Episode 39: Surfacing Scott Rosenberg

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References & Links
Foundation Capital's MarTech and the Decade of the CMO white paper

2023 Edelman Trust Barometer

World Federation of Advertisers

Follow Scott Rosenberg on Social Media
LinkedIn

Transcript

Lisa Welchman:

So Andy, this was a really great conversation with Scott Rosenberg. You can't see me, but I'm tapping my toes with happiness because I've really wanted the two of you all to meet for a very long time because you all have a lot in common in terms of the different types of work you do. And so I thought this was a great conversation. As we mentioned the first time we had someone on who's not like a digital first person.

Andy Vitale:

Right, right.

Lisa Welchman:

And so it was really interesting to hear about enabling teams from Scott and kind of a more, what's the best word? I don't want to say dispassionate, but just a more structured way of approaching it that isn't leading with, "Oh, and we're making this thing." I think we didn't do anything about making things, right. It was all about enabling the team. Yeah.

Andy Vitale:

Exactly. We tried to have Scott on season one, we had some scheduling conflicts, so glad that we got him in for season two. Talked about a lot of great things that marketing operations, the importance of governance and trust in building brands. Just a really fun and informative conversation that I think everyone, I hope everyone enjoys as much as we did.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, I think they will. Welcome, Scott Rosenberg, thank you so much for being on Surfacing with Andy and I. As you well know, I've been trying to get you on this podcast forever. I'm super tickled because as I say to a lot of people, I think only once in my career have I run into somebody who had when I met them, the words governance and ops in their title, and you were one of them. And so I'm really excited to have you join us today.

Scott Rosenberg:

Well, thank you so much for having me, and you were a big part of us embracing that title, governance and operations and the inspiration with your book. So again-

Lisa Welchman:

Not an honor as I always say, but fun. Definitely fun. So I'm going to kick off with the first question, which is what is your current role? So I'm really smiling about this because usually people are like, "I'm a design leader," or "I'm a blah, blah, blah." But you're going to say something really cool. What is your current role and what unique aspects of your sort of professional journey or even your personal one, if you want to add that in, led you to that role?

Scott Rosenberg:

Sure. Well, I'm not a head designer, but I am the head of our global brand management team at Visa, which is part of our brand organization in the marketing team. And my team is responsible for really how our brand comes to life across all touch points. So you can think about our team focused on driving innovation on how our clients as well as our consumers experience our brand, enabling the day-to-day, bringing our life to brand with our teams and with clients. And then last but not least, really focused on governing our brand and reinforcing that deep trust that exists with Visa and with our consumers.

So that's what my team does today overall global brand management and the journey to get to this role has been certainly interesting. Five years ago, actually just this past Sunday, I celebrated five years at Visa and I love working at Visa where I've been able to build this function and this vision that I had around governance, not just focus in the digital space where I was at Intel previously, but an overall marketing governance function.

And that was based on when I approached Visa five years ago, that was based on, I would say three major insights of what was happening in the broader marketing and advertising world. The first one was really around the rise in the influence of the CMO, among the C-suite leaders with the availability of greater technology, greater data to actually influence the business. And there was this instrumental piece called Decade of the CMO that was this inspirational work that I found from the Foundation Capital that argued that the availability of technology to CMOs allowed CMOs to really take a greater influence role in driving business and having a seat at the table at important business decisions, which previously CMOs were not necessarily thought or part of. So that was one major insight was that to be able to operationalize and support that greater influence, there had to be some more structure, more discipline to the organization itself.

The second major happening was the fact that there was emerging and heightened regulatory risks for the marketing and advertising organization. So really fundamentally challenging how marketing and advertising works, obviously anything relating to data privacy. And at the time GDPR was just ramping up when I joined Visa and even how we in work with influencers and talent online, all of these different areas were really challenging the marketing team to act a little bit differently. And then the third one, which is even more relevant today with the updated 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer that talks about how businesses are the only institution that are seen as competent and ethical is this greater expectation in society and among citizens worldwide for businesses and also advertisers to be responsible with their investments and with their budgets. Obviously, advertisers play a significant role in funding the overall internet.

