Road Trip

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to “TesseLeads” with your host, Tesse Akpeki and co-host me Paula Okonneh. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share, hear, tell your stories and your experiences. And we get super curious about the dilemmas shaping the future and journeys of our guests. Today our special guest is Max Ekesi. This is Max’s third or fourth time of being on our podcast, and we are thrilled to have him again. Max, he’s also very excited to be here. He is, in fact, describes himself as super excited about a lot of things, and one of those is the opportunity to serve on his “Agile Austin Community” where he’s been an active member since 2009, and has proudly served on the board as the vice president and now president. In his 20 years of IT enterprise experience in Austin. He is been a people manager, an Agile coach, is Scrumb master, a program portfolio manager, and is presently an IT manager at PayPal. Well, today we are going to be talking more about his personal life, so I need to share this with you. In his spare time, Max loves to play, watch and coach soccer of his daughters, and also to travel the world with his wife and two daughters. So welcome to “TesseLeads” where we are going to be talking about road trip with you, Max Ekesi.

[00:01:49] Max: Thank you Paula and Tesse. Always a pleasure to be here. Always a pleasure.

[00:01:55] Tesse: Hi Max. You can see from my brilliant smile that we always happy to speak with you. We last spoke with you in January, and we are curious about what’s been happening with you since then. What have you been up to Max?

[00:02:10] Max: Oh my goodness. It’s been a fun 2023. Yes. So just a few highlights. I always start the year off in a very positive note, because my birthday is on the 18th of January. And my birthday is the one day that I feel special, so I always have a huge party. So had that, I turned 47 this year. The young shall grow. Young shall grow. As we used to say always in Nigeria, the young shall grow. And so with that, it was just incredible. I still have to just pinch myself to wake up from all the excitement about the fact that now we can be around people, we can be around big crowds. We can be like, I didn’t celebrate my birthday for two years, so I am still on that sometimes PTSD of I went through so much, but now I can connect with people, with crowds. And so it’s been really a year of reconnecting with everybody both present where I live in Austin, Texas, but also globally with traveling to Nigeria, seeing family there where my parents live. Traveling to Rome in June, cause I’m half Nigeria and half Italian. So I have a lot of family in the city of Rome. Which I think is the most beautiful city in the world due to historic architecture, which I’m passionate about,.And it was just beautiful. And then we even traveled in June. We were not only in Rome, we were in Spain where my brother lives. We were in Portugal and, you know, seeing places I’ve not seen before. So this year was just a year of just new excitement, new things. In March for spring break, we went to DC. It was my first time going to Washington, DC, and we saw all the museums and to share that with like my family and to do it with my kids who are now nine and 11, my two daughters, and they’re growing and they’re starting to get to that age that they can absorb a lot more. And Paula Tesse has just been great. This year has been great, thankfully.

[00:04:28] Paula: Wow. I mean, this podcast is titled “Road Trip” and it’s literally been a road trip for you. And you’ve told us all these things that have happened, but did anything in particular stand out for you? Apart from your birthday.

