Comfortable with Uncomfortable; Olga Chaikouskaya

When Olga Chaikouskaya arrived in the United States at the beginning of her career, there were several obstacles standing in her way. She spoke no English, had no money, and faced perhaps her biggest career barrier: she didn’t know how much she didn’t know. Now, after twenty years of financial experience across an array of industries, Olga reflects on that transition as a lesson in becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable. Two of the most powerful lessons she learned along the way were:  breaking free from the boundaries we place on ourselves and recognizing that mistakes are a necessary part of growth and learning.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Harvard College of Business Podcast. Ogachakowskia is the CFO for CXO Solutions, serves on the Diversity Advisory Councils for the Indiana CPA Society, the Indiana University Kokomo School of Business, and is the audit chair for USA Team Handball. 

Speaker 2 (00:27):

Olga Chakovskiya, War Eagle, and welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for joining us. 

Speaker 3 (00:33):

Happy Friday, everyone, and happy to be here with you and go Eagle. 

Speaker 4 (00:40):

You've built an impressive career as a CFO, consultant, and business leader. Give us a short version of your story and your journey and what brought you here today. 

Speaker 3 (00:52):

Thank you for the invite and I'm happy to share my story. I think if we are going to think about where it's all started, it started back in 2001, right before September 11th, where I had the opportunity and privilege to come to United States to realize my dream. I did not know what I have signed up for because I did not speak English or I did not have a family of friends here, but I have to start my life here and rebuild this from scratch. My journey was bumpy and difficult, but I have to start somewhere. So my first positions were very basic positions, but then with the hard work and dedication and become vicious and dreams to realize myself eventually I entered to the management position and eventually to the C-suite roles. It have been a remarkable journey, very rewarding journey, but it comes with a hard work in that regards. 

Speaker 2 (01:52):

So you came here, you had no connections, no network, you were really just starting from scratch. Imagine if you were sitting across from an Auburn University student, they got a 3.0, they have no connections, they're starting from scratch, a little bit different. What would you tell them about building a successful career? 

Speaker 3 (02:13):

I would probably start to be curious and open-minded and also don't accept answer no at the final answer. If you can keep knocking down the doors, you can imagine coming to United States with no friends or family or networking activities. My first job, I was simply carrying piece of white paper saying, "My name is Olga. I'm looking for the job. Do you have any?" Because I could not even pronounce that. And I was just knocking door by door. And yes, it took me a while to get my first job, but at some point someone will be able to help you out and you just need to be persistent with your efforts in that regard. So somebody who's already a college student, I think very well positioned to pursue their career dream. So hey, be very open-minded as far as what your destiny might bring to you. 

Speaker 3 (03:11):

Keep applying, keep trying. And sometimes you need to start somewhere. You need to start somewhere. And more you understand about business, more you understand about relationship, more you understand about networking activities, better you will be position yourself in the future. I also encourage students to get a mentor because with a mentoring relationship, your mentor can navigate. Your mentor can provide you with support with their network connection. So with their directions, "Hey, how do I apply for a job? How do you conduct interviews? How do you manage certain projects?" So all of those things come with a good people around you. Look around. Maybe it's your parents, maybe it's your friends, maybe it's your peers, maybe it's somebody else because many successful people feel like it's a they duty to give back and they will be very, very happy to support you. You just need to ask. 

Speaker 3 (04:16):

You just need to be open-minded about that. 

Speaker 4 (04:19):

So you progress from that entry level accounting position to a CFO. What do ambitious young professionals often misunderstand about climbing that corporate ladder? 

Speaker 3 (04:32):

I guess what I have seen sometimes in a young generation that people want to achieve career very fast and there's not whole lot of patience. And I respect that and young generation is slightly different. But what I have realized that investing in your self-development on a daily basis and doing your job good and precisely and freeing yourself up to help your department or your organization to achieve the higher level goals. So you kind of invest in your time in yourself, you're also at the same time in the parallel helping your organization to achieve higher goals. So all of a sudden you become invisible to the leadership that you're not as shy of the project, you're not shy of the solving the problems and roll your sleeve and try new things or asking the questions like, "Okay, I don't understand something why we're doing things this way or there is a better way of doing certain things." So to me, this is one of the key observation that I have. 