And so I've really found that bodies like the World Federation of Advertisers, that's really gone into how do we do more responsible marketing and really as an industry do the right thing for society while also supporting our business objectives. And so building a team that can help operationalize the governance that's required for doing more responsible marketing, I think is an element that any modern brand that wants to be successful and relevant today's culture really needs to embrace. So that's a little bit about at least some of the vision and how I got to Visa and what we built the journey to get here. I'll start with the good old days of when I was growing up in Baltimore where Lisa and I have that in common there and really being interested in how organizational structures in particular governments or student government could have a positive impact on people and the environment around them.

And so I was very, very active in student government. I ended up going to American University in Washington DC and studying international politics thinking I was going to go into the State Department or some other kind of government function. But I had this major epiphany and experience when I was actually in an internship in Beijing and I was previously in DC I was working for the council in Foreign relations and other kind of government NGOs institutions there. And it was really impactful to see how, at least in the traditional sense in the government side of things, you could influence society. But in Beijing, I was lucky enough to have an internship with the Economist. And at the time, I remember my professor said, "Oh, well we gave you the best internship opportunity because of your experience in DC." And I was so disappointed because I wanted to work for the embassy or something that was truly-

Lisa Welchman:

Oh, but the economist is great.

Scott Rosenberg:

... traditional government oriented. And yes, it's absolutely great. And I learned that very quickly. And it was that experience with the Economist that truly transformed the way I thought about that whole passion of influencing society and having a positive impact. And the Economist, what we were doing was setting up conferences to create connections between business leaders in China and local CEOs or expatriates representatives of major global enterprises. And seeing that connection and the fact that business could actually have a greater impact on transformation and growth, that had a significantly, I think, more accelerated path of impact. That totally changed my perspective to go away from the government route, but into the business side. So that was one aspect that was, I would say pretty critical. And I spent about a decade in China that really shaped who I am today, but the Intel experience prior to Visa truly was where I found my groove and was able to bring that passion around order structure, discipline into an environment that was, as Lisa very well knows, very chaotic in how digital was being used.

Lisa Welchman:

But with the culture of discipline, with-

Scott Rosenberg:

With a culturally-

Lisa Welchman:

... culturally interesting, a chaotic environment, but in an engineering type focused organization that understood what discipline was, just hadn't made that connection, right? That was fascinating to me about that whole experience, yeah.

Scott Rosenberg:

Completely. And it was a time where, this is around 2015 or so 2016, where there was a ton of experimentation going on across the broader enterprise in digital, which was great. And it wasn't unique to Intel. Every company was facing that, but as Lisa mentioned, there was this culture of structure and discipline that came from the engineering culture that is Intel that we were able to embrace on the marketing side and create a really robust digital governance structure and overall organization that was meant to empower a transformation across all of Intel with how we use digital channels. And so that acknowledgement and growing into that role gave me the confidence that this thing that's a little bit of mix of operations plus marketing before marketing operations was a role itself, was something that actually organizations need and value. And so that's really how I got to Visa and where I am today.

Lisa Welchman:

This is great because I'm always an advocate for bringing people in who are sensitive to digital and understand how digital works, but aren't driven by it from an operational and tactical or design perspective because it's hard to be objective when it's your heart, basically, your heart space. But anyhow, what I really wanted to hark back to was the very first thing that you mentioned when you first started talking, which is the rise of the chief marketing officer inside of these organizations. And obviously, it's a true thing, but what really pops into my head is that's usually the role that turns every three years. So in my mind, this disconnect between what a chief marketing officer has been in terms of the solidity inside of the organization. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that a little bit and then how you might just speculate about how those two things might push together or change things in the future.