[00:04:45] Max: Yeah, apart from my birthday. Yes. It’s not just about me and celebrating me. Yes. It’s about, no, I would say that the big thing that happened this year, in the last few months has been, I would classify it as transition, if I could put it in one word. And I say transition because there are key things in my life that I’m transitioning from one aspect to another. And one perfect example is outside of my nine to five job, which I work as an IT senior manager at PayPal. Outside of my work, it’s very important for me to be active in my community, my society, right? To give back a lot of value to a society that has provided so much for me, right? I have lived in United States of America now since 94. So in a lot of ways I’m quite very much like an American and I like to give back where I live, where I’m at. And so in Austin, I was actually very involved in the parent-teacher association of my daughters elementary school, has a volunteer parent teacher association, and I was president for the last two years. My term just ended in June. But a big thing that I did, I really want to emphasize this cause I’m very proud that I did this. I put a lot of focus on transition plan. Because what happens is that when you transition out of a key role, it’s very important that you set things up so that a lot of the advancements, a lot of the progress that has been made can be continued. And in order to do that, you have to ensure that you have some really good quality people taking on from where you left off. And so a big thing for me that started it back in January, even though my term was going to end in June, is finding people that would be very good at being president of the PTA, vice President of the PTA and other board members too. I was so happy to be able to have done that, not only to find very good candidates that then were voted into the position, but setting up the transition plan, right? We had meetings about the particular things we have to transition, how to be able to run meetings more effectively. Things we had progressed in, things we are supporting the school in doing. It’s the first elementary school in our district that has become a candidate for the “IB program”. The “IB program” is the “International Baccalaureate Program”, which is a global program, and we are the first elementary school out of like dozens that has been able to do this. But we have to support this financially and there’s so much going on with that that you want to make sure that these key achievements are continued. So, I could go on and on because of the excitement of this, but me transitioning off a role, seeing some really quality individuals that are coming in and already doing things and still being active in post transition stuff. And I will still be active in the PTA in fundraising and some other aspects. But again, this transition that I talk about emphasizes how change management, the way that we go through change is very important. Because change is inevitable. And when I came into that role on the PTA, nobody transitioned anything to me. It was like, here’s the role, okay, I’ll send you an email to some of the folders that we have on Google Drive and that’s it. There was no meeting, there was no discussion. And I think that, you know, that stood out to me and I definitely wanted to improve on that and that was the great thing. And as you transition, you also personally find out there are some other things that you might be able to take on. And so that’s been a big part. Now that I have this chunk of time, where am I going to transition that time and dedication to.

[00:09:04] Tesse: Oh wow. That’s wonderful. I particularly love when you talk about transition as something that is empowering and enabling when done well. Because usually in my experience, people and consultants, thought leaders link in transformation very closely with transition, and this it’s a quick hop into transformation and they don’t do the transformation very well. So hearing you talk about is brilliant\. You know, this being your road trip, talk to us about your hopes and dreams and how they’re shaping up professionally, personally? You know, you’ve lovely post Covid celebration where you could connect with people. You are super excited about people and “Agile Austin”. What, how are other things shaping up for you, Max?

[00:09:51] Max: Thank you for asking that Tesse, because yes, there are definitely so much that I want to get done now, and I want to do it now. Not in 10, 15 years when I’m thinking that, oh, it’s time to slow down, retire transition into more like, you know, slower pacing. Like now I feel that I’m at my peak. I’m at my peak because I’ve had so much experience and now I can take all this experience from my professional and personal things that I’ve done and really step it into a higher gear in things that I can do. Specifically, I look at the “Agile Austin Organization”, which is an IT nonprofit. And what it is is that, there’s so many people out there, the masses, like there’s so many people that could benefit from things that we do in the organization. So I really definitely want to double click on this kind of an opportunity and really step it up a notch or two. And I’m already very much getting involved in the conference that we’re going to host in March, 2024. And we’re doing a lot more initiatives and programs every month, virtually because we have members virtually. And just very briefly, If I may, because some people they hear this might be saying, agile. What is agile? Example, you’re a president of “Agile Austin”. What does that mean? So in a very quick sense, agile is a term that came around in 2001, like actually as a term. But it’s a mindset that has been around for centuries, forever. And it’s very much the fact of when you approach something, a problem, a project, or anything that you want to do, you shouldn’t sit and plan that forever. You have to kind of approach it with a mindset that things can change dramatically very fast. So you take like an iterative approach, do a very specific small chunk of work according to what your customer needs are for that customer, and then you stop and you get feedback on what you’ve done in a form of a demo. I mean, it’s very popular in the IT world, cause we can demo our software, right? If a customer needs a website to sell shoes, right? They’re like a small mom and pop shop that want to sell shoes online, okay? I’ll just create a very simple site in two weeks, show you some of the functionality and then I’ll demo it to you. I’m not going to ask you to go build document with all of your requirements because you might not know exactly what you want and you don’t know what the capabilities are. So, but when you see demo, when you see something work, then you can say, I’d like more of the options to click on to be at the very top. I don’t want to scroll down. I want to be able to move to the right. Then you take that feedback and you build on that feedback in like an iterative way. So that is the whole concept. There’s more to it, but generically speaking, it’s how can you be more agile, nimble, be more very customer focused about how we build and deliver value. Is that concept of anything you do should be adding value. And it is a very powerful concept, especially now that technological disruptions have made us capable of being able to develop and deliver software IT products in a very short amount of time, right? Very short. And you can just tell, in the industry we use Netflix and not Blockbuster, because Netflix adapted much faster to something. We use Apple and Samsung phones and not Nokia, because Apple and Samsung adapted much faster to the smartphone technology. A lot of people might not remember that Nokia had over 50% of the market share in phones over in 2005, 2006. I’m not talking about 30 years. I mean that recently, and now they don’t exist in the cell phone industry. So it’s almost like to conclude this, you really want to have an agile mindset, because as Darwin also said, it is the most adaptable species. Just like as the most adaptable company, the most adaptable people will be the ones to thrive the most. Adaptability is important in this day and age. Sorry, I get excited when I talk of Agile and everything I’ve been doing in it. I’ve been doing it for 15 years. Like that’s why they hired me at PayPal. That’s why, that’s what my career is based on. My ability to help large companies transform, transition, as we say.

