To commemorate 35 years of Access Sciences, President & CEO Steve Erickson joins Access Answers to talk about the company and its industry’s past, present, and future.

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Episode 5: 35 Years of Access Sciences with Steve Erickson

Julia:

Welcome to a very special episode of Access Answers. As most of you already know, I’m your host, Julia Vergara, along with Angela O’Pry. So, Access Sciences is celebrating 35 years as a company. And today we have our CEO and President, Steve Erickson, with us to help celebrate.

Angela:

We’re so excited to have Steve with us. We commonly refer to him as our fearless leader. He’s done a phenomenal job leading us through the pandemic in 2020. And we had an amazing time last week celebrating the 35th anniversary of the company. So, congratulations to Steve for getting us to this milestone, and the entire executive team, we’re very thrilled to have you.

Steve:

Thanks, Angela and Julia. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, it was a very special party. We had almost every employee in the company on a video conference for our remote party. So, it was a unique challenge and the folks who pulled it all together did an amazing job. We had a really good time.

Angela:

I love that it was 80’s themed. Going back to 1985, the year we were founded. I think we all wanted to get a reprieve from 2020.

Steve:

That was a good idea, the 1980’s theme. We had folks on the video conferencing dressing up for the part. And I was even able to participate in an opening video as the Miami Vice character, Don Johnson. And really enjoyed going back to those days and trying to recall the vernacular we used, the slang we used, and introducing the party.

Angela:

Totally rad.

Julia:

I think my favorite part was hearing you say, “Totally tubular.”

Angela:

Yes.

Julia:

Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah, and that’s just it. I don’t think I ever used any of those terms in the ’80s.

Angela:

How did it feel getting to drive in the 1988 white Corvette in the video?

Steve:

Oh, that was great. And it was too bad we weren’t able to get a DeLorean because we were trying… Hearken back to the Back to The Future theme. But the ’88 ‘vette was fun to drive as well.

Julia:

Yeah, so I just want to tell our audience that that video is live on our LinkedIn page, and it’s live on our website. So, go check it out because it’s one of the more fun pieces of content that we’ve been able to get out there, and you’ll get to hear some great messages from our people at Access Sciences and some very special guests. But I don’t know how much we want to reveal about that.

Steve:

Yeah, let’s not reveal that. There’s some really good guests. It’s worth watching.

Julia:

Definitely.

Angela:

I just got a text from one of my friends I had breakfast with today saying she loved the video, how awesome it was. So definitely check that out.

Steve:

Yeah, but it was an event we’re celebrating. We’ve been in business for 35 years now. That’s an amazing thing. Most start-ups don’t make it nearly this far. And it’s a testament to our founder, Janice Anderson, that she created a company that really provides value to our clients and does so in a way that our clients keep coming back to us. And we’ve been able to survive, and thrive, and grow, and continue to grow these past 35 years. So, it was a very satisfying celebration.

Angela:

Yes, I think we can all say even in a time like 2020 and the pandemic, there are many things to be grateful for. And our employees have just been outstanding, and I think that speaks to our core values.

Steve:

This has been an unusual year for us and for everybody, for our clients, and for all kinds of businesses. And it’s been a real challenge, since last spring as the COVID virus broke out and as the oil and gas industry has taken a hit. Because we have a very large presence in the oil and gas field, so in spite of all that, we have maintained our business. We’ve managed to continue to provide services to our clients. We continue to thrive. And so not only do we have the 35 years to celebrate, but I think we have a lot to celebrate this year that we’ve managed to continue to show value to our clients all throughout the year.

Angela:

Yeah, absolutely. The core value that sticks out in my mind is the one that says, “Do whatever it takes.”

Steve:

Yeah. We have four main core values that we live by, and one of them is do whatever it takes. The others are service mindset, craftsmanship, and stewardship. And I think that the service mindset comes into play here as well. Our service mindset says that we focus on the success of our clients and we provide the best service we can to our clients. And that is our number one focus. That’s the number one thing that we strive for, and all else follows from that.

