Vasion Chief Strategy Officer JD Carter on Building a responsive brand

Summary

The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® — Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX

Episode: Vasion Chief Strategy Officer JD Carter on Building a Responsive Brand

Date: June 5, 2026
Guest: JD Carter, Chief Strategy Officer, Vasion
Host: Greg Kihlström

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on building a responsive and resilient brand amid rapid market and technological change. Host Greg Kihlström interviews JD Carter, Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion, about how brands—and specifically CSOs—can adapt strategy, leverage AI, break down data silos, and embed a customer-first mindset for sustainable business value. The conversation is practical and candid, offering both high-level frameworks and actionable tactics for organizational agility.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Navigating External Pressures and Building Strategic Resilience

[03:42]

• Continuous Assessment:
  The pace of change (e.g., AI proliferation, geopolitical and economic shifts) now requires ongoing, not periodic, strategic review.
• Shortened Review Cycles:
  Vasion has moved to faster cycles of strategy assessment—“really stress testing our assumptions and gathering data in a much faster way” (JD Carter, 04:30).
• Resilience Over Reactivity:
  “It’s not about being reactionary, it’s really about being resilient and building a strategic resilience around understanding what’s going on and how we can alter our strategies based upon those external factors.” — JD Carter [05:02]

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2. Balancing Long-Term Vision with Near-Term Action

[05:44]

• Portfolio Approach to Strategic Investment:
  • 70%: Evolving and defending the core business
  • 20%: Building adjacent/expanded platform capabilities
  • 10%: Exploratory “moonshot” innovation
• Agility for Bootstrapped Companies:
  Without the luxury of long-term, high-risk bets, constant balancing and prioritization are essential.

“What we really try to do is create horizons, time horizons in our portfolio of investments...” — JD Carter [06:00]

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3. Leveraging and Operationalizing AI—Readiness and Maturity

[07:41]

• AI Readiness Is Crucial:
  Assess foundational data maturity before chasing AI use-cases.

“Most companies are trying to transform into AI before they’ve got the foundation in place... have I digitized and centralized all of my data and documents?” — JD Carter [07:50]

• Maturity Ladder:
  • Digitize data/documents
  • Clean and structure data
  • Automate, normalize, and implement data governance
  • Only then, roll out AI at scale
• Rushing Skips Critical Steps:
  “The problem is you’re not actually going to get the promise of these AI solutions if you don’t have all of that context in your organization for it to pull from.” — JD Carter [09:03]
• AI Exacerbates Data Silos:
  AI also generates more “net new data” which can compound fragmentation without proper organizational context. [09:46]

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4. Major Technology Trends Impacting Brand and Strategy

[10:28]

• Cloud-Native Maturation:
  Shift from on-prem to SaaS in large platforms (ERPs, EMRs) leaves market gaps for solution providers.
• API-First and Composable Architectures:
  Siloed SaaS adoption in HR, sales, etc., makes seamless, cross-functional workflow integration a top priority.

“Being able to create seamless end to end workflow across all of these systems is another really big trend...” — JD Carter [11:30]

• Agentic Systems:
  Transition from “tools that assist humans” to technologies that autonomously execute multi-step workflows.
• Adoption Pace Depends on Market Ecosystem, Not Just Internal Readiness.

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5. Addressing Data Silos and Enabling Intelligent Integration

[13:54]

• Siloed Data Degrades AI and Workflow Potential:
  Disparate, unintegrated data is “almost like bad data, almost, because it’s incomplete data.” — JD Carter [14:00]
• Integration Drives Both AI and Manual Efficiency:
  “What the promise of AI is, is to gain efficiencies. Well, there’s other efficiencies... by knocking down those silos and starting to truly integrate those applications together...” — JD Carter [14:55]

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6. Embedding Customer and Partner Centricity

[17:34]

• From Slogan to Operational Reality:
  Vasion’s mantra: “We build with, not for.”

“Customer first is not just a marketing slogan. It has to be operationalized. The way we operationalize it is through customer advisory boards... regular one-on-one conversations... even live in-person engagement...” — JD Carter [17:45]

• Voice of Customer in Everything:
  Direct customer feedback flows into product, support, pricing, and strategic decisions—making customer perspective “part of who you are in your DNA.”
• Partner Alignment:
  Shared customer-centric values are non-negotiable for strategic partnerships.

