Leadership lessons for job seekers in a changing economy

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Personal Journey
• Organization Changes
• Future Goals
• Leadership Style
• Values
• Interview Decisions
• Candidate Qualities
• Referrals
• Salary Questions
• Advice for New Employees
• Job Seekers
• Work-Life Balance
• What Makes CDS Different
• Leader's Impact
• Final Thoughts

Introduction

Michael Akbar:

Welcome to a very special occasion in our series of conversations with CEOs, executives, and HR leaders. Lola Jordan, our guest today, is the president of Companion Data Services, a Celerian Group company. Lola brings more than 30 years of healthcare and information technology experience to bear on the solutions that CDS provides. Lola brings a rare combination of having led large fiscal agent and Medicare carrier operations and a technology background that includes data center, infrastructure, print and knowledge of application development teams.

Michael Akbar:

As a pioneer in health IT, Lola brings insight and vision to the connectivity between healthcare information and technology through specialized business knowledge in hosting services, managed services, cloud business models, government programs, security, and virtualization. Lola adds a perspective that few can, how to work with and build relations with organizations such as Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Lola's passion outside of work is volunteering and supporting the United Way of the Midlands, especially in the area of at-risk youth. Lola, Welcome to our program.

Lola Jordan:

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Personal Journey

Michael Akbar:

Would you like to start by telling us a little bit about your personal journey, your career?

Lola Jordan:

Well, I love to tell people about my personal journey because it's really about parents. My parents were both blue collar workers. They worked very hard to raise four kids-

Michael Akbar:

Wow!

Lola Jordan:

... and support us. The one thing they would always tell us though is, "When you grow up, you're going to college. So when we grow old, you're going to support us." That stuck with my oldest sister and it stuck with me. My oldest sister was the first to graduate either side of the family-

Michael Akbar:

Wow!

Lola Jordan:

... from college and I was the second. When I got in college, I had intended to be a teacher. I looked at salaries and I said, "Well, I can't support my parents at their old age with a teacher salary." So I flipped my major to computer science. It looked like it was the new era. I had taken one course in high school and I said, "That looks like it might be a good fit for what my parents want." That's really how I ended up in the field of computer science, was really trying to fulfill that dream that my parents had set up for me.

Lola Jordan:

So I graduated with that degree, started with EDS, which is the Electronic Data Systems. It's a Ross Perot company. Spent over 20 years there when Companion Data Services found me in this arena and I've come over to this side. I could go on and on, but my journey has been both in technology, end-to-end as you described, but also in the business aspect of it having run the actual claims, data process, and customer service quality, all of those functions that come with it. It crosses Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial payers. So I've had a good exposure and great leaders that have really allowed me to be where I'm at in my journey today.

Organization Changes

Michael Akbar:

That's wonderful. Looking back, how things have changed since you joined the organization?

Lola Jordan:

Well, technology has advanced immensely. I like this analogy. Air travel today is to the Wright brothers travel of yesterday. Technology today is those deck cards as programmers that they would use. A lot of people may not remember them, but deck cards of yesterday as they are computers today. When I was in school and we had Apple coming out with their Macs, I mean, you still had pretty big machines, mainframes filled big rooms. Today, our computer is on the phone, right?

Lola Jordan:

I mean, there is more power in that phone than what I had, thousands fold than what I had on my Mac that I got in high school. What hasn't changed though, which is just as important, is the people behind the technology. We hear many times people say, "Oh, my grandchildren, they can use technology better than I can and they can work their way around a phone." That's all true, but my response to them is, "That's true. And I can use an electric switch. I can go over and I can flip the switch and turn on my electricity.

Lola Jordan:

That does not mean I know how that electrical engineer gets that from the pole outside my building all the way into my building." That's what we're really missing today, is those technologists, those children, those college students in STEM that want to know how it happens. That's such a big thing and it takes the people behind everything we do to make sure that our technology world will continue. Without that, delivery is not going to happen. No more games on your little phone as you sit in airports.

Future Goals

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. That's a great point. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Looking forward, what are some of the important things that you would like to accomplish at CDS?

