Episode 35: Surfacing Sam Quan Krueger

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Transcript

Lisa Welchman:

So I'm really excited about this episode, Andy. We were talking with Sam Quan Krueger about his journey, and he brought up a couple of things that were really exciting to me. He was talking about the role of leadership and the role that they play and keeping the brand together. And he also brought up the C word. Usually I'm talking about the G word, but he brought up the C word, which is compassion. So I'm really excited for people to hear this episode. What did you think?

Andy Vitale:

I thought it was such a fascinating conversation. He talked about what it was like in the early days of an interactive marketing company, so early days of web. So it's interesting to see how his career had progressed to where he is today and just the things that he's learned along the way. And even at the end as he talked about leaders. He gave great tips for leaders that are having conversations with people on their team. So it was just really insightful and really you can feel that compassion and the energy and the care that he has for what he does. So it was really interesting. I loved it.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. Well, I hope everybody enjoys this episode.

Andy Vitale:

Hey Sam. Thanks for coming on the podcast. We're really excited that you're here. I just wanted to know, what is your current role, and aside from that, what unique aspects of your journey have led you to that role?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Hi, Andy. Hi, Lisa. Thanks for having me here. I'm flattered that you want to hear what I have to say, and so I'll try to make this worth your while. So I managed the global digital communications at the United Nations Development Program, which is the UN's leading sustainable development agency. To give you a sense of scope, there are 18,000 personnel at UNDP, and we have 170 offices throughout the world. And at the global level, we manage corporate websites, social media, and we also support all these country offices and their digital communications as well.

I see my role in that position mostly about interpreting its strategy and then aligning it with the constantly evolving digital environment. And we are a relatively decentralized organization, and so how do we build cohesion, coordinate, align, reduce fragmentation in the system to make sure that we're achieving certain goals for UNDP? That's it in a nutshell.

Lisa Welchman:

So how'd you get there?

Sam Quan Krueger:

How did-

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. You and I know each other Sam pretty well from a work aspect. So yeah, the second part of Andy's question was how did you end up there? I've worked a lot with people inside the UN and it's always a fascinating journey. There's people who started there from university and worked their way through. There's people have been there for 30 years and now they're doing web, but you didn't take that path. So it'd be interesting, I think, for people to hear how you got where you are.

Sam Quan Krueger:

Well, there are quite a few people that I've encountered at the UN who have said that all their lives they wanted to work for the UN. That wasn't me, but I was completely privileged, I guess when I was given the call first to work at UNICEF and then eventually moved on to UNDP. I thought about this. I want to give you a fair answer on this. I left college with just interests, not really knowing exactly what I was going to do. I had humanities background, both in art history and economics. And it was this belief that, well, these are really interesting ideas. How do I use them to maybe help with human rights and inequality?

But I do think what that interest plus the changes that were occurring in the world, led me to eventually where I am now. So at that time when I graduated, Bill Clinton had become president and he was shepherding through a new policy, new legislation for national service. And that was inspiring to me. But if that didn't happen, I might not have moved into national service or done nonprofit work immediately.

But I eventually got an apprenticeship in DC under the Clinton administration, and not directly with them, but one of their model programs for national service. And that's where I started learning about community organizing, conflict resolution, power in inequities. And I just continued to follow that interest. And I applied arts actually to that work too. So art as a tool for literacy development, art as a tool for violent prevention, art as a tool for therapy and economic development as well. What happened maybe a few years... So that was in the mid-nineties, and then the internet was starting to boom. We had this thing called dot-com boom, and I lived in New York and-

Lisa Welchman:

That wasn't the place to be.

Sam Quan Krueger:

And it just was so crazy in the city at that point. The sidewalks were hard to walk on because there's so many people coming in. The economy was doing very well, and I had been already working for maybe four years, five years. I decided that, well, I don't know where I'm going with my career and not career minded actually, and mostly about just living. So I traveled to Asia for the summer, came back and got a job at interactive marketing company focused on niche marketing for Asian-Americans. So I felt like, "I'm working with my people." And that seemed to me to be about mission-driven work, although that was in the private sector. So we were working for E-Trade, which was one of the first dot-com during that period, a lot of startups at that period. So it was really interesting to see the early stages of what has become today the digital economy.

Lisa Welchman:

That's really interesting, Sam, because I left New York in the mid-nineties and went to Silicon Valley. That's why it's like, "This isn't a place to be because I left." So I didn't see the beginning of the web in New York City. So that stuff that you're talking about is fascinating to me to see how that took off. But that was really such an interesting time. I mean you could enter into these places skill free. All you had to do was be able to know a little HTML in Notepad, and you were in. I mean, it just didn't take and I guess, have enough chutzpah to think you could do it, and then you were in. So how did you get from that space to get inside of UNDP?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Well, first of all, I didn't know HTML. I didn't learn HTML.

