Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Hey everybody, and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. Today, my guest Sarah Gallagher and I are going to talk about, among other things, the difference between competence and confidence and how each one impacts your ability to grow and promote in your career. And I've known Sarah for umpteen years, so we're going to talk about other stuff too. Sarah is the president of the boutique project management consulting firm, the Persimmon Group, and the creator of one of my very favorite LinkedIn newsletters, Big Dumb Questions. We actually hadn't talked in a little while and we reconnected recently because she's just been putting out bangers every single week on her newsletter.

Diana Alt [00:01:11]:
She's a recognized expert in leadership and strategy execution who helps leaders and teams get their ideas off of PowerPoint and into the real world. She's a frequent speaker, author, and instructor, helping organizations ranging from fast moving startups to the Fortune 500 get unstuck so they can move big ideas forward. Welcome to the party.

Sarah Gallagher [00:01:35]:
Thanks, Diana. I am super excited to be here.

Diana Alt [00:01:39]:
How are you? You gave me a beautiful introduction and I was like, I can make this even better.

Sarah Gallagher [00:01:45]:
I thought it was great. I thought it was great.

Diana Alt [00:01:48]:
It's always fun to go on a podcast when you give people stuff, but they put their twist for their brand on it or whatever. You're like, wow, that's better than what I wrote. I don't 100% if I did better. You have a good team that writes stuff for you, but I think it is really interesting to listen when people introduce you when, like, you're a guest.

Sarah Gallagher [00:02:10]:
Yeah, I'm definitely taking away some of those, those subtle edits. That was great.

Diana Alt [00:02:18]:
It'll be out, like you can get it, right. So we talked big dumb questions. Yeah, yeah, I just bullied you right before I hit record. And to buy a URL for that, you can make it that much easier to tell everybody about it. But what I want to know is where did this genius, fantastic idea come from for this newsletter? How'd that come to be?

Sarah Gallagher [00:02:46]:
Yeah, so. Well, first of all, the term Big Dumb Questions came from a article in the Atlantic that I read that like, just blew my mind. And, and it's not in the context of business, but it was this journalist, Derek Thompson, who was talking about his, like, best performing columns. And he said the best performing columns are ones that answer big dumb questions. Yeah. Smart questions are designed to advertise the wisdom of the speaker. And big dumb questions are the things that everybody wants to know, but maybe never stop to think about that they wanted to know the answer.

Diana Alt [00:03:31]:
Oh, I love that so much.

Sarah Gallagher [00:03:33]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:03:33]:
So that all of those ask it, huh? Or they're afraid to ask it.

Sarah Gallagher [00:03:40]:
Exactly.

Diana Alt [00:03:41]:
Because they don't.

Sarah Gallagher [00:03:42]:
Exactly. And I feel like I walk around all the time with these big dumb questions in my mind. It's just sort of how I'm built. And I started accumulating. I mean, I have 50 right now, in a word doc. But I'm just like, these are the things I want to know the answer to. And I'm one of these people. If I don't get it out into the world, it just drives me bonkers.

Sarah Gallagher [00:04:03]:
So I thought, you know what? I. I've got a really active group of people, smart people on LinkedIn that I'm already talking to. Why don't I throw this out there and, you know, maybe sharpen my thinking and just like, let me tell you.

Diana Alt [00:04:17]:
One of the things I like about it. So the newsletters are really interesting because they, like, flex over time. You know, we've had periods where people want, like, really rich newsletters with a bunch of research data and, like, all of that. We've had times when people would rather chew broken glass than read that. And we're in an age, especially with the resurgence or the not resurgence, because it's newer, but like the growth of Substack in particular. It kind of started when Medium was really hitting a stride, and then substack sort of overtook Medium, and people are writing like this long form stuff, which is nice in the age of TikTok, but most of them suck. Sarah.

Sarah Gallagher [00:05:05]:
Yeah, I know.

Diana Alt [00:05:06]:
Pretentious.

Sarah Gallagher [00:05:07]:
I'm aware.

Diana Alt [00:05:10]:
And I've been. I've been in the mode of, like, should I do that? I did the podcast because I think it's a way to have a richer conversation. And every time I thought about making a newsletter, like, I just thought of all the terrible ones. So I was like, I'm not gonna do that, but I let you in my inbox. I think I'm subscribed to a very small number of newsletters on LinkedIn.

Sarah Gallagher [00:05:33]:
Well, I am privileged to be among that list. And you're right. Like, I. I feel like advice is boring, especially coming from a consultant, first of all, because good advice is tailored to you.

Diana Alt [00:05:50]:
Yes.

Sarah Gallagher [00:05:51]:
And so I. I Don't know. Intellectual humility is one of my core values and so I almost never see start an issue knowing what I think the answer is. I sometimes the answer is gettable and I can research it on behalf of people.

Diana Alt [00:06:10]:
Hang on. Intellectual. What did you say?

Sarah Gallagher [00:06:13]:
Intellectual humility.

Diana Alt [00:06:14]:
Humility. I had to go find a contrast and colored pen so I wouldn't lose this. Can't write in a black pen on my black and white paper right here. So you just go in with like here's a dumb question but I'm going to pretend I know the answer.

Sarah Gallagher [00:06:32]:
Yeah, I, you know by the time I write it I usually have a well considered position that is informed by my experience but also research I do for every article. Some of which like I'll have the, the piece written based on my experience and then like see research that says actually I'm totally wrong and I have to rewrite the whole thing. Which is actually the best thing that.

Diana Alt [00:07:00]:
Could you ever talk. So I've, I don't, I can't say I've read every single one that's gone.

Sarah Gallagher [00:07:05]:
Yeah, sure.

Diana Alt [00:07:06]:
Do you talk about that process?

Sarah Gallagher [00:07:09]:
You should started doing it more. I'm writing more things in the first person because I just again I'm following what's interesting and it's more interesting to. I don't know, to do that. And so yeah, I have been thinking a lot about that that sometimes the, the reason I'm asking the question is important for people to know rather than just assume everyone wants to know the answer.

Diana Alt [00:07:38]:
You know, there's that there's like so many layers to it because there's that part and here's the other part that occurs to me. There's like three layers to every question potentially. This one is like what regular ass people are going to think. Yep. Most of which have never, you know, like they've held jobs but they haven't worked in consulting for example or in the same space as the stuff you talk about. That's number one. Number two is what Sarah thought at the beginning.

Sarah Gallagher [00:08:04]:
Uhhuh.

Diana Alt [00:08:06]:
And then number three is like what you actually learned was right when you researched. So that's really. That can like that can be rich all by itself. And when we were, Sarah and I were talking before I hit record about substack and like how cool substacks become because you can do things that are richer and more robust. And then then just the LinkedIn newsletter that could be a really interesting twist because you could do like your kind of thought think piece and then you could do Like a little supplementary, like bts behind the scenes. This is what went through my mind as I was writing.

Sarah Gallagher [00:08:49]:
Oh my gosh, I love that.

Diana Alt [00:08:50]:
I thought for sure. Like I read the BM versus the. Versus Project Manager versus Business Analyst one this morning. Oh, I have. I have an opinion on that for sure. And then you schooled me in your article. But you could do that because I am not on Team PM and VA being the same person in a, in an organization of any size. Yeah, I think it works very well and not very many people have the aptitude for both things.

