David C. Williams of Automation: Why Proactively Finding Something Broken and Fixing It Is the Ultimate Career Advancement Strategy

As a part of my series about “Lessons From Inspirational Black Men In Tech”, I had the pleasure of interviewing David C. Williams, Assistant Vice President of Automation.

David is the 2021 Black Engineer of the Year LEGACY Award recipient for his phenomenal innovations during the US COVID outbreak. He also hosts monthly solar-robot workshops in under-served communities, gifting 100s of solar robots to students. He is also soon releasing his first book, Business Model which is one the first books ever released with it’s own cryptocurrency offering.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Ever hear of making a dollar from 15 cents? That’s a 600% return on investment. That ability to make a way out of no way, is a mantra that I & many others have lived for the better portion of our early life. It’s also a transferrable skill, that when leveraged in our professions gives us an advantage to become successful. My story is the story of an Anomaly. And I am not alone.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

Internally, we had a small program called Not-so-undercover-boss. All senior leaders would meet with a customer-facing employee to experience the processes & difficulties they might face. I was selected to be paired with our Chairman, Randall Stephenson. His staffers did everything to plan a successful interaction, but God had a different plan. The customer had an outage at a major facility the night before. All the scheduled customer touchpoints cancelled, a couple hours before we met. Long story short, Randall observed me fighting fires, solving problems in real-time, & pushing a product called wireless-backup, which means your Wi-Fi never goes down. That product became a very hot topic after that day. Another blessing is while walking to my cubicle, I introduced Randall to a peer. She was in a very tough spot in her career, and Randall saved her job. Wow.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Somewhere in the beginning of my career, I had about 7–8 mentors who were officers that worked in the company. They happened to all be Caucasian, former military, bald, and no facial hair. So, in my naivety I thought there was some correlation to no facial hair & climbing the corporate ladder… so I shaved my mustache, beard, & head. Yeah… that was a funny sight. I tell this story in every mentor circle I lead because I want the proteges to know, that everything you try won’t work, but you must be willing to change, if you want to succeed.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

Plenty of times I felt like giving up. During those times I look back at the Footprints in the sand & remember that my God has carried me in the worst of times. I’ve survived near-death experiences, fractured spine, father-suicide, & more. I remember once a leader & mentor of mine told me I look too young to be promoted. I can’t fight that battle. God’s proof of bringing me this far, confirms that what He has for you, no one can take from you. Stay positive.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I remember having a Jerry MacGuire moment and had this idea to solve a very expensive business problem. I was projecting a 12x ROI. For whatever reasons, external factors, internal perspectives, I couldn’t attain funding to proceed. For a year I tried, never giving up. My long-time mentor, Mo Katibeh, who worked in different group found funding for me. The project yielded a 23x ROI with several 100s of millions in contra-revenue. Mo always says, “if you really believe in (& know) what you’re doing, have the courage to keep climbing.” I love him for that.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I love quotes. One I share often with people interested in career advancement is this, “Proactively, go find something broken & fix it.” If you do this you will go above & beyond, your resume will shine more, your experience will be broader & deeper, and you will be viewed as a

servant & inherent leader.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The United States is currently facing a very important self-reckoning about race, diversity, equality and inclusion. This is of course a huge topic. But briefly, can you share your view on how this crisis inexorably evolved to the boiling point that it’s at now?

A house divided cannot stand. This is true in a family, company, & country.

Are our behaviors & actions demonstrating The UNITED States? Or The Contiguous States.

We are so much more alike than different, but “contrast” sells and acquires more views, and higher TV ratings, and more Radio listeners than something less controversial as “complimenting” each other.

If we bring our best self to each day, then we are in the #1 position of our life, which is great!

But when we then combine with others, 1 (and) 1 is 11. This is how we become exponentially great. Combining, collaborating, & complimenting is something we need more of “within” races and “across” ethic lines.

This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have a diverse executive team?

