Tonya J. Long: 0:06

Welcome home friends. I'm Tonya Long, and this is RESET, where purpose meets possibility. Each week, we share conversations with thought leaders, innovators and the dreamers and doers who are reshaping the future of work, technology, longevity and purpose. Whether you're navigating AI's impact, reimagining your career or searching for deeper meaning, you're in the right place. So settle in, open your mind and let's explore what happens when purpose meets possibility. What happens when purpose meets possibility. Hello everyone and welcome to Reset.

Tonya J. Long: 0:52

I am so excited today to bring to the community Morgan Templar. Morgan is, I'm going to say it, she's more than a friend. She's more like a sister. Morgan and I met almost three years ago through a women's executive networking organization that we were both part of and completely hit it off and have been talking almost nonstop ever since. Morgan is so much more than her resume, but her resume is pretty darn impressive. She's the CEO of First CDO Partners.

Tonya J. Long: 1:30

That's her own consultancy in data, and we'll talk more about that, I'm sure, but that's after a long career in data and change management around data, which, as everyone understands now, morgan understood it 20 years ago, but, as everyone understands now, morgan understood it 20 years ago, but as everyone understands now, data is such an important part of how we operate in business and in life. So she's the CEO of First Data Partners and, related to all that, with her long history. She's the author of Get Governed Building World-Class Data Governance Programs, and her first I think it was your first book A Culture of Governance. That was the second book. She's a multiple author on data governance, so she wrote the book on data governance and we've had funny stories about people telling her she wrote the book on it, which is nice.

Tonya J. Long: 2:22

So Morgan is an author and she's also now at just recently the host of the podcast Data, ai and how We'll Live, because AI is not just a business efficiency enabler. Ai is going to affect how our lives operate for the better, in my opinion and so Morgan is taking a solid look at that with her robust network of people who care about those things. So I'm going to ask Morgan I've given just the tops of the waves, but what are your priorities right now? What are you working on?

Morgan Templar: 3:01

Well, thank you for that very, very kind introduction and mutually appreciate you and where you've been as well, your journey is amazing, so I have really enjoyed what I'm doing with First CDL Partners. We started as a consultancy, really just as a service organization to help people get a data strategy in place, help them understand where they really were, because two years ago, when we started this company, ai hadn't really hit Like. The boards were not saying we need to do AI, and so it was important, but not that important. So we did gap assessments and data strategy, which is a really important component, get you started. Data strategy, which is a really important component, get you started.

Morgan Templar: 3:47

Over the past few years, though, we have developed a methodology that allows us to look at the ecosystem end-to-end for data, and that is going to change everything. It is literally a pivot. It's a 90-degree pivot. It is not just a little bit of change. I've done change management my whole career. This is change. This is stop sitting in that chair, get up and walk over there, because it's different now, and we model that in the way that we operate as well. We have AI and AI systems at the core of our business, and so how we use AI. We're also experiencing on a regular, daily basis.

Tonya J. Long: 4:28

I love it. I love it and it's going to be super impactful in general of how big of a shift it is when you do a personal change to move from 20 plus years in corporate infrastructures and then you make that leap to do your own thing. Everyone thinks it's so sexy and then you get there and you spend I think we've laughed about, then you spend, you know, two hours trying to move the margins a quarter inch on your website. It's a it's a big shift. So was there, were there fears that you had to overcome as you looked at transitioning from big corporate, big corporations in health care to your own, your own data consultancy?

Morgan Templar: 5:21

Oh, just the nights of stark terror. Stark Terror, I love it. Yeah, I get it. I had no, I've.

Morgan Templar: 5:29

I've never, well, I've never done this on my own before. I've done some counseling, some coaching and you know things like that where people do that, but not without the safety net of that W-2. You know, oh, it's fine, you know, I know exactly what you're doing. I think that the things that I've learned that I really wish I'd known. I have no idea how to do lead generation. We've had to learn. I have no idea how to do.

Morgan Templar: 6:00

Well, we haven't done DC yet. We haven't done a funding round yet because we haven't felt like we were ready. So when we get to that point, we're going to have to bring in somebody who knows, because we don't know, neither my partner or I. We've always IT department, you have a legal department, you have all those things. You've got YouTube. When you start your own company, you know, and YouTube, and YouTube. Yeah, so you know I'm the CEO and I'm the head delivery person, I'm a head customer officer and my partner is a COO and he takes care of HR and finance and filing taxes and you know. But we have to wear every hat and every hat needs to be worn by someone.

Morgan Templar: 6:52

And you know, because we went into it with our eyes open and understanding that there were going to be a lot of hats to wear, it wasn't as challenging, but I think that it did maybe hamper us a little bit in getting started. We started slower. But I kind of look back and I think these two years, these all the fears, all the struggle, that was our incubator period. We didn't join an incubator. I didn't know what an incubator was. I can know it.

Tonya J. Long: 7:22

You had no reason to Mm-hmm.

Morgan Templar: 7:25

Mm-hmm. So we just did it. We just put money in the bank and did it. So you know, I think that's the advice. You don't have to know it all, Just start.

Tonya J. Long: 7:39

What good wisdom. You don't have to know it all. An old boss of mine, you know that was the best gift he gave me. I've worked for him for many years, but early on he gave me the safety of knowing. I didn't have to know it all, but I needed to know how to get to the information.

Tonya J. Long: 7:57

And when you really embrace that so many people in my broader community, they do think they have to prove their worth by knowing it all. And we don't. We don't especially, I think, in our more community focused paradigms that we're coming into, where we're going to outsource a lot of the help that we get to do things. It's going to be more of a networked. That's my vision is a networked future of multiple service providers hooking together to use their best talents and, as that happens, I think, recognizing what we do and don't know. You and I have had some conversations recently about where I'm spending my time that I wish I weren't, and I think it's important to recognize that. So we all move to our highest calling, but that resonates for me. So thank you. Do you think it has changed how you look at leadership now that you're not in those typical structures?