Diana Alt [00:09:24]:
But that for me, if I was writing that article would have been like, here's where I started. I started with this, but then you did all your research and figured out, oh, then yeah, complicated than that.

Sarah Gallagher [00:09:37]:
I. And here's what's so interesting. The position I started with was any PM worth their salt should be able and train themselves to be a BA was my initial position. And then I really thought about every client I've ever worked with and I mean, they've all done it differently. And I really thought like, what made it so successful to have that model? When did it not work? What I realized was it both models work as often as they don't work. And it occurred to me that people's opinion is based on this, like thin slice of what they've seen. I mean, think about in a 25, 35 year career, you're limited by how many projects you could possibly work on during that time. And some people work all in one industry or all with one company or one type of company.

Sarah Gallagher [00:10:41]:
So, you know, we go in so confident that we know the answer. And it occurred to me like, no one can. And so the column became, you know, here's, here's where I think based on what I've seen, it works and doesn't work. And what I like about writing the column is it invites a conversation and I genuinely want to know what other people think.

Diana Alt [00:11:09]:
So my take on the P. We could do a whole nother thing. Just I know right about Sarah's career journey. We always do that. And then I promised in the intro that we're going to talk about competency and competence, which is the competency and confidence, which is the big dumb questions I saw that made me run to my DMs and say, Sarah, you better get on the show. So my take on PM and BA is this. When you're in an organization that has more than just like a very, very small number of people on project teams, I'm a believer that people need to know the lane and like work in their skill.

Sarah Gallagher [00:11:50]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:11:51]:
All the time that I've been doing work there are very few people that are truly skilled and able, temperament wise, skill wise, et cetera. To be a good PM and a good BA. The skill sets are different because 15 years ago we were talking about PM as the promotion from BA and I bought into that. So I'm on the. We need people to do the thing that they're best at because my bias is flex systems and processes and workflows and stuff like that. I don't want a BA that's cosplaying as a, as a PM to manage something that complex. I don't want to PM cosplaying as a BA when they are not strong on requirements, solicitation and management. That's my take.

Diana Alt [00:12:42]:
But when I read your article and you were talking about smaller teams, leaner teams, etc. That's when I was like oh yeah, that is when I've seen it work better to have the same person and usually the person is only called a project manager. The projects kind of manage themselves because the commute, there's not that many communication because the team is lean. So in that case, like the skill set I actually want as a ba.

Sarah Gallagher [00:13:10]:
And I would add another dimension to this which is project management as a discipline has a real problem and has for years, which is no one can really agree on what a PM does and the value that they add. So you have a huge contingent of PMs who think their job is to coordinate work and report status model. The what?

Diana Alt [00:13:36]:
It's the administrative model.

Sarah Gallagher [00:13:38]:
Yeah. And so if you're asking me, should those PMs be Bas? Hell no.

Diana Alt [00:13:43]:
But those PMs are going to be out of a job anyway because they.

Sarah Gallagher [00:13:46]:
Like well now with AI. Absolutely. But you would be surprised how many companies hire them over and over again because it's all they know. Right. But the PMs I work with and hire are some of the best. Right. And they know that's not their only job and they also know they can't do the job without deeply understanding the work and the requirements and why it matters and who is going to hate the thing they're building and who is going to love it.

Diana Alt [00:14:20]:
Right.

Sarah Gallagher [00:14:20]:
And so you know, so those types of people are prime to learn the business analysis skill and they're probably going to be pretty good at it now. Too much work.

Diana Alt [00:14:35]:
Right.

Sarah Gallagher [00:14:35]:
But like, I mean I, I think it also depends on what kind of PM you're talking about.

Diana Alt [00:14:40]:
Well, the kind of PMs you're talking about really have the consulting skill.

Sarah Gallagher [00:14:44]:
Yeah, true.

Diana Alt [00:14:45]:
They have true like they. Yep, true management consulting skill. Not like the Bain Boston Consulting, but like they can see holistically and they understand business and systems. Here's the hill I'll die on.

Sarah Gallagher [00:14:58]:
Okay. I love it. Go on.

Diana Alt [00:15:00]:
Hill I'll die on is you should never have to be the project manager and the product manager. I will die on that hill.

Sarah Gallagher [00:15:10]:
Interesting. Tell me more.

Diana Alt [00:15:14]:
Two reasons.

Sarah Gallagher [00:15:15]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:15:17]:
Number one is that fundamentally a product manager is a decision maker. They own the vision, the strategy to whatever scope is appropriate. You know, product owns the 24 month, 36 month strategy. The product manager owns how that plays out in their set of product. It's a decision making role. Project management is a facilitation role. Same with ba. That's why you can have the same person.

Diana Alt [00:15:51]:
When you are trying to be a facilitator of decisions and you're also simultaneously trying to be a decision maker. It does not work. Kind of like how you don't want your master and your PO to be the same person.

Sarah Gallagher [00:16:08]:
I would agree with that.

Diana Alt [00:16:10]:
And yes.

Sarah Gallagher [00:16:12]:
And when people say oh I want to know, I want to learn Agile as a pm, I better learn to be a SCRUM master. What I tell them is particularly if they fall in that consulting PM top tier, PM spectrum. Maybe you should be a product owner instead. Not at the same time, but the skills. I feel like the level of thinking involved is, you know, that sometimes is a better map.

Diana Alt [00:16:45]:
I'll say this, my yes. And to that is only if the organization is sufficiently product focused that the product owner isn't a relabeled BA.

Sarah Gallagher [00:17:00]:
Absolutely. Because I think we have found our, our agreed upon ground here.

Diana Alt [00:17:08]:
I work with a lot of product managers because I've done product management and I've done and I had to for about seven months be the PM and the, the PO and the SCRUM Master on a team. It nearly killed me. Yep. So I had this opinion before that circumstance. But like I have it even harder now because now I have all these dozens and dozens of clients that I've worked with and I've learned from them too. But I would say that right now, like product management's the job market and product management is really hard right now and the main things leading to that are number one, leadership roles have been condensed. So a lot of people that were on the junior end of directors in particular are finding that the best they can qualify as senior product manager, which still has a lot of scope in good companies. Like, that's not a bad role to have, but that feel, that's an ego hit when you work your ass off for years.

Diana Alt [00:18:05]:
The second thing that I've seen is just all the product management groups are running leaner because of the combination of the craziness of our job market anyway and AI. But the third thing is well over half of the people running around with a label of product manager are not actually skilled as product managers. They're skilled as something else. So those people, when we needed a million product managers in 2021, 2022, now have three, four years of experience as a product manager. That's really a ba under their belt. And they're wondering why they can't get a call.

Sarah Gallagher [00:18:45]:
And this whole conversation. I know it's not a PM podcast, so we can move on, but I have a new big dumb question just from this conversation that I don't know the answer to and I want to go think about it, but should it's. It's multi. Part. Should BAS also report to a centralized PMO where one exists along with the PMs? And two, what role does a PMO have if especially in where there are agile teams, which are truly stable product teams? You know, what role does a PMO have in that? And you are seeing. I mean, I wrote about this too. Like a lot of PMOs becoming value delivery offices because they have product teams that are stable as opposed to, you know, something with the beginning and an end. So I'm curious to dig into that a little bit.