Speaker 3 (05:49):

Sometimes people very unpatient as far as their career ladder, but diving into something very deep and become precisely of whatever they're doing will serve them well in the long run because eventually it will come to you. You just need to be focused. 

Speaker 2 (06:08):

Yeah. Well said. Olga, the business landscape and especially the technological landscape within business is changing very rapidly. You learn a new skill and it's expired by next year. What skills do you believe are most important for future executives regardless of the industry? 

Speaker 3 (06:29):

This is excellent question and I have been thinking about this a lot because with a new era of technology, with the AI and with such a big disruption in many businesses and specifically in finance and accounting profession, it's positioning ourselves in a very interesting environment. We can deploy technology to automate a lot of maybe non-pleasant but repetitive task, but where we need to be excelling ourselves with the personal skills, with a building relationship, with an empathy and how we can communicate with our partners, with our clients, with our team members, with our employees. So to me, emotional intelligent skills are very, very much valuable in an area where technology is taking a lot of technical side of responsibility out of your desk and you really can shine in regards to how do you take what technology is bringing this to you and how do you communicate? 

Speaker 3 (07:49):

How do you bring this value added services to your organization or to your clients? Because at certain point everybody can ... Technology can do a lot of different tasks for you, but how do you read that and how do you communicate and what you're learning from that? This is where I feel like it's important in new way of technology to understand and become better at and also being open-minded, right? Being comfortable with uncomfortable. Okay, it's coming to you. You can deny this all day long, but it's there. So mobilize, be quicker, be curious, see what is going to do, play with that. Minimum play with that and see what it can do for you. 

Speaker 4 (08:36):

So just as a follow-up, do you think that that separates companies that scale successfully from those that struggle, that they don't necessarily acquire those skills or lean into those softer skills within the business and they rely solely on the technological aspects of building and creating? 

Speaker 3 (08:56):

I think when companies scale in, so they develop some sort of business model and then all of a sudden they scale in and they're growing. Processes, defining process is a critical aspect in order to scale because once you define the process and once you train your resources or your employees on the process, volume become irrelevant because you can deploy technology or your internal resources if your process is seamless. So the volume become irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you're dealing with a hundred or million or billion of similar transactions. So technology can handle this and processes can handle this. So this is what get to the scale. 

Speaker 2 (09:42):

Or you are no stranger to doing leadership presentations. Can you walk us through a little bit of your leadership philosophy? If these students were sitting in front of you in one of your presentations, what would be one to two things that you would really want them to walk away having learned? 

Speaker 3 (10:00):

I think curiosity and being open-minded is number one, not being afraid to touch anything. I keep telling many students, nobody was born with those skills. At some point you are at the beginning stage of learning something. It could be looking strange, uncomfortable, or intimidating, but once you're touching this little by little, you will become better at that. And everybody speed and destiny has its own unique way of learning. For some people, it's within a too repetitive task. For some people, it's taking a little bit longer. You really need to find your own way of learning. What is working for you? For some people, it's hands-on training. For some people, they would like to figure out things themself. Also, go extra mile. This is something that served me well in my career. Go extra mile every day, do little something extra in realization of your goals and objective because even with your simple maths, going little bit extra every day, it's create this compound effect. 

Speaker 3 (11:23):

Then within a six months, you will be further along versus where you started. I do not know what else to add in that regards. Being comfortable with uncomfortable even nowadays there's something that I'm not very comfortable, but this is the best environment to get into something and start learning, unpeeling, uncovering, start collaboration, start discussion, bringing team together, brainstorm certain sessions and just realize or figure out the solution or pass. It's okay to make mistakes. This is another very important one for anybody to realize. If you're not making mistakes, you're not doing anything. Mistakes will happen, but what is important, learn from them. Try to mitigate this from happening again, but it's a learning curve. It's a part of the journey. 

Speaker 2 (12:21):

That's right. And it's always important to get the mistakes out of the way early, right? 

Speaker 3 (12:24):

Right, right, right. I have not seen one business where business have not made mistake. I have seen, in a matter of fact, very successful businesses where one mistake actually served them very well because it was such a punch in the face where you have to mobilize all your resources and learn from that and get in a recovery zone and then get to the scale zone. Okay, this is what we learned. It's not going to happen again. We know what we're doing. Let's go. 

Speaker 4 (12:55):

Can we talk about that? 