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7. Balancing Customer Insight and Data Privacy

[20:14]

• Trust and Privacy Are Fundamental:
  “There’s nothing harder to recover from than losing trust.”
• Transparency and Reciprocity:
  • Be clear about data usage.
  • Provide value in exchange for data.
• Certification and Compliance:
  Vasion demonstrates commitment through third-party privacy certifications (e.g., FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO).

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8. Translating Strategy into Tangible Results

[22:28]

• MAPs (Missions of Aspirational Performance):
  Vasion’s customized approach, blending OKRs with the company’s vision/values, ensures strategy is operationalized.
• Bottoms-Up Collaboration:
  Leaders identify missions, then teams collectively devise supporting cross-functional initiatives.

“It’s all about...clarity on the mission ... accountability ... regular check-ins ... and being willing to reprioritize as new information arises.” — JD Carter [23:11]

• Planned Responsiveness:
  Built-in cycles for reassessment and pivoting, supporting “planned responsiveness, not reactivity.” [25:14]
• Empowered Decision-Making:
  Employees have “safety to fail” and can suggest or execute changes as required by evolving circumstances.

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9. Continuous Learning as a Leadership Imperative

[27:02]

• JD Carter’s Learning Framework:
  • Formal learning (reading, podcasts)
  • Informal (industry discussions, peer groups)
  • Teaching others (sharing and deploying new ideas)
  • Practical application (immediate experimentation)

“If you’re not building these learning moments into your day, then you’re going to eventually come to a crossroads...” — JD Carter [28:16]

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Notable Quotes

• “Strategy used to happen... quarterly or annually, but now it’s much more of a continuous assessment process.” — JD Carter [03:52]
• “We build with, not for.” — JD Carter [17:45]
• “You don’t ever want to lose trust with your customer. There’s nothing harder to recover from than losing trust.” — JD Carter [20:20]
• “If you aren’t able to translate that strategy into the task where that gap exists, then you’re not going to obviously accomplish what you’re trying to do as an organization.” — JD Carter [22:28]
• “It’s not about perfection, it’s about really tight alignment and making necessary adjustments...” — JD Carter [24:30]
• “Continuous learning is super important... as I organize my time, I really kind of bucket my learning into a couple of different types...” — JD Carter [27:02]

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Key Timestamps

• 03:42 — How strategy processes have evolved amid volatility
• 05:44 — Balancing short-term and long-term strategy
• 07:41 — Steps to true AI readiness, avoiding hype pitfalls
• 10:28 — Top technology trends impacting brand strategy
• 13:54 — AI and operational efficiency: the challenge of data silos
• 17:34 — True customer-centricity and operationalizing the “voice of the customer”
• 20:14 — Balancing data-driven insight with privacy and trust
• 22:28 — Turning strategy into action using the MAPs framework
• 25:14 — Agile execution and continuous reassessment
• 27:02 — Continuous learning as a foundation for personal and organizational agility

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Memorable Moments

• JD describes Vasion’s unique blend of mature strategy frameworks (OKRs) with their own company values, making “MAPs” a cultural mainstay.
• The recurring theme of not just claiming, but living a customer-first mentality through advisory boards and 1:1 feedback loops.
• Candid advice on AI adoption: “Don’t skip steps—AI without foundational data disciplines is a recipe for disappointment.”
• Emphasis on empowered, bi-directional organizational change: “It’s safe to fail—and safe to pivot.”
• Closing reflections on the necessity—and practice—of daily, lifelong learning as a business leader.

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Conclusion:

This episode delivers rich, actionable guidance for brand leaders, strategy officers, and digital transformation teams. It blends practical examples from Vasion’s journey with deep industry insight, especially around AI adoption, data integration, and operationalized customer centricity. JD Carter’s advice is both strategic and refreshingly down-to-earth—offering clear frameworks, memorable aphorisms, and a playbook for building a truly responsive brand.

Transcript

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[J.D. Carter]

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[Greg Kilstrom]

Hi, I'm Greg Hillstrom, host of the Agile Brand, and here's a question for

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

you to keep up in a changing market.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Are you building a responsive brand or are you constantly playing catch up? Agility requires more than just quick reactions.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

It demands a proactive understanding of evolving

[Greg Kilstrom]

customer needs and emerging technologies. It also means building adaptable processes and systems that can flex with market demands. Today we're going to talk about navigating the complexities of business strategy in a world of constant disruption.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Specifically, we're going to talk about how

[Greg Kilstrom]

chief Strategy officers can balance long term vision with the need for near term

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

execution, particularly in the face of external pressures like economic shifts, competitive dynamics, and

[Greg Kilstrom]

the transformative power of technologies like AI. Welcome to season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on expert mode, martech, AI and customer experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. Again, I'm your host Greg Kilstrom and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of MarTech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or follow to make sure

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

you always get the latest episodes and

[Greg Kilstrom]

leave us a rating so others can

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

find us as well.

