Ep. 22: Amy Vetter - Work-Life Balance with Technology & Innovation

Contact Amy:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyvettercpa/
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram - @amyvettercpa
Email - info@amyvetter.com
http://www.amyvetter.com


Disconnect to Connect: The Path to Work-Life
Harmony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1WYlK-gUME#action=share


Breaking Beliefs Podcast:
https://www.amyvetter.com/breakingbeliefspodcast



FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:03)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. Make sure you send us
an email and let us know what questions you'd like our experts to
answer so we can continue providing you with the information you
need to advance your career. One of the biggest questions, not
just in accounting but across the business world, is about
technology. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I'm joined by my
cohost, Adam Larson, who spoke with Amy Vetter about the impact
of technology and how it can be used to create a better work life
balance. Amy is the CEO of the B3 method Institute and a
professional keynote speaker on being mindful with technology
disruption and this episode, Amy shares her mindful leadership
strategies and discusses the importance of implementing
technology the right way. Adam, what is Amy's business balance
and bliss all about? 


 


Adam: (00:57)


Great question, Mitch. Amy's whole message is that you can
transform your career and your life by being mindful with
technology and utilizing successful leadership strategies. In our
conversations, she emphasizes the importance of leading by
example and engaging in the process, not trying to be perfect all
the time and allowing individuals to be innovative to maximize
the team's potential. As an award winning accomplished C level
executive and board member, Amy strives to inspire a culture of
mindfulness when utilizing technology and in an environment of
innovation and collaboration. Let's listen to how we can create a
better work life balance. 


 


Adam: (01:34)


How can technology be used properly to not only improve business
efficiencies, but also create a better work life balance? 


 


Amy: (01:47)


When you're thinking about putting technology in place, it's
important to step back from the whole process of digital
automation and understand what your goals are. Because many
people just go about where they hear about a certain software or
are trying to rush ahead in technology implementation and don't
really understand the why behind what they're doing and why
they're putting it into their business. So first off, it's really
important to understand why you want to put certain communication
tools in your business. And so when you talk about technology,
that could be a distraction that can be where we set up instant
messaging And then there's email and then there's some people use
like Microsoft teams or Slack for communication as well as just
our regular texting and phone call and people walking into
offices. And the thing is when we're putting all this technology
in place, if we don't start thinking about the human experience
as we're going through the implementation, we can actually create
more stress rather than less. So think about what you were using
each of those technologies for. So if you're trying to put in
communication tools so that people a can easily communicate no
matter where they are, if they're remote, different geographic
locations and so forth, make sure to define what each is used
for. So if it's a Slack or Microsoft teams, what kind of
communication are you doing in there versus instant messaging
versus email versus texting? Because what you don't want to
happen is someone in the workplace feeling like they don't know
which one you're checking. So now they have to send four
different messages to four different places. So that they catch
you, which then creates more stress for everybody because then
you're checking all of those things. Now when we talk about work
life balance with technology, if implemented correctly, it really
can create that freedoms so that you can be doing what you need
to do personally or with your family because you have the right
technology in place and because you've put parameters around that
technology as well. But it's also again, putting guardrails
around how communication happens. So I'll give you an example,
you know, I'm a CPA and when I was a CPA firm partner, you know,
you're working a ton of hours. And what would happen in my day is
I was out at clients all day long and then I'd get home, do
dinner and spend time with the kids and then I'd start working
again and get my own work done. So that might start at eight
o'clock at night. And what I didn't realize was when I was
sending emails at eight o'clock at night, I was stressing out my
staff and the people around me because they thought, which I
didn't realize at the time that they needed to respond to me at
eight o'clock at night and I never had that intention. But again,
this is where the human side needs to coincide with technology
where one day I heard the staff making a joke about the eight
o'clock emails. Then I went over to them and said, are you
talking about the emails that I send? And they said, yeah, and I
said, so you realize I don't expect you to answer those emails at
eight o'clock at night. And they were feeling the stress that
they needed to. That was just the time I could work. Now the way
technology is set up today, if we use properly, if you are doing
your work at eight o'clock at night, you can set it and schedule
those emails to go out in the morning so that you aren't creating
an experience for someone else that could be stressful even if
it's unintentional. But use the technology so that everyone's got
their guard rails between work and home life and their personal
life. And you set up the technology with the parameters around
communication and how you work so that everyone has the freedom
to get away from work when they need to. 


 


Adam: (06:32)


So then how should people view technology? Should there be
different goals for learning new technologies in your career
versus in your personal life? 


 


Amy: (06:41)


Technology is definitely not going to go away. So the truth is
that whatever we learn today is going to continue to change. What
used to happen in our businesses was we'd select software and
that would be good for 20 years or so. But now this is a constant
learning process and we really need to be open to just the play
of it and being innovative with it to find out where it can help
us in our career, but also in our personal life, make things more
efficient. I can use an example. You know, my oldest son just
went to college and you know, experiencing my son moving out was
definitely an emotional time. But then in my personal life was
able to discover this app called Marco polo. And we got on as a
family and it's video messaging between each other. And so at
anytime, even if we can't connect on the phone or all available
at the same time, we're having a personal connection through
these video messages that have actually been pretty hilarious.
But I'm also seeing the new things he's doing as well. And that's
what I mean about play, that this doesn't always have to be so
serious. This is about how do you utilize this technology to
enhance your career and your life and make sure you're having...