Lola Jordan:

Well, CDS has the customer experience as our strategic focus. To accomplish this, we need great people that are passionate about being servant leaders. They need to want to live to make our customers happy. For our CDS leaders, we need to ensure that they're creating the best environment that our people can be matched to the business needs as well. It's a balance between both, the demands of our customers, living in the gray area, delivering what they want. And we're not doing it just out of the box. We're not an out-of-the-box company. We create the solutions that they want, not what we believe as technologists they have to have. Everything fits differently for our customers.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah, exactly. Some of the applications that you support are so much tied into legislations, laws, and so many other factors that you have to consider in supporting those clients. Yeah.

Lola Jordan:

Great example. I mean, healthcare is one of the most regulated industries out there although people may not think it is. It really is very regulated. And legislation changes continually, with the most recent being what they call interoperability where the patient and the doctor can get to the records no matter where they are, which is very important for us as Americans to start understanding our health better than just leaving it in the hands of our health providers.

Leadership Style

Michael Akbar:

Exactly. No, I appreciate you sharing that. On a different note, if you don't mind, how do you characterize your leadership style and what kind of impact do you see it has had on the stakeholders that you work with?

Lola Jordan:

I appreciate that question. As my goal is to be a servant leader and support the team where they're needed, my preference is micromanagement and looking to how to drive the company to success and allow the people to do their jobs. The word empowered is used a lot. But I really do want them to know that they can execute on their jobs and come to me to support them in any way that they need supported. It's very important for growth.

Lola Jordan:

I can't have a succession plan if the people aren't allowed to do their job. The other part of my style is directness. As colleagues could tell you, I'm a direct communicator. So I have to manage that too because there are some people that are more soft and you can't be direct and there's others that you're not direct enough. So between that servant leadership and that directness, I really strive to support my team.

Values

Michael Akbar:

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. What would you say are some of the values that are the guiding lights for you and the organization?

Lola Jordan:

We went through this exercise last year as a leadership team to ensure that we were staying focused on the values. They pretty much have stayed the same. As mentioned, the customer experience is our strategic focus. We meet the customer where they are, meaning we work with them to bring an optimal solution to meet their business goals. We avoid technology deployment for the sake of technology. How can we make technology work for them, not against them?

Lola Jordan:

We live in the gray area. What that means is, as you mentioned, regulations and technologies are constantly evolving and flexibility is key. So ambiguity is not an obstacle for us. If you bring us something, we're going to help you figure it out. Again, we don't do it out of the box. We're creative in our approach. Unique technology challenges require creative approaches. And we value our employees and provide them benefits and environments that we hope they can thrive in.

Lola Jordan:

That includes supporting our community through outreach, such as the United Way of the Midlands or the United Way of whatever local destination they're. We're proud to be part of the largest health insurance company in the state of South Carolina in that we are one of the primary donors to the United Way of the Midlands as employees. You'll see commercials on TV talk about, oh we've donated $2 million. Our employees year over year have donated personally over $2 million just to the United Way of the Midlands in South Carolina.

Lola Jordan:

I mean, that's not the whole state, that's just one portion of it. And we're proud. It doesn't end there. We associate with food banks, the American Heart Association, things along that line. So when we look at the employee, we look at them holistically and see where we can fit them in not just in the benefits that we provide in the environment, but how do we impact our community?

Interview Decisions

Michael Akbar:

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. If you don't mind, I want to change gear here. When it comes to hiring and reviewing candidates' resume, besides their expertise, what make you decide to interview someone or not to interview a candidate?

Lola Jordan:

People seeking a high-paced environment that loves to deliver excellence is a big plus. You can really see that a lot of times through their resumes. Well, structure is mandatory in our environment due to our regulatory environment. We have dozens of audits. We have certifications in ISO 27000, ISO 9000, CMMI Level 9. People watching it are like, "Oh, she's got too many acronyms." But we really need to pay attention to those details, balanced with a creative mind to come up with good solutions to our customers.

Lola Jordan:

When I'm looking at a application, I'm looking for someone that's well-rounded and that they didn't just go to school. They didn't just become a 4.0 student without something else besides an internship. Those are important, but to me, that's part of the curriculum, versus... And I'm biased here. When I went to school, I worked full-time, I had a co-op position in my last year of college, and I was involved in two paternal organizations, not sororities, outside of school, including being a board member on one.

Lola Jordan:

Not saying that to puff me up or anything like that. I'm saying it makes a difference when you're well-rounded and you don't just focus on one thing. It shows that you can be creative and you can multitask and you can move around into different environments.

