How RO Applies at Novus Support Teamwork, Mentorship, and Work-Life Balance

Speaker A My name is Scott Booktimeyer, and let me tell you about myself and how I fit into Novus and how I came to the company and what I've learned since I've been here to prior to joining Novus, I used to audit Novus International, and they were one of my clients and they were one of my favorite clients. I always enjoyed coming out and working with the Novus team. They seemed to have a different culture that really attracted me to Novus. An opportunity came up and David Friedman, who's the controller, had asked if I was interested. Actually, he had asked if I knew of anyone who would be interested in the role. And I jumped in and said, hey, why not me? And so shortly thereafter, I was able to join Novus, and I came from a service organization, and we had a pretty well defined system to evaluate our people because in that industry, we had a very pyramid structure and there was a natural turnover, and it was almost needed given the structure of the organization. And so after every job, we had an evaluation that we had to complete for our staff members. So I grew up in this environment where I was being evaluated and evaluating my subordinates. When I came to Novus, it was a little different, but still a similar process, just not as project oriented, but more trying to tie into the goals of the whole organization. And so one of the transitions that I had to undergo as I joined Novus was not to think about my role on a project by project basis, but think about how I fit into the company's objectives. And this is where the Nova's management system really came in and definitely helped out, because you were able to take this large organization and take all the skill sets from all the various individuals around the organization and align them towards those high level objectives that the organization has established. I left the company for a couple of years, and then an opportunity came up at Novus, which was what I was looking for for the prior ten years. I had worked in the same role effectively for ten years, left the organization for advancement reasons, but an opportunity presented itself at Novus, and that's what drew me back. I have rejoined Novus in a new role. It is a level four role, the Director of Planning and Analysis. I report to a level five, the Chief Financial Financial Officer, and I have one subordinate who is a level three manager of Financial Planning. I work in the planning department, planning and Forecasting. It's a cross functional role. I have to work with various other departments within the organization as we set objectives for ourselves, led by our CEO of Ad. I need to work with the other departments so that we can plan accordingly to achieve the objectives that we have established for ourselves. I think when I first joined Novus, the transition that was hard with the system. I should say most difficult. It's not that anything was in and of itself hard, but the the relationships that you have with other departments, there's so many different ways that you interact and how all those pieces of the puzzle fit together. That was a transition that I really didn't have exposure to in my prior work environment. I kind of worked on a project by project basis. Didn't really have that cross functional exposure until I came to Nova. So that was the largest transition. And I guess I really wasn't made aware of all the different relationships you would have with other departments and what it takes to work as a team, to get the various departments to work collectively and efficiently as a team. It wasn't until I arrived at Novus and started learning the system to where I could see that operate. That was one where I read about it, was told about it, but until I experienced it, I really didn't fully grasp or understand the concept there. But then that also is one of the huge advantages of the system. What I enjoy seeing is the organization establishing goals and seeing us take all the various roles and all the various assets of Novus. All the individuals provide will help us achieve these objectives. And to accomplish it, we all need to work together. And so what I enjoy seeing is when we are successful in accomplishing that and meeting our goals and seeing the cross functional teams each adding their expertise to the process. The thought that comes to my mind is teamwork. At Novus, we operate in teams. And the system has really helped guide at least me, and I believe it guides every member of the teams to work together in an efficient manner to achieve the objectives of those teams. And that is something that I view has been a huge advantage of working with the Novus management system. I view my career at Novus as just an extension of my education. And therefore, as I come to work each and every day, I'm looking for mentors within the organization. And initially my mentor was my boss. And when I first joined Novus, that was David Friedman, the controller. And now I'm looking to try to expand that. And I look cross. Functional. As I'm gaining more exposure in the various teams around Novus, I'm starting to look to others to serve in that mentor role to help me grow professionally. And this has also opened my eyes that I want to try to provide the mentoring to other people within Novus. And again, I had initially worked with my staff. I had several staff members when I first started and worked with many of them in trying to help them grow professionally as well. And I'm always continuing to try to do that. The system has a process to allow you to do that. We have forms that we need to complete we establish objectives at the beginning of the year, we measure our progress against those objectives, and we assess at the end of the year. It's my transition from my old job. We used to do that exact process, but on a project by project basis, right? But here it's a little more involved because we're looking at the objectives of the overall organization and how we fit into those objectives. When I first joined Novus, my manager once removed was the CFO, and I had many conversations with him. One of the most difficult decisions I had in that ten year time period was the decision I had to leave. And so not only did I speak to my manager first and then my manager once removed, I actually took it up another level and talked to my manager once removed from there, the CEO. And it was a very valuable asset to be able to speak to each and every one of those individuals to help me with my decision. And they each added their own bit of expertise to the decision making process. I think at the end of the day, the process is one of the reasons why I am still here today. I don't know if that process didn't exist and if I didn't have the ability to vet out all the issues that I was facing at the time with my peers and my managers, whether when an opportunity came up at a later point in time for me to return, whether that would have happened. But I believe the system allowed that to occur. In the period of my career when I served as a consultant, we were very project oriented and there were hard deadlines. And so that created a very hardworking environment. And you had to meet the deadlines at all costs. And sometimes that meant your families would have to sacrifice in certain circumstances. But the consulting firm I worked for certainly saw that as an obstacle or a challenge that had to be dealt with. And so when you were idle and there wasn't that heavy project going on at the time, they wanted to make sure and emphasize that you receive some balance at that time, take advantage of that time off. The transition to the corporate environment, it was a little bit different, a lot less project oriented. But in my role initially was in the financial reporting area. We had monthly deadlines every month, had to meet these deadlines. And so again, it was a similar effort in that we would work very hard to achieve those deadlines for our parent organization, but when the time allowed, we would take the time off and take advantage of it. The work environment at Novus is a flexible work environment, at least it has been in the department that I work in. And we all have to step up and work together very hard to meet the deadlines we have. But I'll make sure we balance that out when it slows down.