Diana Alt [00:19:39]:
Ah, wow, that's a really good one. Nobody needs to call anything value delivery anything, because that makes me want to put my fist through a wall. Okay. We need to like, in general, the reasons corporate is a joke to so many people, including a lot of the people working there, is that we come up with BS terms like value delivery office. No hard pass.

Sarah Gallagher [00:20:11]:
You know what's funny is I just worked with a client where we did change the name from PMO to video.

Diana Alt [00:20:19]:
I mean, it's okay.

Sarah Gallagher [00:20:21]:
I'm just saying this is where. This is where I love big dumb questions. Like, I loved writing that interview with Trevor about should they change their names specifically, I called him because I had done it, and I still feel we did it for good reasons. But I knew he disagreed with me, right? And so that is like classic big dumb questions right there. It's like anytime I do something and someone I respect, like you or Trevor, has that reaction, I'm like, well, clearly I need to dig into this I.

Diana Alt [00:20:57]:
Think a rename from Project Management Office is warranted. But I think the rename. You don't even have to change the monograms on the handhelds.

Sarah Gallagher [00:21:06]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:21:07]:
Portfolio Management Office.

Sarah Gallagher [00:21:09]:
Okay.

Diana Alt [00:21:11]:
Because that lends itself to either program focus program and project focus work or product focus work. When I was a product manager that had several different analytics products in EdTech, I referred to them as my product portfolio. Mm. Anyway, cool.

Sarah Gallagher [00:21:31]:
Love it. But anyway, all that, all that aside.

Diana Alt [00:21:34]:
Didn'T know we were doing that, guys. That's. That's the beauty of these conversations. Like, I haven't talked to Sarah in two years. She wrote this cool article. Let's talk about this. She's been on my Monday.com potential guest board for six months. We should make this happen.

Diana Alt [00:21:52]:
So I want to hear like the mini CliffsNotes 5 minute version tops of how you went from whatever you thought you were going to do when you were young into this role as president of a consulting organization. How did you. Yeah, just a little bit through that career.

Sarah Gallagher [00:22:14]:
I will, I will try to make this brief, but it. But it was a circuitous route. So I'm gonna start with September 11, actually. So I grew up in a very conservative Christian and that's all I knew. And after September 11, there was a national conversation about Islam. And my. I mean, this is maybe big dumb questions in action early on, but I was like, you know, what I want to do is throw myself into the most different thing that I can think of. And so my major was Middle Eastern studies and I minored in Arabic and I studied in Cairo and I just threw myself into it.

Sarah Gallagher [00:22:59]:
And I changed as a person because everything I thought I knew was now on trial in a good way. And it really helped me shape, like, who. Who I am.

Diana Alt [00:23:12]:
But. Yeah, you are doing what is now referred to as anti racism work. Yeah. Before we even have those words or. It was cool. Seriously. Yeah. Most white people in the middle of the country, like you and I are, if we think about these things or we've heard about this kind of work or the term anti racism, most of us heard it with the murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and like that era in the middle of 2020.

Diana Alt [00:23:49]:
We weren't thinking about it that way in 2020, in 2001. But you just went and like, did a whole degree.

Sarah Gallagher [00:23:57]:
I never thought about that. But I will say it's just always been my temperament to run toward what I disagree with out of sheer frenetic. Wow. Like, I just. It's just. I don't Know it's an impulse. Right.

Diana Alt [00:24:15]:
For. That's your enneagram for Yes.

Sarah Gallagher [00:24:20]:
I. I'm surprised you remember that. I was a four.

Diana Alt [00:24:22]:
I remember that because I remember talking to you about the fact that you were fighting about whether you're a three or a four. I think you're with a three wing.

Sarah Gallagher [00:24:30]:
Yeah, that's exactly right. I. I think that is true as well. But anyway, so.

Diana Alt [00:24:35]:
So yeah. So you studied in Cairo and like I did.

Sarah Gallagher [00:24:38]:
And. And you know, my tentative plan was I'll join the CIA. And then I went to Cairo and loved it, by the way. Transformative experience. But I figured out real quick I did not want to move every two years and spend my whole working career out of the United States, you know. And I was like dating the guy and not the guy, but the person I thought was the guy, you know. And I was thinking about like yeah, just how that was going to work into my life. And then my.

Sarah Gallagher [00:25:10]:
My dad had a heart attack and I. He was fine though he's since passed. And so I came back to my hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma to be with family. And then it was like what am I going to do in the 08 recession in Oklahoma with a Middle Eastern studies degree? And the answer was sales. Because I could get by on my personality and I was pretty good at it. But I also.

Diana Alt [00:25:41]:
What did you say?

Sarah Gallagher [00:25:41]:
Okay, this is really funny. I sold newspaper ads in a small town. Newspaper, Cool. Well, I mean, no, it was awful. And it was. Even back then it was like a dying industry. But it taught me a lot, you know.

Diana Alt [00:25:59]:
And.

Sarah Gallagher [00:26:01]:
And then I went to work for. For a like a for profit career. College also, you know, a strange experience. And I was in admissions, so also a type of sales. And I just, I noticed that like there was, there was no real marketing collateral. I secret shopped a couple other schools. Again, curiosity. And I realized like there were so many things we could be doing.

Sarah Gallagher [00:26:34]:
So then I just did them. And the CEO said I think I've hired you for the wrong job. And so I really became a project manager at that point. And I mean I did projects I had no business doing.

Diana Alt [00:26:48]:
You were never like just based on your temperament and what you just can't imagine that you were ever. Or for any long length of time. The. Here's your status report.

Sarah Gallagher [00:27:01]:
Oh no.

Diana Alt [00:27:01]:
The Gantt chart girl.

Sarah Gallagher [00:27:03]:
No, I was all in. And maybe this, this is my bias around business analysis and, and PMING is like I did. I both led a project and led teams and did a lot of the work. So like for example, one of the projects I had no business doing was applying to the state version of the Malcolm Baldrige Award. And that involved transforming lots of things about our organization. Not only did I educate leaders on what it was and strategically implement things we should be doing, but I was corralling eight other senior leaders to do it and driving progress. And so, you know, and by the way, like, at the same time, I'm, like, launching degree programs and helping us go online before that was a thing. And, like, just all kinds of things at the same time.

Sarah Gallagher [00:28:03]:
There was no rhyme or reason, and there was no other PM on staff. I was just.

Diana Alt [00:28:09]:
I remember, here's the weird stuff. Let's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we trust her. How exciting.

Sarah Gallagher [00:28:18]:
It was really neat. But I'll tell you, I remember discovering that there was a PMI Project Management Institute and that they had this book that was ostensibly like the textbook. And I remember buying it and reading it, I swear to God, three times. And I understood no more at the end of it than I did at the beginning.

Diana Alt [00:28:39]:
That's on brand for the pmbok. Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [00:28:41]:
So then I just, like, invented my own stuff. And then again, that same CEO made a big impact in my life. She said, sarah, as much as I love you, like, you should be a consultant. So. So I decided. I mean, the company that did that was the Persimmon Group. They were really well known. I knew they had clients all over the place, and so.

Sarah Gallagher [00:29:02]:
But I also didn't think I could get a job there. And so.