And do what it takes means that no matter what the situation is, we’re going to get it done for our clients, and provide them the value that they’re looking for. The other two core values I think are important as well though. One is craftsmanship. And while service mindset focuses outward to our clients and our community, craftsmanship really focuses inward to ourselves as individuals. And trying to be the best we can be as individuals, and taking initiative to grow ourselves, and to continue to look for ways to be able to build on our own skill sets so that we can turn around and provide those to our clients.

And then stewardship looks at our own community as a company and taking care of ourselves. As an employee-owned company, we see our employees looking out for the best interests of the company as a whole, so that it can continue to provide its value to our clients. And so, all of those came to bear in this environment of COVID, and oil and gas prices, but it comes to bear all the time in what we do. Good times and bad.

Julia:

So, I may be a little biased as an Access Sciences employee, but those are some amazing core values that I think we all see every single day at work. Could you speak a little bit about how we foster those core values? And make sure they’re in place with everyone in the company?

Steve:

Sure, and it starts from day one when somebody is hired. Part of the orientation program is to introduce everyone. In fact, it even goes back before the hiring stage. It goes back into the recruitment and interview stage. We let people know, as they’re interviewing with us, the importance of these core values. And as we’re interviewing people and filtering through the candidates for positions, we look for people that already embody these core values.

So, it’s not a heavy lift once they’re on board. We tend to hire people that have these already, and we just continue to reinforce them all throughout. We reinforce them during the orientation phase, and we continue to reinforce it all throughout in everything that we do. And it starts at the top, it starts with the leadership, and we practice those values ourselves. Whenever we see other people practicing those values, we call them out. And we try to publicly acknowledge, internally, every time we see people practicing these values. So, it tends to get reinforced all the time.

Julia:

So, backtracking a little bit, Steve, could you talk a little bit to your background before Access Sciences to now? Just so our audiences who may not know us super well have that background on you.

Steve:

Sure. I had always imagined that I was going to be an engineer, and probably something related to computers. And my college days were back in the ’70s when computers were starting to become big and I always-

Angela:

You mean literally or figuratively big?

Steve:

Literally and figuratively, right? Room-sized computers with punch cards.

Angela:

Right.

Steve:

And I had imagined that I was going to be a computer scientist, or an engineer, of some sort. So, went to college with that intention, and used that opportunity as a way to learn how to formulate problems and set problems up before solving them. Through a series of serendipitous events, I ended up going almost directly into consulting instead. And went to work for Big Eight consulting firm.

Some of it was computer oriented, so I was able to rely on that background a bit, but a lot of it was more just pure business consulting. And so, I cut my teeth on that. I took a bit of a detour as the Big Eight was contracting down into what is now… What? About the Big Four? And took a detour into aerospace, and spent 14 years working in the NASA community doing some really interesting projects around moon-based designs, and Mars colony designs, and those sorts of things. And found myself back into consulting again. So about 14 years ago in 2006, I came to Access Sciences, and joined there, and I’ve been here ever since.

Angela:

So, you must be very excited about the water on the moon announcement that came out recently?

Steve:

Yeah… Yes, yes, yes, yes. Anything having to do with the exploration of space, the explanation of moon, especially manned exploration, and people on the moon, excites me very much. And I’m glad to see that we’re starting to get some excitement again around the field.

Angela:

Yeah, absolutely. I think I might volunteer to go live on the moon if that’s an option… In a few weeks. Sign me up.

Julia:

Yeah, get away from coronavirus.

Steve:

I think I’m too old now to think that I might be one of the folks living on the moon someday, but maybe my grandchildren.

Angela:

And something other people may not know is you do have quite a big family.

Steve:

I do. I’ve got four kids and step-kids, a number of in-laws, and seven grandchildren that range in age from 2 to 19.

Angela:

Yeah, so your grandchildren are a big part of your life.

Steve:

They’re a big part of our life. I’m really lucky. They all live nearby. Every one of my kids and grandkids lives within two and a half miles of me, and so we are together all the time. Not nearly as much now as we were in the past because of the COVID-19 virus, unfortunately. But still, we’re a very connected family. Family is very important to all of us, and we celebrate everything as a family together.