I lead the largest Robotics Process Automation program in the world. Last year alone, we automated 70M+ transactions, create several 100s of millions of in savings/impact, & operate with a 3,000% ROI. My team consists of black men & women, Hispanic men/women, Asian, Asian Indian, LGBTQ, people living with disabilities, veterans, etc. They have varied backgrounds, but most do not have a traditional STEM background. How are we able to achieve these results… one word — DIVERSITY. Proof is in the pudding.

Let’s zoom out a bit and talk in more broad terms. It’s hard to be satisfied with the status quo regarding Black Men in Tech leadership. What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

This is a very simple equation to me. The key to success for a group of people is a 2-step process. Align & Stick together; and like logs in a raft, we all can float up out our situation and literally walk on water. Internally black people have more alignment to strive for. And when things get rough, we must learn to stick together vs point fingers & bashing. There are many ethnicities that have a smaller population, or less total GDP impact, etc, and still have made lots of progress. We own this issue. I would be curious to see how many Black Men have hired/promoted black men; and picking our friends/classmates don’t count. Helping people outside of our circle, is how the circle gets bigger. We can’t continue being 1988 School Daze judgmental.

We’d now love to learn a bit about your company. What is the pain point that your company is helping to address?

My firm is focusing our charitable giving & discretionary internal involvement towards addressing the Digital Divide. There are massive plans & actions to partner with school districts across the US & the federal government to extend broadband access to many in need. Digital literacy is also a focus of our Sustainability organization.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our belief makes us stand out. I’ll share a story that probably goes unnoticed. A while back, we appointed a CEO & Chairman, who had recently been CFO. A couple months into the role, after a press conference someone asked what was his outlook on the economy. He casually said I think housing may depreciate. This was unheard of. Housing had appreciated for 39 years. We took a hit on wall street that day. Later that year in July, (based on that same belief) we sold our real-estate. As the 2nd largest real-estate owner in the US, that’s a big deal. Two months later the Great Recession hit, and we wound up on the better side of the circumstance. Know your core beliefs & act them.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Outside of AT&T, I just completed a patent filing/approval for new Mobile Advertising technology. This will offer small businesses affordable advertising with meaningful results, and enable a new uber-like platform for people to earn passive income.

My book, Business Model, will have it’s own cryptocurrency (ANOMALYcrypto.com) associated, and each purchase of the book will also receive shares of the cryptocurrency. Hopefully this helps others work their way into the ever-growing crypto market. The book accounts for my journey from my father’s suicide to the Black Engineer of the Year conference/award.

What would you advise to another tech leader who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill. From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth or sales and “restart their engines”?

If it’s not working, don’t keep doing the same thing. Try something different, up to and including praying first. It certainly removed stumbling blocks from my path. Don’t try to change people. They are who they are, until they are ready to be different; so are you. Change yourself. Connect with like-minded people. Be open when they don’t look like you.

Do you have any advice about how companies can create very high performing sales teams?

Years ago, I worked on the Yum Brands account. They are the parent company to Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, & KFC. My role was to ensure their networking installations went smoothly. Upon joining the team, the CIO of Yum said, “ David, in the midst of all this technology, all I want is to be a lean mean pizza selling machine.” That is something every Sales or Tech team needs to keep as their North Star. It’s not about what tech you can sell someone. It’s about how well you can solve their problems (with or without technology). Lou Gerstner was one of the best at this.

In your specific industry what methods have you found to be most effective in order to find and attract the right customers? Can you share any stories or examples?

Keep it simple & know the customer’s business. I’ve seen customers ready to buy 5 minutes into the meeting, and sellers continue talking for 45 minutes, with no sale to close. Don’t wow them with technical prowess. The customer is the wow! They have a complex problem and have invited you into a vulnerable moment with them to solve that issue. No one wants a surgeon that confuses them with jargon. They want to know are they going to be healthy, how long is the operation, and the specifics (if they ask).

Based on your experience, can you share 3 or 4 strategies to give your customers the best possible user experience and customer service?

