Inheriting an Organization and Its Transformation

This is a repost from The Tech Trek by Elevano, which features a podcast between Amir Bormand, Tech Trek host, and Ashu Agte, the CTO at Artera. You can view the full podcast here.

In this episode, Amir Bormand talks with Ashu Agte, the CTO at Artera, about dealing with an exit and his experience when inheriting an organization and its transformation. Artera is a messaging platform for health systems that aims to improve patient experience and satisfaction. Ashu shares his experience and insights on the responsibilities of an engineering leader, organizational restructuring, and the challenges of managing a team during an exit. He also highlights the importance of communication and transparency in the process.

Highlights:
[00:01:06] Improving patient experience.
[00:04:19] Startup leadership and acquisition.
[00:08:34] Post-acquisition challenges.
[00:14:21] Criteria for choosing a job.
[00:17:18] Uncomfortable vs Patient.
[00:22:24] Situational leadership.
[00:24:21] Empathy in Leadership.
[00:30:08] Executive coaching and self-improvement.
[00:35:30] Measuring engineering success.
[00:37:10] Engineering Analytics Metrics.

Podcast Recap

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] On this episode of the podcast, I have with me Ashu Agte, he is the SVP of Engineering at Artera. We’re going to be talking about dealing with an exit in the impacts on organizational transformation and design. Before we start, let’s have you tell us what the company does and also as the SVP of engineering (now CTO), what are some of the responsibilities you have?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] At Artera, we are serving the healthcare tech vertical. Artera is the messaging platform for health systems. So hospitals want to communicate with the patients, and they use our platform to communicate. If you look at the customer satisfaction surveys, health systems ranked third lowest in customer satisfaction. The lowest is the federal government, the second-lowest is telecommunication, and the third-lowest is the health system. So our mission is to improve patient communication and, in turn, patient satisfaction from the health systems that they are part of.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] As the SVP of Engineering (now CTO), what are some of the things that fall on your plate?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] So I have three organizational responsibilities. First one is the software engineering which is our SaaS product – the messaging platform. The second part is DevOps and the cloud aspects of our platform. And then the third one is data which two aspects: reporting and analytics and machine learning data science and AI.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] So the episode is going to be mainly around dealing with an exit, different components of it. Tell us a little bit about exits you’ve gone through.

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] There’s usually three outcomes of a start-up: getting acquired, going IPO or fully private, or not succeeding at all. So to get to one of the outcomes is always some type of exit so I’m going to share three of my stories.

The first startup I was part of what’s called Qpass in Seattle. I joined that company in 2003 as a senior software engineer two years out of school. I was a senior manager when we got acquired in 2006 by a public company Amdocs, which is a huge globally successful company in telecommunications. I had three options on the table with the acquisition. Many of the leaders were either founding or joining other startups so I could go along with them and see if there are positions for me. Second option in Seattle back then was always Microsofts and Amazons of the world. The third option was to stay on. I wanted an experience of navigating a global and extremely successful public company, so I stayed on and eventually worked my way up to a senior director running a whole department of globally distributed organizations. I learned what to do, what not to do, and how to operate so that was really, really good experience. I stayed post-acquisition for eight years.

I started to get the itch again to go back to another startup so I moved on to Simply Measured, which was in marketing technology. I was an executive for the first time and ran the engineering organization. Three years later, Simple Measured got acquired by a bigger startup with duplicate leaders on both sides, which there isn’t a lot of need for these kind of duplicate leaders in a start-up. I ended up in a transitionary role where I stayed for three months to help transition the engineering organization to the new leader. I’m not sure that is something I should have done because the roles and responsibilities were ambiguous, and everybody in the company knew it was a transitional role which created a lame duck situation. The ability to navigate and the ability to help facilitate was complicated and ambiguous. This has no poor reflection on Simply Measure or Sprout Social, the company that acquired us.

