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[00:01:01] Pat Sweet: This is the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet episode 49. .

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[00:01:15] Pat Sweet: Welcome to the engineering and leadership podcast. The show dedicated to helping engineering leaders thrive. Today I chat with speaker, author and former champion football player, Tanvir Bhangoo about digital transformation projects. And why these projects are much less reliant on technology than you might expect.

[00:01:39] Hi everybody. And welcome to the show. I of course, and pat sweet. And I'm thrilled to have you back here with me today. As always a really interesting conversation share with you today. I've got Tanvir Bhangoo, who's a really interesting character, has a fantastic background, lots of really interesting experience to share with us today, but as is usually the case, a few things I wanted to share with you first, a little bit of housekeeping. Uh, first of all, thanks to everyone who signed up for the productivity for engineering managers course. I hope you're enjoying that already. Of course you could still check out the course. That's still open and available engineeringandleadership.com/PEM. P E M. Standing for productivity for engineering managers.

[00:02:22] And if you lead an organization and you're interested in having the managers or leaders on your team take, this course do reach out to me. I offer it live, offer it online. Uh, the lots of different options there. So please do reach out. You can always use the contact page on my website engineeringandleadership.com/contact, or find me on LinkedIn.

[00:02:42] The next thing I wanted to mention was a webinar that my friend, Jeff Perry is putting on called How To Grow Your Personal Leadership For Engineering Career Success. It's going to be great. Those of you who have seen my work with Jeff or seen any of Jeff's previous webinars, you know, it's fantastic.

[00:02:59] So that's coming up Wednesday, March 23rd at 4:00 PM. Pacific time, 7:00 PM. Eastern. There'll be a link to that in the show notes to make it easy for you to register. And of course that's free. Again, Wednesday, March 23rd. 4:00 PM. Pacific 7:00 PM. Eastern.

[00:03:15] All right. Let's move on to the main content for today.

[00:03:18] The world of engineering has had something of an obsession with digital transformation projects over the last decade. And the COVID 19 pandemic has only accelerated that trend. Ideas like digital twins, digital threads and model based engineering are gaining steam as organization realize the necessity of improving the quality and speed of their offerings. What are the same time cutting costs associated with poor access to information and weak efficiencies.

[00:03:56] If your organization, hasn't already gone through its own digital transformation project, I'm willing to bet it's on the horizon.

[00:04:02] My next guest has led some significant digital transformation projects throughout his career. And it might surprise you to learn that success in these projects has a lot less to do with technology than you might expect. Tanvir Bhangoo is a bestselling author, acclaimed speaker and coach. And former executive and college football national champion.

[00:04:22] Tanvir was the VP of Tech at Freshii and a director at RBI, one of the largest restaurant companies in the world. And I should point out here the parent company to my beloved, Tim Horton's. Tanvir's latest book, the pro business mindset, how to lead amid disruption and chaos.

[00:04:39] Breaks down his unique leadership framework based on what he learned on the football field, where he won a national championship and two conference championships with the McMaster university football team. Tanvir holds a bachelor of commerce, marketing and finance, and an MBA from McMaster university in Hamilton, Ontario.

[00:04:55] And just a very quick note before I launch into the interview. There's a single curse word used during the interview that I don't bleep out. And I just wanted to let you know, in case there are younger ears in the crowd. All right with that said, here's my conversation with Tanvir.

[00:05:11] Pat Sweet: Mr. Tanvir Bhangoo, welcome to the Engineering and Leadership Podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you here.

[00:05:17] Tanvir Banghoo: Pat, thanks for having me, I'm excited for the talk today.

[00:05:20] Pat Sweet: Yeah, absolutely. This, this is exciting for me because it's a topic that I've not covered yet on the show, but it's something that I suspect a lot of listeners have either heard of or been involved in. And that is the digital transformations and digital transformation projects. To set the scene a little bit.

[00:05:39] Maybe it would be best just to define terms and make sure we're all talking about the same thing. So when we talk about digital transformation, what, what do you mean by that? What, what is digital transformation?

[00:05:50] Tanvir Banghoo: Yeah. You know, I think, uh, it's funny because anytime I ask somebody what a digital transformation is, I get a different answer every single time. Uh, there is no definition for it. Um, but you know, some people think it's social media. Some people think it's making a new app. Um, some people think it's, um, you know, finding a new digital platform to sell your products through.

[00:06:13] Those are all parts of a transformation, but they're not digital transformation. The way I like to define it is the reason we in business is to either in a, mostly for for-profit businesses to drive revenues. Right. Digital transformation is basically shifting your revenues from traditional channels, to now digital channels.