Morgan Templar: 8:56

Not really. I've always been a hands-on kind of leader. I know what my people do. So, while I couldn't go sit down and code with them, I have an understanding when my engineering teams are building something, of what it is and why they're building it. And I've always had the approach of leadership, of being open, of being transparent, of admitting that I don't know something, of saying I don't really understand that. Can you explain it to me? Instead of putting on some face like, well, of course I know that I have to not lose my status by telling you I don't know everything. I've always been that kind of leader and I think that has been helpful in building culture, in building an organization of trust where my employees trust me because I trust them, yeah, because I can be vulnerable with them and say that's over my head. Explain it to me, dumb it down for me, please, and instead of raise it up to the executive level, because that kind of talk is whatever, garbage, garbage, yeah, garbage, whatever, garbage.

Tonya J. Long: 10:08

Garbage.

Morgan Templar: 10:08

Yeah, garbage. Really, it's dumbed down for me because I'm not. I'm quite technical, but I'm not quite that technical. I need a little bit down, and so always being aware of my team has helped, and the reason is because I started at the bottom. I started in healthcare as a secretary and worked my way up to chief data officer of a $20 billion healthcare conglomerate. I've had every role, I've sat in every seat. I know what a business analyst does, I know what a project manager does, I know what a manager does. I've been all of those things as I worked my way up, and so it's not a mystery to me. There's not just some amorphous cloud. They're people. They have struggles, they have limited money, time and resources and I recognize that and I will fight for them.

Tonya J. Long: 10:58

I think everything you said is beautiful and perfect. Um, I think leadership's paradigm is going to change, given given how we're going to be working from a distributed talent model, because I think the relationships change. I think they're incredibly more collaborative. Collaborative, um, and the need for leadership in those, in those engagements. Um, you know, you and I've both been through a lot of leadership where clarity did not exist, where, where, where the why wasn't understood. That's just, I think, part of the era of enterprise, that that has existed for both of us. But in the future, when we're partnering with organizations that are part of our organization and 10 others at the given moment, I think that clarity and people understanding what we're trying to achieve is an even more important skill that hasn't necessarily been modeled right.

Morgan Templar: 12:08

No, I agree with that. I really do believe that you're right that as we get into this new paradigm where we're going to be working collaboratively and my model is that very much it's like I I envision my end-to-end data ecosystem as think of like a rod, and then you have these things that slide along it with T-connectors and this is a metadata harvester and this is a data catalog company, and we're just going to inject in the pieces that we need and write software in between to make it go, make it sound frictionless, absolutely seamless, and that's the intent. But we're also one of those players. Is AI One of the players? When we talk about collaborating, it isn't just with this data catalog company, but we're going to utilize our to the fullest extent what we can do with AI and move us forward faster.

Tonya J. Long: 13:10

So leadership, ai there's recent talk about managing AI and managing a human workforce and how leadership will also change, because both are going to require management, but in a different way than we've previously reconciled. Tools have been tools, they've been systems we use, but AI, because of its collaborative nature and because it's so pervasive, frontline you know our AI. You and I have been playing with AI for a long time. But machine learning, computer vision, those forms of AI were way, way, way back in the stack and didn't affect every person and all of your customers directly. They didn't see it. Now they do. So managing that? Back to the topic of leadership. I think it's a fascinating conversation about leading agents leading and I'm not talking call center agents, I'm talking AI agents. What are you seeing on that front, since you are in the future, in the conversations about the future of how we work?

Morgan Templar: 14:30

I think people are very unsure and I would say there's a lot of uncertainty, not because we don't have a perspective on how we might do it, but that things are changing so much every single day 100% and it's really hard to get a leadership philosophy in 10 minutes. So it's important, I think, to have flexibility in the way we're thinking, to consider, as I am in my ecosystem, that AI is one of the parties. Just like you know, my head of HR is one of the parties. My data engineer is one of the parties. Just like you know, my head of HR is one of the parties. My data engineer is one of the parties.

Morgan Templar: 15:09

And oh, this AI LLM that we also have in our private cloud, that's one of the people that we manage and they have guardrails and rules, just like everybody else. So I think of it in a much broader perspective that they will become part of the team and it will have to have. Maybe the rules will be phrased differently because they'll be in code and they'll be, you know, guardrails and things that they don't go beyond, but that's no different than giving our team a set of ethics and a set of privacy, roles and a set of operational paradigms that have to do with regulations that they also have to participate in. So I think we need to not fear the fact that we're going to have AI as part of our team and our ecosystem, but find a way to embrace that and make that a holistic vision.

Tonya J. Long: 16:08

Holistic. That word resonates for me because it does. It's going to need to be leadership models and thoughtfulness about leadership that encompasses the machine. If you will that's not a good word for me, but I'm going to say the machine component and then the human component. And the human component is going to be so much more distributed.

Tonya J. Long: 16:27

Our move to working from home was remote work, was a real paradigm shift for the business world, and now I think it's going to get even more distributed with working with so many people that aren't part of your payroll team but they're absolutely part of your team to accomplish your goal for your customers. So I think that's just the next evolution of how we work people to people, people to machine to people and it's going to require some thoughtfulness that, in my opinion, has been taken for granted for the last 20 years. People just evolved into leadership roles because they'd done a good job, as you know, with their particular technical or vertical that they delivered in, and I think, to be successful in the future, we're going to need to see leaders that are mindful about how to lead all these disparate pieces, are mindful about how to lead all these disparate pieces.

Morgan Templar: 17:26

I agree, you know there's an old saying, and you'll know this saying people get promoted to their level of incompetence because they were really good at their last job and so they deserve a promotion. But they aren't ready or they just don't have the skills or the mindset and next level. We've seen it time and time again and you know not to put anyone down in any way. You know what do we do with people who are exceptional and yet they should be recognized in some way? I think the point of being able to change that paradigm, where you're also including the machine, you're also we say, because I've been in tech, deep in tech the gray matter and the silicon matter Though you know they've said a lot, yeah, so that you know the gray matter, we have our own way of dealing with those issues and you know I've had people that have voluntarily stepped back to where they were excellent Because we were honest and we had those conversations.

