Back to Basics with Pasqual Zottola

The quality of leadership and innovation in biotechnology is experiencing a significant transformation.

Joining me today is Pasqual Zottola, Vice President of Information Technology at Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. We talk about how integrating advanced technological solutions and standout leadership principles leads to sustainable success in biotech. 

Pasqual shares his personal journey, emphasizing the importance of foundational values and a transparent leadership style. 

We also touch on the critical aspects such as employee retention, the pivotal role of communication, and how technology like AI and data analytics are shaping the future of biotech.

If you're aiming to gain authentic insights into the intersection of leadership, technology, and biotech industry best practices, this is one conversation you shouldn't miss!

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• Leadership principles and their impact on corporate ethos and decision-making
• The role of innovative technology in shaping the future of biotechnology
• Strategies for sustaining employee satisfaction and promoting organizational growth

Links from this episode:

• Get to know more about Steven Swan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swangroup
• Get to know more about Pasqual Zottola: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pasqual-zottola-45a1952b
• Learn more about Acorda Therapeutics, Inc.: https://www.acorda.com
  
  

Transcript

Pasqual Zottola [00:00:00]:
Within my company, we had an amazing, what I call doctrine, which was our company's principles and values. You know, integrity, communication, receiving information thoughtfully, trying your best, working hard, but having fun, none of this is earth shattering, but when you put them together and every moment you have something happening around you and you say, okay, what's the best thing to do right now? Well, what's the best thing to do? If you act with integrity, what's the best thing to do to communicate correctly? So what can I do with what I have? And is there something I can do beyond what I have and try something new?

Steve Swan [00:00:34]:
Welcome to Biotech Bytes, where we speak with technology leaders in biotech. We talk about current trends in technology and kind of get their thoughts and feelings on those trends. And I'm your host, Steve Swan. Today I'm joined by Pasquale Zottola. Thank you for joining us.

Pasqual Zottola [00:00:49]:
Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having me.

Steve Swan [00:00:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. This is great. So you're with a court of therapeutics, and, you know, I always like starting out with sort of the big picture from a technology perspective, and then we'll get into some of the other things. Right. But from a technology perspective, what do you think, or what have you seen over your time, over the recent past as to what's affecting us, our industry, and maybe what will affect our industry in the near future?

Pasqual Zottola [00:01:17]:
Sure. I don't think anything I bring up at this point will be earth shattering. I think it's pretty much what people think. You know, for me, as part of my transformation, for a corda over the last few years, it was certainly looking at cloud based systems, SaaS systems, finding out which ones were the best value for the organization and migrating from the typical on premise. So that's a big one. And there's a lot of considerations there. Of course, it's on the tip of everyone's tongue. Artificial intelligence and of course, data and analytics in general are huge.

Pasqual Zottola [00:01:52]:
I think they're excellent tools that are still just at the beginning of being used correctly. And I think that's going to be transformational in a lot of areas if done correctly. I think those are the two big ones that I would point out first.

Steve Swan [00:02:06]:
Sure, sure, absolutely. Now, one of the things I like to talk about as we get into the conversations with, with leaders, I like to hear about, you know, how did you get to where you are, right. What brought you to where you are today and, you know, formed you as a leader? Sure.

Pasqual Zottola [00:02:23]:
Well, I've been at my company for 24 years.

Steve Swan [00:02:26]:
Wow.

Pasqual Zottola [00:02:27]:
So it's been a long journey. It's been a great journey. Certainly, I acknowledge atypical for someone in an IT position in general, but my company was such an amazing ride, such an amazing journey. And the way I couch it is, it's never been the same company for more than two or three years at a time. I started at the company way back in 2000 as about the 21st person coming into the organization, and it just took off from there. We went through, we're a biotech, obviously. We went through clinical trials. We had our share of failures.

Pasqual Zottola [00:03:02]:
Our share of successes. We went public, took the company through the SoCs process, finally getting approval for our flagship drug, building out a sales force. It's all the typical stuff. Building out a drug safety system, a quality system, everything that's required. Supporting R and D, supporting clinical, up through acquisition positions, divestitures, building out multiple offices. It's just been an amazing ride. And just all the stuff that people do, maybe jumping between multiple companies, I've had the pleasure of doing at the one company where, you know, where I started my leadership career, and it's just been a great ride.

