and I know it.” It looks like, “I work in a private company, a public, a 500-person company, or a 10,000-person company. I like to design or I like to run. When the system is up and going, I'm your maintenance person. You can count on me to do that and that makes me happy.” That's not me. I love problem-solving. I love the challenge and the inconsistency of it. For the plate spinner in me and the person who loves to develop people and technology simultaneously, that's cool to be able to do that. I know that about myself.
Knowing what you've learned about yourself, you're leading innovation thinking, design thinking, and so forth. How do you push past people's internal barriers and that fear? You talked about that yourself. When you had this new thing happening when you were nine, you become resistant to change. You start holding on to whatever you can hold onto. That's true in any change management or innovation to break through that, get people's ideas, and have them come along with you. What have you had to learn as a leader to help people through that process?
A couple of things. Number one, fear of failure was a big thing for me. I couldn't comprehend failure, and the fear of it held me back. That's also true of change. If I change, I fail and I'm not going to be successful. Somebody said, "The fail is not what you think it is. It's your first attempt at learning." Great. I love that. That was a game-changer mindset. It's all about growth. It's less about staying static. That was one of my first mantras. It was like, “You can lean into this learning mindset around this.”
Hand Raising And Mindset: Failing is your first attempt at learning.
Number two is I try to help people think past their first impression and their first thought. For people who struggle with that, that often then leads to, “If these are your assumptions and if this is the first thought, what if that wasn't true?” People line up all of their assumptions. I like to think of it as a bowling alley. What if you were to take that bowling ball and roll it down the alley? You do some assumption bowling and they all fall down. What would happen? That helps people without going to that place of, “I'm going to go do something or I'm going to jump into that,” get comfortable. These are the most change-resistant people.
It is thinking about, “Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe this gives me an opportunity. Maybe I could think about this thing differently, or maybe the worst possible thing I could think of isn't the worst possible thing after all.” You can then start to begin to transform into the what-ifs on the positive side. Could this create an opportunity for you? Have you thought about it this way? Oftentimes, to make that jump to cross that chasm, you have to know people personally. You have to be at least curious enough to be asking questions about what matters to them. What do they value? Where do they want their career to go? What do they foresee happening in the company? What does Kate or Bill look like in the next year or the next five years?
For me, it's about trying to tie those things together. Being a great listener and leaning in and helping them lean into the curiosity so that we can get some of these initial biases out of the way, begin to spark a little bit of creativity and innovation still in a safe space, and go at their pace, but help them connect their future version of themselves and their career to dive into that often uncomfortable place of change. It is helping them bridge that through a lot of questions and curiosity.
Being not new to the profession at this point, but having been working with accountants for the last nine years at Avalara, what has been your observation of the ones that can truly innovate and move forward with new ways of thinking, and the ones that are harder to pull along?
There are a couple of things to that. When we do hiring, for example, we're not just hiring innovators. We have outsourced tax return services as part of what we do. You are looking at a financially-minded accountant type. I put that into a broad category of people, where I would love to say, “Two plus two is four every single time. It's done the same way.” It's consistent. We like consistency and we like being accurate.
At the same time, part of what we have to look for is, “I want two plus two to equal four next month, but I want you to do it in a way that helps you do it better, do it faster, and have a less manual touch for you so that somehow your job is enhanced.” Oftentimes, with the folks that what I would say are a little bit more stuck in where they are, less open, and embracing of change, it gets down to how can we make your life better? How can we make your job easier and better?
Hand Raising And Mindset: With the folks that are a little bit stuck in where they are and less open in embracing change, it gets down to asking them, “How can we make your life better? How can we make your job easier?" Those micro twists of thinking through can get people into innovative thinking.
It's sometimes those micro twists of thinking through what is that thing that you don't like doing? If you had a little bit more time in your day, what would you love to do? Where do you see your personal value? What lights your fire? Where's your passion? You love being an accountant and you love doing certain things. Would you love to spend more time doing that? What keeps you from doing that thing? Sometimes, that's what it takes to get people into a little bit of innovative thinking. They may not come up with the idea, but the minute you turn that dial to, “I would love to spend more time doing this.” How do we get you to do that?
