. 
In this episode of How I Work, our host, Josh Becerra from Augurian, sits down with Dena Mayne, the Chief Operating Officer of Keystone Group International. Prior to her role at Keystone, Dena enjoyed a remarkable 25-year career in large corporate environments, including renowned companies like 3M and Ecolab.
Her passion for leadership development and innovation led her to her current position. Dena shares her experiences working in international settings, particularly in Latin America and Asia Pacific, which exposed her to diverse cultures and taught her valuable leadership lessons.
How I Work, Episode 49 with dena mayne
One pivotal moment in her career occurred during a chance encounter with 3M’s CEO in a stairwell, which left a lasting impact on Dena. The CEO’s genuine interest in her growth and development ignited her passion for inspiring action and helping others achieve their goals.
The conversation turns to servant leadership and conscious leadership, which are fundamental to Keystone Group’s culture. Dena explains how these principles focus on empathy, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the importance of leading with purpose. She emphasizes the significance of leaders understanding their “personal why” and surrounding themselves with a complementary team to achieve their goals.
Plus:
- Servant leadership: Empathy and emotional intelligence, hiring to augment gaps, and leading culture
- The common relationship trend between sales and marketing teams
- Advice for leaders facing challenges, change, and uncertainty
“We’re all different in how we lead and why we want to be leaders, so it’s reminding ourselves of our own personal why. Why are we in the position that we’re in? What inspires us? How did we get here?”
This episode offers valuable insights for leaders, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in leadership development, organizational culture, and the dynamic interplay between sales and marketing in today’s business landscape. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain wisdom from Dena Mayne’s remarkable journey and expertise.
To learn more about Dena Mayne and Keystone Group Interational, visit their website: https://www.keystonegroupintl.com/
Explore more content from leaders in the SaaS marketing community on our podcast. Or visit our blog to find more digital marketing tips and ideas.
Want to learn more about Augurian? Listen to our core values or reach out to speak with an Augur today about your marketing strategy and digital advertising performance.
Transcription: How I Work, Episode 49 (dena mayne)
Josh Becerra:
Hi everybody, welcome to this episode of How I Work. This is Josh Becerra from Augurian. I’m super excited to introduce today’s guest, Dena Mayne, Chief Operating Officer of Keystone Group International, where she’s responsible for supporting the organization’s growth to ensure strong delivery of the company’s guiding principles, leadership development, culture, organizational strategy, and growth. Before working at Keystone. Dena spent 25 years in large carpet environments like 3M and Ecolab, furthering her passion for leadership development. Thanks so much for being here today, Dena.
Dena Mayne:
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. So you’ve had an amazing career starting in the marketing function, but evolving to strategy, leadership, and development. Can you share a few highlights with the audience of your road that’s taken you all the way now to Keystone Group?
Dena Mayne:
Sure, absolutely. Very much an untraditional path, especially from a marketing standpoint. So started my career at 3M, actually in an administrative assistant role. And I won’t go into all the details, but quickly realized that wasn’t a great fit and had an opportunity through 3M to go back to school and further my education and then go into marketing. And so at 3M is where I found my passion for innovation and trying to inspire people to take action. I got to work on some great commercials, and some great products at 3M, but then my passion folded into international and wanting to be exposed to other cultures, which is what led me to Ecolab. And spent most of my career at Ecolab working outside of the US, building teams, building organizations in Latin America and Asia Pacific. all under the marketing umbrella, but had an opportunity to touch a lot of different things. And the common thread throughout my entire career has been inspiring action, innovation, leadership development, and team building. So that’s followed me throughout my whole career where I’ve got to do a whole host of things that were unique and fun and challenging as well, from building teams to defining a large organization’s new purpose, vision, and values that are still alive today. and helping organizations completely transform to a customer-centric mindset. It’s been fun.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. Well, I tell you, we’re going to unpack some of those stories because I know that, for example, you have an amazing story about one particular conversation you had at 3M that continues to kind of influence you today. I love that story. So can you share a little bit of that story and its impact on you?
