Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good afternoon. I'm Bill Schomberg, host of Radically Candid Podcast, Second Generation. I'll be your host today. Matt Burke will be my guest, Director of Sales of Engineering with Cognition. We look forward to Matt's perspective around he's been here two years. He's one of our leaders of a team with Cognition. We thought it would be valuable to add his perspective in the conversation related to what does it look like to be part of a company, ever expanding, rapidly growing, rapidly in the sense of he's been here two years, had several roles, his experience prior to joining Cognition, all topics that we will cover in our conversation. Welcome to the show. Thanks. My guest today, Matt Burke. Please introduce yourself to the uh radically candid podcast audience. Give us some idea who you are, what your role is here with cognition, and uh welcome

Matt’s Role Journey At Cognition

SPEAKER_00 1:09

to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. My name is Matt Burke. I've been at Cognition a little over two years now. I'm currently director of sales engineering here at Cognition. Had a handful of different roles here and worn quite a few different hats.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Do you mind digging in on the evolution of those roles with Cognition? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Absolutely. I originally joined two years ago, prior to which I was at Amazon working as an ed tech auto lady on the autos business, which is how I got introduced to cognition. Came over shortly after our CR, our now CRO Amber Daniel came over. Her and I kind of tag teamed the product side of things for a while. We were still, I think I was employed 11 or 12 or something like that. So just two years ago, yeah, yeah. It's wild to think about, you know, we had the resources we had, and Amber and I kind of just we worked on whatever we had to do from a product side, but also like how do we get these products into the hands of our customers and grow the business? So over time, that role had you kind of evolved from well, we really built out our product team and had more of a technical development product team now today that does a lot of the actual building in the evolution of where my role and that kind of spun into, I guess, was more so into this like product enablement role, which was how do we work more closely with our clients, work back from their problems to fit into our current solutions? Or if there are product or technical gaps in like what we are building, we need to go address those and/or build for them and out

Getting Comfortable With Constant Change

SPEAKER_01 2:51

for them.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

How do you view change as a whole and then relate that to how you've adopted and evolved into the current role?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah, yeah. Change is definitely something you have to be comfortable with. I use that idea. Change is required. It is required, it is truly required. And I don't think a lot of people can say they're open and okay with it and open to change. Myself included, there are things that I like. I always like to look at myself as someone that's open to it, but I know there are areas that make me uncomfortable and that I resist in some regards. Same with everybody. Yeah, you have to be conscious of it in true this industry, not it's not even a cognition thing. You have to be life in general, life in general as well. Yeah. I came to Amazon by way of three different acquisitions. So Rocket Fuel kept off by Seismic, Seismic kept bought by Amazon. Rocket Fuel being the book. No, so Rocket Fuel was another DSP. They also had a data management platform. But that was really when the first two years I was there, there's a lot of change, like industry change, product change, but the company, there wasn't a ton of change within the actual company. Oh, okay. And after that, it was, like I said, it was a roller coaster of change. And ever since then, it's just been a different ride or a different floor. You get off on the elevator, whatever it is. It's always different.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And the same thing continues here, and you have to be able to part of the setup that I gave you around our conversation.

Why People Keep Him Here

SPEAKER_00 4:24

We use part of the radically candid conversations of recruiting aspects. There's there's life and of course other aspects to the human being side of who is cognition, and giving potential employees, potential new team members, an idea of what does it look like? Who are the managers? You know, the business cliche, people that join companies, they don't leave the company when they decide they need a change, they leave a manager. And if you can offer some perspective around the people, the team members who have joined, some now report to you. What does that evolution look like from your experience? Because I love the experience part of what brought you to cognition.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Cognition is, I mean, it's one of the main reasons I came here was because of the people. And at the time there are not that many people. But by way of working with cognition, when it was just Matt Carson and Adam, and then shortly after Alex, like it was a good group of people that they had a vision, they knew it would change, they weren't afraid of failing, they weren't afraid of being wrong, they weren't afraid of adapting and overcoming. They were just hungry and driven to succeed and were really set up well to not only from a company perspective, but just a mindset perspective, to be okay with that change, and knowing like if we stake a flag in the ground, like we may, we may pit it and we will dead it, and we have pissed it. So our will and have it, will again. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we're in a handful of iterations, and I mean that's really kind of the nature of the beast with I mean advertising and tech companies. Like, if you're not innovating, you're failing and you're becoming stagnant. If you don't do it, someone else will.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

What's the intrinsic piece that keeps you coming back, showing up every day the way you do?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

We have a diverse mix of backgrounds. We've got people from very seasoned blue chip companies down to people that are coming in fresh out of college. And I think that one of the driving factors is there's always someone here to learn from, whether they're they've had 15, 20 years of experience in automotive or at you know a large company versus someone coming out of college. Like it's two different perspectives. And just because you have experience doesn't mean that's the only thing you have to offer. That's the only thing, the only way something has to get done. You know, there's there's bits and pieces you can learn from every one single one of us here, which I think is is really, really valuable. That and just overall, this the innovation that we're doing. I think we I think we've made a couple big gambles that we're starting to see are really gaining traction, and we've got some really good wins but you know, under our belt at this point and more in the opera. And I think the excitement of other that is really what kind of draws me back. That and figure out like at the end of the day, like we have to figure out how to do stuff we've never done before.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

And nobody else has done before, yeah. Typically, that doesn't make us so much unique. It differentiates us in the marketplace.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Is that fair? I think that's fair. I mean, I I I wouldn't say there's not. I mean, I think it would be a little naive of us to think like no other companies out there are forging their own path or competition's a good thing. Yeah, competition is a good thing, and there are a lot of great companies out there doing a lot of good, unique things. We are just one of those that are out there that are, in my opinion, doing it a little bit better or a little bit differently that makes us more unique.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

So it's not milk and honey, every day is not just uh that nirvana. Sure. But what is it that differentiates the environment that leadership has created here that keeps us on an even keel?