[Greg Kilstrom]

And make sure you check out our sponsor Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world adoption. For more information go to techsystems.com now let's dive in. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome J.D. carter, chief strategy officer at Vasion. J.D. welcome to the show.

[J.D. Carter]

Hi Greg, thanks for having me.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at Bayesian?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah So I'm the Chief Strategy Officer and chief of Staff here at Bayesian and We're a global SaaS company that provides a solution that helps customers to be able to really tame the chaos of document heavy workflows through leveraging intelligent automation around print and documents.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Great, great.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Well, yeah, let's dive in here and we're going to talk about a few things, but I want to start by, let's start with one of the things I teed up in the intro and navigating the external pressures. Certainly there are unique ones right now, but things change and new ones seem to pop up as well. So we're seeing volatility in the global landscape. Everything from, you know, there's geopolitical instability, supply chain, economic, other economic factors. How can a chief strategy officer effectively factor these external pressures, as well as unknown or unforeseen ones into strategic planning processes?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, it's a great question and I think one of the things that it really stands out for me right now, especially as AI has become more prevalent, there's things are changing very rapidly. And so what's changed is that strategy used to happen, you'd revisit it quarterly or annually, but now it's much more of a continuous assessment process. So all these external volatilities that you described doesn't necessarily fundamentally change the role of a cso. We've always monitored markets, geopolitical things, technology shifts, but that cadence by which we have to monitor and assess has increased dramatically. And so what we've done at vayesion is we've started to really shorten our strategy review cycles. So not rewriting our strategic playbook every month or anything like that, but we're really stress testing our assumptions and gathering data in a much faster way that helps us to understand if the, the strategies are playing out in the way that we'd anticipated and if there's opportunities to either enhance or shift those strategies to meet the changing demands around us. Right. And so I think that as we look at it, it's not about being reactionary, it's really about being resilient and building a strategic resilience around understanding what's going on and how we can alter our strategies based upon those external factors.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, well, and that resilience is also, I assume, is based on balancing there's long term objectives which to your point, you're not going to pivot every quarter and change long term strategy. But then there's things like short term cost optimization and other things that need to be balanced with those longer Term investments. How do you look at balancing those again with all this uncertainty as well? Kind of under align it.

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah. So for us, we're, we're a bootstrap company. And because of that we don't have the luxury of, you know, stopping and betting the farm on a five year moonshot. Like we've got to really work on balancing short term versus long term investment. And so the way I think about it, it's kind of like a portfolio. Right. You need to be investing wisely and diversifying that. And so what we really try to do is we create horizons, time horizons in our portfolio of investments. So 70% of what we do really goes to what I call drive and evolve the core business. It's defending against the existing competitive landscape while building out and evolving our core. And then 20% of it is into building additional platform capabilities, so extending beyond where we are today to open up new markets for ourselves. And then 10% of it is kind of that exploratory, big time, you know, moonshot thinking technologies on how we can bring those into to the platform as well. And so I think with that diversified approach, it allows you to really focus on what you do well, expanding where there is adjacent opportunity is very readily identifiable and then still creating room to invest into the long term strategy as well.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