Steve Swan [00:03:42]:
20 plus years. I don't have numbers in front of me. But you're way out on the end of the bell shape, I think so. Way out on the.

Pasqual Zottola [00:03:51]:
All the way out to the right.

Steve Swan [00:03:52]:
Yeah, all the way out. I mean, whoo. I thought I remembered reading once, you know, leaders will last around three years ish, 20 something years. Boy, that's definitely beyond the 1%, I'm certain it's got to be. So that's all good stuff.

Pasqual Zottola [00:04:08]:
I've always embraced doing things a little bit differently.

Steve Swan [00:04:11]:
Good, good. And, well, so tell me about that a little bit. Right. So as a leader inside your organization, I mean, one of the things we've talked about in the past is how, I mean, you know, you've held onto your team. You've kept this core team through the thick and through thin. I mean, obviously they like what they're doing. I always say to people, when it comes to retaining right talent and retaining employees, I was equated all the way back to things that we know and things that we're used to, we've learned when we were little kids. And one of the ways that I always felt that I could keep kids coming back to my team as I was a coach was if they're learning things and if they're having fun, you know, so.

Pasqual Zottola [00:04:51]:
Right, that's.

Steve Swan [00:04:52]:
Again, that's me as a coach, not you as a leader. But I just kind of want to throw that back at you. Why would you say you're successful there?

Pasqual Zottola [00:04:59]:
Well, a couple of thoughts come to mind. You use the metaphor of a team and it's apt, it's an absolutely apt metaphor. And so the first, I live on these little aphorisms and sayings that I've collected over time. And the first one that comes to mind is, you know, don't, don't manage the team you want. Manage the team you have, you know, especially being in a startup and going through so many inflection points and it's a fight, it is a value driver to an organization. But we're often, you know, we're not considered as highly as commercial or clinical or safety, although we are right there partnering with them. So you don't always get the exact team you want. You don't always get the positions or the quality of people.

Pasqual Zottola [00:05:41]:
And that's where leadership comes in and really being thoughtful in the process of, when you get a position and you're hiring, you know, you really have to take your time and do it right. You know, another old adage, higher slow, fire fast. Well, I don't necessarily fully subscribe to that, but the higher slow part I definitely do. It's important. It's important to take your time and not just fill positions with bodies. These are people, these are careers you're helping to develop for them and you're looking to get your value out of that person and give them at least the same value back. So for me, it's always been very important to think of the team. I try often not to say my team, I'm just a part of the team, those people, I'm no more or no less valuable than those people on the team.

Pasqual Zottola [00:06:34]:
And it's really important develop them. And so, yes, I definitely have folks on my team that have been here for a long time. I've had my share of people who've come and gone, and I always think that that's for the best. It's going to work out better for someone else, it's going to work out better for us if sometimes we part ways. But the folks that I have who have been on my team for five, 6710, twelve years have really been valuable to that team and making it and me consequentially as successful as it's been. So it's been a great ride. And yes, in developing that talent and keeping that talent, it is really important to make sure that you're giving. I mean, people don't stick around if they don't feel like they're getting back, at least in kind, for what they're doing for an organization.

Pasqual Zottola [00:07:25]:
So it's vitally important to keep that part of the deal or the bargain between myself and those team players, make sure that I'm honoring that all the time.

Steve Swan [00:07:35]:
And, well, let's, if you don't mind, dig into that a little bit. Right. So a lot of leaders talk about, like you said, developing talent, keeping talent around, but specifically in developing talent, how would you say, you know, you approach that? How do you do that differently than maybe someone else?

Pasqual Zottola [00:07:52]:
Well, it was a learning process. I wasn't always really good at it. It took time, and I certainly had my share of hits and misses early on in my career. You have to get past your own ego at some point and understand that it's, I've seen it out there a lot. There are managers, there are people who can do, people who can manage and people who can lead. And I've seen a lot of people at the, you know, can manage stage who are sometimes actually sort of in, in contention with the people on their team because it's a scary place to be, to be leading a group of people. And, you know, some people tend to start worrying, well, if I, if I let this team get too autonomous, if I develop these people too far, what, what am I here for, you know? And again, another saying, right. It's a good leader is supposed to develop their team to the point that they are essentially expendable.