Lisa Welchman:

You didn't know it? I at least knew it. I learned HTML in maternity leave and then went to Silicon Valley. So I guess I was hopping.

Sam Quan Krueger:

And the chutzpah is really just idealism of youth.

Lisa Welchman:

That's correct.

Sam Quan Krueger:

Yeah. But I think the form that a digital took or the internet took in New York was more marketing. I'm an analytical person to begin with. So at the time, there was media metrics, I don't know if you can remember them. And then they were bought out, I think by Google. And a lot of that then became... So I was really interested in that, how to measure things. And even though I have this humanities background, I'm very pragmatic. So when I see great ideas that someone else has come up with, rather than try to have my own idea, I'm like, "Okay. Well, let me support them." So I'm always been in the production role. Throughout my life I've noticed that, although my inclination is to be more creative. And getting to UNDP, it was all about, I guess I had a competitive advantage because I was always learning the technical aspects of things, supporting people and doing the things that most creative people can't do or don't want to do, which is the budgets and the planning And even the technical learning, the technical stuff.

So I mean, it was a huge jump from the.com to UNDP. I didn't think that that would happen. That happened maybe 20 years later, I think. But along the way, we had a financial collapse and I wasn't in the private sector at that point. I had gone to a museum and started working there and using everything I had learned at that point. And when the financial crisis happened, I was, this is not good for the arts. This is very dangerous. Usually that's the first thing that gets cut. And at that point in my professional career, I had already built a network and I had a friend who was a partner at a digital agency. So he's like, "Well, come to work with us because digital is booming even during the financial crisis."

So I said, "That's a good idea. Let me do that." So I learned most of my technical abilities taking this job. So it was on the job learning. And that's the theme I think of digital is that you just constantly learning. I know there are formal programs now, but even today I think many people just jump in and try to figure it out. And there's a lot of content online to help them. And eventually they build together a career and UN, they need digital specialists. I think when I got the job first at UNICEF, I was the first ever person that was formally called to digital communication specialist. Before then it was communication specialist. And Florida is what? This is 2012.

Lisa Welchman:

Those environments are really tough. It's really tough to change those job descriptions. It really takes mean in the government, in the US at least, sometimes it takes an act of Congress literally to change it. Somebody's job description. I remember in the early 2000s working a lot in the US federal government and people were like, "Well, this is just the job. We can't change the job description." It's like, "Yeah, but you're not writing and printing this stuff anymore. It's all online." And I think talking about how people are still making up things up, even though we have programs, I think it's really interesting because it's still early. People think we are like, "We're in generation 19 of the web or three or two." And it's like, no, it's really early. We are still figuring out, I'm getting ready to give a talk on digital safety and harm and the accountability of designers.

And part of one of the things I'm stressing is, as I always say, everyone who's listening to the podcast, it takes 80 to 100 years to actually commoditize and mature technology and figure out what you're doing with it and make rules. So it is super early and I think people are still making up things. But anyhow, I think this is a good segue into the other question. And you may have alluded to it already, but not touched it exactly. Which is have this really diverse, interesting background of things that you've done, which I think a lot of people who've worked in the digital space for over 15 years have. Nobody came at this straight because you couldn't. It didn't exist when you were at that age. You came at it sideways. And I have television production background, which actually comes in handy now when it comes to thinking about content. But what unrelated skill or seemingly unrelated skill do you have in your wheelhouse that you think is the secret sauce that helps you get your job done right now?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Yeah, I think I did allude to it.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah, you did. But you didn't say it exactly.

Sam Quan Krueger:

I didn't, but what I've learned to call it these days is compassion. So I've been meditating for the past three years since the pandemic started. And initially it was nice just to deal with stress and build clarity. But as those who go into meditation know that you start developing huge insights and you develop self-compassion and compassion for others and you start feeling more connected to everyone. And the reason why I say I alluded to this in the beginning was that, and I never knew it, that there is this humanities aspect of the work. And what drives me is I'm interested in the human experience and we now have a term called UX and CX. And that can be a little bit capitalistic, but it's still about people, and how do we relate to them, how do we relate to ourselves? It can be stressful to work, of course.