Morgan Templar: 18:37

The silicon matter we often find is height well beyond its capabilities, height well beyond its capabilities, and so I've had to have those conversations with those vendors to say this system, this product you've sold me, does not do what you sold it for. So we call that contract back and either end it or modify it because it doesn't have the capability. Yes, and I think you know, having had the opportunity, I think through my career, to be able to have those kinds of conversations already, I think it's really time for other people to start thinking about that and talking about it.

Tonya J. Long: 19:16

Clarity of communication. You know I love the Brene Brown phrase that clear is kind, and so, in dealing with people, I think the most important thing is not to push these to. You'd like to prevent them from reaching the point where someone has stepped into the Peter principle and they've evolved to their level of incompetence You'd like, you'd like for the systems, if you will, around how we make decisions. But I think it's because of that lack of communication, that inability to face conflict, that people have been allowed to cycle up to a point where it actually impacts the business. And we do need stronger leadership, stronger leadership.

Tonya J. Long: 20:07

I know this wasn't the reason for our dialogue today, but I think it's a worthwhile detour for a minute to talk about what we're talking about now, that leadership delivering uncomfortable messages is a gift. When it's done well, it's a gift for the business, it's a gift for the individual who would be impacted. It is, and I find that lots of times people are relieved because we put people on such a trajectory that, oh, I have to be a manager. No, you don't, there's, no, there's no. It doesn't say you're a better human if you have a leadership title. You can be a phenomenal human if what you're higher calling is around writing the code or talking with customers to de-escalate situations. We need to get everybody comfortable with understanding what their gifts are.

Morgan Templar: 20:58

I agree. I think we have elevated the expectation of what is valuable. You have to leadership role to be valuable, and the individual contributors often are the most productive, innovative people because they're not bound by all these. I need to have 17 one-on-ones this week, and is that my skill set? Well, for me it is, because I love to talk to people and we can really talk out those things.

Morgan Templar: 21:30

But not everyone who's been promoted to a manager actually has the capability to have the one-on-one personal skills. Now, that doesn't mean they can't learn it if that's their desire, but we just so often don't look at that as a reason. When we think, oh, we're going to promote someone, we don't always stop and say you know, we're only doing it because they're good at what they do and they want to be in a management role, but they don't necessarily have the skills yet. So I think that's something that we as a culture need to get past. It's okay to be an individual contributor you can rate things, especially because it gives you a lot of flexibility to pop in and out of different things and learn a lot, if that's your personality and you're willing to do it. But it's also, you know, we need to. We need to stop putting status on your role. Status has to do with your contribution, not your role.

Tonya J. Long: 22:35

I love it. This is a lot of wisdom, and this wisdom you did not learn in graduate school. You might have learned from some of your interactions in graduate school. I believe that the people side is. You know, it's what informs us about how we want to do things and sometimes how we don't want to do things. But I'd like to move into how you got to your evolved thinking. Are you good with that? Absolutely as a human understanding conflict. I mean, what happens in our personal lives becomes part of who we show up, as in our professional world. And professional world these days is not just work, it's, it's our, it's our networking circles, it's, uh, it's the people we serve in organizations with um, like your EDM council work that you do, uh. So we, we, we show up at a lot of different ways of work, but I believe that our lives inform um how we handle those disagreements or just disconnects that are going to happen. Horrible way to segue this disagreements and disconnects and but.

Tonya J. Long: 23:51

But you know, one of the stories for you that I am aware of is that is that you have an amazing husband that I love dearly, but you went through another relationship, a marriage, a marriage with children, and then transitioned. Then, you know, did the divorce thing transitioned you? But you did, you transitioned your life to choose another one, got divorced and remarried and you scored. You did very well because he's he's right, you know he's fantastic. So, um, how did that journey for you shape your perspective on change? Because that was a ton of change for you, especially with, with children. Um, and I I've got to think that's part of how you gathered some of your internal wisdom was through that life conflict.

Morgan Templar: 24:46

Yeah, it was, and I don't talk often about my personal issues. I usually say I had a 12-year abusive marriage and men left, thanks. And I have four kids out of that marriage and they're you know, they're all individuals, but it certainly did impact the way that I looked at things and I guess I would say that there were three things in that marriage that really I learned from a personal perspective, that helped me become who I am. The first one was you can't change someone else, you can only change yourself. The first one was you can't change someone else, you can only change yourself. So I spent years buying and reading every self-help book and, of course, I grew up in the world of Stephen Covey and Utah oh, absolutely.

Morgan Templar: 25:38

But of course I had my planner and I had set my goals and all of those things, but in reality, it was because I realized I couldn't change my husband. I could only change how I reacted to the situation, and so that was the first thing. The second thing was I needed help. I couldn't do it alone. Before I could even ask for help, though, I went into counseling for a while. I don't even remember how long a year or so to help me begin to see the narrative of my own life?

Morgan Templar: 26:08

Yes, and not just be a victim of the things happening to me. But what is this narrative? I went from being I was a stockbroker. I was a very you know, powerful and upcoming woman and marrying this person, suddenly I'm not. I'm not.

Morgan Templar: 26:26

Yeah, my personality wasn't the same. I had no friends, he isolated me very well from his point of view and I had to learn to see my own world, my own situation, yeah, and actually be willing to see my own world, my own situation, and actually be willing to see it. And then, continuing with health, I needed outside help to lift me out of it. And so I think you know, as I went through that probably took me six of my 12 years to get away, and that was I had my four children in the first five years of our marriage and then it took me about six years to actually finally love the strength and make the right connections of people who would say here's a hand, you are in a bad place and I need to help you come out of it. And when I said no, no, I don't want to do that, and I said you're going to do that Like I don't want to put a restraining order, you're going to do that had people who were very firm with me and helpful and I really appreciated that.

