SINC’s Director of Content Annie Liljegren spoke with Deena Swatzie in August 2021, and has edited this interview for length and clarity.

My guest today is Deena Swatzie, GVP Cyber Security Strategy and Digital Innovation at Truist (formerly SunTrust), and who’ll be featured at our 2021 Southeast Forum, September 19-21 in Miami.

Thanks for being here, ma’am. I’m particularly excited to be speaking with you because your experience leading through the last 18 months took place under some interesting circumstances.

To refresh everyone on the narrative: Truist resulted from the merger of BB&T with SunTrust (where, in 2019, you were Group VP Cyber Security, GRC Manager). So the merger is announced February 2019, it’s completed in December 2019, presumably everyone’s geared up to tackle those resultant challenges—and then 2020 comes.

As you began to realize the scope of what would be required in addition to the anticipated challenges for that year, what strategy or value or mindset did you arm yourself with? What was crucial to navigating that period?

Deena Swatzie: Thank you, Annie. I think the biggest thing I’ve understood, from the time the merger was announced to today: you have to be able to adapt to change. You’ve heard that so many times over the years: change is good, change is inevitable, but in this particular instance, you really had to be able to adapt. Everything changed for us—this was not a simple acquisition where you’re making a couple changes to pull them into your organization—it was everything from top to bottom. Every department was impacted, and everywhere, and so I think that was the biggest challenge: trying to understand, and manage, and navigate through all the changes.

But the good part was, we weren’t the only ones in the middle of this. My team wasn’t the only one, and you as an individual weren’t the only one, we were all in it together. Working from a positive standpoint actually helped a lot during 2020.

“In this particular instance, you really had to be able to adapt.”

One might assume the dual circumstances made everything worse, that it was equivalent to steering through two storms at the same time. But were there ways in which the remote working conditions actually served as a benefit?

Deena Swatzie: As far as the merger, we had already anticipated all those challenges, so we were already going through the trenches with the merger itself. But when the pandemic hit, I think in some ways it was helpful not to have the extra stress of traveling or of going into the office. With everyone at home, you were at least not having to deal with implementing all of the social distancing guidelines, or being concerned about being in common areas with other teammates.

Of course there are other stressors that come along with being at home, but when you’re virtual you typically have a bit more time to focus on your work and you do lose some distractions. There’s always positives and negatives, but I try to always focus on the positives because the pandemic itself was just brutal for everyone, I think.

Understanding you’ll probably have to be vague here, but was there a process or a system that impressed you as having its value absolutely demonstrated—something you were relieved to have already done away with or to have in place?

Deena Swatzie: You’re right, from an organizational standpoint that’s a delicate question, but I think what you can say is that a situation like this provides an opportunity to build upon the strengths and successes of each organization. And this can be applied to any situation, right? It doesn’t matter what magnitude, how large or small companies are, or even what’s going on—I think you can always draw from the positive, which is to say, build on each other’s successes and strengths.

No one person and no one organization does it the right way, but when you look at both, now you have two versions. You get to see what works best for each one, and then you can decide what’s going to be best overall going forward. In some ways it makes it a lot easier, because you have something to build on.

What were you emphasizing to your team during this time? What did they most often hear you say?

Deena Swatzie: I think it goes back to adapting to change. One thing I really emphasized with my team was you are not alone, and we are all in this boat together. Whenever you’re sitting in meetings or engaging with other teams, realize they’re going through the same thing.

And the second thing was: ask as many questions as you want. This is a great time to ask questions, even questions that may not fully make sense. There’s no question that isn’t valuable right now, because somebody else is probably thinking the same thing.

“This is a great time to ask questions—there’s no question that isn’t valuable right now.”

I want to ask you about backlash to the ‘best of breed’ approach. We’re hearing some frustration from the community over the seemingly-endless array of products, especially where the tech doesn’t necessarily integrate well, or where an organization is only utilizing 10% of their already-implemented solutions.

How do we go about balancing customization needs with the benefits of consolidation?

Deena Swatzie: Boy, that’s a good one. A key thing I’m focused on, and what I think everyone is really focused on, is of course consolidation of tools. If you look at the research that’s one of the current trends—they call it ‘security organization evolution’—trying to plan for vendor consolidation. The goal is always to try to reduce the extreme complexity that comes from having so many different products, technology, applications, and so forth. Those costs will continue to drive up, so we need to simplify operations as much as possible.