And then the other one also just has to do with skillset. So one of the challenges for me when I'm working on governance frameworks with folks, and it's often marketing is the biggest stakeholder in this process with IT Dragon and the business dragon farther, a little even farther behind that they have all these technologies in the cloud that they don't really have their fingers in or their hands on, and they don't really know how they work. And so out of that comes this lack of understanding around how the data's being pushed around or how it's being used, not because they're trying to be bad actors or not work ethically, but they really just don't like in the cloud, we made it do this and it did that. And they have no under understanding of what the log files are that are dragging around. And so I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit too about closing, how that gap gets closed, particularly from an operational perspective when you're managing a group of that size.

Scott Rosenberg:

Sure. So on the first piece around the rise of the influence of the CMO, you are right, CMOs often change over and there's shifts there. But I think the responsibility of, for example, a strong marketing organization and really supported by a strong governance team is to instill those processes, those values of how can marketing bring that value of the voice of your customer and the data that you're using in a sustained way so that regardless of who the leader is, they have the tools, they have the expertise available in the organization that withstands any leadership changes. So one of the big things that I've always pushed in my organizations is making sure that we truly institutionalize day-to-day process and the ways that we're approaching things so that if there is a shift in leadership and we evolve.

Lisa Welchman:

Those things don't break.

Scott Rosenberg:

As everyone will, things don't break. And that that's really a true responsibility. And so making sure that the marketing organization has the technology, has the knowledge, has the day-to-day process to bring those insights to whomever is leading the organization, I think is number one most critical. On the skillset piece, I think of it more of I'll do these various organizations that have big cultural differences, connect and have conversations and understand each other because for example, I will never be a deep expert in all things technology. Even with my years at Microsoft and Intel, there were many a moments where it was still a far-

Lisa Welchman:

Like what are you talking about? Yeah.

Scott Rosenberg:

What are you you talking about? No idea. But what we shared were some common values and ways to communicate with each other to be able to unlock some of those gaps. And this is where if I think back in my career, in my experience, one of the most pivotal skills that has been helpful in that area is around cross-cultural communications and intercultural communications. Learning how to look under the proverbial iceberg and under the water and seeing what those values are that really drive different functions. I mean truly that's one of the biggest challenges with the rise of the CMO, is that there are different values and different perceptions of the marketing organization that you really have to address to be able to get the CFO or the CTO to really respect and give the resources you need. So that's been always helpful I think in my career, is just making sure that there is common understanding and awareness and trust and then to be able to start to have some of those more detailed conversations around different tech or other areas.

Andy Vitale:

So the first thing that I have to say, because someone will punch me if I don't, is once an eagle, always an eagle. I have a friend went to American University and I just sent her a message and I said, "Hey, the person I'm talking to went there." She told that. So had to say that.

Scott Rosenberg:

That is true anywhere in the world.

Andy Vitale:

That's right. But going back to what you talked about earlier, you talked about trust a lot and the trust in a brand. I've been fortunate or in an odd situation in a couple places that I've worked, including currently now where the brand team has actually moved from the marketing team to the design team because of the way the design team is pushing forward our digital properties, our digital products, and influencing the brand. And trust is one of the things that no matter where brand sits, it's key to the success of the brand. So I'm just curious, and without giving away any secret sauce, but what are some of the ways for people who are like, "I've got a brand, I want to figure out trust. How do you quantify trust?"

Scott Rosenberg:

It's a great question. How do quantify trust? I think there's certainly obviously the emotional component to it and there's a significant amount of indexes out there that can help with measuring the trust piece. But at the end of the day, trust turns into business results and seeing profits, seeing growth, seeing cultural relevancy in your day-to-day marketing, these are all I think elements of trust. And on the inside, on the operational side side, I think it's really about regardless of where it sits in the organization, it's about instilling that trust and instilling that brand across the entire organization wherever you sit.

And by doing that and making everyone in the company a brand manager, you're really going to be able to whether it's design, whether it's the technology, whether it's customer support that's having the customer or the consumer really at the forefront of everything that you do. And reminding people that, again, with what I mentioned before with that Edelman trust barometer finding that really more than ever businesses are expected to be those ethical and competent trust enablers, that it is job one in many ways. And if you don't have that trust, you're not going to earn the right to be able to have any relevancy with the audiences that you're targeting.

