#94, CEO @ Kin + Carta, Kelly Manthey: Mapping the Future of Technology: From Consultant to Global CEO

0:00You have to be intentional to pull other people up in your organization. So the best thing leaders can do today, the most practical thing is say, what does my talent pipeline look like? Who am I investing in? Who am I being intentional? I'm here because people invested in me, because people cared.

0:23we always make a concerted effort to achieve a healthy gender balance within our guest portfolio unfortunately though female leaders in the boardroom especially at ceo level are still something of a rarity and the consultancy world is certainly no exception kelly manthe bucks that trend. Joining Accenture from college in the late 90s right through to her current role as the global CEO of a 200 million pound consultancy firm, Kelly's journey is one of determination, meritocracy and exceptional leadership. Kelly unveils how she balances the scales of success and family life, sharing some invaluable insights at the intersection of career and parenthood.

1:09We also talk about the evolution of the consultancy space in light of disruptive forces like AI. We explore the challenges and opportunities this presents and how organizations are viewing AI integration as an unprecedented opportunity. We also talk about what it means to be a triple bottom line business and much, much more. Kelly is a brilliant, vibrant speaker, full of knowledge, full of passion. I really think you'll enjoy this one. And it's all the way from Chicago, Kelly Manphy.

1:45Kelly Manphy, thank you so much for coming on the Tech Leaders Podcast. Really excited about this one. How are you today in sunny Chicago? Oh, I wish it was sunny. I'm doing well, though. But look, Kelly, I'm really excited to talk to you. There's so many things I want to ask you about. But as we always do, I want to start with the question we always start with. What does good leadership mean to you, Kelly? Oh, that's a great question. Well, I'll tell you a couple of beliefs and principles that I operate from. And certainly in the role that I'm in now as a global CEO of Ken and Carter that have helped me.

2:16There's really three things. The first one is I believe the CEO's job is to be a steward of the business. It's my job to make sure that I'm delivering on the mission of the business and that I'm the face of the business a lot of times and that I'm this good steward of what the business stands for. The second principle I live by is to be a good ally. and that's be a good ally to our people, to grow careers, to listen, and to really be in touch with our people and our clients and all the stakeholders that we serve. And so really, it's about listening and empathy. And then the third role that I play is, as a CEO, you have to look ahead.

2:50You have to be looking 10 steps ahead to see where things are going. So it's to be a futurist and to always keep innovation going. So steward, ally, futurist, those are kind of three principles, three kind kind of guiding principles that I've always used to kind of shape the way I lead and approach things. Wow. I'm going to basically steal that answer. And if anyone ever asks me that question, I'm going to basically say, copyright. Now, that's a very, very polished answer, Kelly. I really like that. I think you covered a lot of bases there, but I think, I think absolutely resonates. I mean, yeah, it's a great answer.

3:23So many things I could unpick from that actually, and so many directions we could go in, which we will in due course. But I wanted to basically ask you, first of all, to just give the listeners a little bit of an overview to yourself, maybe an overview of your career from the point of sort of starting your career to where you are now. Yeah, sure. Happy to. To sum it up, I am a 25-year-plus consulting industry, I guess veteran. I can use veteran after all of these years. But I've experienced kind of both sides of the coin of being a consulting veteran. So on one side, I started my career right out of college as an engineer, went into big consulting, began my career at Accenture.

4:03So I had the experience of moving into a very big, well-structured consulting organization and right out of the gate serving large enterprise clients. And this was back in the 90s. And so back in the 90s, the emerging technology at the time was the web. And so I was at the beginning of helping big companies embrace web technology. And it was very exciting. I'm preparing for Y2K. Yes, Y2K. You got it. Y2K was the big kind of scary monster. So I had the opportunity to see a variety of industry verticals and work with a lot of large clients. And then later, I had the opportunity to help build a company.