Dena Mayne:
Absolutely. So very early in my career at 3M, very young. I started at 3M at 19. And so early in that career stage as an administrative assistant, I was going to work one day. And for whatever reason, the main tower building of 3M where all the executives live had been flooded. And it was early. It was like six in the morning, six thirty in the morning, something like that. So no one was aware yet that this had happened, but none of the elevators were working. so I had to take the stairs up to my floor. Upon entering the stairwell, I noticed that the 3M CEO at that time, Desi DeSimone, so any 3M-ers who might be listening may remember him, quite an iconic leader for 3M. Well, I quickly noticed he was not that far ahead of me in the stairwell, and he was a large person, just a large persona, bigger than life personality, and the CEO of a massive company, and I was nobody at 19.
Josh Becerra:
Yes.
Dena Mayne:
basically. So panic quickly set in. And it was through that experience as I was debating, like, what do I do? Do I just like walk really slow? Do I exit and wait and come back in the stairwell? What am I going to do? As I’m kind of thinking this through, he said, Hey, hey, you behind me, I can hear you. Why don’t you come walk beside me? And so what do you do? So
Josh Becerra:
Do I do what the boss says.
Dena Mayne:
Yes, exactly. And so, I went and walked beside him for about 11 floors. And we had a great conversation, but it was through that experience that I definitely knew what I wanted my impact to be. Through that conversation, Desi asked me a lot of questions about what I wanted to do. Was I being supported by my managers? Was I being given opportunities and challenges to stretch myself and grow? while at 3M, he never once asked me what my role was, never asked me where my college degree was from, none of that was really about what did I wanna do and was I getting experiences from 3M that would help me grow. And probably in that moment, I didn’t realize what an impactful conversation that was, but upon going home that night, I was carpooling with some friends back then and. it was coming home and telling them that story that it hit me like that’s what I want to be. I want to be someone who generally has genuine care for others and doesn’t really care about the pedigree or the path that you’ve taken, but really where are you trying to go and how can we help you get there? And so that was a huge influence on me and how I lead today and why I wanna be in a leadership position.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, I love that story. And it’s like, it’s a built in metaphor, right? Like, hey you, come walk beside me, right? And for 11 floors, it wasn’t, you know, you can go around me and race ahead because you’re more agile and younger or whatever. It wasn’t like staying back there, it was beside me.
Dena Mayne:
Yes.
Josh Becerra:
So anyway, I just, I love that story. And it is so kind of relevant to leaders today.
Dena Mayne:
Yeah, it had a big impact and back then he was a huge believer in what was servant leadership, which still lives on today in a variety of different ways, shapes and form. But in all the leaders that I had exposure to at 3M, they led with that mindset and that’s how I got the opportunity to go back to school and continue my growth and career trajectory that all started at 3M.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, well, that’s awesome. Well, I’m sure there’s probably some three M’ers out there who are like, yeah, let’s go.
So, you know, you mentioned when you were talking a little bit about your career trajectory that you had the opportunity to lead some global initiatives which gave you the opportunity to travel the world, and see different cultures. You and I, you know, I’ve spent time living and working overseas, as you know, in Montevideo, Uruguay for 10 years. And I’ve… spent time all over the world, but you had the opportunity to do this multiple times, multiple continents. So can you just talk a little bit about that experience and what you learned from seeing different cultures and living and working overseas?
Dena Mayne:
Gosh, where to start? Just so grateful for the learning opportunity. I think being an expo, I grew up in a small town on a farm where it was a farming community. Everyone was the same. Everyone was facing the same challenges and just kind of a smaller mindset in terms of what, you know, every day was about survival on the farm more or less. So not a lot of concern about bigger picture things. And so being exposed to other cultures just gave me the opportunity to better understand how other people are living life, and what their cares and concerns are about. And I would say probably one common theme of growing up in a small town on a farm with not a lot of money was the survival mode, which happens in a lot of other cultures outside of the US. So I’d say that was a common theme, but the community focus was significant, especially traveling to Latin America.
I would always get picked up and brought to family events as part of my travels. I was never alone for very long, so that was phenomenal. And then in Asia, one of the things that I think I mentioned to you too was just, you know, you hear a lot about women being able to have an impact and it might be harder in Asia. And one of the things I am most proud of is the impact I was able to have in Asia. specifically building up a team of women. So when I started in my role in having responsibility for Asia Pacific, there were no women on the team.