[00:06:33] So for example, instead of going into a restaurant and buying something over the counter, you're now ordering ahead, instead of going into Walmart and paying at the store, you're now ordering online, picking up in store or getting it delivered. The shift that happens from traditional to digital channels and the entire foundation required, whether it's technology, people, change, process... is all part of the digital transformation.

[00:07:00] Pat Sweet: Oh, okay. So, it's a fundamental shift in how business is conducted this isn't just, "Hey, let's make an app!"

[00:07:07] Tanvir Banghoo: Absolutely. It's a, it's a fundamental shift in your business model. That's what it really is.

[00:07:12] Pat Sweet: Right. So in your experience, are digital transformation projects, uh, more customer facing more internal, a little bit of both? Does it, does it matter?

[00:07:22] Tanvir Banghoo: Yeah Yeah So, you know, I think the, the way to define a digital transformation and way should start, uh, you always want to look at two or three things. The first thing is, uh, where are your customers headed? You know, today? Next year, three years from now? Second thing is, where is your company today and where does it need to go to support the customers?

[00:07:45] And the third thing is what are the competitors, the environment, the regulations showing you that has to now you have taken to consideration. Because taking into consideration all of these three factors, customer, company, and competitors is what defines what your digital transformation should look like.

[00:08:02] So for example, a lot of people that I've been there, I've seen it happen is they'll say, well, Hey, we want to go digital first. We want, we want to become the next, let's say Starbucks or the next Amazon. Let's launch an app. That's all we have to do. A year in two years in, you end up wasting a lot of money.

[00:08:21] You end up wasting a lot of resources. Yet you do not drive the ROI you're looking for because an app is a very small part of what you see of a digital transformation. What now has to happen instead of an app is you also have to look at, well, if I launch this app, how do the people in my company have to shift what they're doing?

[00:08:41] How do the departments today, whether it's marketing, whether it's technology, whether it's support at the stores, how does their fundamental operations now shift to support this new app? And now what about the foundations we have in store today? If you're a retail company, for example, launching an app, it means it has to now take orders and push them into the store. How does that affect your operation of the store? Uh, another example I could give you is a lot of times I've worked with companies and you'll see reviews that says, um, digital transformation failed, because look at the reviews of customers on the app store. Um, their app does not work.

[00:09:19] Uh, I cannot, uh, you know, it, it does, it takes my money, but it doesn't get me what I need or it's I went to the store and I couldn't find a product. Most of the issues are a lack of operational alignment in the business versus a technology problem.

[00:09:35] Pat Sweet: So this is a really interesting statement you've made here and it reminds me of something. One of my, one of my best friends, also an engineer used to tell me a lot - he's an industrial engineer - used to say technology is really good at making bad processes uh, worse, faster. They create faster. And I get the sense that this is kind of what you're, you're leading into.

[00:09:56] And I know one of the things that you you've kind of drawn a line in the sand over is that digital transformation projects, ultimately, ultimately aren't really technology projects. And I think that's an, that's a curious statement to make, because obviously there's a technological element - there has to be - but what do you mean by that?

[00:10:18] How is it that, that digital transformation projects aren't at their core about technology?

[00:10:25] Tanvir Banghoo: Well, so if you were to have a, let's say a goal of becoming a digital first company, and you told me that, "Hey, I'm all of my competitors today, Tanvir, have an amazing app. Um, and they're driving 20% of the revenues through this app." It does not mean that you make a new app. What it means is you have to first look at what is your goal as a company.

[00:10:48] What is your objective? Is it to play in the same market as these guys? Is it to go into different market? What is your objective? Then you have to look at why are you not able to hit that objective today? Maybe you already have an app. And this is from my experience with working with large companies, they already had apps.

[00:11:04] They already have websites, but the reason they cannot hit these targets was because the foundations; people, operations and technology, which is legacy technology, those were not set up to have the, I guess, the adaptability of the technology that you needed. And also the volume that you do that was required to shift and adjust in this crazy environment that we're in.

[00:11:29] So it ends up becoming a project that is first and foremost, foundational project. Where, if you wanted to become digital in the future, you want to be able to take any direction based on what the environment is showing you. You must have the right foundations. Two, the people that are now working at your company that are overseeing this.

[00:11:49] They don't have, they have to shift their mindset from thinking that technology is an IT team that is working on an app. It has to shift to, Hey, tech is one of the core pillars. Such as finance, such as marketing, such as operations that is enabling our company to move forward. In fact, I even believe that marketing tech and operations has to become one unit.