The third story is from when I joined another startup after Simple Measured. I moved to the Bay Area in 2018 and joined a construction technology vertical called BuildingConnected. It had a similar flavor as Amdocs where we got acquired by an amazing and extremely successful public company, called Autodesk. And the interesting nuance there was I was part of that acquisition as an executive as compared to Amdocs where I was just a senior manager. There were three startups, three executive and the leaderships and the heads of department of the three startups merging into one and that was a little bit of a tricky challenge to navigate as three companies figuring out what their future is. I let things unfold for a while and then I realized I did not enjoy the financial handcuffs I had on in the role, and thankfully had the advantages of a big public company to move internally. I found an amazing role within the organization to lead AutoCAD, which is the flagship product of Autodesk. So I became head of engineering for AutoCAD across five countries.

So if you look at these three stories, my takeaway or advice to anybody who’s getting acquired, especially in a leadership role, is to just have grit and resilience and most importantly be patient and give it time for things to really unfold around you to get your clarity. Not just about the situation, but emotions are always high post-acquisition. There is anxiety: are there are going to be layoffs, is there going to be cultural change, which tools are going to switch, which leaders are staying, is there going to be a reorg? Once things have unfolded and there is a new normal setting, things will become clearer.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] Did you look back on and the three different industries as well? Are there any commonalities that attracted you to these startups?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] ****I do have sort of a criteria for what I look for when I’m looking for a new job. The first is what is the mission of the company and that matters to me a lot. The second thing is the leadership team who I would spend most of my waking hour with and I want to make sure that there are people I can work with, I can relate to, do they have that grit, do they have that resilience, do they have that fire to go and solve the problem that needs to be solved to fulfill the mission. And then the third thing for me is the culture. There is a saying right, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” and that is so true if the culture is not healthy, amazing missions, amazing opportunities can just dissolve into nothing like they don’t mean anything at all. These are the things I rarely negotiate on. If any of them are a no, it’s a no from my side to move forward.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] You’ve gone through exits at different levels as an IC as a lead IC, as lower-tier management, high-tier management. Three different outcomes as well and I guess three different environments. To public companies and of a start-up, but in the case of Autodesk, you went a whole new team. You mentioned to be patient, and let the emotions calm down, let things play out when you’re in that position. How did you just draw the distinction between being comfortable and being patient.