And how do you look at someone else's perspective and work with them? And I'm also a very teams oriented person. I don't think we could do the work we do if we didn't have a really talented team of people who trust each other. Each has an advanced skill or technical skill, and they bring that into the creative environment as a team. And then each time we have a project or we have challenges, we can discuss it. We have a comfort with each other, and then we also have the skill set to create a solution or come address the problem. So I think it is about compassion. It's understanding myself, understanding what happens when someone sees something online and how if we were trying to create impact, what does that feel like, look like? How do we construct that through a campaign? Yeah, I think I'll keep it there.

Andy Vitale:

I love that. I think the human side of really getting to understand people and that compassion that you talk about is what leads us to want to solve things the right way and come to the right conclusions when we're trying to solve problems. And just anything that we do, just trying to make it better for people, which is what we talk about a lot on this podcast. So talked about a few interesting things. You talked about in or well, everything's been interesting so far, but if I had to put down two things like-

Sam Quan Krueger:

You don't have to flatter me.

Andy Vitale:

No, I mean you mentioned really early on about interpreting strategy and aligning with the digital environment. And then you had this really early start in interactive marketing campaigns in the early days of the dot-com. So touching on those and wanting to hear some of that experience there. There's a lot of challenges that we have right now with digital experiences. So what can you do in your position right now to help shift some of the more negative dynamics and amplify the positive ones? And I'd love to hear when this all started, what did you expect would happen? Did you expect that we'd be where we are today or is this completely out of nowhere?

Sam Quan Krueger:

I want to take the questions backwards. So I'll start with that last question and no, I did not imagine we would be where we are today. And to me, I can't tell if I should be afraid or overly concerned about what's happening. But when I started and started learning about the internet, it was the promise of connectivity and access to information and we see that. We see that people are creating because they have access to more information now and knowledge is shared and that's promising. And look, we have Wikipedia for example, and that's a very great resource but even for professionals too, like scientists, they're sharing knowledge in little groups and enclaves. So that was what I was inspired by, the promise of the potential of information being available to as many people as possible. Where we are today is that there's a digital divide, there's also polarization.

And that's relatively new, I would say, because we're still trying to figure out what to do with it. But what I've learned to address is what I consider misinformation. And I think to do that, you have to be authentic and you have to be verified or validated. So just at UNDP, there's so many different websites that have been produced, so many social media accounts created. And that fragmentation of our brand and identity goes against this idea of being authentic and validated or verifiable because we're so fragmented in our presentation and how we talk about ourselves and even something that's basically as a URL.

So it's really hard to know if it's UNDP communicating or someone else communicating that for insidious reasons, I guess. So what I've learned to do is we need to protect our brand. We need to govern ourselves in a way that we can consistently communicate, be clear about who we are and be trustworthy to the audience that is seeking out this information. And those basic values then lend themselves to certain applications.

So we design policies where people have to approach the headquarters to ask for a website, and then we don't decide whether or not they get a website. We work with the leadership to determine if a website should be created or same thing with social media. But you can imagine how that then folds out. This idea of being consistent, having a clear brand, a unified brand, reducing the fragmentation, being a trusted authority online. There's a lot of different applications to that.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I mean, I want to follow up on that obviously because you're talking about governance related issues. But I hear this brand protection story from a lot of folks and it's interesting because when I talk to anyone down any organizational space, whether it's NGOs or quasi-governmental or governmental or higher education or for profit or digital first, whatever the case may be, everyone has this problem. Now, how it manifests and roles internally, that's unique. But it's interesting because everyone thinks that they're the only ones with that problem. And I'm like, "No, everybody's got it. It's a common disease," but what's different is the why.

So not specifically for UNDP, but you were also at UNICEF and you've been around the UN world. What unique dynamics in organizations like that do you think contribute to this difficulty of being able to align in that way? Because it's almost to the point where I think maybe it's like it's just how human beings are. They just resistant in this way because it makes no sense. You're making more mess, you're wasting resources, you're disintegrating, in fact fragmenting the brand, you're creating an unsafe environment and insecure environment. There's all these negative things that come up and yet we persist. So I'm wondering if you have any ideas about for your type of organization that you're in now for those communities, what you think some of the dynamics might be.

Sam Quan Krueger:

Okay. Well, I think that it's a combination of the entrepreneurial spirit and the democratization of tech. And the tools are just so readily accessible and they seem to be so easy to use. So we have a lot of smart people, and every office seems like a startup in that way. Well, let's not wait to hear back from someone to let us do this. We'll just do it ourselves. So that's the entrepreneurial spirit of it. The dark side of it is that it's siloed and it's uncoordinated, chaotic, and it's a waste of money sometimes. The brand is going nowhere, it's actually going in the other direction because everyone's doing their own interpretation of the brand. Sometimes they're creating their own brands just to differentiate themselves within the organization. So you understand that people are trying to do work as fast as they can in their sphere of influence, but the organization has to be clearer about what the standards are and what the workflows are and provide more structure.