Andy Vitale:

No, that makes a lot of sense. You also talked about operations a lot and operationalizing, I'm curious to hear a little bit about that evolution that you've seen of marketing operations of operations to spread into different areas over the course of your career.

Scott Rosenberg:

When I first started at Intel, I was doing marketing operations. I was out of China in a global role, but it wasn't called marketing operations. It didn't really exist yet. And I think that has to do with the correlation, with the availability of technology and the role itself. And so, I started doing operations management roles in a marketing team, and then that really evolved into, I would say a more marketing operations type focus. But it's interesting because marketing operations as a function is really nascent just the past few years in particular. And then if you ask anyone that does marketing operations, there's probably like a hundred different disciplines across how you would define marketing operations. You could be focused on the marketing automation side of things. You could be focused on business operations and budget management side of things.

The governance piece that has really been a major part of my career I would classify as marketing operations. And so it really comes down to I think that particular team, that particular organization, what their focus is, and building a mindset around discipline, order, a structure, scalability technology, and then organizing around that. And that that's truly one of the exciting things that I tell other people around marketing operations is that it is a new field. I don't know if they offer any academic background in marketing operations, but they certainly-

Lisa Welchman:

That's your retirement.

Scott Rosenberg:

Because again, that's the retirement plan, exactly. So lots of opportunity on the marketing operation side in a very exciting place. And that marketing ops piece is critical, going back to that Decade of the CMO to fueling the insights and the data and protecting the brand to be able to be a responsible marketer.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, with the chief marketing officer owning so much of the... I'm swinging it back in, focusing it on digital just because that's what I'm thinking about owning so much of that and including the technology stack underneath it, there's more operational maturity that's required than when things were campaign driven, purely campaign driven, right? So it's just like, "Not that it was disposable, don't hit me." I understand that there's sustained aspects of marketing prior to the internet and the worldwide web, but there was not this as deep a technology stack stack and not this entire range of products, which is to me, I'm not sure I'm down with that completely with this idea that that marketing is in a lot of ways ingesting product. I would like to see. And I'm hoping that maybe in the next 20 years ago, 20 years, we'll see an exhalation and a release of these things back into business lines.

So it's almost, I feel like there's this gathering up to get control of it, let's figure it out and get control of it. Let's centralize it all in marketing. But I'm way hoping that there'll be some exhalation when everyone's like, "Okay, we know what we're doing now and we cannot all do this from this centralized marketing function. It makes no sense. We don't have the domain expertise, the product expertise or the customer knowledge to do this from in a centralized way, let's decentralized." Or some hybrid component where you've got the technology stack aspects of it, centralized and managed, centralized and digital aspects like taxonomies or data streams centralized, and then other things being released. So that's a lot of me talking but anyhow.

Scott Rosenberg:

Well, on that, and I think this is a topic you and I have discussed, Lisa, is really kind of the evolution and definition of the COE model, and starting with the traditional Center of Excellence, but there's other definitions of COE that I've seen in real life. There's a Center of Execution where that's all you're doing is executing requests, not necessarily sharing expertise or enabling others, but you're just getting things done. Then there's really what I like to see. And going back to your point of what you hope in years from now, what you'll see is more of a Center of Enablement where you have expertise that sits in a particular team, but truly expertise sits across the entire enterprise.

And your role in center is to be able to tap into that and recognize what good looks like and incentivize that in a way that has the necessary tools, support, recognition, et cetera, that really brings the best to life. And that's very much my vision and my philosophy of what we're building at Visa is this Center of Enablement of how we empower our employees, our agencies, our clients, to really bring the brand to life and focusing more on carrot less than sick.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, for sure.

Andy Vitale:

So I'm going to take us back to skills for a second. You mentioned having that cross-cultural communication as one of the skills and someone as successful as you, that's probably not an unrelated skill that people would think that you didn't have or had. So I'm curious, thinking about seemingly unrelated skills or expertise that you have, what are some of those that help you succeed at your job?