[00:12:11] If we are to adjust and make all these great technologies to come to life in the future, which is another way we can dive into this later, Pat, is when people say I'm a tech first company. We're a tech first company. What they mean is that technology is the core of every single department and every single employee.

[00:12:28] It's not a function. It's not a project.

[00:12:32] Pat Sweet: So, this is really interesting because obviously the show, most of the folks who are listening are they're engineers. They're, they're computer scientists. They've got tech backgrounds and the way we look at the world is through the technology, through the lens of technology and what technology enables, whether it's it's an app or anything else for that matter, doesn't, doesn't really matter.

[00:12:56] We see the ability for tools and tech to, to solve problems ,and I think we often get ourselves tripped up thinking that well, if we just design the tech right, it'll all work. And it sounds to me like you're saying not, not so fast.

[00:13:14] Tanvir Banghoo: No, you, you ha this is a fundamental mistake that I've seen. A lot of leaders make is they'll say, well, Hey, let's, let's become a tech first company. So what are we the first thing we're going to do? We're going to go and copy our competitor, who's great at technology. The second thing we're going to do is hire a bunch of engineers who are going to now make us these great products, which does not work because you are not solving a problem.

[00:13:36] You are just trying to do things that you think are going to work without understanding your core business, how it aligns to your business and how will it impact what you're doing today. Instead, what has to happen is you have to understand that the goal for example, is for us to become a tech first company, which means that we have to drive 20% of our revenues, for example, through digital channels.

[00:13:57] Now, what that means for us is that we can now either have an app, an online channel, maybe we can even partner with social media platforms that allow us to also sell stuff through, that's the instant messenger. Now for these three goals, that's a sign, um, you know, objectives and teams on building the technologies in the best way possible that aligns to not just the technology, but also how do our people internally do things today?

[00:14:24] And how does that now change? And the lastly is having someone there which is not technology or business, but a hybrid that can connect the existing company to all these amazing projects that you have, the biggest mistake I've seen people make is having a digital lab that's on its own doing this little thing.

[00:14:43] And it mostly just ends up costing money and it never really solved a true problem.

[00:14:50] Pat Sweet: Yeah, th this is, uh, this is a problem all over the place and, and, and it's tricky. It's tricky because you, you, you simultaneously want technical people and creative people to have the time and space to think and experiment. But at the same time, you can't commercialize something. You can't operationalize something until those experiments meet the real world and the people who need to use the tech.

[00:15:14] So, and th this is the kind of problem that we see all over the places is this idea of siloing, where it's much easier to control a department or a team and manage it. If it's discreet, if it's got clear boundaries, the ultimate work product doesn't doesn't work as well. How do you get around that, that problem?

[00:15:34] How do you really integrate across functions? What, what kinda, what kind of practical things can you do? If you're a leader in an organization, you see this problem? What could you, what could you do to try to solve it?

[00:15:46] Tanvir Banghoo: Well, you know, I'll give you an analogy of an, of a sports team. So I played football and, and McMaster. And a lot of the work that I do today is an analogous to sports and how leadership works eight and in sports, you to be great for this reason. And Pat, is because they have already been operating in disrupt.

[00:16:03] Uncertain changing environments, right? It half-time another team or a second quarter. Another team might pull a trick play. Now you're down 14, nothing. Or you fumble the wrong way. Now you're on 21. Nothing like, holy shit, your playbooks going out of the window. Um, now what's great about a sports team in this context is that it always has a place.

[00:16:25] That everybody follows. It doesn't matter if you're a receiver. If you are a running back, if you're alignment, everybody's following the same playbook, everybody's following the exact same place. And the coach makes sure everybody understands what their goals and objectives. For that game. Similarly, the companies that are doing great, the companies that exist have an even accelerating performance over the pandemic have done one thing great way, which is aligning their teams on the goals.

[00:16:52] So as long as the leadership team and it starts with the top leadership team has to make sure that this is our top level. It has to be a combination of financial and culture and all those things. These are all goals here is how everybody's, everybody's going to be taking on the different actions. And here are the milestones across teams, and here's how everybody's going to work together to achieve these milestones.

[00:17:15] Now, some of those milestones are going to be long-term five years down the road, three years down the road. And for those projects let's iterate, let's fail less may, may make mistakes. There are some projects that have to be completed in the next six. For example, when the pandemic happened, having curbside pick up that has to happen right away.