I'm not going to say the UN, but I think for large organizations, they've just been caught on their heels. So internet has grown, the digital economy has grown ahead of them, and now they're just trying to figure out what to do. And I know that sounds ridiculous because when we hear about social media, like Facebook for example, or Google, Amazon, the list goes on and they've been around for a while, so why haven't we solved this yet? And no one realized the speed which these technologies would be integrated into our society and the sophistication at which they exist, the algorithms, the data that's available. So it's just all still very new and I don't think there's proper resourcing for the digital transformation that needs to happen at these organizations.

Andy Vitale:

It's funny, I saw Lisa light up a little bit because you talked about speed and then democratization, and everybody's just often doing these things and it's chaotic. So just from your perspective, because having done this with Lisa for so long, I know where she's at. When we get to this idea of how do we govern this? Is it okay for everybody to just go full board and get it done? Or does it make sense to earlier on in the process, establish some standards so that it's not just everybody getting things done, but the risk of, if we take this time now, we're maybe losing out on getting something to market or getting ideas heard or having the team be productive?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Yeah. It's not either or. It's some blend of it. That's a very sophisticated picture. But I think it starts with leadership. The leadership has to understand what's happening in the organization and prioritize the marketing and communications work to protect the brand. And then from there, think about how the brand serves the organization and its goals, whether that's revenues or some advocacy work, whatever that might be. And then you have to think about the structure of the organization to see whether or not it can have a centralized approach or needs to have a decentralized approach, and how do you support a decentralized environment in maintaining unity and alignment. So it's very complicated. I hope I'm not being abstract about it all, and I could go into more details, examples about it, but I do think it is this blend of giving flexibility and independence to all these offices, but everyone working on the same playing field, let's say.

Lisa Welchman:

Yeah. I mean, I often use the musical model of an orchestra. You've got a conductor, you've got some music, but then this section's doing this. They all have unique. The horns have to have a particular type of rehearsal strings need to come up with a Boeing strategy. There's all these things, but they're actually playing the same piece. So I think that's really interesting. One of the things you brought up that was really fascinating to me is just the leadership piece, which is something that I'm always puzzling over. So I'm interacting with leaders a lot, usually not the C-suite, but one level lender is usually where I'm hanging out when I'm working with folks on a framework project. And it's fascinating to me because we need the leadership, but they're often the last ones that get it.

And I think part of the rationale behind that in my head, and I'm just asking you this question, is that for for-profit companies, the way that they're compensated, it's actually in a lag way. They don't get compensated for being innovative unless that innovation has already made money, in which case it's not really. So the way that they're rewarded by the board is to keep things flowing in. So taking risks or pausing to align so that we can build better doesn't necessarily always add to the bottom line. And oftentimes these people, not so much in the.com world, in less now, because we've got younger CEOs, and I'm getting older, a lot of times early on, these people had not built their careers in a digital environment. So they're blind. So they're just blind to what can happen with the technology.

I think that's shifting a lot. As because we're 30 years in now, there are people who have built their careers who are going on to do that, but I mean, does that sound legit to you? It's fascinating because we need them to lead. We need them to gather everyone together and say, "Uphold the brand. Everybody, we need to do this all together." But sometimes they're the worst enemy in the system. Yeah. So I find that and maybe back from when you were consulting, before you came into UNDP, you've worked with a variety of different organizations. What are your thoughts about that?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Well, I mean the size of these organizations, I think that's a challenge to be able to lead in that. But I do agree that there is a generational gap, I think in terms of experience and knowledge and sensitivity to digital. And the older generation isn't familiar with the literacy of the younger generation and vice-versa. The younger generation, just like astounded when they encounter someone who doesn't understand something. Let's say like on social media and the culture too now, now I'm talking about the bigger culture. Lends itself to trying to be underground, maybe let's say subcultures. So it also can turn people off, and especially leadership, people who are later in their careers who aren't really interested in participating in the subcultures. But that's just where the ideas are forming and that's where young people and those that are more digitally exposed, that's where the ideas are evolving out of is these cultures.

But I think the challenge for the leadership is maybe... I have to be careful about how I phrase this. It might be the politics of organizations. There are so many different competing interests and there's so many individual actors or distinct actors in an organization that are trying to jockey for position. And it requires leadership to be able to have a good ESP maybe, is that the word? Where they can understand someone's motivation, why they say certain things to them, and does it serve the interest of the organization or that person's interest?