Pasqual Zottola [00:08:40]:
The team could continue on without you. It's good succession planning, for sure, but it's a really scary proposition. You're developing your career and you don't want to make yourself extinct. So it's certainly a balance. But I've always, at a certain point in my career, I began to embrace the fact that I need to bring in really good talent and develop them and not worry so much about myself. I always came to the conclusion that that would take care of itself. If I was doing a really good job with the team and the team was successful, then that reflects well on myself, and that gives me a reason to be valuable to my organization. I'm not sure if I sort of meandered beyond your question, but I think it's just important to develop that team in an honest, logical way.

Pasqual Zottola [00:09:29]:
It's too easy to fall victim to, like I said, worrying too much about how much people are developing or, well, if they develop too much, they're just going to want to keep getting promoted or move up too quickly. And the reality is you can't always do that. And now they're going to want to leave the organization because they've grown beyond what I can offer or beyond what the organization can offer. And again, it took some time to come to peace with that and say, that's okay. I want people to do really well in their careers, and that just may not be in my organization. It may be time for them to move on because I can't give them the next stage of what they need. And one of the ways that really was successful within my organization that helped is about, probably about twelve years ago, eight to twelve years ago, we developed something called the it career Pathways document. And it was a very transparent, logical, truthful document that spoke to what it takes to move along your career pathway.

Pasqual Zottola [00:10:35]:
That's the term we chose and we liked that you hear career ladder, but there's only two ways to go up and down. Well, a pathway meanders and that's okay. And so it was important to stress the value of a person's skills, their experience, their time in a position or their time in a role. All of those combine together and in very different ways for different people to really come to the conclusion that someone's ready to move along that pathway with many other more realistic considerations. Does the organization even have a role for someone at this point? And it was tremendously successful. I feel it was something that was adopted through the organization and really help folks on the team to understand where they were at, because I'm sure, Steve, you field a lot of calls from people who say, I've been here for four years, I deserve a promotion. It's not happening. Find me a new position.

Pasqual Zottola [00:11:35]:
It's not just time. Time is one part of it. Yes, four years, great. That's great. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually ready to move on within an organization. That is, it's everyone's choice to choose to move onto a different organization. And I thought it was vitally important and really helped folks in my team to understand the process so that there was less miscommunication or misunderstanding about that.

Steve Swan [00:12:00]:
I think that's great because in my business, you're right, I see it from both sides. Right. So I see the managers that that will come in and like you said, maybe they'll be scared to hire somebody better than them, you know, and, or, or what have you. Right. And they don't have the same mindset as to the better my people are, the better I look because they're underneath me and we're going and we're doing our thing, and I'm going to give them credit, you know, flip side of that. You know, I see the individuals, right. They'll come to me even before they interview. So what's the career path? Do you got to map it out for me? Well, you can't do that.

Steve Swan [00:12:34]:
I mean, my answer always is, it depends on you, and it depends on the organization, and it depends on the whole interaction and what happens there. You can't just have a conversation with a leader in HR and say, okay, in three years, you'll be at this level. In another year and a half, you'll be at this level, you know, that kind of thing. And I think that the final piece that you hit on with your career pathway, right. And what you basically just said is managing expectations. My whole job is about managing expectations on both sides of the fence. Right. And as long as, you know, I mean, if you and I were both going on a.

Steve Swan [00:13:10]:
On a. On a bus trip, right, it's supposed to be an hour and a half bus trip, and it ends up being a two hour bus trip. And I was expecting an hour and a half. I'm pissed. But, you know, if you were like, hey, I'm. I know that this trip's 2 hours. You're good with it because it's a two hour, you know, so expectations are huge. And the fact that you've found a way, or developed a way, really, over your years of experience to manage expectations, that's huge.

Steve Swan [00:13:37]:
I mean, expectations really are what sets people in different directions with different expectations.

Pasqual Zottola [00:13:44]:
You know, it's completely logical to me. It's the kind of document I wish I had when I was young and starting out in it and in various organizations where I worked. It's not perfect. It's a living document. We've adjusted it over time, of course, as a good document will do, but it was just vitally important. And another point to this, it's great that we were able to develop that document, but I know that it's not easy for everyone in a leadership position to do this if you are not at a stage where your organization is mature, where you have the people and the time and the talent to do this. This wasn't just me sitting in a room developing this document. I had directors in my team meet with me, and we hashed it out over months to really make sure we were covering the important aspects of career pathway development.

Pasqual Zottola [00:14:40]:
And not everyone has that luxury of being able to take that time. You're constantly putting out fires.