I know it’s a struggle for the vendors, but I think the more their products—especially larger products—can plug and play with each other, I think that will help them in the long run. But it is a challenge for vendors and I wish I had the answer for them.

And I think everyone is looking at this issue. Everyone is thinking about cost, and the pandemic shed a lot of light on where people are really challenged with operational expenses. If you’re at home all the time, you look at things from a different angle now, and you have a different viewpoint: Do we need to spend as much money on all these different variations of products and services?

For us, we look at it holistically: we do need to consolidate more, but at the same time, maybe the vendor recommendation is to make sure your products can plug and play with everything that’s out there. The more a product can interact the easier it would be to utilize.

Given those concerns, how could vendor relationships evolve into something that’s more valuable to organizational leadership? Or put another way, what could the ideal vendor relationship look like in the future?

Deena Swatzie: That’s a great question, and a very difficult question to answer. To be honest, I’m not really sure what vendors could do differently. All the vendors are really trying to establish relationships with all the different companies, and well they should—that’s how you get your product out. And there’s so much competition.

Maybe it’s just truly understanding your customer and understanding their business, and being a bit more…compassionate instead of sales-oriented. Maybe that’s the key: thinking about what your client’s needs are and if [what you’re offering] is really the right thing for them.

I would also encourage vendors to be patient. Many of us are going through so much change and planning strategically for the next several years. Just because a product can do a certain thing—we have to look at the business side, what we’re doing, what we’re challenged with. We may have other requirements that they can’t meet and so we’ve got to consider everything. We’ve got to look at our infrastructure, we’ve got to look at customer impact.

It’s like buying a car. Sometimes you want to take a good look, but you’re not buying a car today. That’s the analogy: allow us the opportunity to keep those relationships and let us look at it, let us figure it out, but we need time to be able to determine the best fit.

We have to look internally at what’s going to provide real value before we can make decisions, and it takes time. It is not something we can just make a decision on tomorrow, and say, Great new product, great bells and whistles, we should go use it. There’s a lot of things to consider, especially when it comes to security around what products we want to use.

So be patient, establish those relationships, keep those relationships. And understand that we may not be able to use something, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t maintain the relationship.

The most critical part is just to be patient. If you maintain that relationship, then I’m always going to be thinking about going back to that Lexus dealership.

“We may not be able to use [a given product], but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t maintain the relationship.”

Looking ahead, what’s top-of-mind for you as far as something you wish was getting more consideration, or something that is receiving a good deal of attention, but you think the conversation around it could improve?

Deena Swatzie: I don’t think we know how to deal with the unknown. We don’t know how to plan for the unknown. I don’t even know that we can, but that’s exactly what concerns me.

There’s always something new that pops up and takes our focus—for example, there’s so much attention on ransomware right now. But how do we look at things from a viewpoint of trying to identify what the new potential type of threats are going to be? There are some companies that do some threat analysis, and there’s a lot of us that work with different organizations to pull in the data points and do some analytics, but I think it’s always going to be a challenge trying to determine that next unknown, trying to determine what’s brewing.

If you look at Gartner or Forrester, they’re telling you what’s coming down the line in the next two to three years, or what’s hot right now, but we still don’t really know because things change daily. Things are changing constantly—our environment is changing, the threats are getting more advanced.

We can always address what’s going on today, but how do we get ahead and plan for, or at least plan to be more prepared for, what’s coming? That’s what I’m always thinking: How do we get ahead of it?

More with Deena Swatzie at SINC’s Southeast Forum, Sept. 19-21 in Miami.

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AL:  Is Matt Ryan worth bringing back without Julio Jones?DS:  I’m disappointed Julio’s gone. I don’t know what the deal was but Julio didn’t seem happy. If you’ve watched the special that they did on Michael Jordan?AL:  Right, ‘The Last Dance.’DS:  Yes, and there’s another one on the Detroit Pistons. It’s so funny when they look back at all of those players and ask why they made the decisions they made to move to different teams. And it was all whining—just like Oh well, you know, I didn’t feel like they really wanted me, or because this person was trying to be the head of the team, or Shaq was coming in.AL: (laughs)
DS:  Michael Jordan has a big ego too, but he made the best of it at Chicago. So to me when they start jumping around like that it’s usually because they’re getting unhappy at the wrong things—you need to stick it out.AL:  You know, this has been delightful.DS:  It really has. Hopefully, things will get better and we will be there on-site to see you all in person.AL:  Here’s hoping. Thank you so much, ma’am.
DS:  Thank you.