4:43And so I helped build a company that has become a part of a foundation of the company that I'm leading today at Kin and Carta, right here in Chicago. And through that company, I was able to not only continue to serve clients in emerging technology. So as innovation moved from building websites to building mobile apps to cloud technologies to voice technologies, I was both serving clients with that and shaping what our service offerings were, but also building a startup and scale up and building a business from you know, a few employees to a few hundred employees. And so that was such a great education in both not only serving clients and where emerging tech's going and being a good consultant, but also how do you build a business?

5:26And what do you need to think about at all different levels of scale and different stages of a business? Yeah. Fantastic. Can I just zoom in on that early part of your career at Accenture? I know you were there for, it's probably a very formative time in your life. You joined, I think you joined the consultancy world when everyone was preparing for things like Y2K and also the internet and e-commerce. And it was a very, it was a time of optimism, but also a little bit of skepticism as well. Can you give us a snapshot of what that three years of Accenture was like? What were the main lessons you learned from that period of your career?

6:01You know, it's some very simple things. When you're a new college graduate and you get your first job, you can never underestimate the very basic things like learning to rent your first car on your own, learning to book travel, learning to, you know, it's really the next stage of independence, you know, from graduating from college. So number one, I grew up very quickly, because as in consulting, you're traveling a lot, you have a lot of autonomy, you have to be a self starter, you've got to organize your time very well. So some basic life things and just some basic professional skills were some of the things I learned.

6:37And then secondarily, I learned how to conduct myself inside of businesses. I learned the etiquette and I learned the vast differences from one industry to another, how you could see the same problem inside of two different companies and they look vastly different because the constraints, the budgets, the objectives, the goals, the technology stacks are different in those companies. And so I always say consulting is for the curious and consulting is for those that like variety. Because no matter how many times you run into the same problem, it always will look different based on the industry or the client that you're in.

7:17And so it was a lot of variety. And I really, I really enjoyed it. What was the sort of market picture like at that time? It was the beginning of the end because the dot-com bubble was just about to burst. So it was the height of the height. Was it misguided optimism that it was just going to keep on growing forever? Well, what's your memories of that, that lead up to the bubble bursting? It was a very run fast to catch up, keep up. FOMO, a little bit of FOMO, which again, these cycles repeat themselves. So I could be saying the same thing about what's going on right now with AI. I was just about to say, yeah.

7:51Yeah. And I know we'll probably touch on that later, but it's the same thing. It's as new emerging technologies come on the market, all companies initially poke their head up and say, oh, that's interesting. Maybe we should pay attention to that. And then all of a sudden, it's a race to, well, what are the use cases? How are we going to use this? How are we going to invest some anxiety around the newness of it and what it means? And it was the great adoption. It was racing to let's get our internet presence out there. Let's get our commerce presence out there. And it was a very exciting time. Yeah, I can imagine.

8:25Absolutely. So mid-2000s then, you get an opportunity to join or to leave the corporate world behind a little bit and join somebody on this journey of setting up a company from essentially from scratch. Can you talk to us about that decision to do that, to take that enormous risk and what you learned from that startup culture and the growth you experienced thereafter? Yeah, I had the opportunity to join a former colleague of mine who had just started a business in Chicago. And so I had the opportunity to join him. And when I think about now, hearing you say that enormous risk, it's kind of funny because when you're single, you don't have any children, you're in your late 20s and you just feel like you have this whole world in front of you.

9:08I remember my mindset was kind of leaving the confines of a corporate world, which you inherently equate to safe, you know, in some cases, my mindset was, you know, what's the worst that can happen? I'll try this. And if it doesn't work out, I'll just get another job. Yeah, absolutely. You know, now my mindset is very different. Now married children, you know, different priorities, different responsibilities, that decision would look very different right now. But then maybe young and a little bit naive and, you know, with looking at a lot of runway in front of me, I am so grateful that I took those opportunities and the doors that opened when they did.