Angela:

And were you a Boy Scout troop leader for one of your grandsons? I know you were helping him with his Eagle project.

Steve:

Yes. I’ve been involved with Boy Scouts since I was a Scout back in 1960s. And took one of my sons through Scouting, and then one of my grandsons through Scouting. And the grandson, the 19-year-old, he and I went through the entire journey from the time he was a young Cub Scout. Really proud and pleased to say that last year he achieved his Eagle Scout, which is a high achievement in Scouting and a very unique thing. Not very many Scouts that start out make it to Eagle. So yes-

Angela:

That’s awesome.

Steve:

We participate in the Scouting together. We’ve done a couple of jamborees together. We flew to Japan together to do a World Scout Jamboree there and U.S. jamborees.

Angela:

And I think you developed a reputation during one of those World Jamborees for getting stuff done. So, if there’s anyone prepared to lead our company, it’s you.

Steve:

Yeah. So, the Scout motto is “Be prepared.” And when you are at an event the size of the Jamboree, where you have 40 or 50,000 Scouts and leaders from 150 countries over two weeks… There are things that are bound to not go according to plan, and that was the continuous experience. You have to feed all those folks three times a day. And there are a lot of different dietary expectations for people all over the world. And so, yes, we experienced snafus all the way. We put into practice our Scout motto of “Be prepared,” and we tried to anticipate when there would be problems, and we would jump in.

And, yes, I discovered that I had a reputation there as a problem-solver when one day a Scout leader from Sweden came up to me and said, “Steve, I have to talk to you. You’ve built a bit of a reputation.” And I was a little nervous about what he was saying. And he told me that he had been walking by a German contingent that was having all kinds of problems, and that they were trying to figure out how to solve the problem. And all he could hear them saying was, “Where’s Steve? Go get Steve.” And somebody else saying, “Who’s Steve?” And another person saying, “He’s the American who gets stuff done.” So, I was glad to have that recognition.

Angela:

Awesome.

Steve:

And so “Be prepared” is a good motto, and it carries well into business. We try to practice that, of course, as a company. And “Be prepared” served us well, and we’re seeing that now even during the COVID-19. We’ve spent several years before this anticipating that there are all kinds of risks that the company could face. And we tried to prepare ourselves financially for it, and otherwise, so that when it hit, the impact wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And so, yes, “Be prepared” is a good motto to live by. Maybe that ought to be one of our core values as well.

Angela:

Yeah. Well, I was a Girl Scout, so I would agree. I second that.

Angela:

So, Steve, you mentioned that sometimes things don’t go according to plans. It’s no secret 2020 may not have gone according to plan. Our company right now is in a phase of preparing for 2021. I think we’re seven or eight weeks away at this point? Cannot wait for a new year. But what are you planning, anticipating? It can be in general terms of an economic outlook or specific to Access Sciences.

Steve:

So unfortunately, I don’t think that we can anticipate that when 2021 happens the 2020 switch is going to turn off and everything’s going to be nice and rosy again.

Angela:

Oh, bummer.

Julia:

But one can only hope.

Steve:

One can only hope, but if we’re truly going to be prepared, I think we have to be prepared that the situation we’re in is going to last awhile longer. I’m hopeful that as we get through the year, things will continue to improve. And particularly if we can get to the point of having vaccines for the virus, and start to see a decrease in the number of cases, and the country getting back to business. But I think it’s going to be awhile.

And so, our focus has been really around what can we do to help our clients get through this and continue to get through this. And I think that’s where our focus is going to be in 2021 as well. As we have had to adjust to new ways of doing business, I think what we’re seeing is that some things that were inevitable have just been accelerated. I think that there was always an expectation that over time, the workforce would get more and more remote, and we would have new ways of doing business, more video conferencing, and so on. The virus and the other situations that we’re in right now have just accelerated the inevitable.

So, as we progress, our focus is going to continue to be on what can we do right now to help our clients gain value and if that is helping our clients learn to navigate new ways of doing business, then that’s what we’ll continue doing. We’re putting a pretty strong focus right now on helping our clients navigate remote working and the technologies that are needed to do that, as well as the business practices needed to do that.