Scott Rosenberg:

One of I would say the skills that has been absolutely critical, I would say throughout my career, is really being focused on listening and not overreacting. I don't know how to describe that necessarily as a skill. It's maybe more of a trait, but one of the things that I think is important in this type of role where every day you wake up and there's a new risk, a new threat, a new emerging, something that's happening that you have to react to and you have to react quickly and making sure that you're managing that expectation and not overreacting and causing any unnecessary drama, I think is a very important trait that someone in this type of role needs to bring.

And I think that also goes back to my days in China when I was engaging with new experiences and not being able to read anything when I first got there, not being able to communicate, not being able to even cross the street without getting killed. This was all about taking on challenges and not overreacting and staying calm and knowing that I'm going to get through it and persevere. And so that when we face those type of crises or emerging threats, it's bring that mindset and that overall kind of approach to the team that I think gives comfort and recognizes it's going to be okay.

Lisa Welchman:

I love to hear that mostly because it sounds like mindfulness to me, like one of the benefits of having a meditation practice, whatever that might be, and I'd say meditation broadly for some people that might be doing sports in a way that makes them feel good, whatever that is that for me, it builds in your ability to not react but to respond. So instead of going like, "Oh, that email is so hot and just slapping back or whatever." You're actually able to take a beat and respond instead of react. And I think that for digital leaders, that's been particularly tough because it's a culture of reactivity. It's almost a culture of fear. "We better hurry up or we're going to be behind or we're going to be or whatever."

And so sometimes, if you just wait a second, you're not going to fail, you're not going to go out of business, but you also might think of something better. And as a leader, you're also not winding your team up. It's almost like this certainly like you can't you have to be fake and pretend that you're not a human being, but you also have to realize that you're guiding a number of people and if you are wound up or and reactive that that's going to be the culture of the organization. So I think that one's really, really, really great.

Andy Vitale:

It is. It's a skill that it took me forever to really learn. I would say, "I got to jump in on this." And then as I've grown in my career, it's like, "Wait, that is not so urgent. That is not something I need to react to this second." And when my team comes in with something like that, it's how do I calm them down and help them understand, take a breath. We've got a little bit of time on this one as opposed to going off the rail. So it's really important for a leader to convey that to the team.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, I think I'm going to move on to the next question, and you've dipped into this a little bit and this question that we've been asking people about helping to shift some of the more negative dynamics that are online in particular, and then amplify the good ones. And you've touched on that a little bit, but I think that the role that you play and the engineering and an enablement that needs to happen in order for that to work in a team sits right with somebody like you. And so it would be great if you have any tips that you can give people about how to engineer that and create that environment, particularly as just we were talking about a lot of the people who've got their hands in it, they just can't be that person who's actually tuning that because they're too busy executing.

Scott Rosenberg:

Right. Well, I go back to an inspiration, Lisa, that you introduced to me, and that was being exposed to what I still believe was the best in class digital governance program I've ever seen. And it was with the auto automobile industry-

Lisa Welchman:

That's right. That's right where you guys got introduced. That's right. Yeah.

Scott Rosenberg:

Yeah. And being able to actually eyewitness really a best in class program of how do you focus on enablement and less so on the rules, policies, et cetera, was phenomenal. In particular, that organization. And I still use this as an inspiration for my team on a regular basis.

Lisa Welchman:

Wow, that's amazing. I'm glad that you brought them up. I'm sorry for being coy, but we don't want to announce people's stuff. But really great job, yeah.

Scott Rosenberg:

Did a phenomenal job of recognizing that they were on a path similar to what my team at the time at Intel was going through of digital transformation, but recognizing that operationally it was very challenging because they were very decentralized at a regional level. They had each market that was working within some framework, but they enabled that flexibility to be able to actually still maintain that true brand, but meet the local business needs. And so, being able to see how they clarified, especially on the digital side of things, how to use the website in a very intuitive way across languages so that everyone could understand this is what good looks like with real life examples, with a clear goal of this is what we're working towards. And so providing the actual measured steps to say, these markets should be this level and achieve these standards by a certain timeframe, and then checking in and creating the actual accountability there was truly mind blown for me at the time.

