The Female Founder Show

Ep. 14: Unlocking Potential: Amy Bahrani's strategies for redefining talent and culture

• Bridget Fitzpatrick, Amy Bahrani • Episode 14

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Join us on the Female Founder Show as we welcome the remarkable Amy Bahrani, a trailblazer in aerospace and defense consulting at Accenture. Amy's captivating journey from rural America to making strides in a male-dominated field is nothing short of inspiring. She shares her passion for the intersection of business and government, emphasizing how strategic workforce initiatives can unlock the true potential of a company's people. Her commitment to championing women in aerospace through mentorship and recognition is a testament to her leadership. Amy also sheds light on innovative recruitment strategies that tap into underutilized talent pools, such as returning veterans and women re-entering the workforce, challenging conventional norms.

Beyond Amy's insights, this episode delves into the broader themes of women in leadership and business. We discuss the critical importance of cultivating confidence and owning one's voice, especially in environments that may not always be supportive. The analogy of balancing glass and rubber balls offers a fresh perspective on managing multiple roles and responsibilities. Additionally, the episode highlights the inspiring story of a young professional's journey toward becoming a managing director, showcasing her dedication to achieving both personal and professional goals. Tune in for a blend of practical advice and empowering stories designed to motivate and inspire women to excel in leadership roles.

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Announcer:

This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Female Founder Show On today's episode. I'm excited to welcome Amy Barani, a seasoned leader in aerospace and defense consulting, at Accenture. With a long and distinguished career in the aerospace industry, Amy has worked extensively as a consultant and manager, shaping workforce strategies and driving innovation. As a board member of women in aerospace, she is dedicated to advancing women in the aerospace and defense sectors, helping to create a more inclusive and diverse workforce. Amy's insights on leadership and her commitment to empowering women in traditionally male-dominated industries will inspire and motivate you for sure. So with that, Amy, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me Now. You've accomplished so much and are such a powerhouse in your industry, and an industry that's really predominantly male. Can you share with us how you got into this field?

Amy Bahrani:

It was not a foregone conclusion. I grew up in what you might call flyover country, rural America. Aviation was not something on my radar, but I found I really liked the intersection of business and government. And so in grad school, when I was focusing on economics, someone said to me what about trade compliance? What about working in aviation? So got a graduate internship and I've been in it ever since.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Awesome, awesome. Now you are with Accenture, helping to build teams and workforce strategies. Can you talk to us about what you're doing there?

Amy Bahrani:

Yes, my real goal is to make sure that a company's most important asset, which is their people, that they are being supported and they're getting the most out of them, and so it's really about understanding how does the talent and the skills of your workforce make you successful and how do you execute on your strategy? By getting your people to a place where they feel like they're in the right culture, they've got the right skills, the right leadership to really thrive.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, and I know that your advice can help a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs today, so we're going to get into that a little bit more later. But you do have such a passion for what you do, and especially in helping women in your industry. Can you talk to us about the work that you do as a board member of Women in Aerospace?

Amy Bahrani:

Yes, it's one of my most exciting things I do. Being part of Women in Aerospace is really about not just, you know, getting the numbers out there, educating leadership boards. It's really about for the women that are in the industry now how do we empower them, how do we give them those skills so that they really can show up the best way to drive influence, to be able to support the other women in their workforces? One of the other things we do is we identify who is the really rising talent in this industry and get them support early on. So how do we build those mentorship pathways? How do we recognize the titans of our industry who have gone above and beyond and really representing what women can do in this space?

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Wow, wow. That's great, great work you're doing there now and during the recruitment process. Let's talk about that for a minute. There's so much competition right now for businesses to acquire talent and we're forced to really think differently about how we go about recruiting. So do you have an example of an approach that kind of breaks the norm?