Diana Alt [00:29:07]:
So.

Sarah Gallagher [00:29:08]:
So, yeah, I started a blog called GearsandShifts.com, a blog about the way we work. And essentially it was a. A mini MBA. I graduated undergrad with $120,000 of debt. So an MBA, an actual MBA was not in the cards. So I figured I can't get the degree, but I could get the knowledge and I could get the network. And so I would. I committed 15 hours a week to studying, whatever.

Sarah Gallagher [00:29:38]:
I contacted professors across the country, I attended conferences, I took vacation time to do it, and I wrote about it. And so one of the HR conferences said, we'll give you free admission if you blog about it. So I went. And then the person was like, let me introduce you to the Persimmon Group because they're exhibiting here, and they're like, do you have a resume? And I said, of course I do. I didn't. Literally, the next session, I drove to Kinko's. I got a resume. I came in, like, breathless.

Sarah Gallagher [00:30:11]:
But, like, I just happened to have it like, and then I interviewed and I didn't know what to do to like prove that I could do the jobs. I literally brought in photos of like what I now know as a Gantt chart that I did on a whiteboard. And like I just said like, this is what I do.

Diana Alt [00:30:30]:
I love it. History. Because you, you've been at Persimmon Group, you started as what, a consultant?

Sarah Gallagher [00:30:36]:
Thirteen years. I started as a PM and so and consultant. Right. So like some years I led project big ones. Other years I led projects part time but then shadowed senior consultants in PMO consulting until about four years in three, four years. In between that, my six years PM experience prior, I started doing more consulting than PMing. And then that just continued until 20, until 2018, 2019. I became the VP of delivery.

Sarah Gallagher [00:31:16]:
So then I was also responsible for like quality of delivery of consulting. And it was a made up job.

Diana Alt [00:31:24]:
That, that's why I met you because you came to Kansas City and you.

Sarah Gallagher [00:31:29]:
Yeah, it was a totally made up job and the job I should have wanted was VP of Project Management. That was the open position. And I said, that's not what I want to do. Here's what I think the position should be and here's what I think it should be called and I'm your person to do it. So that's what I did.

Diana Alt [00:31:49]:
Yeah, here's, here's the thing. A lot of people think that stuff can't happen today. Yeah, job market is so strange. But this is happening actually all the time.

Sarah Gallagher [00:32:02]:
Yeah, it is time.

Diana Alt [00:32:03]:
People do it internal to their companies. Especially when you get to the point where you have the ear of leaders. Like, these are the kinds of things when by the time all the rest of the people hear about the reorg that rolled out, the conversations that are like, no, it should be VP of delivery. Those happened as part of the reorg or those ideas spur reorgs as well. So yeah, it's super interesting to think about because you can be in place saying, this is what I want to do, doing your current job well, but telling people, this is what I think the business needs to meet the goals and you can make those things happen. I've done, I probably could have done it more, you know, with a lot of hindsight. But this is also how the people that are working in the consulting and fractional age are getting jobs.

Sarah Gallagher [00:33:02]:
Huh. It's true.

Diana Alt [00:33:03]:
They are saying, this is the value I deliver. I think you think you need this. I see that you actually need something else. I'm your girl. I'm your Guy. That's how people are getting consulting work.

Sarah Gallagher [00:33:16]:
That's true. That's absolutely true all the time.

Diana Alt [00:33:19]:
So if anybody listens to this story from Sarah and are like, eh, she is a unicorn. But that's not why.

Sarah Gallagher [00:33:27]:
So, yeah, yeah, I, I tell people all the time who work for me now, they'll be like, what do I need to do to get to the next level? And I, and I often say, like, design. Design your job. Prove to me the job is needed and prove to me you're the person for it and you don't have to try to mold yourself into the job that already exists.

Diana Alt [00:33:48]:
I have a client I'm working with on that right now.

Sarah Gallagher [00:33:51]:
Really?

Diana Alt [00:33:51]:
He is an L and D expert, specifically in leadership development. He has a book about the first time that you're a manager called Lead Like a Pro. He also works with other levels of leadership and he had a consulting practice for a long time that just kind of like ended up not being the right thing. He went back into corporate in a training role at a company. He left and so now he's not even been there six months and he's having conversations with his leaders about this is where I want to go and this is how I see it in the organization. So I've been working with him on that as he's developed that plan. The problem is for a lot of people it's hard. Like you have to actually dig deep to figure it out.

Diana Alt [00:34:40]:
You became president. Yeah. The Persimmon Group at a very intriguing time.

Sarah Gallagher [00:34:48]:
Yeah, I remember the date. It was February 28, 2020.

Diana Alt [00:34:52]:
And guys. Yeah, 28-8-20.

Sarah Gallagher [00:34:56]:
And 3-13- I think it was, is the day we all went virtual for an undetermined amount of time. And we had to rethink literally everything about how we delivered work.

Diana Alt [00:35:10]:
Two weeks. That's it.

Sarah Gallagher [00:35:11]:
That's it. And here's the irony is like I was, for an ambitious person, I was actually surprisingly reluctant to take this job because. Because I was going to be taking over for founder. Male Gen X. Not a person you think of as someone who can let go. And I didn't really want to be like a figurehead. And so I, I literally did this exercise with him, I think was good for both of us, which was like, I gave him 15 scenarios like decisions. And I said, if I take this position, is it your decision, my decision, or our decision?

Diana Alt [00:35:54]:
Didn't he stay? He was the CEO while you were the president or some such.

Sarah Gallagher [00:35:59]:
Yeah, it's still the case. But what's neat is like he, he is Doing a lot of consulting work now and doing what he loves and I'm running the business and it's working out like so well. And like, to his credit, he has let go. And it is really, I mean, a lot of trust that I, you know, want to, want to do right by. But it was like we had worked everything out and then the pandemic happens and like, I mean, everything was up in the air and nothing. Yeah, pace of decision making went from, you know, monthly, weekly, to daily, hourly. I mean, it was the most stressful time of my entire life. And I'll, I'll tell you this, this is something I'm pretty public about, but I also had just completed my first year of sobriety at that time.

Sarah Gallagher [00:36:59]:
And it was one of those things where, I mean, I got so lucky. And this is a story for a lot of women, middle aged women, is we don't have a single problem with alcohol until suddenly you do. I mean, I never drank hardly at all until, I mean, I remember the day I was really struggling with being a mom. My daughter was almost three. I had no idea how to come home from work and stop thinking about work. And one day my husband hands me a glass of whiskey and says, you need this. And I drank it. And I remember having the best 20 minutes with my daughter that I'd had since she was born.

Sarah Gallagher [00:37:49]:
And then I chased that feeling for nine months. Literally went from, you know, that to drinking a lot and realizing at about the nine month mark, I did not know how to stop and I needed it to be a good mom.

Diana Alt [00:38:05]:
You and I have talked about that. I'm kind of glad you brought that up because you and I talk that story a few years and there's a lot of things that successful present, you know, outwardly successful, you know, nice people, good families, like whatever you want to say have going on, whether it is phobias, addiction, mental health issues, they're an abuser, they're abused. Like there's so much on Behind Closed Doors. And I really appreciate your willingness to talk about the fact that you discovered an alcohol problem and you, you quickly stopped it. I did.