SINC’s Director of Content Annie Liljegren conducted this July 2021 interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m here with Nate Arnold, VP & CIO Operations and Software Engineering at GE Gas Power, who’ll be featured at our 2021 Southeast Forum, September 19-21 in Miami.
Nate, you were originally slated to speak at last year’s (cancelled) event but your topic, “Leadership Within the Generational Divide,” has only increased in significance. How are you thinking about this subject now as compared with February 2020? Have the essential questions changed?​

Nate Arnold: Yes, thanks again for the invitation. It seems like a lifetime ago in February 2020, when we were first talking about this…
A couple of reflections for me: When I first thought about this topic and previously explored it with some colleagues in GE, we were debating the colocation for software development with what we call the hub strategy. And we were observing different cultures depending on the location. Even cities within the US—a California city is very different than a New Orleans, for example—and then global cities and cultures, of course. We were observing different behaviors of retention.
There were standard processes we had around extracurriculars, cafeterias, gyms and free food, game systems and ping pong tables and all the things you think about. We were really interrogating: Is that the concept? Is that what draws people and keeps people? And we were finding the uniqueness of the culture really influenced that quite a bit–what things really mattered—depending on where you were.
What I would add to that, in the fallout of the pandemic, is a personal story. I’ve always been very attached with folks on my team: spending discretionary time trying to get to know them, a lot of relationship management.In the past, it’s been my experience that was something that really helps drive bonds and influence retention. I’ve had a lot of movement of folks lately, through the pandemic, and I’d say I was surprised the weapon we have in relationship-building was really changing in this environment.

So I think it’s still a very fruitful topic. There are so many dynamics going on; it’s been an important thing for us to consider as we think about a mobile workforce and how to retain top talent.

“The weapon we have in relationship-building was really changing in this environment…”

Recent events certainly acted as a crucible for processes, but also for people. I’m going to ask about processes and structures in a minute, but as far as the people side: What surprised you or struck you? What did you draw out of leading people in and through the last 18 months?

Nate Arnold: We talk a lot about the productivity perspective; I think companies by and large are pleasantly surprised with the level of productivity. And then, we’ve been we’ve been dealing with that as almost a negative consequence—are people working too much? Are people not having that separation between work and personal life? We’ve seen burnout.

But one one thing that pleasantly surprised me, I think more than anything, was that even though we were remote there was a level of compassion and empathy, and relationship-building happening on a whole other level. There was a lot of understanding of people’s personal circumstances. We got to know people on calls a lot better because you were seeing their cats and dogs and kids, and laughing about it and accepting it. I found a rich relationship-building was happening with teams at the personal level.

“There was a level of compassion and empathy and relationship-building, a whole other level.”

When we went fully remote in the US, a lot of us kind of freaked out. My global teams reminded me they’ve been doing this the whole time; it wasn’t a big deal and we could still get a lot of work done virtually. That was a great observation.

As far as non-people elements during the transition to remote, what stood out to you as having its worth absolutely proved, or something you were relieved to already have in place or have done away with?

Nate Arnold: I would say compute power, remote testing, performance testing—the simple things you expect to be routine. When GE closed the books the second quarter of 2020, that was the first time we did so fully remote. Without armies of teams in an office with workstations and contract teams, all hands on deck making sure we’re processing hundreds of thousands of transactions and millions and millions of dollars—a very open failure mode pool. That preparation and having systems in place to handle it was a great advantage for us and made the transition pretty seamless.

Let’s address talent. How does drawing from a global pool inform acquisition, development and retention, as you’re compounding generational diversity with this other factor of real and even extreme geographical diversity?

Nate Arnold: Well, we’ve been talking a lot about core competencies. We’ve been talking about what we value the most and what we want to cultivate. We’re finding the importance of a career path is that much more important, as well as the need to get specific about the skill sets that matter to us. Now that leadership are differentiated the fight for talent globally is aggressive. 