And so by the time I left, we had not only gotten a large group of women within a variety of different roles, but we also had women in key leadership positions. And one of those women was actually in a general manager role leading Japan, which was a huge accomplishment. So… you can have an impact in areas where people say it’s really hard. And it was a team effort for sure. I had a boss who was a huge proponent of diverse opinions. And with that comes female opinions, not just male opinions. And so he was a huge proponent of that, which helped pave the way for me to have more of an impact in Asia Pacific. But the same in Latin America as well, bringing women into leadership roles. And it was really more about balancing that voice.
Josh Becerra:
Sure.
Dena Mayne:
You know, you have all women, it’s the same thing, right? You want to have diverse opinions, diverse ways of thinking. And men and women definitely have different ways of seeing the world and different experiences. And so I think there’s a tremendous amount of value in having both. And so working outside of the US just gave me exposure to how do you do that in environments who may not appreciate that or where it might be more difficult. And also the importance of having advocates and how do you find those advocates? How do you build them and get them just supporting what you’re trying to accomplish and show the business impact, right? I think anytime you can tie what some people might perceive the softer things to business impact, you can really make things happen.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. And I think there’s plenty of studies out there that show that when you have more diversity within rooms and decision making, you just have better outcomes. Like, there’s just so many different lived experiences. And I, you know, having lived myself in Latin America, I can only imagine you as a woman. Like, that was probably pretty groundbreaking. I haven’t spent time in Japan, but I, you know, you hear some of the stories about how business is conducted. And. Yeah, I can only imagine that you were finding new ways to be an advocate for yourself and others. So kudos to you.
Dena Mayne:
Yeah, and again, I think it goes back to the passion I have, which is inspiring action. And so how to show those teams, and back then it was my male leadership team, how the dynamic of a conversation can shift. And a lively conversation and debate, healthy tension, leads to better outcomes and leads to better business results. And so it started small and had to build some credibility along the way. But once you build credibility and establish trust, a lot of things can happen pretty quickly.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. We talk a lot about radical candor around here, right? Where people in that quadrant care very deeply about something, but they’re willing to have difficult conversations and divergent thinking. And I think it is, it’s really important. Of course, you need to have trust. You need to, there has to be some kind of psychological safety. So there’s a lot of things that go into that, but yeah, really, really amazing.
Dena Mayne:
The other thing I would even just say on that topic, it’s not just men and women. I worked at an organization where if you are familiar with the insights, the personality test, um, the bulk of the executive leadership team were red and blue, which means driver, let’s get stuff done, action oriented, and blue is I need all the detail. I need all the analytics. I need all the data. And so, um, the bulk of that executive leadership team was red and blue. And that’s a lack of diversity as well. And it showed in engagement results, the engagement results where we don’t understand the purpose of the organization. We’re not inspired by the mission of the organization. We don’t understand how our role contributes to the greater good because that red and blue can sometimes lack some of that orange, yellow energy, which is to inspire, engage, show people the vision, and get them inspired behind it. And so even… just want to call out it’s not always men and women, it’s also personality, diversity that makes a big difference.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, that’s a great call out. So we’ve talked about the importance of business culture as a primary driving factor for any successful business. Can you help define or impact the concept of servant leadership or Keystone’s conscious leadership that I know is the foundation that you use for creating and maintaining a successful culture?
Dena Mayne:
Yeah, so I’m excited to be part of Keystone where the focus is truly on a concept of servant leadership. We call it conscious leaders, conscious leadership, but it starts with the whole idea of empathy and emotional intelligence. And that is being attuned to what that matrix of the employee needs with the business needs. And I had mentioned that earlier too, with building up teams in Asia and Latin America, you have to be able to understand both and what’s that nice intersection. where you can still deliver what the team needs while having an impact on the business. And that’s really what we focus on as a conscious leader, is tapping. Usually, most leaders are pretty strong on business needs. You know, zoned right in on the financials and how am I going to deliver the month, the quarter of the year, very strong on that end of the equation. But then sometimes, you know, have lost focus or lost sight of that emotional intelligence and the empathy that can also help. broaden their leadership capabilities. And so we focus on both, but it’s usually that emotional intelligence that needs a little bit of reminding and kind of pulling back out to balance out the business side of the equation. So we spend a lot of time there and it is getting into thinking about how you lead yourself. So it’s starting with an inward view. We’re all different in how we lead and why we wanna be leaders. And so it’s reminding ourselves of our personal why. Why are we in the position that we’re in? What inspires us? Why did we want to get here? When you can understand that and what your strengths are and where maybe you’re not the strongest, that helps empower you to lead others.
