Transcript
Rob Vaughan: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the FirstCall Facility Focus Forum podcast. I’m your host, Rob Vaughan, here with a great guest today, Sofia Russey, our integration guru. Sofia, thanks for joining us.
Sofia Russey: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Rob Vaughan: Well, we appreciate having you. You know, it’s our goal to talk about a variety of topics in the HVAC and facilities world and really bring a lot of diversified content, and you have a really special role that I think is really integral with everything going on in the facility management world and really all over the world right now. But tell us a little bit about your title and what you do.
Sofia Russey: Well, integral — that’s a good choice of words there. So my role is organizational change manager, which is a very broad title, but the number one thing that I do is run the integrations for our new partners.
So that means once we’ve brought a new company into the FirstCall family, into the FirstCall network, my job is to guide them through the transition that turns them into a FirstCall company and lets them operate in sync with our whole network.
Rob Vaughan: Outstanding. A large array of responsibilities. What are some of the key things you do with this unique role to make all that magic happen?
Sofia Russey: So I think there’s two sides to it. One side is I work with our central support team, which includes HR, finance, safety, insurance — all that back-office stuff. We have a lot of teams that manage that, so I quarterback across those teams to make sure that we have a project plan that works for every department and that none of the teams are working in silos.
On the other side of that, I am acting as kind of a sherpa to our new partners, guiding them through the integration process and making sure that what will amount to probably one of the biggest changes in their professional career is as smooth of an experience as possible.
Rob Vaughan: Well, you hit on that word smoothly. Now more than ever, we’re seeing acquisitions taking place all over our facility management world and other industries as well. What do you find so fundamental to make integration successful, comfortable, and strategically smooth for all parties involved? Because it’s a lot.
Sofia Russey: Yeah. I think the number one thing that I’ve had to learn how to do — and that I’m continuing to learn how to do — is build trust quickly.
We’re coming in there and there are some things that, as soon as that partnership begins, we have to get working on. You’re simultaneously trying to get to know these people and build trust with them. It’s a skill set I’m still developing.
I think the number one thing that I’ve learned in order to do that is to talk less and listen more. I used to think I had to come into every project with all the answers, and I’ve come to find out that my answers are usually wrong. It’s better for me to just listen and try to work with the information I get.
Rob Vaughan: We said this at our last podcast and I’m going to say it again — one of my favorite quotes is, “God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason.”
Sofia Russey: Amen to that.
Rob Vaughan: It’s true in sales, marketing, and relationship building as well. The listening element is so integral.
Moving along, you have the really dynamic responsibility of working with dozens of people you’ve never met before. I really thought about that as I was prepping for this. How many people, on a consistent basis, are working with dozens of people they’ve never had a relationship with before?
What have you learned from this personally, and what advice would you give people going through the integration process — not just in our industry, but any industry?
Sofia Russey: I think it’s probably a bit of a repeat of what I just said about learning to build trust first and foremost and to listen.
A really big part of that — and this ties into the advice piece — is being really honest as well. I used to come in and say, “This is all going to be really easy and this is all going to be great.” And that’s certainly the goal. We certainly don’t go into the integration process planning for anything to be really difficult.
But change is change, and doing anything new for the first time means you’re firing a muscle in a way that it’s not used to, and that can be challenging.
So I’ve learned to be upfront. “Hey, these are areas where I’ve seen it be a bit of a tougher transition, and this is what we’re going to try and do to make it easier.”
The advice I would give is, as a new partner, spend some time before the integration starts thinking about who you are, how you deal with change, how your team deals with change, and what you need. Come into it being really honest about that.
At the end of the day, we all have the same goal — let’s have a successful integration that allows us to hit the ground running with this partnership and realize the value of this partnership as quickly as possible.
The sooner we can get down to brass tacks, build that trust, and do what’s going to work for the team, the better the experience is going to be for everybody.
Rob Vaughan: Well, and you’re really good at it, so don’t cut yourself short.
Sofia Russey: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Rob Vaughan: FirstCall has had a philosophy of “no pain,” and I feel like change can be very positive. I love that simple expression.
Your job is also to highlight people’s strengths. In working with so many different people and doing different integrations, have you had any specific “aha” moments where you were really impressed with a company’s processes, procedures, or way of doing things?
Sofia Russey: Yeah. I’ll shout out CLS.
Rob Vaughan: Oh, come on. This was not staged.