Core Values And Daring To Fail

SPEAKER_01 8:23

I think it really goes back to our core values. And you know, when I was at Amazon, there were a handful of core values that you can kind of you can understand, but they're maybe not like they don't resonate that well with you. But in all of our leadership meetings, I mean in all the walls around here, except the four core values, dirt, and I think that alone, like daring to fail and innovating to that failure, like that alone to me sends a message that we are here to try new stuff and we are not afraid of failing. And I think I mean it really just aligns with the rest of the core values. Innovate and respect and do them with respect and trust your team. That's huge. Like tie together well, it all ties together super well. And I just I think stare and innovate in this industry are something that you have to be comfortable with. And you know, it's very easy to come into a job and feel like, oh, if I do this, I'm gonna do it wrong and let someone down. Or oh, I screw this up and I cost company money, or slow the process from happening and boss something. Like you're gonna do that. It's gonna happen. You're gonna lose a sale, you're gonna lose, you're gonna do your timeline on a product release, put pushback for whatever reason. And at the end of the day, like we're still gonna figure out a way to deliver on it one way or another, and as a team. And I think that part is is great. And you see it on the floor out here every day. I think in a company like this and an industry like this, like this isn't necessarily clock in, clock out mentality. That is a big thing that I think for outsiders looking in, like you have to have that mentality, like you were here too. But you should be excited about what we're doing. Like this stuff is exciting, and it doesn't like this work doesn't stop the second the clock hits five. It doesn't necessarily start at 8 or 9 a.m. or whatever. But it's always there will always be work to be done, and I think it's you gotta get behind

Psychological Safety Through Trust

SPEAKER_01 10:22

that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

What I hear when you frame the conversation that that you just did, what I hear is responsibility, accountability. If someone wanted to look at it in a negative way, they could talk about, oh, I got blamed or something. Sure. You've been here long enough. What's the difference in the environment? Alex Mills talks about psychological safety at work. And so how does that environment manifest itself here?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

It's supported by the fact that like there are inherent risks to like what to innovating, into moving fast, be able to keep up with the pace of this industry and the pace of our clients. Our clients are asking for self-aid that they can't get elsewhere, and we have to do that in a tight timeline. And every team here and every leader here, I in my opinion, believes and trusts their team to be able to fulfill it. Not any one person here can do everything working.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

And if they could, they might not be a fit here. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

So I mean, I think you have to have trust in your team. And I think our leaders here do a really good job and giving you the autonomy and space to deliver and/or fail and re-deliver on whatever it is you're working on. And so I think there's a support system in that too.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Very well

Life Outside Work With Family

SPEAKER_00 11:46

said. Give us an idea what life looks like for you outside of cognition.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Oh outside of cognition, I have my daughter will be two years old coming up in the middle of September here. So that has been keeping all of us very, very busy.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

She's just been born kind of in the season in which you joined cognition?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, shortly after I think two or three months in. So could it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So it was how. How have you sensed, other than identifying real or different or important responsibilities, if you will, how has that change manifested itself in your activities, hobbies?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I still try to do all the stuff that I used to do. We live in a lake up in Michigan, and so the summertime is just we try to get out of the boat as much as possible. And my daughter loves swimming. There's me on the boat. Oh wow. We still do a lot of the same stuff that, but uh, it's all around nap times and schedules and the timelines have shifted a bit.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

I love it. Sounds outstanding. Well, sort of leading to where we will wrap up this conversation, how much I greatly appreciate your willingness to participate. Is it really as we evolve, different opportunities open up in different roles? Yeah. And so what would you? I'm not going to try to pin you down to one, but are there one or two key characteristics in a candidate that when you evaluate somebody joining your team, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 13:17

I

Hiring For Curiosity And Collaboration

SPEAKER_01 13:18

would say for me, the biggest one is like genuine curiosity, being interested in not only what this role entails in the job description that you saw and applied to, but what the other teams within our organization overall do and what the industry does and what other companies do. I think that is a very big one to me. I think in general, it's you can contribute to your role within, you know, if you look at your job description and say this is the box and field that I live in, you might be really great at it. Will you be super successful overall? Probably not. We we need people that come here that not only are interested in fulfilling the direct responsibilities, but also bringing up others along the way. Kind of influence those other teams. And again, going back to like the learning that is fostered here and the collaboration that is fostered here across these teams is really an important thing to me because I see how much it happens and I see how much like cross-team learnings take place on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Well, the way that I came into being the host, Ava Hines created this, and her leadership gave her the freedom to both create, grow, and then she's handing this off. I'm I'm new to this role. I'm actually new as an employee, despite in spite of the amount of time that I had prior to with an entire organization. But I love the way that you said that. People willing to bring the others, other members of the organization along with not just team members. Okay, their particular team, because we're all one big team. Yes, one one big team. I think that's a good place to wrap.

Wrap-Up And Closing Banter

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Let's do it. Grateful for your time. I appreciate you having me on. Well, it dawned on me. All I'm doing is interviewing no employees. What does that say? Is there nobody else? Anybody's had tethered to be here. It's good. Thank you for the opportunity to uh introduce one of our key leaders in this aspect. Thank you. Appreciate you, sir. Appreciate you. All right, you thank you.