Steve Swan [00:14:45]:
But that's another thing, too, right?

Pasqual Zottola [00:14:47]:
I'm fortunate to know, at that time, when we developed this, I'm fortunate that we had the bandwidth to do it, and, you know, a lot of it is doing it at night after hours, but it was completely worthwhile it avoided. So, you know, it's the old take, the short term loss for the long term gain. It allowed us to have so many less awkward interactions with folks who just feel like they're ready to move on it. It was much easier. Of course, we always have conversations with people, but once, once the folks on the team read that document, they really got it. They understood what we were getting at. And it was vitally important to sort of keeping everyone in an equal understanding, everyone on the same page as to what it would take. So that was huge.

Steve Swan [00:15:33]:
Is it something. I'm sorry, I'm sidetracking here. Is it something you actually talk about during the interview process, or is it something that somebody starts hearing about after they join the team?

Pasqual Zottola [00:15:42]:
No, we do talk about it at the interview process. Of course, at my company, we had a great, what I think was a great, is a great onboarding process that included very firm commitments that we, as hiring managers needed to make to the people we were bringing in. And that was an organization wide onboarding process that we took part in creating and adhered to. But I certainly threw in my share, my herbs and spices within the IT team as far as the career pathways document and what it meant to me and what it could mean to someone coming into the organization. And I think, again, that's vitally important. I've done my share of interviews, both being the interviewer and the interviewee. And again, from a logical perspective, being truthful and honest is the only way to go. And that was, it was huge in bringing on good talent because I think the feedback we received was, hey, I know what I'm getting.

Pasqual Zottola [00:16:50]:
There's, you know, this isn't like I'm, you know, I'm going to a, you know, a dealer and buying a used car, but I'm not getting what I actually asked for. You know, people are being disingenuous. No, it was very obvious what, what the role was that the person was doing. Of course, with, with the, with the requisite. Listen, things change, and, and we always want people to stretch outside their role, but this is what we're looking for. This is what we think you are. Correct us if we're wrong on that. And, you know, here is how we are going to bring you in, indoctrinate you, and develop you in the organization to get the best out of you and for you to get the best out of us.

Steve Swan [00:17:31]:
I mean, this is so refreshing, right? It's a people business. It's. It is technology, right, but it's a. But it's about the people.

Pasqual Zottola [00:17:38]:
You know, Steve, you know, if I had a. A dollar for every time I write an article about how it is dead or any technology, when the iPad came out, the laptop, that was it. It was doomed. And it's just not true. And the same thing with people. At the end of the day, people make it happen. Yes. Technology is great.

Pasqual Zottola [00:18:00]:
I know this is a technology podcast, and we're not really talking technology a lot here. My goal, I think, in coming into this is to be more foundational with you. The basic foundational things still work the same way. You know, it's almost like the everything I, you know, I needed to learn about life, I learned in kindergarten. It's very foundational. We could spend 15 minutes talking about AI, and it's a great tool, and it will continue to be a great tool. It's just at its inception. But I think everything I've heard, both in people talking on your podcast and in other interviews and podcasts I've listened to, is, you know, everybody keeps coming back to the data.

Pasqual Zottola [00:18:42]:
The data. The data has to be governed. The data has to be clean. The data has to be protected. And to me, that's not much different than what I learned in my very first college course for management information systems, which is garbage in, garbage out. You know, we learned that on day one in COBOL programming class. You can make the best program, but if the data isn't right, you're going to get nothing good out of this. You get no value.

Pasqual Zottola [00:19:07]:
So the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's the same kind of thing. Same thing with the cloud. Cloud is great, but that doesn't mean that you go and take everything that's on prem and throw it in the cloud. It looks great on your budget because now you've got very low capex. But guess what? Now it's all in computer expense. So you're not necessarily saving money there. You can, and sometimes try going to one of those cloud providers and get your data back.

Pasqual Zottola [00:19:33]:
It's not easy. Once they have it, they're not really incentivized to give it back to you easily. So it makes migration or changing direction much harder. So we can talk technology for sure. But to me, it's the foundational things. It's building the right team and having the right people back to basics. Absolutely. And that's where for me, my doctrine has always been around leadership about what is the best thing to do in this moment.