9:43And yeah, it was just a natural extension of what I was already doing. And so again, began serving clients, and then began growing a business. And again, as we were starting to scale the business, I had the opportunity to help dive in and shape what that looked like. And that was a great training for the role that I have now, which is, you know, kind of looking across everything in the business. Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine that was a baptism of fire, as we say. Yes. So talk us through the growth then that you experienced with the company. You guys seem to grow really quickly over the next 10 years.

10:19Can you talk us through how that growth came about and what lessons you learned from that experience of being in a growing company? Yeah, probably the biggest lesson was focused. I mean, our growth really started to take off when we pivoted the strategy of the business from all things kind of IT consulting to getting really focused on what are we really good at? And being a smaller business at the time, we knew we had a superpower. And so I think being able to find what our sweet spot was in the market and what we were really good at, what we really had a right to win at, and being really loud about those things and showcasing that expertise.

10:56And so at that time, it was when the iPhone was just coming out in 2007, 2007, 2008. And we kind of saw the opportunity that just like the internet and the web and when e-commerce, again, this was the next big tech wave that was coming. And so we had all the skills, we had the know-how, and we just kind of went all in on what was the launch of mobile in a meaningful way going to mean for the enterprise. And so we always focused on large enterprise clients and knowing that any new emerging technology was going to have to integrate into probably largely a legacy IT environment. And so that matching of how do you innovate with the new thing, knowing that you've got a lot of legacy.

11:40And so we went all in on mobile and we became a mobile focused business. And that focus really grew us because we were able to specialize and get a lot of depth and then become known for that skill. So Solstice, you obviously were there till 2020. Can you talk us through that period and that transition over to Kin and Carter? We were actually acquired by what is now called Kin and Carter today. So back in, it was 2015, we were acquired by a holding company called the St. Ives Group in London. And as the St. Ives Group was a portfolio of companies, its heritage was print businesses. And as print was moving to digital technology, they started acquiring more technology focused and more digital companies.

12:18So they had a basket of marketing companies, research companies, those types of things. And as part of their expansion into the American market, they acquired Solstice. And so that's what I was part of. And so over that time, I then became the CEO of Solstice for America and supported the transition of, you know, helped grow Solstice from a boutique mobile consultancy to really an enterprise grade consultancy. And so, again, the next tech wave happened and now innovation was happening on the back end. And it was all about cloud, cloud modernization, modernizing some of those legacy applications.

12:53All the innovation was happening at the kind of the API layer in the back end. And it was helping to get enterprises on cloud. And so that's what we used to kind of grow our America's business as part of the St. Ives Group. And then in 2018, we pivoted the strategy of the St. Ives Group to be a fully integrated digital transformation consultancy. And so we brought the businesses together. We realized a lot of the businesses that we had, when you brought us together, we actually had all the capabilities that some of the larger global consultancies had from the strategy, the design, the custom software engineering, the different distributed delivery centers to deliver work from.

13:36And so in 2020, we changed the name to Kin and Carter. We relaunched the brand, fully integrated, digitally native, digital transformation consultancy, and kind of made our mark on the world as a fully integrated business, working together to serve some of the world's largest brands. Why Kin and Carta? What's the story behind that name? Well, we had some help coming up with it. But the story behind the name is Kin means family and Carta means maps in Latin. The idea is we're a connected group of individuals akin to a family, you know, a team of individuals who will show our clients the way. Clever.

14:17Yeah, it is a clever name. Yeah, definitely. Clever. I wanted to ask you about your current role. Now you're the global CEO. Just give the listeners a little bit of an overview of the purpose of your role. And what does a typical day look like for you, Kelly? Yeah, yeah. Well, the purpose of my role is what I told you at the beginning, steward, ally and innovator. My job is to is to make sure that I'm helping to deliver on the promise, the brand promise of Ken and Cardin, what we stand for. And so, so I'm looking across into the new thing that's that changed for me in this role was not only focusing on the America's business, but our Europe business as well.