All of a sudden, they feel invested in saying, “I want to dump that thing over here. I don’t want to do that ever again.” That oftentimes can be the fire that says, “It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. In fact, it would be a good thing if I didn't do that anymore.” They may not be the one that comes up with the ideas, but when you get them to that place, then you can start to ping a couple of ideas like, “What if we did it this way or if we did this, or if we didn't do that thing but we did this thing instead?” They can start to trickle in and get into the shallow water. All of a sudden, they're swimming in the deep end with the rest of us saying, “I don't even know why I hung onto that thing for so long because it didn't add any value. I now get to do this thing that I love.”
It's an important point, the micro twist, because when you're leading people through change, if you try to throw everything that you plan to do at that beginning phase, it's overwhelming. There's going to be lots of resistance. It's almost better if they know a little bit of change at a time, then when they look back, they're like, “I can't believe how much we've done.” If you're a leader going through this process, it's important to have an open mind.
I'm working with a firm now and doing a wholesale change in how they do business. The managing partner will continuously say, “I hired her because she thinks the opposite of me.” That is hard. You can say that, but then on a daily or weekly basis when you're trying to work with someone that thinks opposite of you and you know you're doing the right thing by doing it, it's taking every ounce of your energy to not scream or cry during the process.
It is for sure. A couple of things you said made me think of a few items. Number one, in that change management process, staying in discovery can be one of the most important things around change management, especially when folks maybe like, “I think you might be,” and for me who tends to get to execution fast and say, "I want to do,” because I'm so biased to that. It helps you understand your why. It helps people give an opportunity to understand your why, to get on board, and to understand how they fit in.
For you as a change management facilitator, to understand all of your stakeholders, and to know the factions of people, and where they sit. It helps not only get them on board but when you know you are going to run into, “I've got an opposite thinker out there,” you have spent time thinking about, “I already know that might be coming and here's how I can help mitigate through that. Here's how I can otherwise try to get the person on board.”
Secondly, as a good facilitator, I always like to think about change being on this spectrum. It's not a singular line. Your ability to help the team go through that oscillates, but you have to know where the boundaries are of, “I'm pushing hard enough.” I'm not down here at the bottom. They're up above the minimum threshold line, but I also haven't exceeded the, “I'm running too fast and driving too much change at the same time.” I feel like those are the red zones. When you can work through that and anticipate what's coming, you do that well when you spend enough time in discovery.
Both of those things are so important. The first one you said about staying in that discovery phase long enough, I find people get antsy doing that because they want results, “We did this because we want result.” If we don't fully complete that stage, do all the research we need to do, and uncover as many ideas as possible, you lose so many things when you go to implementation. A lot of times what people don't realize is when they're in that discovery phase, they're already implementing and changing without even realizing it. They just don't know they're already part of the process.
The second thing you said about pushing hard enough but not too much where you overwhelm people. That is one thing as a leader. When you look in the mirror and you feel that pressure point, it is to be okay with being transparent and stopping, and saying to everybody, “I can feel you. I feel what's happening here. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what we need to stop doing so that we prioritize the most important things.” A lot of times what gets people in trouble in that area is they keep pushing. They're going to keep pushing against the deadline and it's overwhelming people, then the whole thing fails, and you're left with that. Being transparent and self-aware during this process is important.
It's hugely important. The folks on your project team are looking to you to do that and have enough sensitivity and empathy to know, "I'm checking in. I understand. I know where we should be. What's your temperature?" Having that ability to command and say, "We need to turn it back for a second." When we do that, we know what's at risk. I might be putting the timeline at risk and it maybe has an association with these dollars, but we are going to prioritize quality. This is something we said we were going to do back here and that matters.
That's what engenders trust in the team and that's what creates the opportunity. Maybe sometimes you are working consistently with the same team over and over again and sometimes it's not. At the end of the day, even if it's not you leading that, you are going to leave a team that now knows how to work together maybe in a different way that has that basis of trust that says, “I can shout out when I'm not feeling great about this or if I have a question.”
I read something a while ago. It came out of the military, but it's talking about the independent worker, and who maybe is a super high-quality team star, and those folks who maybe aren't as qualified or don't have the skillset but work well as a team. They're always going to take the latter. They're going to take maybe a little bit less quality, but folks that can have that relationship work together and have that trust. Sometimes that means a time trade-off and sometimes that means a cost trade-off too.