And so we then focus on better understanding that then how you surround yourself with a team of people who can augment your gaps? And having been in hiring positions many, many times, it’s really easy to hire people just like you versus… pushing yourself, are you hiring people that are different and are going to augment some of your gaps and capabilities. So we spend a lot of time thinking through what that looks like and helping leaders see that and understand that as part of being a conscious leader. And then the third pillar that we get into is leading culture. And so the big misconception is it’s HR’s job or it’s the CEO’s job, right? It’s somebody else’s job, but it’s not mine. The reality is everyone is responsible for culture and the biggest influencers of culture are the CEO and their executive leadership team. But as a leader, you can influence culture down your team and then spread that across. And so we spend a lot of time talking about what that looks like and how you weave through your personal why to how you wanna lead into the culture that you’re building for your function or your team and how that pulls her up to the greater good of the company. So there’s kind of three key pillars that get at what it takes to be a conscious leader?
Josh Becerra:
I love that. And it is very much an exercise in kind of self reflection and like knowing yourself and your strengths and weaknesses and what you’re trying to do. And like, yeah, keeping that as your North Star. I really do love it.
Dena Mayne:
We spend a lot of time, we’re actually, have just been talking about this as of late. So many of our CEOs are inundated with one problem after another, especially in today’s world, right? It’s such a reactive, things are happening faster than you can predict. And so when our CEOs allowed the space and the time to do what you just said, Josh, the self-reflecting and the reminding of like, why am I here? This job is awful today, right? There’s those tense moments and everybody wants something from you as a leader. And so you can easily start to feel like you’re not doing anyone right. You’re not delivering the numbers and your employees aren’t happy. Your engagement scores aren’t where you want them. The board’s not happy, right? And so at Keystone, one of the big things we’ve been focusing on is how we can help create space for our CEOs to, excuse me, get back to their personal why. Excuse me. I’m going to take a quick sip of water. Excuse me.
Josh Becerra:
Well, I do love how you’re framing that as, you know, finding and maintaining and nurturing your personal why. Cause I do, you know, even everything you were just saying about like leaders who think about these things and, you know, are feeling like they’re getting pulled in a bunch of different directions. Yeah, it’s, it is hard. It is hard leading an organization. And if you can really like keep a hold of your North star, I think it really does help you as a leader. So. That’s
Dena Mayne:
Yes.
Josh Becerra:
great, great advice. I was hoping to shift gears a little bit into some of the conversations that I know you and I, we talk with business leaders all the time. And when we were prepping for this, you mentioned kind of a trend you’d been seeing in conversations, especially with B2B leaders, where they’re thinking that marketing should begin reporting to sales. And I think that that’s like, as someone who’s in digital marketing, but I do sales for our organization. It’s been kind of swirling in my head a little bit lately. So where do you think this kind of idea is coming from? What’s your take on it?
Dena Mayne:
Hmm. That’s a great question. Where is it coming from? Well, covering recovering from a cold. I apologize. I’m not sure. I think what’s happening is with marketing being so data driven now, and you’re in the digital world. So, you know, all the data that marketers can get to the world between sales and marketing is becoming much closer. And marketing has a great influence on revenue generation. And so I think there’s a natural tendency to. look at marketing more holistically in terms of revenue generation. And typically the revenue generators have been sales. And so I could see from an organizational standpoint, many leaders come from a sales position that it may make sense to, well, let’s just put that revenue generator under the revenue generators, which is a sales organization. So I’m certain it comes from a place of well-intended action. I just think the challenge is that the strategies are very different between a sales action oriented revenue generation and a marketing strategy to get to revenue generation. They’re very different techniques, expertise and capabilities. And so molding that under a sales organization, you can lose the power of what that marketing strategy can bring from a revenue generation standpoint.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah, yeah, it’s curious. You know, we’ve had, we’ve done a lot of videos and had a lot of conversations about like the kind of loggerheads that sales and marketing can get into sometimes. But also like you’re saying, like how intrinsically connected the two things are and, um, if only we can get people to kind of start having a shared vocabulary and language about like what it is we’re trying to accomplish together. I think. That’s where you see the most success. Separate functions with a shared language, at least that’s been my experience.