Speaker 2 (12:57):

How do you know when you're in the scale zone? 

Speaker 3 (13:00):

Well, I have one of the examples that when COVID have happened, right? Nobody have any cooking book as far as, okay, COVID is happening, entire company, cities, businesses, country are locking down and all of a sudden everybody's facing the same reality. You not be able to go anywhere you're in a lockdown mode. I work for the company where within one week and it was over a hundred million dollars company, sales have shrinked 95% 

Speaker 1 (13:36):

Within 

Speaker 3 (13:36):

A one week. We had 3,000 employees supporting this company every single day. What do you do? How do you navigate? How do you maneuver? How much cash do we need to pay those people? What do you do with people? What do you do with the customers? It's kind of like reshaping you. Okay. And by the way, there is no recipe. It's not that you can go and call somebody like, "Hey, what should we do? " Nobody knows. It's a brand new challenge for everybody. And it's not that you depend only on your decision also there is governmental decisions. And once again, top priority, half of your people. People, your team is the largest asset of your organization. You need to protect them. This is top priority. Then you need to take care of your customer. Communication, once again, pick up the phone and start talking to your customers. 

Speaker 3 (14:35):

What do you guys do? Can we come to you? Can we serve you? If not, when can we come back? Sometimes you have to make a hard decision. We have to make, as the executive team, hard decision to furlough people. We did not eliminate positions, but we put people in a safe environment for them to stay home without pay. We were working very, very hard to give them some sort of compensation then they can at least feed their families. We did not send everybody home. We continue to invest heavily in a technology and developing technology. So when doors become open, we were very well positioned to return back to work all those people and start serving our customers again. And a matter of fact, at the end of this journey, our revenue and coming back was scaling up incredibly because it's made us so much stronger because we were facing this problem together. 

Speaker 3 (15:34):

So we have to make some hard decision, cut and paste, send people home on the furlough, protecting our cash as well. But then we have to maneuver and navigate. We did not know how long this will take. And people will come to me and say like, "Oga, how long is it going to take?" And it's like, "I don't know. " And as a leader, to me something else, it's okay to be open at times saying like, "Yes, I truly do not know. This is what we're doing now. Maybe it's the right decision, maybe it's not perfect decision, but this is what we're doing now because we need to rescue the company. We need to survive somehow. We will figure this out. When we cut people pay, we repay people back, but in that moment of time, we have to make those stop decisions. 

Speaker 4 (16:25):

Yeah. So how has your role of the CFO changed from being a financial steward to becoming a strategic business partner? 

Speaker 3 (16:34):

It's interesting because in Talking and many different business owners, people think about CFO role in so many different aspect and perspective. 

Speaker 3 (16:46):

And I have been very fortunate building very successful and strong team members under me who can do a lot of good, solid, very important work, which technically free me up to be closely with the shareholders and with executive team to drive the strategy because somebody have to do a work and you really need to free yourself up in order to help shareholders to achieve their goals and objectives. So you really need to build the team, right? Your team have to be strong because ultimately you're responsible for financial aspect. When things are not working well, it's your responsibility and you have to shift yourself more in operational role versus strategic role. But if your business and your mini operations is running smoothly and you can count on them, then you become available to do a lot of strategic project and strategic initiative. So building strong teams, reliable teams who you can trust, who can execute is a part of the recipe as a leader. 

Speaker 3 (17:57):

Because once you become in a C level, you're no longer doing hands-on stuff, you're more integrating and directing the certain teams, okay, this is what we're doing, this is our priorities, this is what we have to accomplish. By the way, we have to accomplish this five years from now and then one year from now and this is our priority in this particular quarter or week or months. So you're kind of like doing reverse engineering and you're all becoming this strategic advisor leader part of the team where you brainstorming and you're trying to figure out, okay, this is what is important for the company. All of a sudden you're driving company forward. 

Speaker 2 (18:37):

You also have extensive experience, mergers and acquisitions. What is one lesson every entrepreneur or executive should understand before pursuing growth through acquisition? 

Speaker 3 (18:49):

Do your homework. Do your homework. Many companies can grow organically and it's a kind of like natural flow of business or grow through acquisitions. And when I'm working with the companies and with the owners of the companies, even if they have no desire to sell at any point of time in the near future, one of the questions then I will be asking them, "What is your exit strategy?" 