Tonya J. Long: 27:34

You know I couldn't have done it without somebody outside pulling me in, because my own family had not gone through the process of reimagining my life and seeing how bad it was right, right, um, you do never talk about your first marriage and that we're not here to dissect it today, but I reflect back that so much of how you approach the world, how you approach the negative things in the world, are because you've lived through negative things and you've come out on the other side with thoughtfulness. You've done the work to understand who you are, what you value, and then you partnered with someone who values you for what you bring, for what you uniquely bring, and celebrates that. I think putting ourselves with the right people is really a part of all good resets. Yeah, I saw you smile. All good resets involve other people.

Tonya J. Long: 28:49

I love what you said about taking six years and a lot of olive branches that got extended to you by others for you to be ready to transition out of one relationship and then, in time to be healthy, to find one that that elevated you. Uh, so, finding finding the right help, um, you and I aren't really good at accepting help, right? So how did that journey, um, and how did it help you be better about recognizing where people can help you?

Morgan Templar: 29:31

Well, I'm going to tell you another story. Okay, I'm going to step away from that because, as you said, I really don't. I feel like that's a chapter in my life closed on. Cl is closed, yeah, moved on, yeah. But I am very blessed and very lucky to have found my true soulmate and my other half and we together are like practically the same person and I love that. I love that 23 years later we still keep each other up until three in the morning, talking, because we just love to be together and I do love that.

Morgan Templar: 30:07

But so we had a very traumatic experience in our family and it really in many ways, is is what heal I don't want to say healed me, but actually really made me completely reinvent my paradigm and how I thought about things. One week before my first anniversary to my sweet Steven, our oldest daughter almost died. Rushed to the hospital we got to the hospital. Rushed to the hospital. We got to the hospital. Stephen sat on her bed and he felt something in his brain shift, heard a ring in his left ear and it popped, and he couldn't hear out of it. He didn't tell me any of that. We were dealing with our daughter who was about to die, and they managed to save her. And so we went on these parallel journeys for like a year. Where she was, she had an previously undiagnosed and untreatable blood disorder, so every four days she was getting a blood transfusion and trying novel treatments to see if it would work. And so that was all happening. And we were trying to find out what was going on with my husband. And he had a brain tumor which in that same year had removed, which left him permanently disabled, chronic vertigo. He has no idea which way is up, falls even when he's in bed. You know that Even when he's lying in bed he knows that he's not falling, and yet his brain thinks he is. And so we did that. Our daughter, you know, coming around the year, a year later, had a bone marrow transplant. Her little sister was a perfect match and so she had that happen.

Morgan Templar: 31:52

So we're having these parallel things happen. One of them was too much and two of them was impossible. But my family stepped in and we have a family agreement when someone is in the hospital you don't leave them alone. Somebody spends every night with them. There always is a family member there, because you never know when the nurse changes shift, if she remembered to tell them this or that. That's right, and so we do that for each other, which I do really appreciate about my family, and we basically took shifts of staying with my daughter so that I could stay with my husband, and you know, in the end it was really challenging. They had a year of being home alone. You know, in the end it was, it was really challenging. They had a year of being home alone and while she was recovering, he had to relearn to eat and I had to shower him and he couldn't really walk and he would fall down the stairs.

Morgan Templar: 32:53

And so I learned through that a couple of things.

Morgan Templar: 32:59

One of them is it doesn't matter what is going on in your life.

Morgan Templar: 33:03

If you have to only survive the next breath, that's okay, and then the next breath and then the next breath, and that's all you have to see. What's happening right now in front of me? I'm dealing with that. What's happening right now in front of me? I'm dealing with that. In front of me, I'm dealing with death. What's happening right now in front of me? I'm dealing with that. And just taking that perspective of the big picture is all there, and I'm a big picture thinker, so generally I'm all over it, but thinking about the big picture of our life for those two years is more than the brain can handle and the soul can handle. You just can't. And so my family was there. I had three other children who were not at the hospital all the time, and I basically lived at the two hospitals and hardly ever went home for like four months and the CEO of the hospital let me shower in his personal shower in his private bathroom and I'd sleep on the sofa in the administration office.

Morgan Templar: 34:04

I mean, just people were there for me and that seems like an odd thing, but it meant the world, because I had a private place where I could go and decompress. But I was still there. Yes, I could just meet at your hospital in 10 minutes or just go upstairs and you know the the support of my family and the support of my, my community, my friends, that that was how we got through, that. We never would have done it otherwise. You know, things that we would have to do became routines. We just changed going to cheerleading practice to going to blood transfusions and like, yeah, twice a week she had cheerleading practice.

Morgan Templar: 34:46

Well, three times a week. Now, twice a week she has a blood transfusion and it just became our family routine and, as you know, she's got a soccer game and you know he's got a little league game and she's got a blood transcation. It just became part of life and we tried not to treat it like we were in a bad. I don't even know what to say. We didn't victimize ourselves about it. We simply and this is life, but we deal with it and we move on. It's the three-legged dog concept and I think of that all the time. You know how many three-legged dogs you see? They still run, they still play, they don't even notice they're missing that I had a three-legged cat growing up.

Tonya J. Long: 35:25

He got caught in a bear in a trap yeah, oh yeah and you're right, they, they, they move, they move as if they never had it. Yeah, and they're fine.

Morgan Templar: 35:35

So you know, that's kind of how I I can came about dealing with all of that trauma. You can't have trauma without fear, though, and fear is a big narrative. I think I mentioned earlier that, like how did I start my founder's journey with Stark Terror? And now you laugh about it. I do, because it was like I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how to do it. We just did it Like whatever, now I can do it, so I can do it. We just did it.