Dena Mayne:
I agree. And I think the way to do that is to hone in on the customer journey. And so remove the internal tension, the internal debates and really become more customer oriented and customer centric and spend the time as an organization understanding what is the customer journey that they’re going to experience. And then use that to say, what role does marketing play at each step of that customer journey? What is their role? What is the data that they’re capturing? What does success look like? How are we going to measure? On the flip, ask the same questions of what’s the sales role? And I think that really helps define the differences between the two and how together, we’re trying to achieve action. My whole passion is how we inspire action. If you really focus on that customer journey through that lens, you can see how the value that the sales team is bringing at a different touch point versus the marketing team. Because they’re all very different actions, but what we’re both trying to do is inspire action along that customer journey. And
Josh Becerra:
Yeah.
Dena Mayne:
I’ve seen that strategy play out really well where it helps remove some of that tension, but also provides a lot of clarity on what are the accountabilities? What are the roles and responsibilities between teams as they become closer from a revenue generation standpoint? And on the flip side, it also reinforces that many of the marketing activities have longer lead times because it is digital, it’s a longer play, where some of the sales activities are more quick in action or quick in response. And so how do they play together to inspire action as well?
Josh Becerra:
And I think like where some organizations get tripped up is at the very, very beginning when they are working on that customer journey. Many times I’ve seen where marketers are saying, this is our domain. It’s where we’re the ones who define the customer journey. And honestly, I feel like the sales team are the people who are kind of belly to belly with the customer all the time. And so getting their input and influence on helping define that customer journey, like actually listening to them and saying like, what are the needs or how are customers feeling at each stage is super valuable. And then if you actually consider their feedback and then they see that, then they’re more bought in. Right. And so it’s like it does almost start at the very earliest stage, which is We’re gonna do some customer journey work, but it’s not gonna be marketing doing it all on their own over here. Like we’re gonna take the input of sales and their understanding of our customers to heart. And that’s, it takes leadership, right?
Dena Mayne:
Yep, it does. It takes the sales and marketing leaders to be unified. And the other two teams, I would add into that conversation right at the start as your customer service or your customer care team and inside sales. They also have such a great pulse and unique perspective of different touch points and engagements with customers that I think brought in early into the process can make a really big impact on the outcomes.
Josh Becerra:
Yeah. Oh, this is a fabulous conversation. I’m sure we could go on for days about sales and marketing, but I’m gonna wrap it up with one last question. And it’s mostly just asking for some words of advice for leaders. So, you know, we all face one thing that is a constant and that is change uncertainty. So any words of advice that you might have for leaders on confronting this reality of challenges, change and uncertainty?
Dena Mayne:
Gosh, it’s a great question. You know, I would start with empathy. You know, as leaders, we live more frequently in that change dynamic, and we spend more time contemplating if that, then this. And so we’re a lot, we feel a lot more confident about potential directions, but our teams aren’t living in that mode. And so when we introduce change or a new way of doing things, they haven’t been sitting with it for as long as we have. They haven’t gone through the process of weighing pros and cons or seeing different companies go through different paths and learning from that. And so I would say it starts with empathy and understanding that most people start with a negative change happening because something bad and something bad is going to happen to me. It is just human nature. And so going back to kind of the beginning of conscious leadership, servant leadership, having that empathy and really trying to understand where your team is coming from and navigating them through that change curve can make a huge impact and having the patience. Again, I always remind myself that we’ve been living in this state of change and contemplating for much longer than our teams. And so yes, they have to go through their own journey and we’ve got to help bring them there. And the key is. are we bringing along the right managers, the next level of leaders on that journey so they can help with that change management? And it doesn’t all sit with the executive team.
Josh Becerra:
Right, yeah, I love that answer. Empathy, patience, and bringing along the right people. This has been a great conversation. I really thank you, Dana, for your time today. So, and I’ll just say, you know, that’s all we have for today, but check out Keystone Group International, and Dana, if you get a chance. Thanks again.
Dena Mayne:
All right, thanks, Josh.