Candidate Qualities 

Michael Akbar:

Exactly, exactly. When you interview someone, again, what are some of the important things that you look for in a candidate, again, besides their expertise and certifications in that live, dynamic interview? What are some of the things that you would particularly look for?

Lola Jordan:

Yeah, that's a great question too. It's really dependent upon the position. First and foremost, I really look at the resume. I want to know, are they paying attention to details? Because that'll tell me how they're going to serve their customer, how they're going to take care of the administrative stuff that we need to have. Are they paying attention to that detail? Diversity is in thought and experience.

Lola Jordan:

It's very important to have that diversity and also to see how they can express the inclusion of that diversity in their prior experience. We've moved from just simply talking about diversity to, how do you make it an inclusive environment? How do you make sure that if you're bringing on a female into an environment that she feels a part of that team? An example is golf. There are women that golf. So I'm using a cliche, but golfing. If they go after work and all the men go out golfing and this woman doesn't golf, then it doesn't feel inclusive.

Lola Jordan:

So making sure that there's activities that are inclusive that they want to do as well. That goes with whether it's ethnicity, cultural background, whatever that is. Or if there's a flower on the wall in a meeting and they're the quiet one in the group, how do you bring their thought out? How do you bring out their inclusivity? So asking questions that will really get to that point of it. And it really doesn't matter if it's a leader you're seeking or a frontline individual performer. We all need to figure out as a team how to bring out the best in each other. So those questions are important there.

Lola Jordan:

Already talked to you about really wanting someone that's well-rounded and seeking those questions to understand that. Especially as students come out of college, a lot of them don't think about the true experience that they have. A simple example is a big babysitter, right? People think, "Oh, babysitting, that's an easy job." No, somebody is leaving their children in your hands.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. Exactly.

Lola Jordan:

You have a big responsibility. What did you do when you had those children? Did you read to them? Okay, now you're a teacher. Did you go out and play with them? Now you're a coach. It's really looking at, how can you bring those questions out to your interns and people coming out of college as well? So really, depending upon where they are in the life cycle of their career, it can be very different in how I interview for the position.

Referrals 

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. That's great. That was very insightful. Thank you for sharing that. What kind of a difference would make if the candidate is someone that other members of your team can vouch for or they have known and referred? How important that is or what kind of a difference would it make?

Lola Jordan:

If anyone says that it doesn't make a difference, I think they might be kidding themselves, right? Because we're comfortable with the known more than we are with the unknown. As part of a large healthcare insurance, South Carolina, we're proud of the lineage of our friends, our family, our referrals that work here. There's no better compliment than someone bringing you in as a referral. If the referral comes in from a strong employee, we take that into serious consideration.

Lola Jordan:

And since we have a diverse workforce, it allows us to attract more diversity as well. In the way I like to think about it, is if I'm going to refer somebody, they're probably going to have to work twice as hard just not to make me look bad. That's the way I think anyone referring somebody is, right?

Michael Akbar:

It's smart.

Lola Jordan:

Because it's a reflection of you. Who's your friend? Who's your family? Who's your former colleagues? So I think it's important. That being said, if we don't have enough diversity, we still need recruiting practices that allows us to bring that diversity in. So our recruiting practices are still tapping into partnerships with the historically black colleges and partnerships with like the University of South Carolina for internships so we can tap into that diversity, going to work fairs, closely working with veterans, organizations. So it's not the only way to get in, but it's certainly one of the ways that we recruit.

Salary Questions 

Michael Akbar:

That was really insightful. Thank you so much for sharing that. A totally different question. A lot of candidates are concerned that by answering questions about the salary... Because a lot of applications nowadays ask what's your salary expectation. Their concern that by answering that question too early they may be leaving money on the table or disqualifying themselves for a position, what is the perspective from the employer's side? What would you advise candidates on how to approach those questions?

Lola Jordan:

If you are asked, then be candid and honest about it. I love this one story. I have a couple of stories, but I love this one story. When I was running a customer service center 10, 12 years ago and had a new manager that I brought in, actually came over from Turkey, and were interviewing customer service. We had candidates that came in and we'd ask that question, what do you want? Some would say $10, some would say $12, some would say $6. I mean, literally, it's all over the place. Our going rate hourly at that time was 10.25.