[00:15:13] Paula: Transform, transition, key words that are very important. And as you say, I can see the passion, the authenticity. I can hear it in your voice. And our listeners will as well, about what you’re doing at Agile. And I know it wraps into Agile coaching. But because we have limited time , I think we’ve heard a lot about your passion. What words of wisdom would you give to, I wanted to say the up and coming generation, but I think it’s to all of us, because as you said, yes to everyone. Because as you said, what you do at Agile, Agile coaching, you are looking at things in real time as they’re changing and it’s impacting everyone. So what words of wisdom would you give to all of us? The young, the up and coming, and the not so young, but still young.

[00:16:09] Tesse: Young at heart.

[00:16:10] Paula: Young at heart.

[00:16:11] Max: For young the young at heart. People who still believe in a growth mindset.

[00:16:18] Paula: Yes.

[00:16:18] Max: That you continuously have to grow, right? No, Paula, thank you for the question. There’s one particular thing that comes to mind, and it’s that simple fact in that wherever you are professionally especially but also personally, is be yourself. Be yourself. Be transparent. And when you are like that, the main thing you have to focus on is how to manage the differences among ourselves. Because if I’m myself and I come to, whether it be an organization, a company, a relationship with someone, or whatever the case may be, and I’m myself, that other person might conflict with me because of certain viewpoints I have, because of certain characteristics I have and that’s okay. What we have to focus on is respectfully managing our differences, managing the relationship, because at the end of the day, we a lot of times have a common goal. So we focus on the outcome. Everybody I work with in my organization, in my company has a common goal. We want to deliver value to our customers. We want to work to progressively get products. For example, I work at PayPal online payment products to customers better and faster. That is our goal. We have different viewpoints about how to do it, but first of all, when we are ourselves at least we know where we stand. And then from there, we work towards the common goal. Now, this mindset, honestly, can really be used in so many ways. Think about what is really hurting our society a lot of times, our political differences. You know what? Let’s be ourselves. We have different viewpoints on different topics. Then we manage those conflicts, we manage the conversation in a respectful manner. What I see is that sometimes people start tweeting, people start saying things, and a lot of things are not very respectful of other folks. Even when you don’t agree, you can get some points across and then maybe you reach a point where you’re like, okay, I am who I am, you are who you are. We have differences that we have. Maybe we are not really trying to achieve the same goals and outcomes. Right? You discover things like that is something that. I would say to everybody, whether new into the workforce or has been around for a while, something that has helped me very much. And there are consequences.   You have to be prepared to be able to manage those consequences. Because sometimes I will say I have been in scenarios in my corporate America career that I was myself and that impacted my career advancement within an organization or a company. But I was okay with that, because at the end of the day, I was still myself, right? I have a lot of pride in just being myself and being very transparent about it. And that sometimes wasn’t really aligned with the political bureaucracy structure that was going on at that point, the hierarchy structure and everything. So there are consequences to it, so you’ve got to be aware of it and manage it very appropriately. And the last thing I like to add in there, is that what I’ve seen that is very encouraging in the last, I’d say five to seven years is that a lot of corporations that I’ve been involved with, not only that I work in, but that through the “Agile Austin organization” and other things that we speak to, are a lot more aware of people’s needs within the workforce. So a lot of topics that may be when I started my career 20 years ago, would never have been discussed. For example, psychological safety. I mean, that is something that when I bring up now we have forum groups at work that talk about how can we be more psychologically safe to express ourselves, to be able to work together in an environment where if I share a different opinion, I can feel that I will not be marginalized, right? My opinion, idea might not make progress, but that should not reflect on me per se. 20 years ago you say psychological safety, people would say, we don’t have time for that.