Pasqual Zottola [00:20:04]:
And I push that throughout the team. What can I do? I know in the military they have doctrine and a lot of that. I didn't serve in the military, but I did my research on it. It's important. It's about saying, in this moment, with what's going on, what would my commander tell me to do? If my commander is not here, what should I do? It's really just a basic logical process so that you're calming the emotions and you are doing the right logical things in the moment to get the right outcome that you want. And when you can train people to do that, it's great. Probably the term train isn't great. It makes it sound like people are easily trainable.

Pasqual Zottola [00:20:45]:
But when you educate people on that process, it's very helpful. Within my company, we had an amazing, what I call doctrine, which was our company's principles and values. And it's eight or nine very simple things. Integrity, communication, receiving information thoughtfully, trying your best, working hard, but having fun. Real basic things. Wow. None of this is earth shattering, but when you put them together and every moment you have something happening around you and you say, what's the best thing to do right now? Well, you know, what's the best thing to do? If you act with integrity, what's the best thing to do to communicate correctly? We had another one which was, we will find a way or make one. So what can I do with what I have? And is there something I can do beyond what I have and try something new? So aspirations that we have, and I've certainly taken them to heart because they've been great.

Pasqual Zottola [00:21:46]:
And guess what? When you come home and you have your personal life, they work there too, because they're universal. So it's been great to develop my leadership skills in an organization that's so open and encouraging to that. It's just been a great ride. So foundationally, that's what I'm all about.

Steve Swan [00:22:06]:
And it seems like your leadership style skills start from the very beginning of the process, finding the right individuals and then going all the way through the whole life cycle with them. Right? Because you've had people for, like you said, 7810, twelve years. So you're not hiring somebody burning a mountain and moving on to the next. It's far from that. You're doing the opposite. Right?

Pasqual Zottola [00:22:29]:
So there's no value in that for, for myself, for the team, for the organization, or for the individual people. Burn out for different reasons, and that's. That's okay. But, you know, I make it my mission to not be the reason why people are burning out or being overworked or not feeling satisfied in their job. That just starts to create, you know, a toxic environment and challenging associates and does nothing for anyone. And now, now I'm spending a large portion of my time on HR factors, and that's not where I am providing value to the organization. I can do that, but that's not what they're really compensating me for.

Steve Swan [00:23:11]:
Right? Right. No, of course not. Some point, I don't know if I can even ask you to see it. I wouldn't post it, but I'd love to see your career pathway document if I'm allowed to.

Pasqual Zottola [00:23:20]:
Oh, sure. I haven't copyrighted it, so. And I'm happy to share it again, there's nothing proprietary in there, Steve. It's all good basic logic. You know, maybe. Maybe we have some specific titles that are unique to a court, but other than that, it's really about, you know, logical stuff on how to move. So absolutely, I'd be happy to share it with you.

Steve Swan [00:23:45]:
What you learned and what you know how to do, you learned in kindergarten, like you said, right? You know, it's all basic.

Pasqual Zottola [00:23:50]:
It is. It's foundational even in dealing with industry trends and hype waves. It's important to take a step back and not get caught up in the emotion of it. Or the FOMO. That's a great term that everybody has now that there's things like Facebook and LinkedIn. Just because you are not implementing a technology that you are hearing so much about does not mean you're doing it all wrong. Certainly the vendors would want you to believe that because it's in their best interest. And the news sort of gets caught up in that hype wave, too.

Pasqual Zottola [00:24:23]:
So to me, it's more about is that the logical next step for our organization? Does that present value to the organization that we don't otherwise have or better value than what we're doing now? And those are more important questions to ask, certainly that there's a place for not just responding to what the organization is telling me they want, but bringing to them, hey, have you thought about this? And helping them collaborating? Because that's important, too. You can certainly play a role at a time in an organization when it's smaller, of sort of just keeping up with how the organization's moving. But there's certainly a time where you need to be a leader and a change agent and really start to promote, you know, technologies or methodologies that you feel are going to be better for the organization.

Steve Swan [00:25:12]:
Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, you, like you said, you're a leader, you're growing. These folks, you have these folks, of course they at some level have, they got to deal with the technology, right. Because you're steering the shit. You're up on top of it. You know, you're up on top of the deck and they're down below, they're doing stuff. They have to.

Steve Swan [00:25:28]:
I mean, that's just part of what we all got to do, right? You know?

Pasqual Zottola [00:25:30]:
Absolutely.