I’d like to bring you back to something you said in your February 2020 interview with Jason Cenamor. I’ll give you the full quote for context:

“Sometimes the basics are what matter most. I myself have fallen into the trap of thinking a foosball table and free bananas means I’ll keep folks longer, but at the end of the day people want a sense of purpose, to feel valued in their work, to be respected. It’s easy to lose sight of that when we complicate factors around the generational considerations. There are important differences you should know, but good leadership is good leadership. If you care about your people and focus on things that matter, you have a better shot at retaining those folks.”

So to me this suggests a consistency of values or an underlying value system informing the tactics—treating the idea of leading across the generational divide, or leading virtually, or leading through a crisis, as informed by those values rather than as a grab bag of tips and tricks?

Nate Arnold: Yes. And I think there has to be consistency to it, right? One advantage of being with a company like GE is that we have decades of experience working globally within different cultures, and the leadership locally that involves themselves with those teams is critical.

Recently I was speaking with a young lady we have; she has a PhD and works outside the US. She has been very motivated within our team and very loyal to GE, even in the face of frequent external offers. So I was asking about that and really interrogating it. She said it came back to a couple core principles: the sense that there’s a genuine interest in her, that the leadership team cares about her, that there’s a focus on her development, and all of this consistently. And then there’s flexibility—an understanding of personal situations and allowing for a personal life. Those are three things that I meant [can get lost] by overcomplicating the thinking.

It’s easy to just step back and say there must be a fundamental problem, and there must be an easy fix here, and if I throw a pinball machine in the hallway that’s going to fix it. That’s just superficial. If you don’t have those core principles, and consistency, and some good training and leadership—even in your junior ranks, to model it—then that’s the problem.

I understand you particularly enjoy the informal elements of formal events, the opportunities to “catch people in the hallway,” and you encourage other folks to to really be proactive about that. So, especially as we’re thinking about generational culture, to what degree can that hallway interaction ever be authentically replicated virtually?
Or is that a fading paradigm in itself—do younger leaders already not see the same distinction, or not necessarily feel a loss there between virtual and in-person?

Nate Arnold: That’s a good question. There’s an informality and an “ad hoc-ness” to the water cooler or the hallway. I think it can be replicated, there just has to be a lot of intentionality. Because, what I’ve found is this: my schedule is a complete disaster now more than ever. We do a lot of lean at GE and I try to follow some sense of lean standard work, but [my schedule] is a nightmare—no consistency.  So how do you accommodate for those ad hoc sessions, because you do have to force it—I have to ping somebody and say Hey can you jump on video for a minute? But if you do allocate those times, I think that interaction is genuine.

And I think it can serve the same purpose, where someone feels really motivated. If it’s one-under-one, or one-under-one-under-one, I think those kinds of sessions are the things that motivate people. They realize the leadership team really does care what their opinion is and cares about what they think.

So it puts a little bit more on the leadership or the culture, to ensure you’re educating teams to be comfortable pinging folks. I consistently tell my teams: I hate email. Do not email. Do not email. Ping me, text me, message me—whatever. That’s a more personal interaction, it’s one-on-one, and I can quickly do it. I think the more we buy into messaging services and let email die, and focus on the threads of interactions and the one-on-ones, I think it’ll be there.

“The more we buy into messaging and let email die, and focus on threads and one-on-ones, I think [genuine interaction] will be there…”

But, you know, I still really value at least periodic time. I’ve told my software engineering team we’re going to get together for big room planning sessions in the agile process—we’re going to find a way, once it’s appropriate. We’re going to do that again, and at least have those interactions, and then we can lean into the other remote ones as best we can.

Hear more of Nate’s insights on “Leadership Within the Generational Divide” at SINC’s Southeast Forum, Sept. 19-21 in Miami.

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Annie Liljegren:  Falcons or Saints?
Nate Arnold:  That’s a long story! But actually born in Cleveland so I’m a Browns fan.
AL: That’s unfortunate. I wanted to ask you about Taysom Hill…
Nate Arnold: Taysom Hill is a beast.
AL: And Matt Ryan coming back?
Nate Arnold: He hasn’t gotten over the hump in so many years, but at this point what do you have to lose? Go get something new and give it a shot.
AL: Indeed. We’re all set, Nate. Appreciate your time and we’ll see you at Southeast.
Nate Arnold: It was a pleasure—thank you.