Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate
May 12, 2021
A Conversation with Guillermo Ortiz De Zarate, MBA, Chief Innovation & Information Officer at National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and President at Lineup®
Embrace New Opportunities
Our lives and work are full of uncertainty, and what better proof than the way we have all been navigating a global pandemic. I love the joke going around on the internet about who lead the digital transformation at your company: the CIO, the CEO, or the pandemic? I have never had a problem with uncertainty. In fact, that is where I feel more comfortable and add the most value, but I know not everyone feels the same way. Uncertainty that is clear in your face, like the pandemic, gives you little room to negotiate your risk aversion. You suddenly go into survival mode, and ideas start flowing.
Yet, sometimes, uncertainty is masked, and you see conditions present themselves as assured because of their familiarity. Your perception of the situation may give you a false sense of control of the situation. In those moments, innovation and creativity is muffled because it seems risky to try something new. Riskier than playing it safe.
In truth, there is still uncertainty all around us, and we are far better off embracing it and calling it what it is than choosing to ignore it. Recognizing the things we don’t know can help us focus on new opportunities and manage risks in small bites by taking smaller steps and always advancing to find the next best choice.
Some people are wired to manage risk by identifying what can go wrong and using extra caution when moving forward. This works well in navigating around known and well-defined risks. My brain usually prefers to look at the possibilities first and then train myself to look at the potential pitfalls. Or surround myself with people that are complementary to me. It is my nature. Some people are risk-averse, and their first reaction to a new idea is to see all the reasons why not to try it. I am wired to see the potential opportunities, then work on pathways to lower that risk.
At NCARB, embracing new opportunities allowed us to complete a digital transformation process and become a mature organization that operated in a continuous improvement mode. This transformation has given us credibility and trust from our stakeholders. We are now working hard on pushing the envelope further by democratizing innovation and ideation across the organization. You don’t have to be a higher-up to have an idea considered! Initiatives are not conceived in a closed-door conference room, nor are top-down.
Associations as Information Management Organizations
To find new opportunities, we focus on business needs and business strategy. Associations need to realize that, like NCARB, the core value they provide is information. Associations are large information management organizations. At NCARB, for instance, we use our programs and standards to create a proxy for architectural competence in the form of a record, which is then used by state licensing boards to vet someone’s ability to practice architecture. So, to me, the whole strategy of the organization is about the value chain creation of information. We add value through an information management model where the value chain is how we collect, interpret, and communicate information to the right people, in the right format, and at the right moment.
Professional Associations are similar in the sense that they are selling Information-as-a-Service. These memberships are nothing but subscriptions to information, sometimes in the form of educational content, sometimes in the form of access to opportunities (like a networking event or a job posting). So, when we are thinking about the strategy of our association, we are thinking about how we can provide the most value to our subscribers (or members) who are willing to stay engaged. And pay what they think is appropriate for what they get.
In creating value, I’m not thinking about the actual technology itself. My mind is focused on what the organization needs to achieve, then I think about the value chain necessary to maximize all those opportunities for the best outcome.
One of the things that we sometimes recognize in mapping our value creation is discovering that we miss an opportunity. When we have the knowledge, expertise, capacity, and the team to solve a problem worth solving, we can create the solution.
Early Lessons from a Startup Digital Venture
In the case of Lineup®, our SaaS venture, we recognized an NCARB need that did not have a good solution in the marketplace. We decided to solve it for ourselves! NCARB was going through a complete redesign of all of our programs, and those need the invaluable input of hundreds of volunteer subject-matter experts (SMEs).
The task's complexity required us to be very strategic about the different diversities that we needed to solve these problems. We needed people with certain knowledge, skills, and abilities, with certain perspectives, from different backgrounds, geographies, and experiences. We engaged all of our stakeholders, the volunteers themselves, the staff, the consultants that were helping, and set out to co-create a solution to help us easily curate the perfect teams inspired by the NFL draft. We developed fantastic software that quickly exceeded our expectations and yield streamlined processes, high-performing teams, and happy and engaged volunteers.
We had a feeling we had the potential for a spin-off venture, but we needed to validate if other organizations shared our pain points.