14:52And so having more of a global purview. So what's been important for me is to be able to continue to see the forest and to make sure that I'm looking at the big picture, but then I'm zooming in with the team. And then it's also to care for the culture, to make sure that we've got a best place to work, that we're fostering the kind of environment that can attract and retain talent. We are a people business. Consulting is a people business. You know, we're not making widgets here. We are developing people who, in turn. I have to bring this up, Kelly, because the one thing I love about your LinkedIn profile is that you've got on there mom, Manthe family, 2008 to present.

15:28I love that. Look, there's only one me. There's only one life. And so I am 100 % bringing being a mom to work. I'm 100 % bringing being a tech professional into my kitchen, whether my family likes it or not. So I'm bringing my whole self and all the things that make up myself into all aspects of my life. I've had to make time to pause. So some of the things that have really helped me are kind of giving myself permission to shut off. When I can, I try to keep a fairly consistent kind of bedtime routine. Every Saturday morning, I like to go to a workout class. And that's something I do when I'm able to do it.

16:05So I have to have some routines that I know I need to stay whole. But yeah, balance is a bit of a myth. My schedule is not my own most of the times. Sometimes I'm able to carefully construct an ideal week, but a lot of times I'm not. And so I am juggling all the things just like everybody else. And yeah, it's just when I can make the time and I have moments to pause, that's what I do. One thing I've done is Sundays before the week starts, I usually sit down. I have an old-fashioned paper planner. I love paper and writing with pen and paper. And I plan my week. And literally, I just look at my calendar.

16:43And I like to know what's going to happen in the week. And then where can I weave in pockets of downtime? Or am I going to cook this week? Or are we going to be ordering out all the time? I like to know. And sometimes in knowing, I feel better about it. Instead of it just happening to me, I feel like I'm a little bit more in control of it. So yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of mindset, a little bit of finding times to take a break and then making sure that you do something every week that rejuvenates you. You have to. Yeah, for sure. Well, that's really refreshing. I think people will take a lot of value from that.

17:18I mean, I think some people may look at successful individuals like yourself and just sort of wonder how you do it with all the struggles of life and, you know, and all everything. It's really great to get an insight. But I think, you know, that you're just a normal person after all. And, you know, I'm a normal person. Let's be real. You know, if I could tell you how many times I get a phone call from the school that who's going to pick up PJ today because we forgot. I mean, that's that's real life, you know, and that happens regularly. So, you know, it's it's not without a network of help and asking for help when you need help.

17:53So, you know, some weeks are better than others. Some are harder. But yeah, I mean, we're all just real people trying to figure things out. Yeah, absolutely. So how do you guys go about trying to achieve a good gender balance in your workforce in Kin and Carter? We're not perfect. But again, I've learned about the power of the pause, meaning the power of taking time to be intentional about things. So back in 2020, we became a B Corp, which means we run a triple bottom line business aiming to strike a balance between people, profits and planets. So kind of the social responsibility and the environmental impact that our business is making.

18:36And that in and of itself, you don't have to be a B Corp to be a responsible business. But we realized we were already doing a lot of really great things. And so the B Corp framework gave us a methodology to hold ourselves accountable towards. And it gave us a rhythm and a routine to be able to stop and pause and ask ourselves the tough questions. Could you just explain what a B Corp is? I think it's maybe European listeners may not be aware of what that is. I know it's to do with for profit and not for profit, isn't it? Can you maybe clarify that? Yes, we are a for-profit business, but the B Corp framework has several pillars to it across different dimensions that, you know, effectively a third party rates you as being a responsible business.

19:23So we, you know, proudly wear the badge on our website, but it's much more than a badge. It means that you're committed to running a triple bottom line business and that a third party is going to rate you and your achievement of a certain score on the path to it. And so again, from people, planet, and profit, looking at those three dimensions, how are you doing as a business? And so we use that framework as a guidepost. And as we were building Kin and Card, as we were transforming from several different brands to one unified brand, the B Corp framework was something that was a great kind of binding thing that kind of bound our culture together and helped us get organized around, okay, what kind of company are we trying to be and help us codify how we're going to run our business?