Lola Jordan:

One candidate came in and said she wanted $9. So new manager, and I said, "Okay, why are you going to offer her?" And he says, "Well, she wants $9. So we're going to offer $9." And I said, "Is that wise?" And he is like, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, really, we're offering everybody else $10.25. If her experience is such, we should be providing that." And he's like, "Wow! We do that?" And I said, "Yeah, we do that." But it gives you a starting point. That $9 told us that she'd be happy at nine, but when we offer 10.25, you've already built a loyalty there, right?

Michael Akbar:

Oh my God! Yeah.

Lola Jordan:

Now, the flip side can happen where you have someone coming in that says, "I want 14," or, "I want 13." I don't believe I make those decisions for individuals, but we at least know where they're starting at and it's not fair to deny them the opportunity to say no. If they're the best candidate, then at least we know where they've started. I want to go to females. It's really, really important for females to state what they want. This is the second story, is that I had a mentor when I was applying for a job.

Lola Jordan:

I'd been in EDS so long I really didn't know what the market was. He told me, "Here's what you should start with." I looked at him and I thought, "You're a little crazy. I can't start that high." And he's like, "No, that's the problem with women in general, not all, I've learned now, is that they undervalue where they are. It's better to start high and negotiate down." I said, "Okay, great." So I did what he wanted, and lo and behold, I get hired at that amount. I'm talking to my husband and I'm like, "Wow! This is amazing."

Lola Jordan:

Later I became good friends with the recruiter who hired me and said, "Well, you were actually hired at a higher amount than we actually targeted." I share that story because men are more comfortable with targeting high, women need to get more comfortable with targeting high. If I had not had an advocate or a mentor that taught that most important lesson to me, I wouldn't have been where I'm at in making sure that I'm getting what I'd like to have. So I really think it's important for the employer to know it. I know people have the whole battle with stating what it is and I was a prime example of it.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned about how women approach this as opposed to men because we witness the same thing among our coaching clients. For some reason, as you said, women so cautious about going with numbers that are typically much lower than men, although in many cases they are far more qualified.

Lola Jordan:

Right. The other thing that women do... This is something to really encourage them about. I learned this from Gartner, who is one of our partners that we partners up with, is that women tend to literally take the requirements... not mandatory, but reference and all of that, literally. So if they miss one little aspect, they're "I'm not qualified. I won't apply." Goes back to my babysitting example, right? And men are like, "Oh, they only want that, but I'm great so they're going to want me anyway."

Lola Jordan:

So when I'm mentoring women or they ask my advice, I say, "Unless it's mandatory, there's some things you can't get around. A college degree, you can't get around that." With their algorithms today, it just bounces the resume out. But other things, it's not literal. We've got to quit taking things literally and see how you can work it in to say, "Yeah, I may not have this part of the aspect that you want, but you never thought about this part that is just as important or more important."

Lola Jordan:

Maybe they didn't use the word collaboration, so you bring it into your resume. "Very collaborative, and let me give you an example of how I'm collaborative." And there are men that are reserved in how they approach it. So both could learn that. And again, I've been taught that through good mentors or companies.

Advice for New Employees

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. How would you recommend your newer employees to go about their work, not only to help the company as best as they can, but also be conscious about their own career advancements?

Lola Jordan:

Right. I speak to classes at the University of South Carolina as they're going into their years for internships. I encourage them to learn as much as they can when they start. I mean, your schooling really never ends. I think college, unless you're in a really technical field, medical, chemistry, things that you don't want someone operating on you that doesn't know your body parts, the rest is teaching you how to learn in the environment. Your learning never stops. So be a self-starter.

Lola Jordan:

Don't expect anyone to own your career. A lot of young and old will come in and they think their leader owns their career. I have never let my leader own my career. That's a fatal mistake. You need to own your career. Identify your goals. Where do you want to be? How do you get there? Now, your leader can help with that. That's when you could talk to your leader and say, "This is what I want to do. What do I need to do? What continuing education do I need to do? What technology do I need to know? Because technology changes at a very fast pace.

Lola Jordan:

Just as an auto mechanic must learn the new feature to work on a car.... I'm proud of my brother. He's a 36, 37-year mechanic for a Ford dealership. I mean, the amount of money he spends on tools because they change constantly, but he wouldn't be in the business if he wasn't learning them. Even a car 10 years ago is not a car today. Today, I have Android Auto. Love my Android Auto. Well, he has to learn that. It's the same whether it's the latest in medicine, whether it's the latest in technology, latest in marketing.