How do you prevent people from immediately rejecting new ideas without much consideration? The bigger the idea, the easier it is to be dismissed. So, how do we deal with that resistance to innovation? My approach is to work from my circle of control outwards. There is always a domain, be it an initiative, a project, a process, or even a task, that we control. Within that domain, what assumptions am I making that need to be true for the idea to be valid, and what can I do to validate those assumptions quickly and without spending too many resources.
In the case of Lineup, I was fortunate to be finishing my MBA at Johns Hopkins and lined up (see what I did there?) some strategic classes for my last semester that helped me refine the venture concept. I showed my classmates some screenshots and a simple pitch of the value proposition of our internal tool and got a wonderful initial reaction. We worked on the concept as a class project, and the outcome was the foundation for a formal pitch.
At the same time, I attended the ASAE Annual Conference and introduced the concept and idea to my peers, receiving great initial reactions to our existing software. I approached one of the most prominent AMS companies on the exhibit floor and arranged for a meeting to show them the software presenting it as a potential module/add-on for them. The response was great, and we had follow-up meetings with their CEO to discuss the potential next steps.
Here is the catch: I did not have a market-ready software that was domain-agnostic and ready for subscribers. I had an idea based on a proprietary tool that could not be adapted for other clients and needed to be rewritten. Was there risk associated with showing a half-baked solution to my peers and the AMS company? Yes, but the risk was far smaller than jumping on an initiative to create a product that I had no evidence people even wanted.
We all realized there that the process of making the software ready for the marketplace would demand rewriting it from scratch. So, we backed off to do more validation that the idea addressed a problem worth solving.
With this information, I put together a formal pitch to my CEO, who was intrigued and invited me to present to the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors and later to the full Board. The Board voted to fund the initiative, and we then met with the Association Ventures team, who helped us with more research, outside validation, and business model advice. Even with funding available, we did not write a single line of code for another 6 months, making sure to take our time to validate assumptions and understand the opportunity.
Take Smart Risks with Co-Creation, Iterative Design
Our very first client for Lineup signed up to use the tool within nine months when it was still a pretty embarrassing first release. We still have that loyal client with us, and they have seen the platform grow in strides ever since. But that growth happened gradually and through informed collaborations to prioritize the feature rollouts to maximize our clients’ needs and enhance our opportunities for new sales.
We learned not to create this big product within a waterfall process and try to make it perfect before release. I cannot imagine the risk we would have taken if we did not release to our clients early and often, allowing for an extremely short cycle of feedback. We were willing to take risks, get to a customer who wanted the solution, and then co-create the next version with the customer. We were living in the real world and making adaptations, iterating along the way, seeing a limitation of the product, and improving it. By the time we got the second and third, and fourth client, the richness of the feedback also multiplied, and so did our ability to deliver value that was meaningful.
Going into an entrepreneurial venture has been a rollercoaster ride. There have been moments where I felt we were definitely going to conquer the world, only to not feel so sure the very next day. It takes patience and help from many people. The Association Ventures team and others helped with a constant flow of information, sharing the good and the bad news.
After three years of presenting updates to the Board-our investors- I learned that the iterative approach convinced them that I never claimed to have all of the answers. I was always transparent from the very beginning about the assumptions we were making and how we were planning on validating them. Yes, we are taking a risk, and we are taking the risk in small bites, evaluating whether to persevere or pivot along the way and maximizing our opportunities.
Empower Staff Talent
A crucial part of embracing new opportunities and building new products is making the best use of talent. I enjoy helping people through mentorship and coaching to find the best use of their abilities and give meaning to their careers. It is like being a sports coach that finds someone for the right position in the team where they might go from struggling and not having fun to being a star player. Since I’m naturally high-energy and excited by new opportunities, I surround myself with people that help me see possibilities and keep those risks in check. There is nothing more energizing for me than bringing people together to create something.
I believe that high-performing teams are those where the individuals do what they do best most of the time, and hopefully, have fun while doing it! There’s power in having fun and loving what you do that usually comes when people can have mastery and autonomy over their work and collaborate with other empowered team members to create something they align with.