A big part of everything that we do is change management. We’ve built change management into all of our practices, whether they’re technology practices, whether their governance practices. Any time that there is a change in how you do things, a change in the technologies you use, a change in the processes that you follow, there needs to be a focus on getting people through that change. And you can’t ignore the human side of change. And so, we will continue to put the focus on, not only the technologies and the processes that need to change as we navigate through this new environment, but also the methods of navigating people through the change. Setting expectations about what to expect and understanding where the resistance is to those changes. And helping to build communications programs, and training programs, and other kinds of approaches to get our clients through the change.

So, I think as we move into the next year, we’re going to find ourselves still doing the fundamental information management consulting and the business process outsourcing work, but the focus is going to be on how we can help our clients continue to get value out of their information, through the technologies and through the people, but with new ways of doing it with a remote workforce and the other challenges that come along.

Angela:

So, it’s safe to say, Steve, that in the course of 35 years, the history of the company technology has changed quite a bit. And our service offering, as a result, has changed from what we did then to what we do now. Tell us what it looked like back then, or how that evolution has taken off.

Steve:

Sure. Obviously in 1985 was very, very different than 2020. The PC was just coming out. And before that, most information systems were mainframe, large mainframe, or minicomputer based. A lot of the information management activity was around paper records. In fact, our earliest days were primarily around managing paper records in libraries. As the technologies and approaches to information management have changed over time, we of course have stayed up with that and in some cases gotten ahead of that.

So, as PCs became more ubiquitous, more and more of our solutions became PC-based. As content management solutions got more sophisticated and you started seeing large enterprise content management systems, we started embracing those. And as the internet became ubiquitous, we embraced that as well. In effect, our team actually helped build the first web-interface into one of the major enterprise content management systems way back in the day. And-

Angela:

Wow.

Steve:

Yes. I’ve run into alumni of that enterprise content management software company who to this day, still tell stories about the development that we did of that web-based interface into the content management system. So, as we progress now, we’re starting to see more and more technologies around video conferencing, with Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, and other type platforms.

And so, our focus has been to stay up with those and help our clients navigate through those things. Technologies continue to change, and they will change in the future. Artificial intelligence is now an up-and-coming field. It’s starting to become very real. Artificial intelligence was actually my focus area as an undergraduate in the late 1970s. And it was very different back then than it is now.

Angela:

Well, you just took another course recently from MIT.

Steve:

I did.

Angela:

So, tell us about that.

Steve:

I did, I did. I just completed an eight-week course on the impact of artificial intelligence on business strategy. And part of the course was to remind ourselves of the history of AI through the decades. Those in the field talk about various cycles of dark years, where the promise of AI didn’t play out. And actually, when I was studying it in the late ’70s, we were just about to enter one of the first dark areas, where the promise of what we were learning didn’t pan out.

But it was with the advent of machine learning recently, that it suddenly has started to see some promise. And we’re seeing it in a number of applications ranging from self-driving cars, to bots on webs, to natural language processing, to talking to Siri and Google. And so, it’s an area that’s starting to grow precipitously. We’re going to see an explosion of applications. And so, of course, we want to stay with that as well. So as technologies continue to evolve around how information is used, and processed, and analyzed, we will stay on top of those trends.

Angela:

I see a lot about AI in marketing even. I’m sure that was part of your course too, as a use case.

Steve:

It was. We had to actually develop some example use cases ourselves, and I used marketing as one of our use cases. The ability to use machine learning to learn from marketing campaigns of the past to predict which types of campaigns would show the promise of success in the future. So artificial intelligence is largely about predictions. It’s about using historical information, and learning from that historical information to make predictions about the future. And there are so, so many applications in business, from predicting the market success of your own product, to predicting the best way to logistically move products through your product line.

Julia:

So, Steve, you mentioned a little bit earlier about how we’re an employee-owned company. And I know that didn’t happen until 2010, and you were already part of the company then. So, could you tell us a little bit about that transition? And how that has affected our company culture today?