And so I know a lot of companies are looking at some of their investments involving AI. Certainly we talk a lot about that on the show as well. And so it's definitely having, there's some hype for sure, but it's also having a meaningful and tangible impact on a lot of businesses. What advice do you have for other chief strategy officers who are trying to determine the right strategic approach to utilize AI in their, in their organization? You know, how do they avoid getting caught up in all of that hype while still capitalizing on the real opportunities?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, no, this is a big one right now because the hype is real. There's a lot going on in AI, but the first thing I tell other CSOs when I'm talking to them is like, before you assess what AI use cases to go after, it's, it's really important that you assess your AI readiness as an organization because most companies are trying to transform into AI before they've got the foundation in place. And there's really like this maturity ladder that you have to build as an organization to understand like, all right, have I digitized and centralized all of my data and documents? Because we all understand the power of AI comes from the context and the data underneath the models. Right. So once you've been able to digitize all of that and then you clean and structure that data, that really puts you in a place where you can identify, well, what's happening in the organization in a repetitive way and we can start to automate some of that data capture and that workflow. And once you've done that, then that really puts you in an operational place where you can create interoperability across your systems to now normalize the data across that. And once you've done that, now you can implement governance across those pieces, which puts you in a really strong position to, to start to leverage AI into your organizations. And I think that a lot of companies, because of the urgency of AI, they're trying to jump and skip some of these steps. But the problem is it puts you in a really bad situation because you're not actually going to get the promise of these AI solutions if you don't have all of that context in your organization for it to pull from.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Right, right. Well, and those were things that probably were always issues, right? I mean, data, data, you know, fragmentation and silos and all that stuff, you know, they were, they were always an issue. But I think to your point, AI is just exacerbating that, right? I mean, there's, you know, because everybody's racing to skip ahead, you know, to your other point, they're quickly finding that they didn't have the right foundation in place in the first place. Right?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, yep. And to your point, AI is proliferating that problem because it's creating so much more net new data that doesn't have the context and it's almost starting to build on itself while missing that foundational understanding of the organization and the existing data. So it's definitely a problem people are trying to figure out how do we solve this ahead of truly rolling out what I would consider like applied AI in mass to really gain the value.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And from, from a technology standpoint, what else are you seeing that really has the potential to significantly impact business strategy in the, in the years ahead?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, so the things that I watch closely are, number one, like this continued maturation of cloud native architectures, specifically the shifts we're seeing from on prem to SaaS around large scale applications like ERPS and EMRs. What that's doing is that's creating a massive gap in the marketplace. And one of the things that, as we look at our strategy, it's, it's what is happening inside of our customers where we can go and help them transition or that we can help them on their journey to fill those gaps. And this is one of those areas where because we handle all that legacy on prem print infrastructure, but we do it from the cloud. Our customers as they start to shift into these cloud based solutions, it's a natural progression for them. And so that's one thing that I watch very closely is where are things happening from a cloud maturation perspective and how are things being shifted to the cloud in a SaaS native way versus just lifting and shifting old technologies. Another one is this API first and composable architectures. So you see a lot of these companies where they have fragmented operations, where you have SaaS applications that have been selected by HR and another one's been selected by accounting and another one for sales and another one for marketing. But those aren't actually working together seamlessly. And so being able to create seamless end to end workflow across all of these systems is another really big trend that we're seeing right now. And what that's doing is it's actually pulling in the technology groups into operations where historically operations kind of was running independent. Now we're seeing a lot of mandates come down saying no technology needs to be involved in our operational decisions to make sure that we're leveraging that technology to build the best of breed solution that works across the organization, not in these silos. And the last one is Agentix systems. Like that's everywhere going on all the time. And it's really I think a big piece because it's moving away from what was viewed as like a tool to assist humans into a technology that can now start to work independently and execute multi step workflows autonomously for us. And that's another one that I think is a really important thing for us to be monitoring. And we continually are looking at it, but it's all about how quickly can we actually adopt these technologies. And a lot of times it's not dependent on the organization themselves. It on depends, it's dependent upon the suppliers. Is it dependent upon the market? And so as we're watching this, we're able to help provide assistance to our customers on how they can move forward in any one of these three different areas.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, well and to that point, I mean particularly the second item, the kind of fragmented systems, do you think that that's also being, I mean there's been silos within organizations for ever since there were organizations. But, but do you think that's another one of these things that's just, it's AI and the needs you know, AI works better with more good data and so more diverse data, all that kind of stuff too. So is, is that just being kind of brought to the forefront again because of these AI needs, just, you know, all that fragmentation?

[J.D. Carter]

Yes, 100%. Right. Like if we're siloing our data in these third party app, in all of these disparate applications and not allowing it to be able to be surfaced to the collective model, then it creates, it's almost like bad data, almost, because it's incomplete data. And so there's this big push to be able to gain access to this data, structure the data and make it accessible for AI. But I also think that there's another ancillary benefit of doing this. It's how do we connect these systems together so that they start to operate and orchestrate across the systems versus operating independently. Because even that alone, when you're operating multiple systems independently, it requires manual work. And really what the promise of AI is is to gain efficiencies. Well, there's other efficiencies from deterministic type workflows that you can gain as well by knocking down those silos and starting to truly integrate those applications together to be able to build end to end workflow. And so I think that AI is not only pressing this need, but the idea and concept around efficiency is starting to spark and say, how do we do this all the way down and even at a baseline workflow level that can then build itself into where AI can leverage those applications seamlessly as well.

