In this episode of “At Your Convenience,” CSP Executive Editor Hannah Hammond talks to Julia Lazzara, president of Leading NOW, during CSP’s Outlook Leadership event in August.
The two talk about CSP’s upcoming C-Store Women’s event, which takes place Nov. 3-5 in San Antonio, Texas.
“At Your Convenience” brings industry experts and analysts together with CSP editors to discuss the latest in c-store news and trends. From mergers and acquisitions to foodservice and technology, the podcast delivers the story straight to listeners in short-format episodes, perfect for the morning commute or a quick break at the office.
Listen to their conversation above, or read the transcript here, which has been edited for length and clarity:
Hannah Hammond: Can you tell us a little bit about what Leading NOW does and how they work with us for CSW?
Julia Lazzara: Absolutely. And thanks for the question. And first of all, it's just a real honor to join you today. I'm very thankful to be here to discuss this topic. And so I can gladly share Leading NOW is a global award-winning leadership development firm. And we work with organizations across many, many industries to build stronger pipelines of what we call Ready Now leaders, and especially leaders who are working at sort of middle career and even senior career levels. That's where our work really tends to center the most in terms of our leadership development work. Our focus is on business-based leadership, development of the rising executive or executive who is looking to progress in the career and to do so by driving measurable business outcomes. That's really what we're focused on.
For the C-Store Women's event, which is, I will be completely honest with you, one of our absolute favorite events of the year, because it's really meaningful. It's very meaningful and there's a lot of participants that bring so much just wonderful energy to the work. And so what we do at Leading NOW is we serve as the educational partner to CSP, meaning that we design and deliver much of the educational content that's present at that conference. We work on creating and delivering high impact interactive sessions that go really deep into the real skills that are required to lead in the c-store industry. And what we want is for our sessions to be practical and relevant and tailored, specifically tailored to the industry. So whether we're talking about financial fluency, or how to influence and embed strategy or executive presence, it's all about helping women accelerate in their careers by building the capabilities that matter most to the business and the organizations where they were.
Hammond: And we're so grateful to partner with Leading NOW for the CSW event. It really is unlike content that you might hear at other convenience store events, so I love that about it. At the conferences in years past, we've talked about some of the main reasons why women don't get promoted, why we don't see as many females in C-suite positions in the c-store and other industries. So according to Leading NOW’s research, what are some of main reasons that women aren’t promoted?
Lazzara: It's a great question. And I think one that a lot of people are interested in the answer to, so I'll tell you what we hear over and over and over again from senior leaders. In order to be promoted, it's not enough to have potential. You have to have—and this is really critical—you have to have and demonstrate business strategic and financial acumen, because it's the indicator that you're ready to lead a business. And too often, women are seen as strong people leaders. And they are. And they're seen as strong individual contributors. And they are. But they're not necessarily viewed as being ready to lead the business. And that's the gap. So even if women have the skills, they're not actively demonstrating them, talking about them not speaking the language of business and then therefore not really being considered for the next level or for succession planning to some of the most strategic roles in the organization.
Hammond: And can you expand a little bit on what you mean specifically by business and financial acumen? How would you define those?
Lazzara: Yeah, because they can mean different things to different people and in different contexts, right? And so the way we like to think about it is like this: Business acumen, it's really knowing the business of your business. It's knowing what drives results, how money is made, how success is measured. Most organizations track performance in kind of four key areas: cash or revenue, growth, return on investment, and customer or consumer. And as an employee, as a participant in the business, you need to know how your company is doing on those measures and then how specifically your work or that of your team contributes to that. That's business acumen.
Strategic acumen is more about connecting dots inside and outside of your organization. Are you aware as an employee of external factors to your business, industry trends, consumer behavior, competitive pressures? Can you translate the organization's strategy into actionable priorities for your team? And so by combining external factors and what you know about them and being able to connect your work to internal strategy and then, and then activate that strategy, that's how leaders create real impact. And that's what strategic acumen means.
Financial acumen is very basically understanding the financial picture of your organization. Can you read and interpret as an employee your company's key financial statements? That's the income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement. More importantly, can you find that story in the numbers? Can you really start to discern with these reports, what's really going on in an organization's business and what it means, what it means, and then how you can derive insight and then translate that into your work and that of the organization? Because when you know the levers that you can pull from your role to influence the business results, you're a more effective leader. So that's what financial acumen is.