And maybe the best part of that experience and being there on site eye witnessing their overall conference was the recognition program that they did. They had various categories to incentivize great digital, whether it was most improved business results or following all of the standards or meeting local needs. They had various categories that were important to their business that their market leadership saw value in. And so I remember Lisa, and I were there on site and it felt like the Emmys are the Grammys, the folks were dressed up, they were really excited when they announced the market that was nominated and the leadership was there. It was a big deal, and they had to bring that they were excited to bring that trophy or that plaque, whatever the award was back to their market. And seeing that level of collaboration, excitement, positivity, was extremely inspirational when I went back to Intel and then to today as I'm building governance across Visa.

And so to me, in terms of tips is one is clarify what good looks like with your team and what you're really focused on, and make sure you do have that clear North Star of what you're trying to address, whether it's getting your digital channels and digital platforms in order, whether it's becoming more culturally relevant through your digital channels, whether it's decreasing the costs of unnecessary content and content bloat, whatever that may be. Just be very clear on what that looks like. And then focus on the carrot side of things of incentivizing people to do the right thing, which is I think we should all assume good intent. And that means giving tools, giving guidelines, playbooks the support, the day-to-day consulting, invest in that piece so that at the Center you can enable the broader organization.

And then lastly, celebrate success and recognize when great work is happening so that people do really want to strive. I'm a big believer of Clifton's strengths and focusing on identifying people's strengths and not focusing on their growth or development areas to get the most out of people. And this is, again, a way to recognize that is when you actually acknowledge and recognize the great work, you're going to see even better work. And that was very evident in that particular program.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, I mean, you're reminding me of some of one, a really fun trip. I remember that experience. It was a great experience, and I remember being quite impressed at how engaged the leadership was. I mean, I work on projects all the time, but it's very seldom that the very top of the organization's going to sit down at a table with me and let me tell them about this and be really engaged about it. And so I think that was really something else. And I just want to put a line underneath the first thing, I think on the list of three that you said, which is know what good looks like.

That one is very heavy, deep, and real, because I don't think that means winning, deploying the most features. It's a very shallow answer often, and it's not rich enough for 30 years into these digital spaces. It's not good enough to just say, "We deployed it first so we win," Right? Or, "Hits." And it's shocking how many very large organizations are still doing very immature metrics and business analysis of what they're doing in their digital channels. And so I just wanted to put a line underneath that one. I don't know what you want to add, Andy.

Andy Vitale:

Well, governing a brand is really interesting for obvious reasons. And you talked about it a little bit earlier and you tied it into this answer too. I would love for you to talk a little bit about the value of governing the brand both to the organization and to the brand itself.

Scott Rosenberg:

Sure. I would say that there's operational as well as overall business value and built a scorecard around the governance side a few times. At the end of the day, it does depend on what your organization is facing and what you're trying to achieve. But certainly, for example, at Visa, it very much is tied to preserving, maintaining and deepening the trust that consumers and our clients and others have with our brand. And so making sure that we are acting responsibly, making sure that we're using technology in the way that is meant to be used, and also the efficiency piece to it. So the efficiency piece, especially when I was at Intel, was a critical part of really measuring the success of governance. We started at Intel before we formalized our governance program with a crazy amount of content, whether it was on the.com, other websites, micro sites, social channels, mobile applications.

And what we recognized was that there were millions and millions of dollars being spent on these experiences without really true cohesion, connectedness and really alignment to the overall brand. And so, in that particular governance example, it was very focused on the efficiency side and ultimately the customer experience side to make sure that we weren't serving up a schizophrenic version of our brand across 10 different versions of our digital channels. So a mix, I think of the trust and the emotional factor, the financial and efficiencies piece that you can gain, as well as really the, I would say the skillset. And when we think more about the empowerment side of seeing the broader organization be able to be more self-sufficient, innovative, and able to address some of these opportunities on their own rather than relying on a small team of digital experts as we did back in the '90s and 2000s.