Sarah Gallagher [00:38:48]:
And so fortunate that other than my, you know, strain on my marriage and my family, I caught it before there were any visible repercussions, which was, which was great. And I'm going to tell you something else. One of two things that forced me to see this clearly was an HR person that I had known, like just peripherally for years posted on LinkedIn that they were in their sobriety journey. And I figured if an HR person based on LinkedIn, I love it. Yeah. Then I can do it too. And so I, so that's why I'm open about it is it saved my life for someone I respected professionally to be open on it about it in a professional setting.

Diana Alt [00:39:41]:
Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [00:39:42]:
And let me tell you, every year on my sobriety birthday, I usually, I didn't remember this time because I, it literally went by and I didn't realize it had happened. It was crazy. But I usually post something about it and usually.

Diana Alt [00:39:55]:
Did you say it's the 13th?

Sarah Gallagher [00:39:57]:
September 2nd.

Diana Alt [00:39:59]:
Oh, September 2nd. Okay. Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [00:40:01]:
And so. And so. Yeah, so now I do that. And almost always two people reach out to me and say we need to talk because I think I'm going through this. So yeah, for me it is a moral obligation at this point.

Diana Alt [00:40:15]:
Yeah. It's a big deal. Like I haven't had like an addiction issue like you describe, but I chose to be very public with the fact that I was having brain surgery. Share. Had a pituitary tumor. His name was Pete. There's stories on LinkedIn and I should do a solo episode about that for people. But I decided that I was going to be public about it because number one, I live alone.

Diana Alt [00:40:44]:
And so marinating in that, even if you're talking to your friends, is really hard. And the other thing is we tend to act in life like we can't move towards goals if things aren't perfect.

Sarah Gallagher [00:41:00]:
Yes.

Diana Alt [00:41:01]:
And my life was very much 100% not perfect. I will say I just started back to work in earnest two weeks ago. Had surgery in August in, at the beginning of August and I was going nuts. So I would work like a couple hours a day just like, let's keep the, let's keep the email down and let's talk a little on social or whatever. But I didn't do any client work for two months, almost three months. And it, I'm approaching things differently.

Sarah Gallagher [00:41:32]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:41:33]:
And it was partly a decision, but it hasn't been the hard decision so far.

Sarah Gallagher [00:41:38]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:41:40]:
So. Well, thank you for sharing that.

Sarah Gallagher [00:41:42]:
Absolutely.

Diana Alt [00:41:43]:
You've been the president for five years. You went through the craziness. I want to make sure though that we, we hit on two things. Number one in your role, which is you have a big job, you have 20 something employees in the company, which doesn't sound like much, but honestly, I think it's harder to lead a 23 person org than a 223 person org.

Sarah Gallagher [00:42:06]:
Everything that happens, you feel intensely because everybody sees it.

Diana Alt [00:42:13]:
Huh? Everyone sees it. What Are some of the things that you do to make work feel good for you in this big job where it's so intense?

Sarah Gallagher [00:42:26]:
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, going back to sobriety, the things you do to stay sober, and there's also this thing called emotional sobriety. Right. Are the very things that. That have helped me put work in its proper perspective. One of the things that is so interesting to me, I didn't know I needed it.

Diana Alt [00:42:52]:
Right.

Sarah Gallagher [00:42:52]:
But when everybody's looking at you all the time, whether you're at a networking lunch or you're at work or you're with a client and like, everybody. Tulsa is kind of a small, big city, like a small town, big city kind of thing. So everybody knows you, like. But when I walked into a room with other alcoholics, I. No one gave a shit who I was. And everybody was there with the exact same problem. And I would sit next to surgeons and teachers and people who'd been on the streets two weeks ago, people who had just lost their kids, people who just got out of prison. And I was.

Sarah Gallagher [00:43:33]:
We were all the same. And I didn't know that. Like, I needed that feeling. But I. But it really has helped me, like, realize, first of all, it's kept me very humble, but second of all, I didn't realize I needed an outlet where no one gave a shit.

Diana Alt [00:43:51]:
You know, it's really. That's actually like, one of the things that I am seeking locally. Like, I have people. I. I left corporate in 2019 for good. Hopefully I never have to go back to that because I like what I'm doing. But I. Everything changed in my social circle because when you.

Diana Alt [00:44:15]:
For it to be an entrepreneur, when you leave any job, 95% of the people you don't talk to again, even the ones that besties, nothing bad. It's just not how life works. Then I was pivoting into entrepreneurship, which people don't understand. And many people see as an indictment of their decision to be in corporate. Like, it is amazing.

Sarah Gallagher [00:44:38]:
That is true. I've struggled with that myself.

Diana Alt [00:44:41]:
How often people think, well, you think I'm dumb for being a corporate employee. And I'm like, my whole business is helping people get jobs and be better. Yeah, mostly corporate careers. I do work with some small business owners because we live in the age of fractional, but I'm like, I need people that are needing corporate jobs in order to eat indoors. Somehow they still take that as an indictment. I think it's because they don't want to do that. But they don't. They haven't had that pain that makes them change yet.

Sarah Gallagher [00:45:14]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:45:15]:
So interesting. But I'm trying to rebuild. And, like, I want to go do something, like an improv group or, like, something where I don't even know what people do. Yes. And do, like, whatever that thing is, whether it's yoga, improv, community theater, freaking dodgeball team. Like, I don't care. I would like to not know that the person next to me is on the streets two weeks ago. Or a surgeon.

Sarah Gallagher [00:45:44]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:45:45]:
I think there's something powerful about that.

Sarah Gallagher [00:45:47]:
So I think so too. And, you know, the other two things I did are so simple, and everyone says to do it, but I just finally freaking did it. Is a. I stopped working after 5. I will get up at 5 in the morning and work because it's so nice to have that quiet hour. Or sometimes I get up at 5 and just play video games.

Diana Alt [00:46:07]:
Like.

Sarah Gallagher [00:46:07]:
Like, literally. But it's my time, right? And then. And then I never really stopped working virtual. Like, I discovered I had a baby during the pandemic, and I was like, I was not gonna miss it. I wanted to milk every moment that she was at home. And so I do client stuff in person when I need to, though a lot of my clients are national now, and I see the team in a really intentional way on either Fridays or every other Friday. But I work from home, and for me, it is. What.

Sarah Gallagher [00:46:45]:
It just makes me feel so comfortable to. Not again. Probably it's the same thing. Just to be able to go into the kitchen and talk to my husband for a minute and be a wife instead of the president all day is, like, fantastic.

Diana Alt [00:47:01]:
Yeah. I work at home and I like it. And I do some client work every once in a while. I have a client, a business owner. She's starting speaking and coaching and stuff like that, but she has a corporate job, and I'm doing like, a VIP half day in person thing with her. And so, like, that's the kind of thing I want. Whiteboards and that chemistry of. But mostly I enjoy working remotely too.

Diana Alt [00:47:29]:
So I don't know, like, how I would do it. It's not that I don't like people. It's like, I spent a lot of time and money getting my office as it is to where for me. So I want to turn to this confidence competency thing.