We can combine all three of these things. and talk about your work in those terms and structure your work in a priority fashion to be addressing these core areas, then that's when the decision makers in an organization really see you as a business leader.
Hammond: Where can women start to start improving their business and financial acumen?
Lazzara: Sometimes it seems overwhelming and sometimes it's hard to know exactly where to start. And so what I would say is there's really several very exciting ways that you can start to demonstrate these skills. And if you don't have them, you can start to build them.
So the first thing I say is start with the numbers. I had a wonderful manager and mentor when I was in my sort of director level stages of my career. And his piece of advice to me was know the business better than anybody else. Inside, outside, upside down, around the corner, know your business better than anybody else. So let's start there, right? Start with the numbers. Learn how your company tracks success. It's written all over the place. If you listen, if you read, if you pay attention, study key metrics, especially around revenue or cash around how you're growing, and how you are measuring return on investment. Really look at that.
And here's the second thing: Ask to be included in the discussions of these things. Ask to be included in quarterly business reviews, in budget meetings, in planning sessions, in key sectors of the business, especially when those planning sessions are cross-functional. Because what you want to do is you want to get an understanding of how decisions are made, what the key considerations are in those decisions.
The third thing I would say is really start paying attention to the language, the vocabulary that you're using in your communications because when you can, when you've identified how your company tracks success, when you've gotten familiar with the key outcomes that the business is measuring, now you need to translate all of that into the way you communicate.
And then, I'm going to say two more really important things about how you get started doing this. One is there are people around you that can help you tremendously. And those people often become mentors. And sometimes the most strategic mentors can become sponsors for you in an organization.
And then the final thing I would say is: be a forever student, be eager to learn, read, read, read, read earnings reports, read competitor news, read industry updates. For goodness sake, read CSPmagazine. If you're in the c-store industry, we want you to be knowledgeable about where you are and what you're doing. And the more you can connect your team's work to what's happening externally in the environment, the more valuable your insights become to your organization.
Those are five or six really, really key ways that anyone can start building their business, strategic and financial acumen.
Hammond: So CSW is coming up now Nov. 3-5 in San Antonio this year, and we're going to touch on a lot of what you went over here, which has been great. What other topics are you looking forward to covering at this year's CSW?
Lazzara: So I'm so excited about this year's CSW. I really think it's stronger than ever in terms of the educational content and the lineup. So, and I have to say what I love most about it is it directly connects to everything that we've been talking about.
This is our third year now, and we like to begin with leadership in the Missing 33%. It's where we talk about the importance of business strategic and financial acumen as sort of the third of the leadership picture that often gets missed as it relates to women's career progression. So we always start with that and I'm excited to do that again. Interestingly, we have a panel of past participants from CSW that are going to tell their stories about how the mindset shift around this, sort of demonstrating that type of acumen has made a difference in their own journeys. And so to me, that's one of the most impactful things is to hear those stories and really connect with others that have made a change, right?
Then we'll move into this is a session that's well placed on at the beginning of the conference, which is called industry connections. And what we're going to do is we're going to look at strategic networking. And that's that is different than conventional networking, strategic networking, and specifically with a c-store industry lens, we're going to break down the industry and figure out the, some of the best strategies for navigating it. And it's not just about making connections or, you know, linking in or, or, or the things that we do to, to be in communication with one another. It's about understanding what really drives success in the industry and who you need to engage with to expand your impact. And so, it really sets up a beautiful tone, I think for the conference where networking and building those types of strategic relationships is so important, one of the key outcomes of the conference.
Hammond: We’ll get to test those skills right away, so I love that.
Lazzara: Absolutely. And then on the second day, going to get into some hard-hitting acumen, right? So, we're getting into a session called Follow the Money, which is a deep dive into financial fluency, understanding some key metrics, tracking performance and using financial language to lead. And as part of that session, we're going to have the chance to see executives from various organizations in the c-store industry tackle a financial problem in real time from stage. And they come from different functional backgrounds as leaders. And we get to hear how they tackle some questions and some problems and what further questions they have coming from their unique perspective on the industry. I think it's going to be fabulous. It's maybe the most fun you can possibly have in a financial session.
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