Lola Jordan:

Whatever that is, just keep retooling yourself, keep yourself relevant. The other thing is, when you go into meetings... There's big meetings and you'll have five or six topics and only one little topic applies to you and you tune out and you go to your phone and I'm not paying any attention to this because it's a meeting. Oh, no. The way I got where I was with getting a huge amount of the business aspect is I would sit in the meetings with my customer and soak up what they were talking about that had zero relevancy to what I was doing today.

Lola Jordan:

When my company was awarded the contract in California to run their Northern California Medicare program, I was a technologist, but the customer who was part of my because company, but they were my customer, said, "I want to bring you to the business side. You know the business better than most of the people on the business side."

Michael Akbar:

That's amazing. That's-

Lola Jordan:

Right. And those are simple tools. Things I just told you, it's not rocket science. It's really just having and thriving on wanting to know as much as you can about your company, your customers' companies, and the businesses that you're supporting.

Job Seekers

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. That's wonderful. On that note, what are some of the hot topics in the areas of business that the company is involved with that job seekers should pay attention to?

Lola Jordan:

Since we are in technology and healthcare, the hot topics, one, I want to encourage our listeners first to do this, is to really encourage their children, male and female, to go into STEM; science, technology, engineering, and math. There's this myth out there that it's all been [inaudible 00:29:04]. We have a huge deficit. Just in South Carolina, the last thing I saw was like over 100,000 technology jobs empty.

Michael Akbar:

Wow!

Lola Jordan:

That's because we're not getting our kids into STEM. They have the knowledge, they have the capabilities, so I encourage them to do that. That's a hot topic. If the listeners want to look up a nonprofit that we help, it's called it-ology.org.

Michael Akbar:

ITI?

Lola Jordan:

Yeah. I-T-O-L-O-G-Y.org. It's what we're trying to do for the state of South Carolina to teach, attract, and reach people in technology from pre-K through 12th grade, college, and retooling the trends, midlife career changes, things along that line. So what in technology are hot topics? Security. We cannot get enough people in security. I mean, I'm sure your listeners, every day they open the paper and there's a new security breach. I mean, the pipeline, we're on the east coast, the pipeline getting hit.

Lola Jordan:

So everybody goes to the gas pumps making sure we get gases. Security is a big one. Programming obviously is a big one. Project management. The great thing about project management is that it's a skillset that you can take across industries because the Project Management Institute is not specific to an industry when you get certified. In theory, you should be able to cross that certification across industries. Networking is big for technology industry. Cloud and virtualization. Think all the things we talked about at the beginning. Those are all jobs that have a very big shortage in activities.

Michael Akbar:

Incredible.

Lola Jordan:

The other one, which is very surprising to me over the last year to two years, is accounting. Because we're a full company, we call ourself a technology company, but we still need our finance area, we still need our contracting area. Accounting is a big one that's starting just see a hard time recruiting.

Michael Akbar:

Oh wow!

Lola Jordan:

If you're great with numbers, look it up. It's a good opportunity for career advancement.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah, exactly. I sure hope we don't come to a point where shortage of accounting would start impacting businesses. It's so central too.

Lola Jordan:

It is. I talked about ours, but here is something that I think our education system... not the system as in the people, but our cultural system, fails, is encouraging the trades. Everybody wonders why plumbers, electricians, construction, whatever that is, has become so expensive. It's because we encourage our kids, "You've got to go to college." So I said two of us went to college, my oldest sister and myself, but the other two didn't.

Lola Jordan:

I just told you my brother is a mechanic. I mean, for decades, he'd say, "How much are you making?" "Yes, you're still making more than I am with a four-year degree. I get it." A science four-year degree. So we really need to start pairing and understanding young. There's some value in what the Japanese do, right? What's your interest? Where do we want to go? Where's the shop classes. That's where it started with my brother, was the shop classes in high school. Get them into the Midland tech schools.

Lola Jordan:

Parents just need to say, "What is it that my child wants besides... " And this, again, is my bias, "a liberal art degree that may not get them somewhere?" There is value in that, so nobody online get mad at me. But I'm telling you, the tech jobs, high demand. Just like accountants, if someone cannot fix our plumbing, we are going to be in big trouble. If someone can't take care of our garbage, we're going to be in big trouble. So all of those jobs are so important in our society. And they're not low paying.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. Exactly.

Lola Jordan:

So I encourage people to look at that instead of feeling as if they have to go to college.