Sarah Gallagher [00:47:48]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:47:50]:
Because we. I said we'd talk about that. We need to spend some time on it because it's so freaking important. And I've been interviewing a lot of people that are really trying to help people crack through to what's the next layer of leadership? How do I get viewed as more strategic? Women in particular report to me that they're being told that they're not strategic. It's fair. Sometimes it's not. And then I had a conversation with a woman who helps coach people on executive presence and she's like, no one ever tells a man they don't have executive presence. So she said, zero times have I ever heard that said dozens of women.

Diana Alt [00:48:32]:
So there's a whole lot of things that are wrapped up in this.

Sarah Gallagher [00:48:35]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:48:36]:
So talk to us about confident. This was a big dumb question, right?

Sarah Gallagher [00:48:41]:
It was.

Diana Alt [00:48:43]:
Is the best way to go about this to, for you to just share, like how did the big dumb question come up and what did you research and learn and then poke at it? You want to.

Sarah Gallagher [00:48:53]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been reading research for a while that talks about how confidence is a proxy measure for competence. And in, in nearly every arena, but especially at work, like confident people are perceived as competent even when they're not. And here's why this question mattered to me is I have been the beneficiary of that dynamic.

Diana Alt [00:49:25]:
What is, what was the exact question that you used for your big dumb question on that? Do you remember?

Sarah Gallagher [00:49:32]:
I think it was why do we promote competent people over competent ones? I think it was, I think it was something like that.

Diana Alt [00:49:43]:
Yeah. I actually have LinkedIn here. Let me see if I can look up the newsletter because I think this is actually really important. So. And we're entertaining you by me looking something up. It's okay. It's a, it's just, it's one of those things that I have a lot of mixed feelings. I have a lot of feelings about it.

Sarah Gallagher [00:50:10]:
I do too. And I think that's how I knew I needed to write about it.

Diana Alt [00:50:16]:
Okay. It's because I looked up Sarah, not your freaking. I don't know what's happening. I'm having trouble with my tablet here. So basically you were, you were hearing that people and seeing research that people were getting for being confident. Yep. Being having competence attributed whether they deserve it or not. That's the, that's.

Sarah Gallagher [00:50:42]:
And then there were some factors that made this very personal to me. Factor one was I think I am where I am because I've never had a confidence problem. And my confidence in the beginning outpaced my confidence widely. And I, I think, yeah, I, I, and now I will say, and I wrote about this recently. I think confidence and self doubt can coexist. But when it comes to like my willingness to do something I'd never done before, my willingness to speak up in a meeting and just know in my heart I wasn't going to sound stupid like those, being in front of people, giving a presentation like this, it's never been hard for me. So even when I was junior, even when I hadn't done enough projects to know what I was doing, I looked like I did. And so, I mean, I've been promoted every two years my whole career.

Sarah Gallagher [00:51:42]:
Like, yeah, I don't think it's because I'm a genius. I think that early on, especially that confidence takes you a long way. So that's the first reason that I knew I had to write about it. The second is once I started hiring people myself, I realized I was doing it too. And that was eye opening and bad hire.

Diana Alt [00:52:08]:
Did you ever make like any really bad hires that were people?

Sarah Gallagher [00:52:12]:
Oh yeah. But here's what I'll say is like, I think, I think bad promotions more than bad hires probably. And obviously I can't get into that on a podcast. But I mean, yes, I would say that is true. And, and it is usually like I, and I really respected women who asked for a raise. It didn't understand women who wouldn't. So I think, yeah, I, I mean bias was just infused into my, the fabric of the way I led for a long time. And so, and, and I noticed it and it's like, you know, I have fixed it, I think in terms of making systematic changes that counteract my bias.

Sarah Gallagher [00:53:04]:
Right. I think sometimes you have to like put practices in place because it's really hard to change. How you mean the bias you've been steeped in?

Diana Alt [00:53:14]:
Really interesting. One of the things that I end up needing to work on with people sometimes is leveling. Tell me more so people will like levels like senior principal 1, 2.

Sarah Gallagher [00:53:26]:
Got it.

Diana Alt [00:53:27]:
Whatever those are, they're not standard. Like there's no standard for that stuff. There might be a standard internally in a company, but there's not a standard when you're moving from place to place and when you're dealing with complex knowledge work. Like even inside the company, it's hard because is it really somebody's fault if the scope of the department that they're in got cut? You know, like, yeah, but I end up working with people who come to me a lot and they're like, well, I'm going to go for like a principal program manager job. Okay, cool. I have to help people untangle whether they're actually qualified for it which is not really super my job. But I, they can't get the job if they should be a senior and they're aiming for principal poll, they're gonna probably get interview. They'll get a decent amount of interviews, especially if I help them with their resume.

Sarah Gallagher [00:54:25]:
What's so interesting to me too, like the other piece of this is, and I'll find the research for you, but the idea that men are often promoted based on potential and women are promoted based on performance.

Diana Alt [00:54:39]:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [00:54:41]:
And that's just another way of kind of stating the same.

Diana Alt [00:54:45]:
Yeah, I don't know that it's that though. This is a little bit.

Sarah Gallagher [00:54:49]:
Okay, tell me more.

Diana Alt [00:54:50]:
My context is different because I'm working with people who are trying to get a job or who think they deserve to be promoted because I do like career development coaching, coaching. And so they'll come to me and be like, I think I should deserve to be principal or I think I'm going to apply for jobs that are principal level roles. And sometimes that doesn't work. And I've had some people that have come in from a small company to a large company or vice versa. You know, they came from a big company and they're targeting smaller companies and they think they should have a higher title because the company is smaller and they had a big scope. But it just doesn't work that way. So I have to work with people on. For the target that you have, you say you want principal program manager in a company of, you know, 2,500 to 10,000 people.

Diana Alt [00:55:42]:
What is the principle there? What are the problems that that person is solving and to what degree have you already done things at that scope and scale? A surprise. There's a, there's a decent amount of people that actually target too low.

Sarah Gallagher [00:55:58]:
I think you're right. And, and I think what you're talking about is probably especially true in a job market where I think the bias creeps in is when you're already at the company and you have these sort of like network of relationships, formal and informal. And maybe you have a charismatic personality. Right. Maybe you're confident. And so you know, those people are often seen as, you know, they've got potential. So I'm going to promote them. And people that don't have those things, it's, well, okay, can you prove to me on paper that they deserve this job? And that's just a different, you're just holding people to different.

Diana Alt [00:56:38]:
When you have and when you have a combination. These, these are two things that go together a lot you have a combination of if the person isn't gregarious or showing us confident or self promoting, even if it's like quieter self promotion, they're just trying to do their damn job.

Sarah Gallagher [00:56:57]:
Yep.

Diana Alt [00:56:58]:
And hoping they'll be recognized. Which in a better system we would recognize that better. But that's often also accompanied by humility on paper. So if the person that is the more confident presenting and the person that's less confident presenting, but they're both equally competent applying promotion, the confident guy's resume also looks better.

Sarah Gallagher [00:57:24]:
Yeah, that's true.

Diana Alt [00:57:26]:
They could have done. They could have had the same impact. So there's ripple effects all the way through. I'm seeing the ripple effects when people have it wrong when they're looking for a new job more often than I see it. You're looking at it from promotion. But I had a, I had, I've had a couple of clients who fortunately were open to being active on LinkedIn. Like a lot of my clients are scared to put anything on LinkedIn. But I've had a couple of people where I was really questioning whether the level they were targeting was correct.