So digital for examples, people constantly come to me and they're like, "We can develop and design websites or campaigns for X amount of dollars." I'm like, "Goodness gracious. Go ahead please. Because if you figure out how to do it for $5,000, then I want to learn that." But where do they get these ideas from? And they will say those things to the leadership. And then I have to defend myself. 5,000, I'm like, "I'm in the wrong job. You should hire that person then." And sometimes they do, they get rid of the people who have their talent who are trying to do it the right way, and they're replaced by the political actors. And then-

Lisa Welchman:

Well, then the siloing happens, and then the fragmentation happens, and then the brand disintegrates, and then we end up into some of the things that we were just talking about earlier. Anyhow, Sam, this has been really a great conversation. And to close, I want to ask you one last question. So you've had a long journey along this way, and I know you mentioned that you never really planned to be working in the digital space, it's just evolved naturally for you. But looking back on that, what are a few things that maybe you wish someone would've told you when you started out on your work career in general? Is there something, or do you feel like there might not be anything? Or do you feel like it's played out well? Are there any little tips and hints you wish somebody would've told you back in the day?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Yes, and I'm a very passionate person. My parents left me to my own devices, so I just entered life the way I thought it should be lived. And that even means my work life. And sometimes I wouldn't say things that I think were what I believed were right. But there is an art form to working with other people and you to understand the interpersonal politics of an organization is important. I rarely think about that. I think about, "That person's friendly, I'm going to go and talk to them and let's work it out and I'll share what I can and that's a bad idea. I'm going to tell that person that's a bad idea." And now, I guess this goes back to the compassion part. I'm much more thoughtful about how I say things, and I try to think about where I'm positioned in the organization and where someone else is and how our interest can work towards a certain goal. So there's a lot of just contemplation these days. And I think if someone had told me, "Don't go in there trying to do everything."

Lisa Welchman:

Don't go in so hot. Yeah.

Sam Quan Krueger:

Yeah. Don't go in hot. Exactly. And just watch and observe. And then I think that would've served me well. I think the other thing that's very basic, which people are starting to realize now, is just to take care of yourself. Get more rest, have a healthy diet, exercise well, and your job is part of your life, not your life. And I think that will serve others who are listening to this well as well.

Andy Vitale:

That's awesome. Sam, you did say one thing that I want to not close without hearing a little bit more of. So you talked about understanding your position in the organization and how to have conversations with people with compassion. What's some advice you can give someone who may have a higher up in the organization position that is commonly interacting with others, and sometimes they're not fully aware of what they say and the impact of those words. So what's a little bit of advice that you'd give them?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Well, you hired your team and let them do their work, be involved and curious about their work. I find digital communications to be constantly interesting, even the problems to be interesting. And leadership should also, I would imagine, be curious about these problems, why they exist, and just have conversations about them with the team you hired and learn from them. And I think together you could collaborate on forming new ideas about what could be done. That sounds really ideal. I will just say from my position, I do supervise people and I do something similar as well. I'm like, "Okay. When we meet, let's talk about this and this," and before we end the call, anything else to talk about. And people will bring up the issues and then we start trying to tackle them as a team. And some of these issues I'm not very familiar with, and it takes them educating me on what the problem is and how to solve it.

And one last thing is that when you're being advised by, let's say, a digital specialist, you can't just go in blindly. You have to also be rational about it. So from your position as a leader, ask questions, interrogate, try to feel more comfortable with this information before you accept the approach.

Andy Vitale:

I love that. So Sam, just as we close out, is there any way that people can get ahold of you if they're hearing something and obviously they're like, "Hey, I have another question." What's the best way for people to do that?

Sam Quan Krueger:

Okay. Oh, thanks for allowing me to do shout out for myself. So on LinkedIn, I think that's probably the best way to be in touch with me, Sam Q. Krueger, K-R-U-E-G-E-R. The name doesn't reveal it, but I'm Asian-American and the podcast doesn't reveal it, but when you do the search on LinkedIn and you come across the Asian mug, it's me.

Lisa Welchman:

I don't know. There might be two. Sam Q. No, there's not?

Sam Quan Krueger:

I don't think so. I mean, I am revealing myself that I've searched by name a few times.

Lisa Welchman:

Well, you have to do that. I think that's good. Just personal digital hygiene is to figure out what's going on in your name online. Anyhow, thank you so much for joining us. It was really a pleasure to catch up with you and good luck with everything.

Sam Quan Krueger:

I enjoyed this. Thanks guys.

Andy Vitale:

Thanks Sam.

Sam Quan Krueger:

Have a good one.