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[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So I want to talk about this also. We've been talking quite a bit about the internal operations and aspects of this. I want to talk about this from the external so the customer and the partner views of this as well. And so you know, and you've certainly said, mentioned the importance of having a customer and a partner first mindset. How can a, how can a chief strategy officer ensure that a philosophy like that is truly embedded within an organization and not just, you know, something we

[J.D. Carter]

say, yeah, I think that's a big one because everybody claims to be customer first and partner first, right? But how do you act and behave? And I think where the CSO can play a big role in this is helping to set the strategy that dictates the actual tactical execution. And what I mean by that is we've created a mantra here where it's like at Vasion, we build with not for right. And when you think about that, it fundamentally changes how you listen. Right? Like customer first is not just a marketing slogan. It has to be operationalized. And the way we operationalize it is through customer advisory boards that are actually influencing the roadmap. Regular one on one conversations. Not just high level surveys, but actual conversations through customer success, through product, even live in person engagement, right. Scheduling time when in the field or at events and trade shows. Being able to have that one on one time with customers to have that actual voice of customer coming to you. And then how do you take that voice of customer data and, and flow that into every part of the business. Not just pricing and packaging but feature prioritization, the support structure on how you're supporting the customers as you can do that, it really becomes part of who you are in your DNA as an organization. And we feel like that's one thing that we've done to be able to really take that voice of customer and infuse it into our day to day operations. And for me that's just a natural extension of the partners. If we're doing the work with customers, customers and surfacing that in our product and the way we operate, then we're going to attract the right partners because they're partners that value that exact same thing. If you are find yourself working with partners that don't really care about the voice of the customer, then to me it's a chance. It's to really assess and say, do we have the right partner that's going after this for the same right reason? Because I believe firmly if you're delivering what's in the best interest of the customer, everyone else succeeds, ourselves and the partner included.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, well, and then how do you certainly customers want to feel like they're being listened to? And, and certainly that's, that's a key part of what you're saying. How do you, how do you strike that balance between, you know, a customer being felt listened to versus being felt like they're, I don't know, being wiretapped or you know, like, in other words, how do you, how do you keep that, that level of okay, you know, this, this company really cares about us and oh wow, they know that I did that. You know, how do you, how do you strike that right balance with privacy and things like that?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, no, this is a really, I think, important tension point right now that we're experiencing in the market because companies in particular, like, they don't want to get into regulatory issues because we're seeing a lot more privacy regulation come into place. But for me, even more important than that, it's, you don't ever want to lose trust with your customer. There's nothing harder to recover from than losing trust. And so I think where the balance comes in is it comes from transparency and control. So the more transparent we are with the customers, the more willing they are to share their data with us and also understanding that when they do share data, there's a value coming back to them. Right. Like there is a value in the data that they're sharing. So what are we reciprocating by providing them, you know, the features that they're looking for, providing them with the feedback that they're seeking. And that's how I think that we really try to balance this out. The other thing that we've done is really tried to focus at a product level to get the certifications to validate it not just by us, but by third parties. We just rolled out our Fedramp certification or our Fedramp authorization high. We've got SOC 2 compliance, we've got ISO compliance. Like all of these things are important to I think put your money where your mouth is. As far as saying like we're doing this at a privacy level between our, yourselves, Mr. Customer, Ms. Customer and us, but also helping to protect your organization from third party threats.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So as we wrap up here, a couple, couple of things here want to talk about. Certainly strategy is something that is kind of like AI, it's often talked about. And, and yet, you know, I, I think that there's definitely a gap between talking about a strategy, putting the deck together, talking it through and the actual execution of that.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