Speaker 3 (19:25):

Because ultimately every business should be ready for exit at any time for any reason. What does that mean? Not necessarily to put company on the market, but company operate efficiently and effectively with they process with the people, with their teams, then it's ready to be put at the market at any time for any reason. So being proactive, always act like you are going to be selling your company or acquiring your company one day because once you experience M&A and you experience what kind of questions buyer is going to ask you during your due diligence, during your presentations, the buyer is going to challenge a lot of your business. Why are you doing things certain way? And then there's negotiation on the pring point, right? 

Speaker 3 (20:28):

What is the value of your company? So building this value of the company, it's an ongoing process and it's not fixable within a week. It have to be happening a little bit in advance. So preparing your company, this is what successful companies do. They operate at this stage then they're pretty much, okay, if the buyer, if strong buyer comes tomorrow, we're ready. All the docs in order, all processes are great. We have a great success story. We make an excellent decision. We have a good playbook of our business. We understand the business. We know how to business operate. We're mitigating the risk, so being prepared. So do your homework, do your homework, be proactive. Don't think about this today. You have to think about this a few years before. 

Speaker 2 (21:22):

That's good advice. 

Speaker 4 (21:23):

So your consulting work spans startups, restructuring, innovation, and market expansion. What are common challenges you see across organizations regardless of the size or the industry? 

Speaker 3 (21:35):

I think it's comes to asking the questions, brainstorming and also developing a roadmap. Where do you want to go and what is going to take you with this journey? Many times we start with a conversation. Okay, I would like to enter, I don't know, new market. 

Speaker 3 (22:02):

Okay, that's great. But how do we convert this initiative in a minute, actionable format? If this is what I want to realize, what did that mean? What kind of targets it is, what kind of market it is, does this have potential? What kind of risk does it have? What kind of opportunities? Who is going to do it? If this person is capable of executing, what kind of resources do we need to have? What kind of due diligence we need to do research? So kind of creating a roadmap on this particular initiative. So if we're doing market expansion, do we understand the market? What our customers want? Do we have a good, suitable ... If we need to open new market, does this have to be in Florida? Does this have to be in Alabama? Does this have to be in New York or Alaska? All those questions need to be answered during those strategic discussion. 

Speaker 3 (23:07):

Okay, we want to expand. Okay, there's a 50 state. Where do we want to expend? Or we want to launch two new products. Okay, can you do all of it? Or maybe you should start with a one. And by the way, everything is costing money because we 

Speaker 1 (23:24):

Do 

Speaker 3 (23:24):

Not know what is the outcome. So you really need to think through this and develop this roadmap as far as, okay, resources, human resources goes, technology, capital then you need to invest, time you need to allocate and how long will it take you? When I'm looking at any kind of proposed initiatives, I'm always looking like return on investment. This is what we need to invest. This is what we're going to get back and I will always challenge return on investment money wise or time wise because we really don't have a five years. Typically we don't have a five years to realize return on investment for different initiatives unless it's a heavy capital investment type of thing. So all those questions need to be answered and something else that I have learned and it's kind of like interesting. Sometimes you really need to make a decision without all answers because even if you have all answers in reality, certain things will pop up and you just have to navigate through them. 

Speaker 3 (24:34):

There have been many, many times where we were entering into new market and we thought like, okay, we've done our homework. We research everything, know what we're doing, know how we're doing, and all of a sudden we did not realize that there's certain nuances with this particular market then we'll dictate slightly different outcome. 

Speaker 4 (24:55):

Yeah. Could I ask a quick follow-up? What are some of the questions that you ask when you push back on ROI when you're in those discussions? 

Speaker 3 (25:05):

So it really depends on a setting and on initiatives, but okay, what assumptions have you made? What assumptions have you made in order to present this particular investment proposal? Those assumption realistics, did you do your diligence and discussion and collaboration, not only from your particular department, but did you get involved with the operations or with sales or with IT? Because in many cases, whatever is proposing certain initiatives have to make sure that all parties are united. Typically, when I'm supporting larger corporation, is this fit in overall strategy and big vision? Does this fit in our long-term goal or we're trying to disrupt ourself? Discipline is important part as a discipline. Question number one, does this fit in our overall mission and vision, what we're trying to accomplish? Okay. Yes, it does. Then does this fit in our strategic plan year one or year two or year three? 