[00:17:35] So as long as you have the alignment of the top and you're distilling and you are pushing down through each channel of the organization, make sure people are aligned in what their goals are and who they're playing. Uh, for example, it was an analogy, um, what plays they're going to be able to make as long as people understand that.

[00:17:54] You were marching towards the same goal. The biggest problem that I've seen as we're coaching today is different teams have different objectives that do not align the top level goal, which creates silos, which creates issues across departments. And you end up having friction that should not be there.

[00:18:10] You know, stuff like, oh, the tech team's always too slow or marketing, always throws something last minute on us. We can change direction so fast. All of this is avoidable. As long as you have alignment of the two. And making sure that the leadership team across the functions has alignment as well.

[00:18:27] Pat Sweet: So, so this all sounds like it's, it's informed very much by your experience in, in digital transformation projects. I'd like to touch on. Um, maybe, maybe a story from, from one of the times you've been involved in a, uh, in a project like this and maybe touch on the, uh, the good, bad and ugly. Uh, you know, there are a lot of people out there who are obviously looking to execute projects like those, frankly, even if it's not a digital transformation project, there are plenty of people out there who, who see the need to interact with.

[00:19:03] Adjacent functions and work across functional boundaries. Um, maybe you could share a story of a, of, of success and maybe, maybe

[00:19:12] Tanvir Banghoo: failure. Yeah, yeah,

[00:19:13] Pat Sweet: well. Yeah.

[00:19:15] Tanvir Banghoo: Um, yeah, you know, I can cure a recent example, um, with a company and a client. Um, so we were, the objective was to build again, you know, digital transformation, which I always start off with is to become a digital first company. Um, the, the problem that the company had was everybody had put technology in a silo.

[00:19:35] You know, when I was, when I was actually. Uh, in the office, you can feel that the tech team was just on a stone and it was this more of a support function yet. They wanted technology to become the face of the company and have 50% or more revenues driven through digital channels, which means now that the tech team should also be sitting in front of the CEO's office, not just the finance team.

[00:19:58] Right. So there was a fundamental shift that had to happen. Now, the problem was the technologies that were implemented before. We're all customer facing, for example. Yes, we, oh, by the way, we want to drive digital sales for the retail company. Let's make an app. Right. But there was no foundational work there.

[00:20:19] So the first thing we did was not to improve app ratings. It was not to go and, and start to have new processes to make this integration better. It wasn't to start hire a bunch of developers to start fixing. No. The first thing we did was look at the root cause and the root cause of the problem, why the digital sales were so low was because there was a lack of integration and the systems that were in place across the, this, across the units across as retail, a retail store.

[00:20:54] And globally, we're not strong enough to handle all the demands of the customers, the replacing. So you had a fundamental problem between what were the customers were looking to do, uh, you know, which is you have another brand who has amazing experiences. Why can't I have the same experience here, the app.

[00:21:12] Great, great, great interface. But when you were trying to replicate the same thing other brands did, it would actually backfire because the underlying technology. I was not there. So instead of fixing and hiring a bunch of developers and fixing the small root causes or small issues on the app, we actually put a big bet on.

[00:21:33] Ripping and replacing the entire underlying foundation, the entire integration platform where the, on the orders were coming in. Uh, let's say, uh, having the right analytics in place, having a cloud infrastructure, I called the hub and spoke model where it doesn't matter if it's today or five years from now, you can enter, you can add, you can rip out different pieces of technology that are going to become relevant in the future that we don't know yet.

[00:22:00] For example, voice. Uh, Alexa or owning to WhatsApp, we had to build a foundation that allow you to do all of these things in the future. So that in two years time, we don't have another problem. So the good news here was that it took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money CapEx, which companies hate, because this is on the balance sheet.

[00:22:22] It took a lot of that. And it took a lot of getting people to buy into the vision. Because again, this kind of stuff takes a lot of. For you to have results, right? It takes two years, three years, four years down the road, but we actually stuck with him. We did it. And what you saw was that as things kept changing, as you know, post pandemic things are now even more uncertain and turbulent regulations are coming in and out.

[00:22:48] This foundation is allowing these in other companies that we worked with, it's allowing these companies to now reap the benefits of these programs. Now, an app is a, an extension of what the customers. It's not the entire technology, but let's say tomorrow, we're seeing a lot of people ordering the voice ordering now, or they're ordering through each chat or WhatsApp, the abilities are there.

[00:23:10] So it was a lot of work, but I'm glad that we were able to rip the foundations apart and actually build something for the future. Um, so looking back, it was like a, wow, you know, good that we did that because now we're set up for the future and forever.