Morgan Templar: 36:08

But you know fear, and being able to manage fear and being able to realize that that is just like pain, it's a symptom of something. So what do you do to remove fear? You bring in knowledge, you bring in understanding, and it really, I think, was it was kind of the impetus for me to kind of reinvigorate more of my spiritual life and being able to think about things not just of here and now and what I'm doing, but really who am I and what do I believe and what is important and and what do I want? What do I want my legacy in this world to be? It's not just she works harder than everyone.

Tonya J. Long: 36:53

It worked for 20 years. Well, that's that's interesting, that you bring up your spiritual life. Clearly, you and I have had these conversations offline. It's a key thread, I think, in our relationship as we've both evolved the last three years or so, that spiritual awareness that is becoming stronger and stronger, I would fairly say, and then being because it's very important to you to be authentic. So how have you?

Morgan Templar: 37:41

blended that spiritual journey with how you show up in your professional world. It is a very tight rope sometimes. Well, I guess I would say that my belief system is a little bit unusual and it's not your typical. So I would describe myself as a Christian Taoist, and so I have the Christian upbringing, upbringing, and I believe in Christ. But I'm also a Taoist, which is an Eastern religion that includes magic and spirituality and you know community energy transfer, I guess. So the two don't seem to be in any way related. For me they are completely related. I started by focusing on a small concept which is called Wuwei W-U-W-E-I, thank you. So Wuwei is essentially action through inaction. So Wu Wei is essentially action through inaction.

Morgan Templar: 38:43

It's the idea of floating down a river and not trying to fight the current, going where it takes you and enjoying the journey and dealing with what's happening this second, and not trying to fight because I want to go over there, but the current is really pulling me over here, and being aligned with the natural currents in the universe and that there are natural currents in the universe and that they take us on journeys that are important for our learning. So that really really helped. Action through inaction is one way. Other people say effortless action, but in in in both cases it's really just that alignment with the natural flows and and we have talked about it that I'm very sensitive to the flow of things and I can tell that this is going to be a very intense time and I'm going to have to snub everything because I need to focus there and then, oh, the flow has come back and I'm more family centered and so being able to look at that, being able to accept the flow like water moving around and through things and just going where it is naturally, really it's not that there's no effort, it's not that there's no effort, it's not that there's no work, but that it's effort and work that aligns to the purpose, and not just effort and to the assignment but to the purpose.

Morgan Templar: 40:12

And that's really, I think, where that all kind of comes together for me is. I believe very strongly that we should be value-driven humans, we should have an outcome that we're supportive of, if not driving, and we shouldn't just be carried along not caring or not doing, and you're not doing you make your effortless. Activity is about very much about focus and bringing your values into everything you do, and I think that's been kind of. I think, the theme of me as a leader as well Building trusting teams, is more important to me than just about anything, because if my team trusts me and I trust them, we can get through any obstacle, and that's the same in my personal life.

Tonya J. Long: 41:10

Well, this is an era thing, but many of us grew up in command and control leadership, right, that's what we experienced was, you know, more of a dominant flavor.

Tonya J. Long: 41:22

But this concept of water is beautiful. Interestingly enough, I had a blue post-it note in my corporate years from an employee, way back in one of my first tech leadership roles, that told me that water carved mountains and in Tennessee there are, you know, multiple geological structures that water had a big impact in creating. I mean, look at the Grand Canyon. And so I had a little blue post-it note on the corner of my monitor and I carried that to every, that same post-it note to every job and it was on the corner of every monitor and invariably it would cause people. People would see it when they'd be in my office and they'd say water, because all it was was blue post-it notes with water as a reminder for me. And but it would lead to some really interesting conversations on, you know, us charging the hill is one approach, but with this approach of carving mountains by being water pays dividends in what we're able to create with the teams and the customer teams that we ultimately serve.

Morgan Templar: 42:36

And I really do believe that there is a natural flow, even in business and technology. You know, okay, even in business and technology things come and go and you know we talk about things in waves and we talk about.

Tonya J. Long: 42:52

We're at the peak and now we're in the drama. Yeah, there's a billion water connection analogies. You're right.

Morgan Templar: 42:55

There really are, and if we recognize that, that's because we can't help it, because there is natural flow in the universe and, um, for me, while I don't generally talk about my personal beliefs, um, just because I don't really need to, there's plenty of other stuff to talk about. Yeah, um, it does guide who I am and it does guide how I show up every day and the values that I bring. It really creates a sense of harmony between me and the world and that, to me, has been quite amazing, just to feel. I mean coming from that background and immediately going into all of that trauma and then reinventing I want to say reinventing myself.

Morgan Templar: 43:46

I said that in the mirror this morning. I said reinventing myself. I said I'm not reinventing myself, I'm going back to who I was before all of that happened. I loved who I was at 20. You know, I was independent and strong and fearless and I could do anything and that's who I wanted to be and that is who I work to become again, and but this time with compassion, this time with empathy, with an understanding of other people's pain and trauma, because I've had my own, and so it's a much more mature type of leadership.

Tonya J. Long: 44:24

And so it's a much more mature type of leadership. And I mean I can't separate you as a leader and as a human, because I think that as you've evolved and clearly I've only known you three years or so but being human and being authentically you is is absolutely it's, it's, it's a, it's a non-negotiable for you to show up and and be yourself and bring your whole self to the journey. Right, I know there are parts that it's just best for us to you know, we know they say don't talk about religion or politics with the people you work with. And there's wisdom in that, because because we are, as we've discussed, so divided across the planet around mine, no, mine, no. This is best, I know best.

Tonya J. Long: 45:15

But it's hard to stay authentic to who we are and yet not let those conversations evolve naturally as people start to trust each other more. You have to be vulnerable in order to start to begin to share who you are and what matters to you outside of delivering the project and you've already said you don't like execution to you outside of delivering the project, and you've already said you don't like execution. So you know, showing up as who you are is is um it, it. It's a careful journey when you get to the levels you and I've served at. So how do you balance vulnerability when, when you're working with teams? How do you balance being vulnerable and authentic with your professional persona?