20:07And so that framework, we track a set of non-financial KPIs in addition to financial KPIs. And so we pause and we have ceremonies and times where we evaluate and we look at how are we doing? Are we achieving the goals that we want to that are both financial related? Just like most companies have lots of forecasting meetings and financial performance meetings, we give the same diligence to some of the non-financial aspects of our business. that intentionality, that pausing, you know, the B Corp framework has given us that tool that we needed as we were getting kind of getting started at building Kin and Karna.

20:45It just makes you pause and you just ask questions differently. It's quite a controversial topic, isn't it? I think, but I think with organizations, as long as the intention, the intent is there to achieve diversity, to achieve a good gender balance, et cetera, et cetera, that's all you can do, isn't it? This episode was brought to you by BDigital. BDigital support leadership teams to optimize cost and get more out of technology investments. BDigital and the team have unrivaled expertise with technology license management and data remediation and are therefore perfectly positioned to help prepare organizations for AI technology capability.

21:28And on the last point, And BDigital have just developed a cutting-edge AI readiness assessment, which provides tech leaders with the platform they need to make well-informed decisions about AI adoption strategy in 2024 and beyond. Go to BDigitalUK.com to find out more and get in touch.

21:50So I wanted to ask you, Kelly, you stepped from the Americas role into the global role. Have you noticed any, in terms of the marketplace you're operating in, is professional services consultancy in the US and maybe the Americas more broadly, is it very different to the rest of the world? Is it the same sort of rules apply across the board globally? What are the sort of differences? Maybe between the Americas and Europe then as a case study, what would you say the significant differences are? Yeah. And when I speak about Europe, I mean, our business is largely UK business. And so I would say consulting as an industry is largely the same across the different markets that we serve.

22:33But the work can look different or the buyers can look different. So in the US, the tech buyer might look different than some of the behaviors that we see of the tech buyers in our UK market. And so the work could tend to, there's definitely an overlap and similarities, but sometimes the work, the gravity or the center of gravity of the work tends to look different. A lot of the US companies, they're maybe spending bigger budgets from the outset. In some of our UK business clients, we see smaller starting and then ramping kinds of things. So yeah, it's really dictated by the market. So let's use this as a segue then.

23:16I want to keep on the topic of professional services consultancies, but I want to ask you about the evolution of that business model and the consultancy space. There's a lot of things changing at the moment. obviously AI is everywhere. Organizations are looking into the prospect of utilizing AI to become more efficient, more competitive, et cetera, et cetera. How do you envision professional services consultancy evolving over the next, say, five years in light of these emerging challenges, shall we say, and opportunities as well, maybe specifically in terms of AI? Do you think the the professional services are going to have to evolve or do you think the same paradigms will apply?

23:56Yeah. I mean, I'm continually reminded that standing still is not a strategy for any business. It's going backwards, isn't it? Yeah, it definitely is. You know, I think over the last year we've seen with the macroeconomic conditions, you know, we've seen, you know, large enterprise clients have certainly, you know, tightened budgets. There's more of a focus on where spend is going. And so how has that looked for a professional services company? Well, it's meant being on the receiving end of vendor consolidation sometimes. And so what does that mean? Well, it means that where the enterprise buyer is going now is looking for more things from a single partner.

24:36And so when you look at the M &A that's happening in the professional services space, it's acquiring more capabilities to be more of a one-stop shop for the clients that we serve. And so I think that's one thing, you know, separate from AI, that is one thing that partner that we're seeing in the consultancy space is that, you know, clients want fewer, deeper relationships. And in order to serve them, you need to be really great at those things. And so where I think AI is going to come in is it's going to continue to help make more efficient the work that we do. So just like, you know, any company is saying, what can we automate or what's the power of AI to make this process more efficient, reduce manual work, it's the same for consulting, whether it's research, you know, the research that we do, the notorious PowerPoint deck that consultancies are notorious for putting together, you know, but it's like, how can we make application development, engineering?