Steve Swan [00:25:31]:
So, and that's just, it is what it is. I mean, it's at some level somebody's got to do that. But where you are and what you want to do is leadership. Handle these folks. If you got the right people and you got the right attitudes and the right expectations. I mean, expectations, again, I live by that. That's, I mean, I live by that all day, every day, with my kids, with everybody. You know, if you're not leveling expectations, you're in trouble.

Pasqual Zottola [00:25:55]:
And the foundation of expectations is clear communication. And again, acting logically and being truthful, it doesn't help to set expectations that are unrealistic. That's just going to, like you said, burn people out, whether you're in your work life or your home life. It's just, it's about getting everyone on the same page and really honestly wanting everyone to thrive. I don't see how as a leader I stand to benefit at all from being unfair with the people in my organization. For, I don't want to call it lying, but for exaggerating or for under reporting, it's misspoken. Communication is just not worth it. So it's important to really learn those things.

Pasqual Zottola [00:26:40]:
And again, I wasn't born this way. It took me time. I didn't do a lot of this. And that's how I got there is I looked back and analyzed where I failed and said, okay, that's a great learning moment. And realizing that I live and die by the team. Another sort of foundational concept we live by within our it team is no hero mode. And I define hero mode as which a lot of organizations seem to embrace is who's that person who just always seems to step up at the last minute to put out the critical fire and all organizations, regardless of how well staffed, how well organized, they're going to have crises, they're going to have fire drills. And certainly when you're in a startup and a growing company, you get more than your share of those because there's just so much to do and not enough people.

Pasqual Zottola [00:27:40]:
And that's just the way it is. That's okay. But we really tried to promote this no hero mode attitude within our organization, which is basically, again, and I've seen it time and time again, people fail to plan correctly, which leads to a crisis, and then they pull an all nighter or they go above and beyond to fix it. And, yes, that's great, and that they should be commended for that. But there should also be some analysis to say, well, actually, if you had planned it correctly and communicated it correctly, there would have. There would not have been a crisis. So, you know, you don't want to be the firefighter who is always first to the fire, and then people start to say, why is that? Are you possibly causing those fires? And then you get your hero commendation. Nothing against firefighters not saying they do that, but that's the metaphor.

Pasqual Zottola [00:28:37]:
It's about not creating the fire in the first place, and then you don't have to run and put it out. And that's tough, right? Because we, as humans, we want that adrenaline surge. We want that. A lot of people do. You want that dopamine reaction of, oh, I did it, I took care of it. But really, I think the boring. Everything is working really well, and there are no fires to put out is better than that. Living on the edge of your seat constantly.

Pasqual Zottola [00:29:06]:
So it's really important for us in our organization to really, no hero mode as much as possible. Sometimes it happens, but I don't think it necessarily should always be as commended as it is. I think sometimes it's more important to say, well, why did we get in that, in that predicament in the first place? And how can we make sure it doesn't happen in the future?

Steve Swan [00:29:28]:
Yeah, yeah. No, that's interesting. And I do see that. I see that quite a bit from organizations where they get to that point and to, to what you're saying, to your point, they reward that.

Pasqual Zottola [00:29:43]:
They thrive on it. Every organization has their own little award system, spot awards or caught you doing good or whatever you call it. But I think if you went back and did an analysis, you'd see a lot of those awards are dependent on a potential crisis situation that didn't have to happen. And maybe part of it is the fact that no one gets an award for just having everything run really well. You're not as easily noticed. And for me, I've been in the it sphere for over 30 years now. That's just something I embraced from the beginning. A lot of times you're going to be on the sidelines, you're just going to be keeping things running, and then people only notice when it breaks.

Pasqual Zottola [00:30:27]:
That's okay. That's just a part of what I've signed up for. Certainly as growing into a leader and taking a more active role, collaborating with the organization. Some of that changes, but it's still, again, foundational. Just keep things running well, plan, don't have the crises, and everybody's in a much better place for it.

Steve Swan [00:30:47]:
Sure, sure. This is great stuff, and like you said, yeah, tech podcast, but we don't get into the people part of it much, and that's my business. Right. So, you know, I hear. I hear about.

Pasqual Zottola [00:31:00]:
That's all your business for sure.

Steve Swan [00:31:02]:
You know, I hear about this all day long where I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten from individuals telling me, you know, I'm at this company. I've been here six months. Totally different than what I expected. Totally different from what they told me. None of them have ever come from yours. None of them have ever come from your place. Okay. But, yeah, it's just, it's.