Morgan Templar: 46:05

You know you're right about me just kind of showing up and being me, and I rarely. I had no problem at all when somebody sitting in a room says, oh well, mars is in retrograde. So of course that's fun and I'm like I have no idea what that means. But OK, good for you. I'm glad that you're willing to talk about what you believe and I think that's important.

Morgan Templar: 46:28

I've always made an effort to at least once a quarter with my teams, have a non-work team meeting, which is a trust building meeting. Team meeting, which is a trust building meeting. We get talking about things from a very personal perspective of how does this feel, how is our team feeling, not just talking about output and throughput and you know deadlines and timelines, but how is this team working for us? Is the dynamic okay? Are we trusting each other? Do we have anything missing? Do we need somebody who's just going to be project managing us all the way through so that we get things done, or is that going to disrupt our flow? And so we've always take.

Morgan Templar: 47:20

I've always brought that in when we talk about those things and I think that builds trust in a team, when they know that what they believe is heard. You don't necessarily need to come and say well, at church last Sunday I heard this, but you can come to that. You can say that if you want to, because we go into it with a cone of silence, agreement, you know, we're just going to go in it with a cone of silence, agreement, you know. I know we're just going to go in and have a conversation. I'll usually have some things planned out I want to cover, because I've noticed that we're having, you know, some friction over here, or maybe we're not really communicating over there, and so I will guide us a little down the river. I can paddle, I can guide us a little down the river.

Tonya J. Long: 48:01

I have a paddle.

Morgan Templar: 48:02

I can guide us a little bit, but mostly I want them to begin to see those things themselves and that journey that I talked about earlier of self-discovery in order to get out of a bad situation. I want them to have the skills for that. So we do things like a book club every week, where we're reading books together. We have conversation about what does that mean and how does that make me a better leader or a better team member, and those are the things that make teams and work culture effective. I'm really effective through putting really effective teams, so I don't say this team or that team or the other.

Tonya J. Long: 48:40

Like we are one team, we, whether you are offshore or onshore, we are one team. We have the same expectations for collaboration and for you know output, and I trust you to be part of my one team. I trust you to have my back and I'm not yours. Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. Have my back and I'm not yours. I promise this connects to what you just said, but the you know the little devil in the back of my head is saying well, it's all good until things change.

Tonya J. Long: 49:18

You and I have led big change management programs inside companies, at a society level. You know what we're doing with AI is a big change management. People don't see it as a plan, but I think it is. I think there is this massive shift happening and we are part of the change makers and way showers for how AI will affect everything on this planet. So everything's good until things change. Then, when things change, you know, as I think about this conversation, what I recognize is, every time something changes, changes, those values come up and the priority that people put on certain values becomes the reason that change becomes uncomfortable across groups, across organizations. So have you had any particular experiences that you want to share or that you would give as examples of how do you lead, change and still stay authentic, vulnerable and promote other people being their full selves, knowing that we all have to change a little to accomplish that next step in the goal a little to accomplish that next step in the goal.

Morgan Templar: 50:46

So I have a change management cycle that I utilize when we're going through change.

Tonya J. Long: 50:49

Okay.

Morgan Templar: 50:52

There's a framework for everything with you, morgan. I do actually have a system and I actually I stole this. Actually, I borrowed this from a friend and he said go ahead, take the credit for it. Okay, he's like I don't care, I'm never going to be out there. Take the credit for it. Okay, he's like I don't care, I'm never going to be out there. Take the credit for it.

Morgan Templar: 51:06

Fine, it really walks you through the four stages of change and it's focus on self versus focus on the change, and then focus on the past versus focus on the future. So it's a quadrant, and so, as you kind of focus on the past and focus on yourself, you deny it, you don't want to be part of it. As you move through that process, the next step in the paradigm is is you're focused on yourself still, or you begin focusing on the change, but you're still focusing on the past. Things were better before. You know I this will never work, you know. And then you move through that change, continue, continue to focus on the change instead of on the self, but you're still. Now you're on the future. So now you're looking at your oh yes, the change in in the future and how that impacts you and you know what, if we people start to get creative? What if, could we, could we make this better? What if we did that?

Tonya J. Long: 52:01

yeah, and then finally, what if it's such a powerful statement?

Morgan Templar: 52:05

yeah, it is and just moving through that continuum. Everyone goes through it, even me, and I love change. I mean, I just, yeah, we do. I. I describe myself as a coffee bean. If, if I'm here, somebody expected change, because I'm a coffee bean and I'm in the water and when I, you know, whatever happens, the heat turns up, the heat turns down, that water is going to be coffee. That's what's going to happen.

Morgan Templar: 52:33

And so, taking people through that, I go through it really quickly, but I recognize where I am in that quadrant and where everyone in my team is in that quadrant, and helping them understand the quadrant and then helping them move through it quickly gets you through a change, gets you through the pain of change. It allows you to start thinking about the way we do things better, where you're thinking about the future and you've accepted the change and and now it's, this is the way we do things now, and then productivity can begin to skyrocket. But one of the things that the other part that being a leader requires is that when you're going through that change, when you're changing things for your organization, there is a necessary and unavoidable slow, slow down of production. So you are, you're, you're going to get behind and unavoidable slowdown of production.

Morgan Templar: 53:27

So you're going to get behind, things are going to be harder. Transition points I call it the pit of despair.

Tonya J. Long: 53:37

Okay, that's a funny title but it's true. But I get it. We're doing what we're doing and change happened.

Morgan Templar: 53:45

Now we're down here, and then you have to rise up out of that, and then, once you've gotten out of it, then productivity will skyrocket or at least improve, and so the goal of a leader is to make the pit less deep and the gap between the two things shorter, and you do that by helping people understand. Change happens in this way. This is how we go through that gap. We're through it. Now let's go.