Amy Bahrani:

Yeah, it really starts from understanding what it is you need in a person's skill set to be able to be successful in that role. One of the big challenges is just availability of talent. We know this war on talent is a phrase we're all familiar with, but are you really needing to get that? We call it a purple squirrel, that like perfect candidate every time with that college degree or that master's degree? Specifically in the space, I really challenge employers to think about is a college degree necessary? Can you take someone from automotive and cross-train them to be successful in aerospace? Can someone with a supply chain background be a good salesperson because they understand the mechanics of your business? So I really think it comes down to understanding exactly what you need out of that person to be successful.

Amy Bahrani:

I also really like looking to workforces that typically aren't maybe top of mind. So an example would be people like women like myself who have had children. Maybe they've had a break in their career. How can you help encourage people to come back, recognizing that gap on their resume and thinking about that as not a hindrance but really an opportunity for someone to redefine themselves and really jump into work? So I think organizations that support women, organizations that support returning veterans, for example, and veteran spouses. It's a really, really important part of getting the right talent and fulfilling your pipeline.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, and then where do you look for those people? Maybe there's some talent pools that we might not consider, you know, traditionally. Can you help us there?

Amy Bahrani:

Yeah, you know, I went to an economic summit last week hosted by the Chicago Executive Forum and one of the speakers there said go talk to your local high schools and it was something that hadn't occurred to me before. But she said go talk to the guidance counselors and say, hey, what are you doing with your students that might not be on the college path? How can you get them involved in internships in high school? How can you get summer jobs into your factories to start building that exposure to your business, to your local community? I think that's really interesting and powerful. Interesting and powerful Reaching out to your local veterans affairs organizations, your local VA asking, hey, do you have returning vets that are looking for work? We have organizations like the Mom Project that specifically help women coming back from leaves to take care of their children. So there's a lot of these groups. But really I think it comes down to asking and being clear on what you need.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, yeah, that's sometimes the challenge is being clear on what you need. So, yeah, and as entrepreneurs it's sometimes hard to develop, once you have that person in place, a recruitment and onboarding experience to be sure that you're really setting the new employee up for success. What advice would you give that would help small to medium-sized businesses when it comes to this?

Amy Bahrani:

I have advice on two ends of the spectrum. One is around job shadowing. I think it's so important, especially with the move to so much remote. I think that informal learning has really been lost, and so I think about my first day working in my dad's small business. I sat there and just observed him, learned what he did, understood how he took the calls, how he did the sales, and so I think observation is really important. So baking that in from the beginning, having someone set up to learn and mentor that informal learning, and then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have to have documentation right. What happens if Sarah in accounting gets, you know, wins the lottery next week, If she leaves, who knows what that role, responsibility was? Is it documented? And so that you know that inflection of being able to have the informal learning, and then you know having a standard operating procedure, an SOP, a policy written down by guidance. There's a balance there that really supports your employee.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

You know, as a small business owner, you're creating a position that's that you've never experienced before. Whatever that may be, what do you think the best way is to go about putting the process in place? Or where do you go for that To the employee? Do you look at, you know? Is there some place online that can help you? How do you get those processes in place?

Amy Bahrani:

You know, I did this exact exercise with one of my best friends last summer. She owns a therapy practice. She went from five employees to 18. And she was still doing that, you know, as the owner, doing the intake process, scheduling out things, and I, you know, I said to her, jamie, like you need to understand roles and responsibilities. I think that's the first place.

Amy Bahrani:

So, if you write out all of the different tasks that need to happen, maybe in a like a sub process, or or end to happen, maybe in a sub-process or end-to-end, whose responsibility is it? And then from that you can develop okay, so what are the steps to do it successfully each time? Who owns the steps and who owns accountability? And I think that's an important part. It's understanding accountability versus input. So, as a business leader, what do you need to know about, what do you need to be consulted about and what are you responsible or accountable for? And we call that a RACI in the corporate world.