Steve:

Sure. So, first of all, I want to say that we’re not 100% employee-owned yet. We’re about 60-61% employee owned at this point. In other words, the employees own a little over 60% of the company value through an ESOP, an employee stock ownership program. And we did this program for two reasons. One, was to start to provide a way for our founder to see the value out of what she built by buying back her shares and allowing her to get value that way out of the shares that the company bought for. But I think more importantly, we saw it as an opportunity to get the employees more engaged in the success of the company.

So, as employee owners, we all have a stake in how the company does. And as the company grows, so do our individual shares in the company. And we’re trying to create a situation where our employees have security in the long run. This is similar to a pension program, whereas you stay with the company and the company grows, your value grows. So that later when you leave, and we hope it’s through retirement, that you can realize the value of your investment in the company.

It has the immediate impact, and benefit, of also impacting how we work with our clients. Because as our employees are fully engaged with the success of the company, they know that that success comes from providing superior value to our clients. And so, they are always on the lookout for how we can add value here, add value there, to our clients to delight them, so that they continue to bring us back and help us continue to grow the company. So, it’s had a very, very positive impact, I think, on the culture of the company. And it’s actually a part of the culture of the company that we are employee-owned. This is part of the stewardship core value that we have, that we steward the value of our company.

Angela:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention too, that we were women-founded and women-owned. So, what’s it like leading a company that’s women-owned and women-founded?

Steve:

It’s actually fantastic. I see the value in this. We are still a Certified Women’s Business Enterprise. We have majority ownership of females. Our board of directors is a majority female board of directors. And studies have shown that companies that have strong female leadership tend to have some success advantages, and I see that. There are a lot of diverse ideas that are brought to the table, and not just from the fact that we’re women-owned and that we have a large contingent of women in our leadership and in our working ranks. But we try to take advantage of diversity in every form.

And so, whether it’s socio-economic background, gender, race, anything. Any time you have divergent backgrounds in the company, you’re bringing in people that have new ideas for us to approach, and it keeps us from being stale. So, I’ve been very, very happy working in this company. As a majority employee-owned, and a majority women-owned company, we’ve got very strong female leaders. We’ve got very strong female potential, future leaders in the company. And it’s been delightful.

Angela:

You put out a blog post pretty early on in the year supporting diversity and inclusion. And I know that really meant a lot to the employees, so thank you for that.

Steve:

Yeah, I don’t think you can over-emphasize the importance of diversity. And like I mentioned, it’s about diverse viewpoints, but it’s also about learning diverse ways of empathy. And that ties in very closely, I think, into just the way we do business with our clients anyway. Our main approach to doing business is that we spend time upfront before we try to talk about any solutions, really trying to understand our clients, and their business, and their issues from their perspective.

And you can’t do that unless you’re good at being empathetic and putting yourselves into their shoes. And so, by having a diverse workforce, we have exposure to diverse ways of viewing things in the world and diverse world viewpoints. That helps us practice being empathetic and taking that empathetic viewpoint to our clients, so that we can first listen to our clients before we try to come in with a solution.

Angela:

I know you’re a big fan of Brené Brown, and I am too. And she talks a lot about leading with empathy.

Steve:

Yes.

Angela:

Do you have a favorite Brené Brown book or quote? Or how has she been impactful to you?

Steve:

I’ve read her book “Daring Greatly” and it’s a good introduction, I think, to the topic of empathetic leadership. So, if you haven’t read “Daring Greatly,” I recommend you do that.

Angela:

Yeah, we need to set up a meet and greet when it’s safe to be around people again so we can all meet Brené.

Steve:

Yes, we’re lucky to be in the same city as her. She’s at the University of Houston, and here we are in Houston.

Julia:

Well, thank you so much, Steve, for joining us on this very special podcast celebrating 35 years of Access Sciences. And I want to address our audience really quick, and just say come help us celebrate 35 years of access sciences. You can attend our Virtual Bingo Night in support of Girls Who Code on Thursday, November 12th. For each win, we’ll donate $35 to further the organization’s mission, and you can access the registration form at our website at accesssciences.com. Thank you again, Steve.

Steve:

Thank you for having me on the podcast.