Lisa Welchman:

And the 2020s.

Scott Rosenberg:

And the 2020s.

Lisa Welchman:

I mean, I hate to say. It's a long-

Scott Rosenberg:

I hope we've evolved by then.

Lisa Welchman:

I think we have evolved, but I really feel that in the next five to 10 years we're going to bump. I think we've plateaued a little bit and I think we're really... There's a lot of pressure coming behind that, and some of it is technology based. All this stuff with AI, just this stuff is really real and it's really pervasive and it's pushy and it penetrates deep into the platform and deeply into processes. It's invasive, not in a negative way, but invasive to people. And so, I think a lot of this operational and governance related stuff, it's just got to hit because there's no way to scale responsibly. And if you are a big brand, and if you're a big brand that, I mean all brands want trust, but some more than others, financial institutions of which both of you all represent, that's a thing. And so I think other ones too, pharma, all the heavily regulated ones, that's going to be a really big thing. So I'm hoping that kind of shifts. But anyway, Andy.

Andy Vitale:

Last question, Scott, what are a few things that you wish someone had told you when you started out on your professional journey?

Scott Rosenberg:

The first I would say is really invest time and understanding who you are and what your strengths are and embrace them and embrace it by building a strong personal brand. I mentioned Clifton strengths before, and that was a pivotal moment, like 15 years ago or so for me to have a way to articulate in a positive way. Who am I? What are the type of experiences that I thrive in? And I use that in both individual contributor roles as well as people leadership roles to understand what are those environments that I will be successful in and to be confident about that.

So the focus on, again, your strengths over your development areas was something that always really resonated with me. And knowing that certainly would've been, I think, more helpful earlier in my career. That would be number one. Number two, and I think I've done this throughout my career, but I would say if I could go back and say, it's going to be something you should really seek out and that is taking informed risks and welcoming opportunities that at the time you might not think you're able to fulfill or that you're qualified for.

I go back to that internship that I had in Beijing with the Economist as really one of those moments in my life that really opened up my aperture to say you could actually have greater impact through business over the traditional government route, and seeing how organization and discipline could influence that. The other thing was taking the risk and going to China and starting my career, there certainly was an informed risk, but it was one that didn't necessarily seem conventional at the time, but that paid off.

So that's the second one. And then the third thing I would tell myself earlier in my career would be really to be confident in the value that you are going to bring to these various situations, environments that you're going to work in. I always felt that because my academic background was in international politics, that working in technology or working in the financial industry, that it was a little bit of a barrier because I didn't necessarily have the deep expertise, subject matter expertise in the things that the company was selling or developing.

But I've also grown accustomed to acknowledging the expertise and the value that I can add to an organization and surround myself around people that are smarter than me, that have deep expertise in a particular area, and really prioritizing learning. And so, having that confidence earlier on in my career to say, "You don't need to have a degree in computer hardware to be successful at Intel." For example, or finance at Visa, that would've been really helpful to just make sure that I was able to more easily and openly express my point of view in a group of people that were older than me, more experienced and had deeper expertise in the core product. Those would be the three things I would definitely wish someone told me back in the day.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, this has been a fabulous conversation. I really appreciate the guidance that you're giving folks. I think one of the things that's going on now in the digital space is just this leadership challenge, and part of that is the engineering of the team and the enablement of the team. If everything's been so product and outwardly focused that this interior part doesn't get as much done. So I really appreciate this conversation. I guess the last thing is, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Scott Rosenberg:

Yeah, I would say LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn as K Scott Rosenberg at Visa, so definitely connect with me there.

Lisa Welchman:

Lovely.

Andy Vitale:

Nice, Scott. It's been so great to meet you. I already can't wait to chat again about a couple of things, so I was super excited.

Lisa Welchman:

Groovy.

Scott Rosenberg:

Likewise. Same here. And thanks for again having me on the show.