Tonya J. Long: 54:12

Yeah, one of the things that I'm thinking about as you're explaining this is that you've had tremendous clarity in where the change led to, had tremendous clarity in where the change led to, and in my 25 years of leading programs that I have, you know, I had a mission, as dictated by a board, somewhere that we were going to do something so one of my gifts has been bringing clarity to that process and to get people enrolled in where we were going.

Tonya J. Long: 54:43

Well, today, let's roll that forward. It worked for 25 years and it was like it was like. My thing was clarity and communication, because I knew where we were going, I knew what we were trying to get to and, with AI that you and I are so deeply involved in, it's such a paradigm shift, More than a task, more than the integration of companies. It is a societal paradigm shift that will affect everything we do, professionally and personally, Communicating with certainty about enrolling people in the path. You know, it occurs to me I don't have the same confidence in what I'm getting people to do. There's not an end goal that I can articulate the why for. So I know that you're experiencing this too. What would you say about this new journey that we're on? Leading change, being vulnerable, being authentic, bringing people forward when the end goal is not super clear?

Morgan Templar: 55:57

Because to your point earlier, it's changing daily, yeah, so I guess I would say this is one of those moments. Sometimes we just have to focus on the next breath oh beautiful, but we also need to learn as much as possible. And then you need to decide. Every single human needs to decide Do I want to help guide and direct this change, or do I want to just let somebody else do that? I'm just going to follow along, okay, what you decide is going to change the way you react to this change, and many of us who have led change for years and like I know this is the objective, because I have a go live date and I know exactly what it will look like when I get there.

Tonya J. Long: 56:39

This law comes into effect on this date.

Morgan Templar: 56:41

We better be there when it shifts, I have no idea where we're headed. Yeah, although I do sort of, because we've seen it in fiction. Right, we tell stories through fiction and we adapt our culture through fiction. You know how many movies have we seen where? You know the Star Trek, you know computer. I'd like a glass of Chardonnay Okay, there it is. Or I'd like a glass of wine Would you like your favorite Chardonnay? It knows everything about you, yeah, everything. So I I worked, done a lot of work on data privacy and AI privacy and they just didn't call us the last couple of years in my volunteer work with the EDM Council, and we talk about that like how much of our information about me is it mine?

Morgan Templar: 57:34

Does it belong to Facebook? Does it belong to Google? Does it belong to anyone? Who knows the societal ecosystem Exactly so, is the data about me? Do I have ownership of it?

Morgan Templar: 57:47

Probably not, why we do ask that question and we do debate it, but ultimately we have to stop and say we're going to be an integrated society where AI is a persona in our life, where AI is a persona in our life and it doesn't have to be the Star Trek computer that knows every single thing about us in every way of our life forever. But just like a new team member, ai as a function plays a role in what we're going to do in personal life and in business, and not everyone has the opportunity, the experience, the understanding of how to get involved in it. They don't understand, you know how. It just seems like magic, right, like I can open up this thing and ask it questions and it will tell me the answer. You know, I can click on my phone and say, you know, perplexity, answer this question. Or Google, answer this question, and it will. And it will with pretty good certainty Not perfectly, but better than I knew before, directionally, amazingly. Yes, and better every day to be fair. They're all improving every day. Yes, and better every day to be fair, they're all improving every day. And you know, I think that that is something we have to be aware of as we lead change and drive forward and we kind of think about the change continuum.

Morgan Templar: 59:15

Even if I don't know where I'm going, I'm looking to the future. I'm not quite at acceptance because I don't really know what the product is, but I'm certainly on the journey of what if we could do this better? Here are some things we could try, which is the third quadrant of my change management continuum and so we can get ourselves there. And then we collaborate, we bring the brain trust of Earth together, and sometimes we do that in small groups. Sometimes we do that in things like this in a podcast for someone and later come back and watch it and say, wow, that was really interesting.

Morgan Templar: 59:54

I want to doesn't frighten me that I don't know the end, because I don't think there's a cliff on the end. I believe it's that we're going to come out of this trough of disillusionment and the bathym of despair and we're going to just skyrocket with additional capacity. Skyrocket with additional capacity. And that is what I look for, that is what I'm working for. Is that goal of these things we're creating right now becoming part of life?

Morgan Templar: 1:00:39

And I will say that there are going to be 90% of people on earth who have no idea that, a they're interacting with something artificial.

Morgan Templar: 1:00:48

B that it is the result of a lot of hard work and spending, or even when it is as C, they don't know what this thing is.

Morgan Templar: 1:00:57

If I said you know you're using a chatbot, okay, what does that mean? It doesn't feel like a chatbot. It understands my emotion. It can change its response to the way I'm responding, to tell that I'm. It can tell I'm upset and it can say I can you know? I can see that you're feeling a lot of emotion here. Can you tell me why or what you're feeling? And it will ask those questions today. And so, as I look at it very hopefully and with a very positive outlook, that these things are coming and I'm bringing my own self through the change continuum and anyone else I can drag through as fact that I can bring them through it, the more people we have in that, getting ready to accept and accepting what we have and moving to the next thing, the more brain power we have to make it better, to make it more intuitive, but also to understand how we work with it and how it brings us. It elevates our abilities, elevates our innovation, as opposed to replacing them.

Tonya J. Long: 1:02:09

I agree, you know, I think we have to pat ourselves on the back a little because we have stayed away from our AI and data roots, which is so much a focus of what we do now and the focus of this podcast is about. It's really about when everything that we're working on starts to result in direct change to people's lives. I'm trying to prepare people for that by thinking more actively about resets and how we achieve these resets and how we thrive through the resets, but you and I love to talk tech, so I'm just going to say I think we've done a great job of staying out of the analysis of the tech and we've kept it at what happens with people. Okay, so with that, then, though, I'm going to ask an AI question, but it's still about people.