Steve Swan [00:31:21]:
It's crazy, you know, and I. I don't know how long. I guess folks just feel like they can keep getting away with it. They cycle through folks. I don't really know, but it's just, to me, it's like, wow, that's short.

Pasqual Zottola [00:31:33]:
Well, it certainly checks boxes. It satisfies the spreadsheet if you're managing by a spreadsheet. And it's easy to fall into that trap, for sure. Well, we just need people, and we have people. So that should have solved the problem. Why didn't it? Because there's more to it. That's why it didn't do it.

Steve Swan [00:31:51]:
Yeah. You wonder what the motivation is or what those boxes are that they're checking or what the metrics are they're measuring success by on that hire, you know, and it certainly isn't longevity, because they're calling me six months later saying, isn't what I, what I signed up for or it was, I don't know. I gotta be in every day when I was told I only gotta be in two days or whatever. You know what I mean? Right, right.

Pasqual Zottola [00:32:11]:
I don't have to be. An organizational culture is key to that. Again, I've been fortunate to be at a company that from day one, when I started, and a quarter was only five years old when I joined it. Our CEO Ron started it in his bedroom closet in Manhattan and built it into a small office. And then that's when I joined in. And what was always great and what I felt fortunate about it was that he. You knew from the moment you met him that what mattered most was, of course, the patients that at the time, we were going to help. We weren't able to yet.

Pasqual Zottola [00:32:48]:
We were still researching and trying to get our. Our drug approved, our therapy approved. But the people who are working at the organization, it was so vitally important that everybody knew that they were so valuable to the organization. If you were there, it's because you were valuable and you were meant to do something valuable for this organization. No, and nothing's perfect there. People do come and go, even in our organization, even on my team, and it's even something that I had to learn to embrace, is that you aren't necessarily doing great if no one's leaving, either. It's not that you need people to leave or you need people to stay. Sometimes it's okay for people to move on and again, and it works out for the best for everyone.

Pasqual Zottola [00:33:34]:
But that culture, that organizational culture needs to start from the bottom up. And I'm sure every time I go on LinkedIn, there's always some great quotes on there that people post about. This part of culture needs to start with the CEO or it won't work. And I just saw one recently, security mindedness starts with the CEO, and those things are key. They have to start at the top and work their way down. I'm so very fortunate that with our organization, they did caring about the people in the organization and caring about the people we were helping was paramount. And if you did that, the success and the opportunities would go from there. So it was just so great to develop my leadership style in an environment that had the right culture.

Pasqual Zottola [00:34:25]:
It was really great.

Steve Swan [00:34:26]:
That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, well, thank you for sharing all that. Totally different perspective. Totally different from the other conversations I've had, you know, making it more of a people than a Bytes business. Even though bites is in the title of my podcast. Right, but that's good. No, because that's my business.

Steve Swan [00:34:42]:
Right. My business is people. And to understand, you know, to your point, it came from the top. And when you met Ron, right? Isn't that what you said his name was when you. When you met him? I mean, you knew that this was going to be about people. And you and he are aligned in, obviously, in how you think about what we're doing to get to where we need to go, you know, from that.

Pasqual Zottola [00:35:02]:
Absolutely. And again, just, just use those fundamentals. Make your deliberations based on the simple stuff of what will be of best value to the organization, what is the right way to do it, how do I plan it, and that the rest sort of flows, falls into place, especially.

Steve Swan [00:35:16]:
If you have the right people, right?

Pasqual Zottola [00:35:18]:
Absolutely. I mean, it's just, it's. This is great news for you, Steve. People are not going away. Organizations will not run on AI any, anytime soon.

Steve Swan [00:35:27]:
I don't think so.

Pasqual Zottola [00:35:29]:
And I love playing around with AI, and I love seeing how now you can make whole songs using AI, and that's really cool. And you can change your voice or change how you look and all of that wonderful stuff if you're using that tool correctly. Of course, you can use a hammer in a productive way, in a not so productive way. So AI is the same thing. But it all comes down to, do you have the right people? To me, that's not going to go away. You don't have to worry. People are going to be hiring in it for a long time to come. When the time comes that, that an AI manager comes into being, I'll be very interested.