Maybe less so in the military in that particular situation, but why does that matter? When you want to talk about total results and getting a team aligned to think about the quality of what they've produced and the success and the recognition that they get as a result of that. As I said, humans are engineered to want to do great things and do it together with other people. That's what it comes down to at the end of the day.
Hand Raising And Mindset: Humans are engineered to want to do great things and do it with others.
There are so many great lessons and tips that you've given. I like to end with some rapid-fire questions. You pick a category. The category is family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Let's go with health.
Things or actions I don't have that I do want?
I need to be more fit. I've turned that 50-dial and it's more important than ever. I've always been athletically minded. I want to stay feeling young and doing things that I love to do. I need to maybe spend a little bit more time being outdoors and doing things that support my overall health.
Things or actions that I do have that I want to keep?
I eat well. I would say that. I'm tuned into that. As I said, I'm still out there doing a ton of things and trying to keep up with my kids. I feel like I'm doing that well on the health front.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want to have?
I don't ever want to run anywhere as far as fitness goes. I've learned the things that I get inspired about doing that I can keep up doing.
It gives you energy.
Hot yoga is amazing and I love that. I love to ride bikes and things like that but keep me away from running.
I was running on the beach and I'm not a fast runner. I was running one day on vacation. I ran past a woman wearing a shirt in big letters that says, “I hate running,” and she was running.” I thought that was perfect.
That's pretty funny.
The last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
I don't know if I have any answer to that. I'm pretty good about making those choices and saying, “These are things I do and I don't,” and I'm intentional about that. I don't know that I have anything in that category.
Is there anything that we haven't discussed or that you want to emphasize as some takeaways for the people that have read this interview?
You have probably heard me say it thematically throughout my career. It's curiosity, hand raising, leaning in, and a growth mindset. Those are the things. They're game changers. I mentioned I went back to school. It was a little bit more recent than you might think. I got my MBA in May of 2022. COVID degree, thank you. I forgot how much I liked academic learning. I'm a learner and I like to read, but you go and learn a thing and it's not for the purpose of an objective at work. I was like, “I remember how to do that and how great that feels.” Having a discussion with people just to have a discussion was awesome. I'm going to carry that torch forward and say it to as many people as possible. It's fantastic.
Hand Raising And Mindset: Curiosity, hand-raising, and leaning into a growth mindset are game changers.
I love that. I was listening to a meditation and in it, they were talking about music. When you're listening to a great song, you don't want it to end. You want to be right in the middle. That's the thing about learning. You want to be in the middle of that process and the good stuff when your brain is exploding with ideas, and not rush that part because that's the fun.
It is the fun.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and so many great lessons. Thank you very much.
You're very welcome. It's great to be here.
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Now for my mindful moments with my interview with Liz that had so many great lessons about how to think like an innovator and work that through your organization. To come to that, we talked about Liz's background of her parents getting divorced and her moving across the country, the effect that had on her at a young age, travelling across the country by herself with her sister, and building that whole belief system of making sure that she would protect and insulate her sister from any pain, stress or fear of doing this.
Early on, she took on that ownership and responsibility. She took on the belief system that you don't need anyone else. You do what you say you're going to do. You follow through and how important responsibility is. That belief system led her to push through in her schooling and make sure that she achieved what she wanted to achieve. What she learned along the way is that in order for learning to happen and to achieve your goals, you have to get others involved.
It can't all be on your shoulders. A lot of us go through that hard truth of learning how to delegate and learning how to trust others with the work that we do or the work that we need to do. We soon find out that we cannot do everything alone. If we try to do everything alone, we're going to work around the clock. What we talked about that's important is her observation of having to let people in and not having to be an expert in everything. Find those people that are your gaps in your knowledge base so that you can push forward and create an even better experience or better project than if you had done it on your own.
She learned from a young age also how to prioritize. When we take on the responsibility, what soon happens is we have to figure out why we're doing what we're doing, and what are the most important things that we need to do through those skills that we might learn because we have to learn as we're going up.
One of the things she realized that she had to learn was how she let go of things and let other people do the things so that she can move forward and do the best work that she needs to do. Evaluate whether other people can do the things that she can do and have that trust. Trust is such a big piece of this to make sure that you have the ability. One plus one is not two. It's three or more, depending on the skillsets and gaps that you fill with others.