[00:23:28] Pat Sweet: As a, as a systems engineer, this is music to my ears because I said another way, what I think you're saying is, you know, you have to understand not just, not just the, the app's role in a business, but, but how the businesses work. As a whole, right? It's a, it's, it's an entire integrated system. And then you also have to look across a spectrum of, of time as well.

[00:23:53] What's the job today? Where are we going in the future and, and design for that? What this all comes down to in my mind is, is the importance of, of knowing die self, right? Understanding the business as a whole and understanding the organization, how it ticks. Why is that so hard? It's a kind of thing that I see, I see countless examples of, and I'm sure you have to, why is it so hard for people to kind of step back and see the forest for the trees before they, they jump right in.

[00:24:27] Tanvir Banghoo: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. And you know, I, I'm fortunate that I'm a, a business leader. I'm an MBA who was put into a managerial role in technology with zero experiences. So I was, it was the business experience and I had to learn the technology part, uh, back at, uh, RBI. That was my first tech role in 2015.

[00:24:48] And. I was great because I saw both sides of the fence. I saw that, Hey, as the leader, here's, what's important for your business. Here's how businesses have to make money. Here's why we're in the operating and business. But now I had this, you know, correlation or this, um, Like my colleagues, my teams in the technology side, and I saw how they were thinking, Hey, I want to make the best product ever.

[00:25:13] I want to make sure this app is free of bugs. I want to make sure that we are doing things that others have never done before. And now, how do you bring those two things together where the business says, Hey, I just need it enough to make money. Now I have tech team and engineers who really want to do it the right way.

[00:25:29] But it might not always make sense, but sometimes do it the right way is what makes sense. And the company says, I don't want him to put the money up right now. All the cap ex let's wait a few years. So I had the four, you know, I was fortunate enough to kind of be on the both sides. And as I grew in my career, I realized that the biggest skillset that we're lacking in business today, especially at a leadership level, is the inability to combine technology and business as one unit in your own strategic mind.

[00:25:58] So as. Great at business, but technology seems daunting as tech leaders, great technology, but I don't want to understand the business part, but if you can understand the business and how technology enables your business, and it's not hard, it just takes some practice. This problem will automatically clear itself away.

[00:26:20] And the problem problem occurs because a lot of the tech folks are just tech dominant, a lot of leadership. The CFOs, the CEOs are business first and you feel to understand each other. So if I think that's one of the reasons why I think it's lack of lack of training, that we don't have the training in business schools that says, Hey, to be in.

[00:26:41] You don't know, you need to know how to code. There are other things you can do in technology. How do these, how do you maybe oversee technology teams? How do, what are the, some of the major things in technology that you have to implement in your business to stay relevant and vice versa? A lot of technologies at schools, and I know this from, you know, my wife's a PhD, uh, engineer as well.

[00:27:00] They don't have a lot of leadership courses. So you're going into the workforce now, are we all young leaders and you have not been. And how to combine these two worlds, which is what business is today. It's a combination of business and technology. That's the fundamental root cause. And I know I'm kind of harping on a little bit, but it starts here.

[00:27:21] It starts to the lack of combat combining these two functions as your.

[00:27:26] Pat Sweet: It's interesting. You say that I recently had a fellow by the name of Duncan Oyevaar on, on the show here. We had a really interesting conversation. His business, uh, really revolves around providing frontline staff. Like engineers with core business skills and then unleashing these people with these new skills to find opportunities to improve the business.

[00:27:49] And it's amazing the light bulbs go off. When, when you teach an individual, the difference between revenue and profit. When you teach someone about the importance of throughput, when you teach someone the, you know, the, the, the, the value of having cash on hand, it's not, it's not rocket science. You and I both have MBAs, but you don't, you don't need an MBA to wrap your head around these

[00:28:15] Tanvir Banghoo: just need to, you need a weekend and he need to be able to Google. The rest is on you. Are you willing to put in the work to learn because you know, you're going to be a great leader in the future if you do this right. I mean, I love it when my team let's say, when, you know, in the beginning of the project would come to me and say, Hey, I want to do these five things on the website, or I want to implement these five things today.

[00:28:38] And the same person, six months later comes to me and says, Hey, I think we should implement these two things to, because this is going to allow us to do a great user experience, but also make sure that we can hit our business goals. That to me is when this person has not grown as a leader in a company that had tried to become tech first.

[00:28:57] And that's what we need to strive for. If you're going to have people thinking that way, that is like literally music to my ears. Um, you're always going to be in a.