Work-Life Balance

Michael Akbar:

Yeah, exactly. No, that's a great point. That's a great point. Coming back to a company like yours, what advice do you have to young to mid-level employees for them to keep the right balance between working hard and at the same time don't ignoring their life, basically maintaining the right balance?

Lola Jordan:

Everyone needs to learn where to find their balance. Early in my career, I was not as balanced as I am now, which is usually unusual to hear because a lot of times people hear executives say, "Oh, I work 60, 80, 90 hours a week." I worked 50 to 70 hours a week. This was not mandated by my employer. It was a self-imposed condition. I came from going to college full-time, working full-time, and I said, "Oh, I got to keep doing this." The employer will help provide room for the balance.

Lola Jordan:

You need to set the boundary for what your balance is in life. If you're going to give the employer 60 hours a week, I'm not going to stop you. But if you set your boundaries and you say, "Hey, here's my workload and... " And it needs to be a fair your assessment of your workload. Not that you want to play for two hours a day and then say, "I'm overworked." But it really needs to be an assessment of your workload and say, "Here's what I can do and I can't do."

Lola Jordan:

So I'm happy to say at this point in my life, even being a type A at work, I have balance. I have a lot of fun outside of work. I travel, I have friends, I have family. And when I go on vacation, I make sure that I have backups. So even as an individual performer, who's your backup so they're not calling you while I'm vacation? I just vacationed with some friends. It happened to be that the mens were the ones doing this, but they were working a lot and they're like, "Aren't you working?" And I'm like, "No, I have a good team. I have great people."

Michael Akbar:

That's right.

Lola Jordan:

"Really, they work harder than I do when I'm at work," I tell people. Whether as an individual performer or as a leader, make sure you've got that backup. Make sure you're not keeping things in your head. Don't hoard information. That's actually counterproductive for you. Some people want to say, "I want to be the expert. I don't want to share." But it's counterproductive. You can't get that balance and set those boundaries of what's most important to you.

What Makes CDS Different

Michael Akbar:

That's great. Again, coming back to the company, what would you like to set CDS apart as a great employer when you look inside your own industry?

Lola Jordan:

Can you ask the question again? I'm sorry.

Michael Akbar:

When you look in the industry, how do you see CDS setting itself apart as a great employer compared to other players?

Lola Jordan:

Excellent. I think the way we set ourself apart is going back to what I originally said. And that is that the customer experience is our strategic focus, making sure that our people are part of that and are important in that. We're not driven by profit. That is not to say that we don't want to be profitable, right? I love being in a non-publicly traded company because we are allowed to make decisions that affect two to 10 years out and not quarter by quarter.

Lola Jordan:

Given a choice, unless somebody gave me some huge multimillion dollar bill that would lock me in with a golden parachute, I love my company, I love where I'm at. And I just want that to be known, is that we're driving for our customer and our people and not for meeting some false dollar expectation. When you do that, in my experience... Even when I was in a publicly traded company, I tried to keep that mindset with my customers. The profit will come because your customers will come back and your people will stay.

Michael Akbar:

Exactly. Yeah. That's so profound, that in this day and age, we constantly think of the latest competitive advantage. But what you are talking about is so fundamental and at the same time so true. There's no question about it. Yeah.

Lola Jordan:

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Leader's Impact

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. One of my last questions, what would you personally like to be remembered as a leader?

Lola Jordan:

Whether it's inside of work or outside of work, what I want to be remembered as is loving Christ and being his follower. People need to know that no matter what occurs in the workplace, our treasures are not here, they're not in the work, but there was Christ and he sacrificed for us. Whether I profess that on a day-to-day basis at work, because we know the balance we have to have there or not, I want them to know that there's more importance to life than just work and that they as individuals have a huge value that had a price paid for it. And that's really what I want.

Final Thoughts

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. That's wonderful. Any other final thoughts for our audience?

Lola Jordan:

My final thoughts, I've thought about this, it's one I use often, is persevere through any activity or barrier, be passionate about what you do, and love your people or the people around you. If you have those three things, you're going to succeed.

Michael Akbar:

Yeah. That's wonderful. Lola, thank you so much for your time and advice today. Lola Jordan, president of Companion Data Services.

Lola Jordan:

Thank you, Michael. You have a great day.

Michael Akbar:

You too. Thank you.

Lola Jordan:

Okay.