[00:20:54] Paula: Yes.

[00:20:54] Max: That is not important right now, we have some other priorities. And they might say it in a very respectful way, but they’d shut it down. Now, psychological safety, mental health, a lot of things like that are accepted in the workplace. And this is progress.

[00:21:10] Paula: It is.

[00:21:10] Max: This is progress. Let me tell you, a lot of people take these things for granted. Some people come into the workforce and they’re like, hey, of course yeah, we can talk about these things. We can be open. No. There was a time where, no, I wouldn’t bring that up myself, because they’d be like, Max is spending too much time focusing on non-high priority items. Maybe we should assign him to more projects, right? Like it would almost be that kind of aspect. So I feel very optimistic for the direction that a lot of things are taking in that professional corporate aspect, and that rolls out into society also. Talking about mental health, you have a lot of, whether it be actors, tennis players, everything, say I’m taking time off to focus on, I mean, my mental health. I mean, there are athletes that say that without a problem. Nobody like says, what are you talking about? It’s understood. You know, in this post pandemic world where there’s still a lot of PTSD going on, it’s key to openly be yourself and talk about that.

[00:22:20] Paula: Oh my word. You know, we can be talking with Max forever.

[00:22:25] Max: How about if we do a marathon? A marathon podcast, just go nonstop.

[00:22:33] Paula: Well, at least you’ll know that you’ll be being yourself if you do that marathon.

[00:22:38] Max: All the time.

[00:22:39] Paula: That’s max.

[00:22:40] Max: All the time.

[00:22:42] Paula: And so that’s why to our precious listeners and our viewers,, we tell you that your precious stories and your lives matter. As you heard from our guests, be yourself. Because the holistic view on each one of us matters. How we think, how we work, how the people we work with, the environment, it matters, because we are human beings. And so, we encourage you to please share your stories with us and know that stories are supported, encouraged, and our listeners are nurtured, whenever your precious stories and lives matter, please share them with us. Others are supported, encouraged, and nurtured when they know that they are never alone. And for our listeners, who have heard what Max Ekesi said, be yourself. That was his words of wisdom. We ask that you continue to support us by going over to “Apple Podcasts”, “Google Podcast”, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts and subscribe. And if you would like to be a guest on this show, “TesseLeads”, please head over to our website, which is “www.tesseleads.com” and apply. So that we can have these continuous, invigorating, and supportive conversations with people just like you heard Max Ekesi, thank you for being a guest on “TesseLeads”.

[00:24:13] Tesse: Always a joy Max. Always a joy.

[00:24:16] Max: Thanks for having me. And as always, I’m happy to come back. And Paula and Tesse, it’s always good to see that you two are doing great and making progress. I follow your podcast, I follow you online, and so happy there are people like you adding value in this way. Keep on going, my sisters, keep on going.