So you know, it's one thing to, to create a strategy, it's another to, to see it through. How do you, you know, as a, as a chief Strategy officer, you know, how do you, what's your recommendation to make sure that these things don't just stay in PowerPoints and that a strategy can really translate into tangible results?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah, that day to day work is so important. If you aren't able to translate that strategy into the task where that gap exists, then you're not going to obviously accomplish what you're trying to do as an organization. And so for us at Bayesian, what we try to do is we have a system called Missions of aspirational performance or maps. They're similar to OKRs, but we've actually taken OKRs and weaved that type of a system into our company values and aligned that to our vision. Right. And so here's how it works. We assess where we're at relative to our vision and then we identify what is the next most important mission that will help move us closer to accomplishing our vision. And then we break that mission down into cross functional supporting missions. And, and this is very much a bottoms up and collaborative process. Like we set the vision at a strategy level of what is the next most important mission for us to accomplish. But then we open that up to the organization to understand, I see where we're going. There's clear alignment and visibility in where we're going as an organization. Now the creativity and the collective intelligence of the organization comes together to create supporting missions that allow us to put, push these things forward. And really it's all about a few, a handful of things. Right. Like number one, we have to have clarity on the mission. The more clear it is, the better people understand the More aligned they can be to that. But then not only that, then we have to create accountability. So there's an agreement that happens in that process between a mission owner and a contributing mission owner that they understand what are they working to accomplish. And then we do regular check inside. Like there's a cadence on what type of progress are we making against this and we're willing to open and open to reassess that. So every month or so we're sitting down and going through this and seeing what progress is being made. And honestly, at the end of the day, if the progress we see is being made but it's not in the right direction, it's okay to actually change and reposition the mission to move us in the right direction. Because a lot of times you don't know everything up front and you gather information along the way. So it's not about perfection, it's about really tight alignment and making the necessary adjustments to ensure that the execution that's happening on the day to day stays aligned with the vision and the strategy.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. I mean that, to me that sounds like an agile process. Right. So it's, you know, which from my perspective just mean it's not reactive. You know, what you're saying doesn't sound reactive. It sounds like it's based on an understanding and actually revisiting and measuring. Right. I mean, I assume measurement is a key component of this.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Right?

[J.D. Carter]

Yes. Yeah. As we sit down, like you create, the missions need to have a component of solid measurement into those so we can see what are we making progress against that. And really it's about the ability for us to be agile, as you mentioned. Right. It's about planned responsiveness and how do we adapt as we find new information or things change in the process. And that's what this whole map framework is all about. It's, it's because we operate in these cycles with clear metrics, it builds in a natural moment for us to course correct. You know, we're not locked into an annual plan that may become obsolete in March. If, if we're in it and all of a sudden we see it needs to shift, we can make a change to that and adapt accordingly. And it's. But building that into your culture is the harder thing. So that's what we've learned is as you help to reinforce this behaviorally saying, like, look, as you get into this, it's safe to make a change, it's safe to fail. That's why we actually call these aspirational performances. We want to stretch ourselves These aren't imperative things that must happen. These are goals that we're stretching ourselves to achieve. And we need to understand if there's a time that we need to adapt and move, we can do that very quickly. And what that stems from is this clear vision, alignment, and an empowered decision making down the organization to be able to go and say, hey, this isn't aligning with where we thought it would. We need to make an adjustment and we go ahead and do that.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Love it. Well, jd, thanks so much for joining today. I got one last question for you before we wrap up here. What do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?

[J.D. Carter]

Yeah. So for me, I think continuous learning is super important as you are organizing. As I organize my time, I should say, I really kind of bucket my learning into a couple of different types. Like, there's formal learning, like I dedicate time to deep reading, books, podcasts, those sorts of things. Then there's also, like, informal learning where we're having conversations. I've got some groups that I join, and we do, you know, have some threads going around different topics. And then another one is practical learning. So by teaching, like the concepts that I'm learning, being able to share those across the organization, because as you think about this strategy needs to be deployed across an organization. How do you think strategically? Every leader in an organization needs to understand that. So as I'm learning new concepts and ideas, I'm out there sharing those and teaching those to other leaders in the organization. And then practical is just taking those things that I'm learning and actually apply them into practice every day. And as I do that, it starts to become second nature. And I think that's what allows, or as I look at this, that's what's allowed me to grow with our organization over time. I think that if you're not building these learning moments into your day, then you're going to eventually come to a crossroads where either an organization has outgrown the skill set that you provide, or there's a new need that you might not have seen and prepared for. So that's how I do it, is through continuous learning and trying to really stay on top of things like podcasts like this one. So, Greg, I really appreciate the time. Thanks for having me this week to have this conversation.

[Greg Kilstrom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Again, I'd like to thank J.D. carter, Chief Strategy Officer at Vasion, for joining the show. You can learn more about JD and

[Greg Kilstrom]

Vasion by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're Leaders and Full full Stack Tech Services, Talent Solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn [e-mail] that's teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can

[Podcast Co-host / Interviewer]

find the show too.

[Greg Kilstrom]

And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach reach out. Just visit GregKillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay Agile.

[J.D. Carter]

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