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] **** I do a lot of writing and that has been the constant anchor for me to go through all the acquisitions, all the stressful situations. This was the habit that got formed after working with my executive coach. We’ve tried so many different tactics to figure out how I can mentally navigate some of these things and writing was the thing. When I do a lot of writing, I start seeing emerging patterns.If I start to feel like I’m not making the impact, or it’s turning into a 9 to 5 job, or I’m not making progress in my own personal growth, that’s the signal. I ask three questions to myself: what am I grateful for, what’s going well and what’s not going well, and how am I going to show up differently tomorrow? So if there is something I have done wrong incorrectly, there is a growth opportunity. Otherwise, it’s really, really easy to just go with the flow and not make any changes.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] You’re obviously very cognizant of your own mental model above everything else, you’re always adding to your toolbox. How do you know which one of those you want to pull from? How do you evaluate what you need to do?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] ****Situational leadership I think is the name of the game these days. My leadership style by default when things are all well is servant leadership. I’m here for my organizations and individuals and the leaders so they are successful. There are situations where somebody is talking to me and I need to be that active listener. They actually don’t want advice, they just want to vent and I’m going to give them that space to vent and then we are going to talk about. That awareness of taking a pause and looking at the toolbox and say that this needs a hammer, this needs a screwdriver, this needs a drill is very important. There is also an underlying important element to this which is empathy. I can decide to choose which tool to use, but if the other side is going to get hurt by it or not going to listen or not going to get shut down by it, I need to be more aware of what to use. It could be decision-making, it could be feedback, it could be any situation whatsoever. So choosing that tool has to come with empathy to understand who’s at the table or who’s on the other side and what type of person are they in order to navigate that particular situation. A lot of time, there are power dynamics, and the expectation is the organization has to align with the leaders with their style and leaders can be only one style. But that plasticity, that adaptability of leaders, is extremely important, on how to navigate all these situations.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] When you’re looking at people that you’ve worked with that became future leaders, how did you help them develop?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] ****Two years ago, I went through a workshop on how to coach and one of the important things I learned is that coaching is the best way to actually go through that situation. The example that everybody uses instead of giving them a fish, teach them how to fish and that teaching them how to fish requires a lot of things. Asking powerful questions like where you’re stuck, which areas you want to give it a try, what do you think are your possible solutions, and asking solutions you want to prioritize, will help people go through their self-discovery to actually figure out who they are and also create psychological safety to fail. Coaching is always not necessary, but it is when critical opportunities show up. There’s a a trust element, there is a safety element, there is creating a safe space element for them to fail. So all these things have to come together to build the right culture and if you remember my criteria was amazing culture. It has to be that growth culture within the organizations within the leaders. That ‘alright, it didn’t work, I’m just going to get up, shake it off and I’m going to try something else.” That grit and resilience is something that is so important when it comes to all these situations and that’s the nurturing part I believe because growth mindset is definitely nurture.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] You hired someone that helped you on an executive coaching level to get there. When you go become a manager, no one actually continues more education, we read watch videos podcasts, but getting a coach is a real commitment. What drove you to go, “I need to have a coach”?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] ****The biggest driver for me was I needed a blunt honest mirror to see all the good, bad, and the ugly. I have my life experiences, my traumas, my situation so the reflection is not always clear on what are the real issues and real strengths. I want to be able to see them clearly and rely on them with unprejudiced eyes. Even with coaching, there is still tremendous amount of improvement I still need to make. It’s not like, because I’ve done coaching, I’m excellent. I can list ten things right now that I need to get better at, but that is active work that needs to be put in. Instead of saying, okay, I’m head of engineering, I’m an executive of very successful startup, I can sit there and say that it’s all good and I don’t need to do anything. The personal desire to excel and keep getting better at it is something that drove me to get a coach and, and somebody who was like blunt, direct and honest was something that I really, really craved for which is hard to get at an executive level.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] Absolutely. Ashu, I was I was going to say like we could I keep asking you and and I think you’ve got more to give but I know you got to get back. Before I let you go, I like to ask each guest if they could have a future guest cover topic for them subject that you’d be interested in listening to, what would you like to hear more about?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] One of the topics that’s been hovering in my head, and I’ve done a lot of reading about it, but there aren’t a lot of discussions happening around is, there is the engineering metrics, what to measure for the engineering organization, right? There are process metrics like scrum and agile, then there are DevOps metrics like DORA. There are engineering metrics like cycle times and there are other metrics where teams get error code has, what is that set of metrics that needs to be measured so that organizational behavior is driven by it and those could be healthy markers. It’s been an ongoing topic in my head. I haven’t figured out the right solution. So if anybody who you think and have that discussion, I absolutely would love to hear it.

[QUESTION, AMIR BORMAND] That’s a good one. I got to see if we can find somebody who’s an expert in that space. And if somebody wants to reach out to you and connect with you regarding a thing you’ve mentioned on the podcast, what’s a good way of getting a hold of you?

[ANSWER, ASHU AGTE] The best way to get ahold of me is my LinkedIn, Ashu Agte. Just find me on LinkedIn, send me a connection request and put a context saying I heard you talking about these topics with Amir, let’s connect and let’s talk and get some conversations going.

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About Artera:

*Artera is a SaaS digital health leader redefining patient communications. Artera is trusted by 800+ healthcare systems and federal agencies to facilitate approximately 2.2 billion messages annually, reaching 100+ million patients. The Artera platform integrates across a healthcare organization’s tech stack, EHRs and third-party vendors to unify, simplify and orchestrate digital communications into the patient’s preferred channel (texting, email,  IVR, and webchat), in 109+ languages. The Artera impact: more efficient staff, more profitable organizations and a more harmonious patient experience.*

Founded in 2015, Artera is based in Santa Barbara, California and has been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 500 company (2021, 2022, 2023), and ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for four consecutive years. Artera is a two-time Best in KLAS winner in Patient Outreach.

For more information, visit www.artera.io.

Artera’s blog posts and press releases are for informational purposes only and are not legal advice. Artera assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of blogs and non-legally required press releases. Claims for damages arising from decisions based on this release are expressly disclaimed, to the extent permitted by law.