[00:29:06] Pat Sweet: So, what might you recommend to someone who, um, has a background in technology or engineering, computer science, who kind of has this interest in the business side of things and sees the value of, of exactly what you're saying of, of broadening themselves and having kind of a strength at that, at that intersection between business and tech.

[00:29:25] Of course, you could, you could sign yourself up for an MBA, but that that's pretty extreme. What, what might you recommend to someone who's willing to invest time, but, but maybe not the a hundred thousand dollars or whatever it is for another degree.

[00:29:38] Tanvir Banghoo: I totally agree with you. You know, you don't need an MBA to become great at this. Um, the people that I know who have been able to make, make the leap and are now doing really well. Um, pat, it starts two places. One is when you are working as an engineer, as tech first, first in a tech service role is to seek out projects.

[00:29:58] And seek out experiences that allow you to work with as many different people as possible, because the core fundamental in business is working with people. We're in the, in the business of people. So the first thing I always tell people, when they ask me this question is, Hey, find a project, a cross-functional project, take yourself out of your comfort zone, where you actually have to present to people.

[00:30:20] You have to listen to their opinions. You have to make an argument on why your reasoning is better than their reasoning in a respective manner. That is the first thing that always helps because it gets you talking to people. It gets you, uh, understanding people's opinions and also. Uh, allows you to present an argument and make decisions in business.

[00:30:43] That's the first thing, it's all about the people side of things. The second thing is actually learning. And this, you can do this online. You can do this on your own time is learning how to make better decisions. We're not taught this in school. I know in an MBA classes you have, you know, consulting lab, for example, it's the decision trees, right?

[00:31:01] But you don't need an MBA for this. You can literally go online and Google. How do you make better decisions through decision trees? How do you do case analysis and learning how to think through a problem logic? We'll make all the difference and that's all it takes is if you have the tech skills, you can make better decisions.

[00:31:19] You can work with people. You're pretty much almost 80% of the way there. These are the two of the things that I been doing as well, that have helped me as a young one. I was a young manager all the way through to the VP level.

[00:31:32] Pat Sweet: I think that's, that's great advice. And even for people who are, are interested in, in maintaining kind of their, their technical track, better decision-making is, is, is a core skill. It's something I preach all the time. Uh, th this has been very, very interesting stuff, Tanvir, and I really appreciate everything you've shared on, on, on digital transformation.

[00:31:55] I want to pivot a little bit to your book, uh, which came out, uh, within the last few months, uh, the pro business mindset. And it'd be great to know what that's about and, and how, um, and how that mindset and the model that you present in the book might be applied to projects like digital transformation projects or, or even more broadly than that.

[00:32:16] Tanvir Banghoo: absolutely. You know, I'll start with a story. Um, and this, and this is again, it'll help, I think engineers, but also leaders. Um, when I was. You know, and a young manager, um, I had graduated from, from my MBA. Uh, even before that actually I was, I played football. As I mentioned earlier, we won a national championship.

[00:32:36] Um, uh, graduated, started working at corporate corporate, started doing really well. Um, what was fortunate to be at companies that really rewarded meritocracy. So I was able to go up the ranks very quickly, um, and the fortunate enough to lead great teams. I looked back and my career, and I said, you know what?

[00:32:57] There's something fascinating about what I've been doing. You know, I'm in technology, without it, without a tech background, I have been leading teams, global digital transformations, you know, we've made some pretty good progress in crazy chaotic, disruptive environments. Uh, What is it that allowed me to do this.

[00:33:18] And a lot of the times I'll get to this question from other MBA students that I would want to speak to. So I started reflecting a little bit and I realized that everything that I did, Pat, was not a, you know, it wasn't anything hard skills related. It wasn't technology that I've learned. It was all very similar to how I had played on the football field.

[00:33:38] Believe it or not, it was. Talking to other people, resolving conflict, having a plan, putting in the work every single day, building your foundations, rebounding from failure, celebrating the small wins and always having, you know, your goal, the eyes on the prize. So things like that. And that was exactly what I, what allowed me to personally accelerate my career, but also.

[00:34:01] Lead all these digital transformations. So people ask me, well, how is that possible? You know, digital transformation in their tech projects. I was like, well, not really because technology is a function of what your team and you can achieve. It's it's an end result. But at first starts with whether it's a project that I did, whether it was at a large company, small company, it started with, Hey, having the right alignment on the goals, having the right buy-in understanding where we want to get to building the right team.

[00:34:31] Executing consistently not letting distraction. And you brought it up before is not letting the shiny toy syndrome that I call. Right. And saying, well, this looks pretty interesting. That's a good jump on this one. Let's change direction and pivot. How do you not let that affect you? All of these are principles that I learned in football and in 20 19, 20 20.