Diana Alt [00:57:57]:
I said, let's do this. You have this target title. You are convinced that you can do this job, let's validate it. And I had them go on LinkedIn and say, hey, I'm in the mar. I'm doing, I'm targeting X and I'm doing market research or like product, market fit. I think one of the people was a product manager. So PM terms. What are the top problems that your people at that level are doing in your company? Like what are they solving?

Sarah Gallagher [00:58:31]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:58:32]:
Are they bringing and then got comments from people because the universe was nice and the algorithm was nice and they got feedback and then that person and I, those people and I would go over it and say, which of this do you, you know, have you done already? Which of the things do we know you have the skill set to combine to do and saved some job searches? Because we're targeting too high. Yeah. You get in front of the VP of product. Yeah. You didn't do anything. Zero to one. You haven't owned the strategy. That's the three year strategy.

Diana Alt [00:59:10]:
You've done great work. You're one layer below.

Sarah Gallagher [00:59:13]:
So one of the best things we did, you know, I mentioned like sometimes the best way to combat bias is to put governors in place. And we've done two things that I think have been huge. And I know so because people have challenged me on my decisions to the point where I change my Mind the first one is every role has written. Here's what doing the job looks like, and here's what ready for promotion looks like in very tangible terms. Not like strategic thinking, but, like, you know, has. Yeah. And so that's there. And so that gives people a piece of literal paper that they can show me that says, I'm doing these things.

Sarah Gallagher [00:59:55]:
Where's my promotion? Right.

Diana Alt [00:59:58]:
I had one company I worked for that did things that clearly, it was my first job, and I have not seen that done well in 25 years. Well, which is sad. Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [01:00:11]:
Yeah. And you know what's interesting is what the exercise of doing it showed me how unclear we'd been because we couldn't agree, you know, until we did, we couldn't. And. And that whole exercise was, like, so eye opening. And then the second thing we did is we do pay equity reviews twice a year. And literally, in Excel, we sort salaries low to high or high to low. And we look at like, okay, these two people, one makes a little more than the other. Why? Right.

Sarah Gallagher [01:00:47]:
And we can pull that piece of paper up or we can say, well, you know, they've got this certification that makes it easier to place them somewhere or, you know, whatever that is. But, like, we have to justify it to each other and we write out our logic. Right. And so we can always look back and say, this is why we made that decision. Maybe it was the wrong one, but that's why we did it. And I think that changed a lot.

Diana Alt [01:01:11]:
That is so good. I think pay equity reviews are really important, and they're important demographically. Like, your company is small enough that. Yeah, but I remember one time, like, Marc Benioff, who founded Salesforce, is well known for being a proponent of pay equity.

Sarah Gallagher [01:01:29]:
Huh.

Diana Alt [01:01:30]:
And then they did a large scale pay equity review. I swear, like, it's been a while, but I remember reading about this a few years ago, and he found out that as committed as he and a lot of his executive team were to pay equity, demographically, they were missing the mark. And they analyzed it and they fixed it and they put processes in place, if I remember correctly. But yeah. So I love that you're doing that. Can you tell an example, though, of what one of those concrete ready for promotion type things might be?

Sarah Gallagher [01:02:06]:
Yeah. Well, I might have to look it up. Can I do that? Do we have time for me to look it up really quick? Okay, let me pull it up. It's easy to find.

Diana Alt [01:02:14]:
Yeah. I'll tell you. While you're doing that, I'll tell the story of like the consulting firm. I was a baby consultant out of college and we had two concepts. One was promotion and one was progression. So promotion, there were only four or five of them. Promotion was associate consultant to staff to senior to whatever, whatever, till you were the world. Then they had progression, which is you're an apps analyst focused person, you're a project management focused consultant, you're this.

Diana Alt [01:02:45]:
And so those could be lateral or they a little bit up and down. And they had defined like these are those types of roles that go with what level. Any move was celebrated as a progression.

Sarah Gallagher [01:03:00]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:03:01]:
Even if it was lateral, some people from a esteem or like, you know, kind of like that prestige standpoint would think it was backwards. It was celebrated as this person is adding to their career. The other thing that they did that I loved is we had like pretty clear definitions, like I think you're about to share with me. We would go through them and we had guidance that if you are performing at meets and exceeds for pretty much everything at your role level, whatever, and then you were hitting like a quarter to a third of the next thing, you were stretching into it, then that's when you were gonna go try to advocate for promotion. But if you're meeting everything but you weren't scratching the surface on any of the next role, then your promotion. And that was mostly in the world of promotions. So.

Sarah Gallagher [01:04:02]:
Right. Yeah. And. And I think it's important. It's a conversation we've had with the team. Like, I mean, like I'm looking at the difference between a consultant and a senior consultant. There's. There's eight things on the ready for promotion list.

Sarah Gallagher [01:04:16]:
I don't expect that someone hits all eight. Exactly. If some are more important than others and we communicate what those are, you know, and sometimes just by virtue of the work that that's secured for them, there's no way to do one of them. Like, I mean, you know, so. And in fact, one of the decisions I changed my mind on is someone came to me and said, okay, but this number seven, you've had me at the same client for two years. How am I supposed to demonstrate that I can succeed in a variety of project types? And I'm like, well, that's a good question.

Diana Alt [01:04:55]:
Right? Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [01:04:58]:
So we talked about it and you know, and, and thought about it, came up with, you know, well, here's how we can get you that experience and you know, let's revisit in six months. Then we made a. We made a decision.

Diana Alt [01:05:12]:
Yeah, I love that. Because you didn't compromise on the standard you built a plan to help the person meet the standard often doesn't happen. And I think leaders have an obligation to try to figure that out. So, so that's a really good example. Like you have experience on multiple types of clients. One of the common things that I've seen is this is one where I really have to push people on branding.

Sarah Gallagher [01:05:37]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:05:38]:
The personal brand thing. A lot of times the difference between a senior and a principal, especially when you're a consultant or a product technical person, is that the industry knows you. So you can get to see if your clients love you or if you're doing well internally. But you can't get to principal unless you're on stages, you're on podcasts, you're blogging. Like when people in your region or your industry know your name or you're, you're getting invited to those things, you're winning the, the speeches that you submit for at the conferences. You kind of can't get promoted until those things are happening. So it's not uncommon. Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [01:06:21]:
Yeah. And, and that's especially true I think in, in consulting and in a small business. You know, we, we are a non traditional in that we don't, we don't make people get their own business because it's my belief you can be really great as a consultant and not good at sales. And that doesn't mean that you aren't as valuable. Yeah.

Diana Alt [01:06:42]:
Like Accenture and like all those companies.

Sarah Gallagher [01:06:45]:
Right. Eat what you kill type and plus it breathes like fine.

Diana Alt [01:06:50]:
Like fine. Make the car go kill things. But your person that you hired to help set up PMOs. Yeah. Spent 20 years doing it and now they want to do it as a consultant. Does not need to have the pressure. Exactly. And a half dollars in sales.