Sofia Russey: This was not planned. I’m not getting paid for this shoutout.
A couple of things that really stood out about the CLS team were, on the tactical side, the clarity of process. Everybody was so clear about, “This is who I am, this is what I do, and this is how I contribute to the mission of our business.”
It was really special to come into an office where everyone was so clear on that.
On the other side, just the relationships and the culture. Every single time we partner with a new team, you come in and see a new company culture and a new way of the team interacting with each other.
I really enjoy the culture at CLS. You guys immediately invited us to Super Monday and your Kentucky Derby day, which I’m very excited for.
Another team we partnered with in the last year is LC Anderson up in Boston. They run their business on the EOS system — the Entrepreneurial Operating System — which is really focused on empowering every employee to have that owner mindset.
It’s focused on cutting the fat in meetings and process and letting everyone leave each day feeling like, “Wow, I accomplished something and I solved a lot of problems.”
Going into that partnership and learning about that from their team, I was able to take so many learnings into how I operate and how I run meetings.
I think that highlights that in my position, I get to learn as much from our partners — if not more — than what we’re bringing to them with the integration process.
Rob Vaughan: I’m glad you mentioned EOS with the LC Anderson team. I was blown away with that.
All those examples are about defining roles and people understanding their lane while still working together as a team and fostering accountability.
One of the things I find most fascinating about integration is — there’s probably a more professional business term for it — “idea stealing.”
When you have these acquisitions, you take the EOS system from LC Anderson, maybe the processes and roles of the CLS personnel, in addition to dozens of other partners, and you’re really building a much more well-oiled machine when you utilize the best practices of all those partners.
Sofia Russey: Yeah. That’s kind of the beauty of what we’re building, right? The whole is greater than the sum of our parts.
Rob Vaughan: Absolutely. In all your experiences in this unique role, what do you enjoy most about your job?
Sofia Russey: People.
Like we’ve been talking about this whole time, I’m getting to build new relationships with people all the time.
On a personal note, I try to guide my life by my Christian faith, and that’s all about loving people. I feel so blessed that I get to have a job where that’s really my role.
If I were to boil it down to one mission, it would be loving these people by helping them get through a transition that they’re doing for the first time — that may be scary, that may feel uncertain.
Helping these people build new relationships and realize what their vision has been for their business through our partnership.
I think that’s been my favorite part of my job — getting to live out what I see as core to who I am.
Rob Vaughan: Amen. I absolutely love that answer.
It reminds me of a great leadership trainer I worked with many years ago. He told me that you can teach sales skills, leadership skills, organizational skills, and management, but you can’t teach empathy. Empathy is an innate trait.
It sounds like that’s really important to you — letting your faith guide you and relating to other people. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.
Sofia Russey: Right. Amen.
Rob Vaughan: Well, this is a fascinating topic, and we might have to have a part two because I find integration to be so important in what’s going on in the world in general and in our industry as companies are partnering together to create a greater business sense and greater offerings for clients.
But I want to end with something kind of fun here. As a proud Texas alumna — which I know you are — I want to know: Will Texas bounce back and whoop Ohio State next season when the game is in Austin after that tragedy that happened earlier this year?
Sofia Russey: Absolutely. That’s why there’s always next year, right? Because next year we’re going to whoop them. Arch is coming back and he’s going to take them to school.
Rob Vaughan: He’s coming back. Yeah, he’s ready. I can feel it.
Do you want to predict the final score? We’ll keep this recorded.
Sofia Russey: I’m going to give Ohio State a little credit. I’m going to go 49–41. Texas is going to win.
Rob Vaughan: Well, much to the dismay of our friends in Ohio and the delight of our friends in Texas and all the college football fans, there you have it — Texas will bounce back, and I’m sure that will be their win that guides them to a national championship.
You heard it here first. We don’t just cover facilities — we cover sports advice too.
Sofia Russey: I’m sure people who heard that score were like, “This girl knows nothing about football.” And that’s also true. But I love the Longhorns. So, Texas minus 7.5 — we got it.
Rob Vaughan: Amen. Hook ’em Horns.
Hey, thank you so much. You are awesome at what you do, and we could never do what we do without you on the FirstCall team. We appreciate you joining us.
For those listening, stay tuned. We’ll have more facilities content coming up very soon, and we appreciate your listenership.
Take care, Sofia. We’ll talk to you soon.
Sofia Russey: Thanks so much, Rob.