[00:34:52] Oh, this is pretty cool. I think people can benefit from this. So I started writing this book and I also started a podcast. I interviewed hundreds of athletes turned executives on exactly what allowed you to lead in business in this crazy time. And almost every single person said it was leadership. It, they never said it's technology.

[00:35:11] They never said it was, you know, how do you balance a checkbook? And they never said they knew how to do Excel modeling without using. I know how cool that is for some of the finance folks, but it all came back to people and financial people in leadership. So I, so I was like, well, you know, I think this methodology can really help people.

[00:35:29] So I built the methodology called the pro business mindset, the always the off season where in the off season, you're in sports, you're building your playbooks, you're building your teams. And similarly in business, you've got, gotta invest in your foundations as we talked about before, and instead of go making it.

[00:35:44] Figure out. What's actually the problem with the business get buy in from leadership team, understand who's um, how do you become adaptable? And then the regular season comes in, in sports. That's where you actually play your, you know, your games in business. It's doing the work executing consistently staying on the path, um, celebrating the successes and the.

[00:36:05] And then finally the playoffs, which is a P of the pro-business mindset is the post-season and in business, this is where you have to have a short memory because you are going to make mistakes and which is fine, but you got to rebound. Uh, how do you adjust your playbook when the pandemic happens? How do you make sure as a leader, your team is working crazy hours, but how do you make sure they don't burn out? All of these things combined is, you know, the pro-business mindset is the methodology that I built and I said, okay, I want to share this with the world, which is way the book, uh, came about, started writing it in 2021 and just launched February 1st, uh, of a 20, 22.

[00:36:45] Pat Sweet: I'll look, congratulations on, on the release. It's a, you know, a, a wonderful time to be doing kind of deep work, deep thinking where you can't, uh, you can't leave the house half the time. It's.

[00:36:57] Tanvir Banghoo: Yeah.

[00:36:57] Pat Sweet: A beautiful opportunity to hammer out a significant project like that. Um, uh, listen, this has been, this has been just a wonderful conversation Tanvir and I've really, really appreciated the insight.

[00:37:08] If someone is interested in the book or are interested in learning more about you and your work, what's the best place for them to go.

[00:37:16] Tanvir Banghoo: Absolutely. So you can, you can buy the book today on a major outlets, wherever you get your books from it's on amazon.com.ca Barnes and noble indigo as the first place. The second place is you can check out my website, tanvirbhangoo.com, uh, primarily doing a lot of keynote speeches and workshops on probe with this mindset.

[00:37:33] So I hope leadership and teams build stronger teams in disruptive of certain environments. And we apply a lot of the core principles from the pro-business mindset. And lastly, um, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I always share a lot of great content there and, uh, and small tidbits.

[00:37:51] Pat Sweet: excellent. And, uh, I could put links to all of the above in the show notes. Uh, so that'll make it easy to, uh, easy to reach out, uh, Tanvir Bhangoo, I really, really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for joining me

[00:38:02] Tanvir Banghoo: Well, thanks for having me here, Pat. It was a pleasure.

[00:38:04] Pat Sweet: You take care.

[00:38:05] Tanvir Banghoo: Thanks.

[00:38:07]

[00:38:17] Thank you so very much. Tanvir I really appreciate your insights, your knowledge. Your your wisdom from, from this experience that you've had, you've built up this really unique experience, leading digital transformation projects. A few things that stood out to me included the fact that digital transformation projects her about enabling businesses and solving problems. It's not just about building a shiny app. It's not just about.

[00:38:45] Technology for technology's sake. And he really hammered that home that if you don't have a particular purpose or a particular gap that you're trying to address, Uh, digital transformation project or any technology project for that matter is going to fall flat. And I think it's really, really important that people listening to this, take that away, that if you're not filling your particular need, don't get suckered into launching a tech project. It's fun and it's exciting and it's sexy, but it's not going to move your business forward. One of the other things that we touched on was this, this idea that alignment on goals is critical.

[00:39:21] This idea that in order to break silos down, you really need at the very top of the organization, a common understanding of what your goals are, what are you trying to achieve? As an organization. And if you don't have clear goals, And people don't know what those clear goals are, even if you do have them.

[00:39:39] Frankly, you're, you're headed for trouble. And maybe even doomed, frankly, this is super, super important. It's not just about. Getting functions to work together. That's one of the big benefits, but you really do need at the very top a clear sense of what your organization is there to do. And that's what is going to enable success is going to give digital transformation projects, purpose.