Sarah Gallagher [01:07:06]:
Exactly. So then you know the only level where that becomes important. But it is the principal level. But it's still not eat what you kill. It's. Are you taking people to lunch and keeping us in front of people? Are you able to take the engagement that you're on and get more work from them? Are you able. Maybe you are a podcast person and you're posting on LinkedIn and that's okay. But like whatever your temperament allows.

Sarah Gallagher [01:07:36]:
Are you contributing to business growth?

Diana Alt [01:07:39]:
I love that perspective because business today is relationships more than smile and dial, especially for the type of. I have a friend who is, who owns a IT staffing firm here in Kansas City and in, in a lot of these third party recruiting agencies, staffing agencies, what they are measuring their recruiters on or their business people on is how many calls they made, particularly recruiters, how many emails did you send? How many calls did you make? What he chose to do is how many meaningful connections did you have with people that can make decisions, especially for his biz dev people, because he said it's not fair to tell the person that has a Rolodex and can call three people to find the perfect senior cyber security engineer to submit that they need to call 40 people.

Sarah Gallagher [01:08:36]:
Right.

Diana Alt [01:08:38]:
So he. Yeah, the. The metrics that they tracked were much more around those kinds of connections and submissions because they're very selective. They're not like the kind of firm that is like, well, we found 10 people that could do it. We're gonna submit all. They pick one or two. So it's like, did you find the person? And then, of course they're paid on placements. I'm gonna go to a lightning round real quick.

Sarah Gallagher [01:09:03]:
Let's do it.

Diana Alt [01:09:04]:
All right. And then I'm also going to put up. I'm putting up on the screen. For Those watching Sarah's LinkedIn. She loves to connect with people. That's friends. So please feel free. Just tell her you saw her on the show and connect with her.

Diana Alt [01:09:22]:
But the first thing I want to ask you is, what's the worst piece of career advice you've ever received?

Sarah Gallagher [01:09:28]:
Oh, man. Let's see, Man. It's weird because, like, I. I. Mostly the things that stand out are the best career advice, but I would say probably. Okay, so this is funny since we're talking about confidence versus incompetence, but I was told multiple times early on to stop raising my hand because. For work. Because other people were upset by it.

Sarah Gallagher [01:10:06]:
Right. They felt like I needed to wait my turn and, you know, not. Not volunteer.

Diana Alt [01:10:13]:
My brain went. My parents are teachers, so my brain went to. You're raising your hand in a meeting.

Sarah Gallagher [01:10:17]:
No, raising my hand to do work.

Diana Alt [01:10:20]:
Right.

Sarah Gallagher [01:10:20]:
Like, if I heard an interesting project, I would ask to be put on it. But, like, no one else was asking and they felt like that was, you know, not okay slash, you know, a direct attack on other people who, you know.

Diana Alt [01:10:38]:
Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [01:10:39]:
And I think it was a advice geared at a woman, to be frank, because there were guys doing it too, and it was not a thing, you know? And I think there was a. I think there's. There was a kernel of truth, which is that it's never. It's usually not productive in the long term to be seen as competing with your peers as opposed to lifting everybody up. Right. But competition is One thing, trying to grow your career by, by seeking out new types of work should not be viewed as competition. Especially because I, I was, you know, if someone told me, no, it's someone else's turn, I wasn't going to quit over it.

Diana Alt [01:11:23]:
You know, I had a really interesting thing. This reminds me of a situation that was almost 20 years ago at Cerner. I was managing the QA testing lab for like all of our internal application stuff, which was a big job. And we had a very broken sdlc. These were waterfall iterative kind of days, not agile days. And I basically got sanctioned from the CIO to own a project to build a new process that would work. I was at team lead level managing like five people. And there was this senior manager who had been hired in two years after me had a big team.

Diana Alt [01:12:08]:
And he was, he obstructed me at every turn because he was one of the stakeholders I had to work with. And he, I overheard him one day saying like, well, I just don't understand why Rich would have Diana do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, despite the fact that I did this as a consultant before I worked, know my background. And I just looked at him and I said, sir, all you had to do to get this project for your own is do it better before I got done.

Sarah Gallagher [01:12:41]:
Love it had to do.

Diana Alt [01:12:43]:
And you have title that. If you started to do it better while I was doing it, you probably would also get the project. But you're not, you're just obstructing. The guy ended up getting fired like a year and a half later. Not because of this, but for other reasons. But okay, number two, personal habit that's helped you be successful. We may have touched on this a little bit earlier. It's a personal habit that helps you be successful.

Sarah Gallagher [01:13:09]:
Yeah, I would say, and this has become a formal practice since, since sobriety. But there's this thing called a fourth step, which basically when you're irritated, upset, angry, sort of write down what has you upset and then what it's impacting and then what your part in it is, which doesn't have to mean that you did something wrong. It could mean you are the one letting this get to you. Like you are upset because you are letting yourself be upset. Right?

Diana Alt [01:13:44]:
Yeah.

Sarah Gallagher [01:13:44]:
And then what are you going to do next? And so for me, I mean, I literally will grab a notepad and if I'm upset about something, that's what I do. And it lets me not only release some of those things that piss me off, but also help me see more clearly how to show up in, in this situation. And since I started that, gosh, seven years ago now, it's been a game changer.

Diana Alt [01:14:09]:
I love that. That's really good. And finally, what is something that you've changed your mind about recently? Recent doesn't have to be yesterday, but like, what's something you've changed your mind about?

Sarah Gallagher [01:14:22]:
Yeah, let's see. I mean, I think that, not to go full circle, but I think that article about PMs and BAS. I, by the time I was done writing it, I, I changed my mind. I, I really was like, of course a PM should be able to be a ba. And then I talked to a bunch of people that disagreed with me and I, I, you know, read, read a lot and realized this is not so clear cut. And I know that's a tactical example, but I kind of just live that way. I just feel like if, if I haven't changed my mind about something every month, then I, I don't know, I feel like I'm not energized.

Diana Alt [01:15:06]:
I love that. And like, I actually stole that question from Adam Grant.

Sarah Gallagher [01:15:10]:
Oh, okay.

Diana Alt [01:15:11]:
He's got his, his podcast is.

Sarah Gallagher [01:15:14]:
Well, his book is Think Again.

Diana Alt [01:15:15]:
Right. Rethinking, I think. Okay. But the whole idea of it is, you know, what are you changing your mind about? And so he asked that on his podcast. So I stole that question. I think it's really important because, like, cognitive adaptability is so important in the age where things are changing so fast. Well, Sarah, thank you so much. Of course.

Sarah Gallagher [01:15:40]:
This was like the best conversation.

Diana Alt [01:15:42]:
It was amazing. I love a Friday afternoon podcast interview. It's fantastic. If you. Sarah's. Sarah's LinkedIn is on the screen if you're watching on YouTube, she is Sarah with no H. Sarah Gallagher. All of her links and things will be in show notes later.

Diana Alt [01:16:00]:
And look for the big Dumb Questions newsletter on LinkedIn and sign up for it, guys. So thanks a lot. We'll see you next time. Want some more career goodness between episodes? Head on over to DianaAlt.com and smash the big green let's connect button to sign up for my newsletter. Let's make work feel good together. And that's it for this episode of work. Should feel good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend.

Sarah Gallagher [01:16:36]:
Friend.

Diana Alt [01:16:36]:
Hit follow, hit subscribe. Do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good. Let's make that your reality.