You Must Stay Objective To Be A True Trusted Advisor

I think a lot of organizations, and certainly ones I’ve worked for in the past, they have a tendency to kind of say, ‘Well, this is our view of the world, and we’re not coming off it. And everything’s going to be marching in this particular direction,’ – don’t do that.

So it is kind of a trusted adviser relationship where we’re listening to them and also taking a few steps to making sure that our advice is objective.

For a trusted adviser, almost like a doctor or a lawyer, the ability to walk down the objectivity path is difficult to do.

There’s lots of vendors out there and different partner programs and things like that, but looking at the responsibility and making sure that we’re providing them a technology solution that’s going to be optimized to their needs, and not necessarily some sort of a prebuilt stack moving forward [is important].

My role in life has been making sure that doesn’t happen. And if we do see those things start to form, make sure we’re breaking them up and moving them in a more objective direction. So staying objective, and providing capabilities to do that is important.