[00:40:04] And it's going to help functions cooperate with one another. It's super, super important.

[00:40:08] What are the interesting ideas that Tanvir suggested was this idea of working in cross-functional projects. If you can, if you want to get. Better versed in the world of business and kind of leave the comforts of your technical work as an engineer, try to interact with people doing other things. It seems very simple, but it's incredibly powerful to. Try to find ways to interact with the outside world. So to speak even, even though the outside world is still within your organization.

[00:40:38] If you can find ways of working these multidisciplinary projects, it's amazing how you can grow that the people you can meet it really can help your career in a significant way. So that's another really highly recommended bit of advice that Tanvir offered.

[00:40:53] Thank you once again. Tanvir I really appreciate you coming on the show. Um, if you had any comments or questions or any feedback on that interview, I'd love to hear from you. Just leave a comment the bottom of the show notes page at engineeringandleadership.com/episode49.

[00:41:10] Next up, we've got the engineering and leadership mailbag.

[00:41:13]

[00:41:13] Well, my friends, you know how this works. This is the part of the show where I read your messages and to answer your questions. I promise to read everything you send me. And I promise to read my favorites right here on the podcast. I got a lot of feedback from people sending their congratulations, their well-wishes on my new role with the American society of engineering management. So thank you so much for the support and the kind words I really appreciate that.

[00:41:48] If you're listening to this podcast, but somehow are not a member of the American society of engineering management. I would highly encourage you to join. It's a fantastic community, a tight knit community of people who are trying in, in various ways to advance. The practice and the understanding of engineering management. So very much.

[00:42:07] Aligned with one I'm trying to do here with the podcast. So again, if you're not familiar with go to ASEM.org, there's absolutely a place for you. We would love to see you there. And there was a comment from Lizzie G who commented on a video. I posted a little while back about the importance of having systems in place to maximize and sustain productivity. And she said,

[00:42:30] Loved the video, Patrick, the part on booking solo meetings and allocating 20% open time. For the known unknowns is something I will implement. Thank you for sharing this. And I really appreciate your feedback, Lizzie. I'm really glad you're taking action. This is always what I want to see.

[00:42:46] As someone who distributes content and shares ideas with the world where people actually take action with it, that's incredibly motivating for me. What Lizzie's referring to here is this idea that I promote, that you should be able to book yourself meetings. You should be able to come into your, your own time. And the way I think about it is that.

[00:43:07] If other people are allowed to book your timeline, why aren't you allowed to book your own time? I think it's super important to make space for deep work, for getting things done. If you don't control your time, someone else will. So control your time. Do it take action. And the other idea there was that 20% is I like to keep equivalent to a day a week, normally about two hours a day.

[00:43:28] Free. I save it as my own personal management reserve in case things go wrong and something always goes wrong. Things always pop up. And when that happens, I have time allocated to that. And if for whatever reason, I don't need to use that time. Well, I can work ahead on tomorrow's work. So super, super valuable there.

[00:43:48] Thanks again, to all those who reached out. If you'd like to chat with me or leave a comment, please do find me on LinkedIn or leave a comment in the episode. Show notes.

[00:43:56]

[00:43:56]

[00:44:01] Well that my friends is all the time we have for the show today. I promised to be back very soon with our next episode, which is going to be episode 50, which is a big milestone. I'm really excited about that. And for that. I'm going to be doing a solo episode. I haven't done one of those in a while and talking about the idea of this the four day workweek and the emergence of that idea and what I think we're all getting wrong. When we talk about that four day workweek.

[00:44:25] Uh, could, could be a bit controversial, but, uh, trust me. I think, I think you'll like it. I really hope to see you then. Uh, before we go, don't forget. There's a webinar with Jeff Perry next week. How to grow your personal leadership for engineering career success on March 23rd. So I hope to see you there as well.

[00:44:43] If you enjoyed the show, I would love it. If you would subscribe and stick with us, join the community. And if you could leave an honest review, that would be great because that helps me understand what people like, what people don't like, and it helps other people find the show as well. So that's a wonderful way that you can help things improve here. I'd really appreciate that.

[00:45:01] For more information and links to the resources mentioned today. Just go to the show notes engineeringandleadership.com/episode49. Until next time, this is pat sweet. Remind you that if you're going to be anything. Be excellent.

[00:45:14] Pat Sweet: You've been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet, to learn more about the engineering leadership project, including other podcasts articles, free resources, courses, consulting, and much, much more. Just go to engineering and leadership.com. That's engineering and leadership.com.