What she learned through this process was to help people be better leaders, and involve them in the process early so that they feel that they're part of the process. A lot of times, we go off as leaders into a room and start making decisions, and not getting the feedback that we want to get so that people feel involved in the process. They feel like it wasn't a bunch of people making decisions that don't understand their job or what their day-to-day is like.
What she found in her life is that she had done a lot with her family situations and made sure her sister was okay. She was much more of a peacemaker. She wants to make other people happy. With that, she had to truly understand what that was creating in her life, whether that be work or personally, to make sure that she wasn't overdoing to make other people happy. A lot of times, we're doing that for our own self-worth or we have to be honest with ourselves about that, and what is truly helpful versus where we are enabling someone to not do the things that they can do and have the ability to do.
One of the things that she talked about was creating mirror champions. She said that these are people that are helpful to look at and to give yourself an example of what you want to create for yourself. Do you see that in yourself? Do other people see that in you? Through her process, she has identified those types of people in her life that can give her real feedback and vice versa.
What she has found when she works with others to help them in the learning process and take on leadership and innovation were four areas. The first part of the learning process is raising your hand. You want to be a part of it. A lot of people go by exception and might always look at the negative and that it might not work instead of looking at the possibility, and being a part of the project to determine if it is doable or not.
The second one was to be curious and make sure that you have what I would call awe. It’s that feeling of what is possible and that excitement that we might be creating something so amazing that will change people's lives, even if it's a little thing. The third thing we talked about was taking on new projects. Some people enjoy more maintenance work. This is something we have to be honest with ourselves if we are more in the maintenance mode versus liking to start a new project all the time and putting together puzzle pieces. Those are good observations about ourselves to make sure that we are the right person to work on a project.
The last one was value execution and making sure that the things that you do create value, and how you evaluate that along the way. We also talked about what can hold back innovation, and the things to look for when you're going through an innovation process. The first one was fear of failure can hold back change. It's important that we apply that learning process into this about that growth mindset, about the curiosity, and how we push past that negativity or preconceived notions without knowing if something will work.
The second thing was thinking past the first impression and the first thought. What if that wasn't true? That assumption that we might be making that it wouldn't work, can we get rid of those assumptions in the innovation process? Is it the worst possible thing that the worst possible thing would be? We keep going down that path to make sure that we can live with what that worst possible thing would be, and how we can put guardrails around that so that we can get comfort from the people that we need to get comfort with so that we can push past on this project.
The last part was getting to know people personally. As you get to know people in different departments or might be customers that you're trying to help through change and so forth, it's important that they feel like you care about them personally. You're not just there pushing an agenda. You show that you're listening to them. You're getting rid of any bias that you might have. You're helping them connect to this future version of themselves or the organization that they're going to feel nurtured and supported to get there.
There were so many lessons in this episode that I'm sure many of you can take away when you're going into this innovation process in your organization. Also, recognize what are those belief systems that might be holding you back or that might be holding others back so that you can push past them and get to this curious state. It’s that state of awe and excitement about what you're going to be doing, and understanding why you're doing what you're doing.
Realize that there's no singular path to get to where you want to go. There might be multiple options. It's all about that curiosity throughout the process to make it an exciting and delightful process, and remember to build in fun as you go about it. I want to thank Avalara for sponsoring the show. Also, for any of you that are looking for sales tax automation and all of the different products that Avalara offers, you can go to Avalara.com/Accountants or you can email Avalara at Accountants@Avalara.com.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it would be helpful to your organization or the people that you work with. Please share it, subscribe to it, and make sure that everyone benefits from the great advice of all these leaders that come onto this show. When we are more aware of the belief systems that might be holding us back, we can start the little steps toward change, and be able to create the life that we desire.
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About Liz Armbruester
Liz Armbruester, SVP, Global Compliance, Avalara
Operations Liz oversees global compliance operations at Avalara. She brings more than 20 years of leadership experience from a variety of technology sectors including software, media, and services and is known for her strong track record of innovative problem solving, process optimization, and an ability to deliver automation for efficiency and scale.
Liz's strong commitment to operational excellence and aptitude for partnering cross-functionally helped her drive value in her prior roles with Vubiquity, a provider of content monetization technology, and Zilog, a computing microcontroller manufacturer.