Tonya J. Long: 1:03:07

I have so much hope for society with what's coming with AI. Things I don't even understand or know are possible yet, but I know they will. I know they will arrive, and much more quickly than any of us are ready for, more than likely. You mentioned the word hope a moment ago, and I wonder what about AI gives you the most hope for human potential for our future?

Morgan Templar: 1:03:39

I would say that I have been aware for many years of the tech divide those who have and use technology, yes, who don't, yes, and it is a significant divide that literally divides our society, your ability to earn a wage, your ability to integrate with the things that are happening in the world, that divide, it's getting bigger this way, really, but it's getting bigger and bigger. And my hope with AI, my belief with AI, is that it is becoming, because it is being based on natural language processing. You don't need to know about an underlying technology to use it, and I believe that it will become a bridge. Yes, the ability for people to move from. I'm not in the technology world and I don't understand. In fact, I don't even own a computer. I just have you know one of these things and oh is that the Internet?

Morgan Templar: 1:04:44

No, no, that's just my Facebook. That's not a Facebook, but you know that's that we really are coming for people with no knowledge and people who you know are looking at quantum, and we didn't even touch on quantum, which is a dating topic we both love. I thought it was best to stay away. That is a huge divide in people right now.

Morgan Templar: 1:05:06

And it doesn't mean one is better than the other. It means just a different, you know, point of view. I could never weld a car back together, but someone can and I appreciate it. But as we think about that, I think AI has the ability to get to bridge that gap for people and I hope that we're building it with that point of view, that it becomes an equalizer, that it allows people to have information that they need when they need it, instead of feeling stupid, instead of like I don't really know and I don't want to say anything, so I don't know. Instead, they can just quietly type on their phone and say and I do this, by the way, first time I ever when I interviewed for my job at Blue Shield of California, they took me to dinner and I saw this word on the menu I've never heard of, called quinoa.

Tonya J. Long: 1:05:59

I didn't know the quinoa, I love it.

Morgan Templar: 1:06:08

Never heard of it. I came from, I was semi-prepostered, but I very quietly said when is quinoa? Which turns out I am actually allergic to it, but I didn't know that then I'd never tried it before. Like, oh, it's an ancient grain. Okay, I can give that a try. Right, I can eat rice. Give it a try. But, yeah, like, but, yeah, like. I used the internet, I used the AI that was available to me in 2013 to help me know if I was able to eat what was on my plate in front of me in real time.

Tonya J. Long: 1:06:35

In real time, committees had to be convened to analyze it and give you results you had and I didn't have to ask everyone.

Morgan Templar: 1:06:42

That's right everyone and be embarrassed like I don't know what this is, because they're all right well, they were all from california and quinoa bowls were already a thing, even in 2013.

Morgan Templar: 1:06:52

Yeah, yeah, and you know so I, you know my experience and in using it to to bridge the gap of understanding without having to just be dumb I was on a job interview after all. Yeah, absolutely, and you know, those are the things that I am hopeful with AI is that it will be available. Like Google search has changed the world. I believe that AI and the things that we're building and the choices that we make about ethical AI, about privacy, about making sure that AI retains people's humanity, and that we are elevating that perspective. I think we have an obligation to the world to think of it that way.

Tonya J. Long: 1:07:43

I think we have an obligation to the world to think of it that way. I don't think there's any better thought to close out our conversation than what you've just shared. I'd like to call it the yellow brick road instead of a bridge, just for the record, and anybody who knows me more closely would understand the humor in that, and anybody who knows me more closely would understand the humor in that. But the vision that you've painted is one that I think, no matter what our individual values are, I think that we can all see a way forward with what you've described as what our potential is for humanity. And so, without being a lofty sociological you know, big theory response, it was a very real response about what we can look forward to, and I think everyone needs something to look forward to right now. So thank you for that.

Tonya J. Long: 1:08:45

When people want to obviously follow you on different channels like they should like they would want to. Based on this wonderful conversation, how would you like people to find you and be able to even get in touch with you?

Morgan Templar: 1:09:00

So I use LinkedIn primarily. I don't do a lot of socials, but I do LinkedIn and so please, you know I'm also an open networker, so anyone who wants to connect with me send me a connection request. I don't have I don't have filters on that, I'm it. Unless there's some reason like don't with the hey babes, and I will not connect with you. But for the most part, anyone that wants to connect I'm happy to. I'm also very happy to provide limited time with people. Obviously, I have to limit it, but I do a lot of unstructured mentoring.

Morgan Templar: 1:09:41

I'm more than happy to give answers entering questions. I'm more than happy to give answers. I will often refer you to someone else who's either a better person than I am, because I do have the network of interesting people, but please do connect with me on LinkedIn. You can see more about me on workingtemplarcom and firstcdocom. So those are my personal and my professional websites, and I invite you to take a look at my sub stack, morgan Templer's sub stack, which is where my podcast is hosted. So I'd love you to come and join the audience there. It is not behind a paywall, so you're welcome to join at any time and that's pretty much how you reach us, wonderful.

Tonya J. Long: 1:10:27

We will include all those in the show notes so that people can access them. I think those are very, very varied ways that people can take part in the wisdom that you have been curating for decades, and it's a gift. So thank you for that and thank you for today. So everyone this has been Morgan Templar and Tonya Long with RESET. We hope that what we've shared today will give you some cause for pause and to be thinking about how you're going to look forward to the future, as we all reset in different ways around the changes in society that technology will bring. Morgan, thank you.

Morgan Templar: 1:11:15

Thank you, Tonya. I've appreciated the conversation tremendously.

Tonya J. Long: 1:11:19

It's been wonderful. Thanks everyone. Have a good day. Goodbye. Thanks for joining us on Reset. Remember, transformation is a journey, not a destination. So until next time, keep exploring what's possible. I'm Tonya Long and this is home. This RE SET.