Keep this in mind… many would guess the automation in Tony Stark’s home costs $50M. When in actuality, an Alexa & a thousand bucks can get you 85% of the way there. There’s more than one way to get something done. This is when that dollar-from-15 cents transferrable super-power comes in handy. The cheaper we find solutions, the more competitive the company will be. If companies “insist” on expensive solutions (perhaps because they are not open to new technologies) then the competition will erode at their EPS & market share.

Simplicity is the highest form of sophistication. This is a reality that applies to everything. Whatever your process is, there’s a very strong chance it could be simpler. Proactively go find something broken(inefficient) & fix (optimize) it.

When problem-solving, allegiance to any one technology or application is a fatal flaw. When making a cake, the baker, the customer, & the cake are important. The tech (things) used to make the cake… don’t lock yourself into only one option.

As you likely know, this HBR article demonstrates that studies have shown that retaining customers can be far more lucrative than finding new ones. Do you use any specific initiatives to limit customer attrition or customer churn? Can you share some of your advice from your experience about how to limit customer churn?

Pre-covid, I would bring/save an extra chair in a meeting; to represent the customer. At times, internal agendas/objectives can impede reaching the best customer’s experience. Keep the customer’s perspective very close. Lastly, meet the customer where they are. If you don’t the competition will.

Here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful tech company? Please share a story or an example for each.

(1) You can teach Tech, but you cannot teach Passion.

The Navy Seal Team Six selects it’s best of the best of the best, based on Trust & Performance. They prefer High Trust & Medium performance over High Performance & Medium Trust. Fear leads to unhealthy competition. Trust leads to collaboration.

(2) If you do not believe more than 100% about what you are doing… do something else. My team created a system that we call, The Mountain. It tracks our work. Every day we work to move the mountain (figuratively). When the mountain pushes back, we add more hands/people to push the effort forward. We ALL know our greatest strength is each other. Therefore when “we” command the mountain to move… it moves.

(3) Everyone has a superhero inside of them. Encourage & incent that hero coming to the rescue. Everyone on my team has a hero name. There’s Joe’bi Wan Kenobi, Burn Rubber Reber, Neo, I’m Optimis’tic Prime, & so on. I encourage all of them to be as quirky, cool, swaggy, or nerdy as they want to be… all day long while they fly around the company solving problems. My job is to find mountains (objectives) worthy of their talents & remove any stumbling blocks from their path… so they can be heroic all day, every day.

(4) Every significant automation/solution must have a story. I could go into extremely deep depths about the technical components of what we develop, but what is most important, is the

story all those technical components create. This is how funding, approvals, & growth are made available. Every quarter, each corporation shares their results. But to the Wall Street analysts, the question they all have is… what story does this tell.

(5) Everyone loves you until you become the competition. Major airline companies are great at transporting people across a state, country, or globe. However, not many can deliver your tacos in 20 minutes. Or transport you from northern Los Angeles to southern Los Angeles in 20 minutes.

One is better at somethings than the other.

Internally, you have to anticipate that traditional ways of developing software will be unfamiliar to new strategies & methods. Try to bring them along. Show them you are better working together… but don’t stop serving the customer/-facing employees.

Wonderful. We are nearly done. Here are the final “meaty” questions of our discussion. You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

ANOMALIES MATTER TOO.

There are NFL players retiring & becoming doctors.

Gymnasts leading successful businesses.

Never allow anyone to limit you.

Michaela dePrince, now world-renowned ballerina, was once an orphan in a civil war & stabbed with a machete. Who knew a Canadian, Jewish, child-actor would be artist of the decade (Drake). Or could foresee one of the greatest writers of our era coming from Marcy projects (Jay-Z).

Anomalies are rising, aligning, & coming together. As momentum builds, success becomes inevitable.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I am a huge fan of Viola Davis & Carla Harris. It would be a dream come true to meet them. Until then, there’s more work to do.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!