Speaker 3 (26:22):

Okay. Where does this fit in my priority list? If we have several initiatives, which one takes priority? Does this make sense? 

Speaker 4 (26:35):

Yeah. 

Speaker 3 (26:35):

Yeah. And if we have to pick out of three only one, which one is the best and maybe not just the best today, but also the best three years from now, because ultimately we want to create a value of our organization. So those type of questions I will be asking, does this fit in our mission and vision? Does this fit in our strategic plan? Does this fit in our priority? Because I also have seen people thinking like, "Oh my God, let's do that. " And it's become a little bit disruptive. We are spending a lot of energy towards something that maybe too premature to attack as of yet. 

Speaker 2 (27:19):

Right. Yeah. Having that litmus test versus just being emotional about it, that's really 

Speaker 3 (27:23):

Going out. Emotions out. It's just simply, "Hey, no feelings." 

Speaker 2 (27:26):

Yeah. Now as we wrap up the show, what advice would you have for our current listeners? Let's say they're current college students, maybe recent grads or in grad school, what advice would you have for them? 

Speaker 3 (27:41):

I would say find a quiet peaceful place for yourself and maybe spend 10 or 15 minutes in this quiet place and think about ambitious goal that you want to realize 10 years from now. Don't think about short term. Think about big picture and be aggressive, be very free with that thought process. And more importantly, whatever come through your hat, write this down, write this down and then think about this and periodically come back to that thought. Okay, if this is who I want to become 10 years from now, what do I need to do this year to get myself closer to this big ambitious dream? And more importantly, keep looking at that and think what today I have done to get myself closer to this dream and what do I need to do tomorrow to get myself closer to this ambitious dream? And this is very, very simple, very, very simple roadmap that you are building for yourself 

Speaker 2 (29:06):

Yeah, I love that advice. It's not just professional, it's also personal. 

Speaker 3 (29:13):

Exactly. It's applicable to your personal goals and also to your career goals as well. Both purposes. I have one myself and it's always on my desk and I'm just periodically just looking and like, "Oh my God, this is my ambitious goal. Okay, what have I done today related to this? " It just standing there, but it's have to be in the writing. 

Speaker 3 (29:45):

And if you truly discipline with that vision, you just becoming your own builder of your own destiny. It's not Olga who can do the work for you, right? You You can achieve this yourself. I mean, look at me. I'm a no one 25 years ago here, very little stranger who does not even speak word English. But even without hope, you can achieve something. So you are your own destiny, your own helper, your own resourcer and also look around and ask like, "Hey, who else can help me? Is there anybody available?" Alga is available. I'm doing mentoring to young generation. One of my personal goals is to build future leaders. So I'm offering mentoringship services for free. So this is what I do. I'm sharing my story. I'm offering mentoringship. I just remember how difficult it was for me in my journey where I was super pleased for somebody just even listened to me. 

Speaker 3 (30:52):

I was very much appreciative of that. And now I feel like it's time to give back. It's time to give back and support and sometimes help comes from nonware. And this is beauty of America because people are in general is super nice here. 

Speaker 4 (31:07):

Well, on that note, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today, Olga. How can our listeners keep in touch with you or contact you for some mentoring? 

Speaker 3 (31:17):

Yes. I guess there will be a challenge to learn how to spell my last name. I guess the easiest way is to go on a LinkedIn and trying to find Oga. I can guarantee you I'm only one Oga with this weird and strange last name out there. This will be a homework assignment. 

Speaker 3 (31:35):

Learn how to pronounce my last name, but more importantly, if you want to connect with me, you need to find me on the LinkedIn and just send me a message. I read all the messages and I'm happy to support. I'm happy to answer the questions. I'm happy to connect people. My goal is to help people to realize their dreams. I love businesses and I love people and this is what driving my goal. Make a positive impact to society, to young generation because ultimately if we are achieving our goals and becoming successful overall, our society is becoming successful. 

Speaker 2 (32:12):

I love it. I love it. 

Speaker 4 (32:13):

Yeah. We appreciate your time all good. Thank you so much. Thank 

Speaker 2 (32:15):

You so much. Warrior. 

Speaker 1 (32:20):

Harvard Inspiring Business.