Pasqual Zottola [00:36:07]:
I'll probably be well out of the workforce at that time. But, you know, it's for now. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:36:13]:
Well, I thank you for your time. That was awesome. I don't know if you watched any of my other podcasts, but usually at the end of the podcast, I ask each guest one final question and it's the same question.

Pasqual Zottola [00:36:25]:
Okay.

Steve Swan [00:36:26]:
Live music. Live music concerts. Do you have a live concert or music that you've ever seen that you would say is your favorite concert or favorite live music that you've ever seen?

Pasqual Zottola [00:36:38]:
Oh, sure. I'm going to completely expose myself as a nerd because of this.

Steve Swan [00:36:45]:
I can't wait. I'm on the edge of my seat now.

Pasqual Zottola [00:36:47]:
My favorite live concert experience is Rush.

Steve Swan [00:36:51]:
Love it.

Pasqual Zottola [00:36:51]:
And they are a nerd band, and I've been a fan of them forever. I went to see them in concert for the first time in 1988, I believe it was, it was an amazing experience, and I've seen them many times since then, and unfortunately, they are no longer correct a band, but they've just, that was an amazing, inspirational, and it's the kind of music that a lot of, you know, people like, if they're into mathematics and computers, it's just, it just fits. And it's been some of the best live music experiences. I've been to all sorts of different concerts, but those rush concerts were always the best.

Steve Swan [00:37:28]:
So I'm from a family of four boys. My three brothers have all seen rush multiple times. I never got. I just. I don't know, I just.

Pasqual Zottola [00:37:36]:
You missed out.

Steve Swan [00:37:37]:
Flaked on it. And I was reading an article recently. They were talking about prog rock, right? They were talking about Genesis and they were talking about all those bands. They threw Russian there. I didn't. I didn't.

Pasqual Zottola [00:37:47]:
I see it.

Steve Swan [00:37:48]:
I see it, but I didn't. I didn't originally have them there. You know, Rush.

Pasqual Zottola [00:37:52]:
Rush is. Prague has been since the beginning. If you go back to their early catalog, it's. It's Lord of the Rings type stuff.

Steve Swan [00:38:02]:
Yeah. 20 112 is great. What a great album.

Pasqual Zottola [00:38:04]:
20 112 total. You know, early cyberpunk concept album. And. Yeah, I mean, their first album was pretty straight ahead, Led Zeppelin esque, cream esque rock and roll for the seventies. And then they just. They took a turn, in my opinion, for the better. And I've loved their entire catalog.

Steve Swan [00:38:24]:
And how many bands do you have that were the drummers writing most everything? Right. Neil Peart, who unfortunately passed away. Right.

Pasqual Zottola [00:38:31]:
But yeah, he an amazing, by the way, a great example of someone who, you know, they called him the professor.

Steve Swan [00:38:39]:
He did.

Pasqual Zottola [00:38:40]:
But he didn't have a lot of formal education. What he did was he strived for self improvement in all areas of his life. And, you know, when they were touring, what did you do on the bus? What he did was he read and he read and he read and he absorbed that and, you know, built his own philosophy around it and created, in my opinion, some of the best lyrics and poetry that any. That any band has. And they've always been a great example. Again, in general, all three of them, Getty, Alex, Neil, are great examples of continuous self improvement. I mean, those guys never stop trying to improve, regardless of where they were in their careers. They never phoned it in.

Pasqual Zottola [00:39:22]:
They never sat back and rested on their laurels. They always tried something new and something better, even in errors. When people now, they're all synthesizers, they're not as rock anymore, but it was something new. They were always trying something new. And it's always been an inspiration for me. I'm a bit of a musician. I'm not classically trained, but I play guitar. I've played drums.

Pasqual Zottola [00:39:42]:
I've been in bands. And regardless of the type of music I play and I listen to all kinds of music, but that's my go to. If you tell me you got to go on a six hour drive, what are you playing? I'm going to start the rush catalog from the first album and just listen all the way through. That's my guilty pleasure.

Steve Swan [00:40:01]:
That's great. That's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. We learned some good stuff today. I really, really, really appreciate it.

Pasqual Zottola [00:40:07]:
I hope so. I hope it was good stuff.

Steve Swan [00:40:09]:
It was. It's really good stuff.

Pasqual Zottola [00:40:11]:
It's good. I'm glad. I'm glad it worked out.

Steve Swan [00:40:15]:
Well, thank you for joining us.