Amy Bahrani:

So, having that set up, defining the process and, importantly, until you define the process, you can't really take an objective, look at it and say I think we can do things better. So it really comes down to it can be something as simple as writing it on a piece of paper. You don't need to have anything, be fancy, but writing down those process steps, understanding what good looks like for you and then taking a critical eye to think can we do something better to make it more efficient, less painful. And my last comment on that is bring your employee's perspective in. This doesn't have to be a top-down exercise. By doing this with your workforce, it gives them an opportunity to feel heard, which is so important in culture and so important in retention, and give them fingerprints over their work product, because that really helps build buy-in, which is going to make you more successful.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Great advice that I'm going to take. Thank you Now, once they're there. We talk so much about workplace culture, and so often we do, but how do we really measure and affect cultural change?

Amy Bahrani:

Yes. So culture, I think, can feel like a bit of an art and not a science, but I actually think you can measure it. You can build strategies to get to where you want to be. I define culture as the way things are done around here. It's the experience of your people. And so, thinking about, what does that feel like for folks? Go and ask them, do a little pulse survey.

Amy Bahrani:

A pulse survey is a survey that takes between three and five minutes to fill out and you do it periodically and you track sentiment. So if you send it out to your 10 folks this month and you say, hey, on a scale of one to five, do you feel like you're able to speak up and provide input? Do you feel like you're able to bring an entrepreneurial spirit and really solicit or provide information? And so you go through a couple of questions and you track it and you can see all right, my people are saying they don't feel like they're heard. Okay, how can I address this? Maybe we'll do a weekly stand up as a team. We'll spend 15 minutes and everyone gets to share what they're working on, be really specific to what you're looking to achieve. It all starts with behaviors. Those behaviors have to be productive or you're not going to get the most from your workforce and you're not going to be able to achieve your vision.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

How do you see high-performing cultures change over time to adapt when going from a startup to scaling and sustainment?

Amy Bahrani:

It's important to know that a culture can't be stagnant. What got you to that first big sale, that first series A, isn't probably going to be what gets you to series C or wherever you're looking to get, and so part of that is understanding again the roles and responsibilities of your team. They're going to shift. Hopefully as you get more people, the tasks and the focus kind of narrows a little bit. So you're focused on what your primary goal is and with your culture, you may have to go from a really consensus-driven culture to more of individual accountability and responsibility. So that might mean before, four people got in a room and they made a decision about what the next product design was going to be. In the future, you're going to rely on your one person that you've decided is your expert. It's really about understanding what you need in that moment to be successful.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Definitely, definitely Great, great advice. Now, as a leader in your experience, what skills would you say are the most important for women to cultivate as they grow their businesses and teams?

Amy Bahrani:

Such a good question. I hate to play into the stereotype, but I think being confident in speaking your truth and your accomplishments is so important. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, I was just taught to always be very humble, to not brag, to really understand the power of we and not I. But there gets to be a point in your career where you have to make sure people understand your story, where your credibility hinges on people knowing your accomplishments, and so a silly little trick I do sometimes is I just think what would Elon Musk say in this moment He'd shy away from talking about his experience, and it's really about just getting past that and being your own advocate.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, that's great advice. And I struggle from the same thing. I was raised the same way. Keep your head down, do your work. And I struggle from the same thing. I was raised the same way. You know, keep your head down, do your work. And you know, don't speak up too much. But it really is. You know the differences between how a man is treated when he speaks up or says something is so different from when a woman does a lot of times, and how you say it. And you know the man can be oh, he's so, you know assertive and aggressive, but the woman, oh, she's such a bitch. You know, it's just, it's a fine line. So what would Elon Musk say right now?

Amy Bahrani:

He would say whatever he wants, but and I think that there is a really intentional way we can support each other in a room. Yeah, so, um, I heard this phrase called a glow up, so if you say something, I have the opportunity to say you know what? Bridget, that was a great point. I'm so glad you raised that. Thank you for that insight. It's echoing what I heard, but it's also giving an opportunity for your voice essentially to be heard twice.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, yeah, you know what, amy. That is a great point. Such a great point. I like what you said there. You know what, amy? That is a great point, such a great point. I like what you said there. Yeah, thank you. No, that's great advice to be supportive so that everybody does feel inclusive and their voice matters. Everybody's voice matters, absolutely. Yeah, well, change gears a little bit. You have so much on your plate with your business, your participation in Women in Aerospace, you're a mom to two beautiful children and a wife. Now how do you balance all of these roles and what advice would you give to those watching?

Amy Bahrani:

My best advice is to really understand what is critical and important and what is okay, to let kind of sit. And I give this analogy of you know if we're juggling a lot of balls in the air, which ones are glass and which ones are rubber, which ones, if they drop, are going to break and you're going to do irrevocable harm, which ones are going to be okay. So you know, something that's been really challenging for me this past couple of years is my son has had health issues.

Amy Bahrani:

My little three-year-old had brain surgery last year and there was an opportunity for me to go on this big business trip, do this exciting thing. I just realized like it's not in alignment with my values. That can drop, it's not going to break. I'll have an opportunity to do that in the future, but taking care of my son is something that I won't be able to do again, and so you know it really comes down to understanding what your priorities are. The other little trick I do and it can. It can be from like doom scrolling on my phone to if I want to go out with friends. I try in the moment to think is the thing that I'm doing helping me or hurting me? Is that, you know, doom scrolling, just like keeping me up from going to sleep? Is seeing my girlfriend tonight worth, you know, not getting the sleep sleep?

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Clearly it's a common theme here, yeah, so important.

Amy Bahrani:

Yeah, so I think it really comes down to that, that priority. Um, because you're right, there's a lot on and I don't want to be a subpar mom. I don't want to be a subpar mom. I don't want to be a subpar employee.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

balance is hard and it takes constant shifting yeah, you know, I've never heard that analogy with the glass and rubber balls. I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So sometimes some things can sometimes drop and it's okay. They're gonna feel they'll be there the next day or the next week when when you can get to them. But yeah, we're so're so overwhelmed as small business owners, entrepreneurs and with your career. I like that analogy. I'm definitely going to think about that next time I'm freaking out about my list that I have to do. Yeah, yeah, now there are a lot of women watching that haven't started their business yet or they're just starting out as entrepreneurs. What advice would you give those, specifically in the area of stepping into a leadership role, such as a business owner?

Amy Bahrani:

Well, first of all, I'm proud of you for making that decision. What an exciting place to be, and I think it really comes down to understanding what it is that you want. What does you know that vision look like for you and being really clear on why you're going into. You know being a business owner, what it means for you that you can hold true to that. When you have those challenging um, you have those challenging moments. So, whether that is you want to be able to be financially in control of your own family's um, you can be in control of your own finances. Whether it's you want to build community, whether it is you have a service or a product that you think is important for the world to have, it's really about holding true to that, and so, when you're faced with decisions, when you're faced with those late nights, early mornings, you have something that you can hold on to and be inspired by.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Now, finally, you have accomplished so much at such a young age, so what's next for you? Where do you see your career in the next five to 10 years?

Amy Bahrani:

Oh, what a great question. So, within the firm I work for, I really want to make managing director. That's my goal, and for me, what that means is a level of revalidation in myself that I have the expertise to do that. It means a financial security that I didn't experience growing up. For me, it's really about proving to myself that I deserve to be in that boardroom and and what I have to share is important. So I'm just going to keep climbing, um. You know, it's a combination, like you said, of keeping my head down doing the work but also popping up and being really proud of how far I've gone. You know, college was not even on the radar for me as a child, and now I've got graduate degree. I work with people who went to incredible schools, um, and so I want to stay hungry, but I also just want to be able to sit and feel proud.

Bridget Fitzpatrick:

And you should be. You've accomplished so much and you're a superstar in your industry and we really appreciate the time that you've given us today. So your advice today has been invaluable. We really appreciate it.

Amy Bahrani:

I've loved it. Thank you so much.

Announcer:

Thank you. This is the Female Founder Show with host and entrepreneur Bridget Fitzpatrick, exclusively on ASBN. If you're a female founder and would like to help other female founders with your inspiring story, we would love to hear from you.