Trace3 Inc. Chief Executive Tyler Beecher is betting his company can turn CTOs into CEOs.
The Irvine-based technology-consulting giant wrote a curriculum called, “Pocket MBA,” and teaches it with other area executives that takes two and a half days to complete at Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California-Irvine.
“There’s no program for how you make leaders out of IT folks,” said Drew Cather, Trace3 vice president of innovation and co-creator of the Certificate in Business Leadership for IT Executives.
Cather observed a similar program at the University of California-Berkeley a few years ago, but thought it missed the mark.
“Too much sales pitch by each speaker.”
David Knuff is his partner at Merage’s Center for Digital Transformation. The assistant dean also observed a similar program before arriving at UCI.
“Drew [Cather] approached me. I said, ‘We can do better with you.’”
UCI charges students about $2,000, often underwritten by their employers, and lets students apply the cost to an advanced degree if they matriculate.
The program “aligns with our mission of leaders for a digitally driven world,” Knuff said.
Beecher likes the idea of being part of a movement to offer techies an avenue to become bigger players.
“As Orange County is building its brand into being a tech hub, it’s pretty cool to say that OC has one of only two university certificate programs in the world focused on building the country’s next generation of technology-business leaders.”
Riding High
No company knows of or is riding faster on the tech train than Trace3, the consultancy whose engineers can help tech-up most any type of company—particularly those in financial services, healthcare and manufacturing—and any part of operations, all to grow sales and become market leaders.
The company, based in the Spectrum area, is one of Orange County’s higher-flying businesses.
It became one of OC’s newest $1 billion tech companies following its summer purchase of Midwest-based Data Strategy LLC.
Privately-held Trace3 was founded by Hayes Drumright in 2002 with $100. It’s told the Business Journal that it’s been profitable ever since.
It employs about 500 in 15 offices, including more than 140 in Irvine. A high percentage of jobs are in engineering, as it competes with consulting titans like Accenture PLC (NYSE: ACN), McKinsey & Co. and Presidio Inc.
Drumright lured Beecher out of Silicon Valley to run the company in 2014.
Beecher said he starts “every pitch to any CFO [or] CEO with, ‘Can we agree that all positives live in technology?’”
“If all positives truly live in tech, how important is it that you’ve got an IT leader that really is a business leader—good on stage, good in a conversation—[and] they’re comfortable with tech but not as [a] transformational biz leader—not really IT—that’s table stakes now,” he said.
“Chief digital officers and CTOs are now showing off in businesses.”
Paying Off
Michael Woore is a longtime technologist, recently vice president of technology at private mortgage giant loanDepot LLC in Foothill Ranch. He’s also a recent grad of the new UCI-Trace3 course.
Woore got his traditional MBA from the University of Southern California about 20 years ago. “I was looking for a refresher course in leadership. I see a lot of CIO colleagues participated.”
Colleagues like Steve Lance, infrastructure director at Torrance Memorial Medical Center.
“How do you introduce innovation into an organization that’s historically been conservative?” Lance asked.
It’s important for his company and his future, as the 95-year-independent hospital now has an affiliation with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Lance manages about 50 people, but his boss gave him the three days and underwrote the cost of the IT leadership program. After taking the course, he said he believes the investment will pay off.
Back to School
On Friday, Oct. 12 in the afternoon, the final class was about innovation. An Amazon Web Services executive was the instructor, citing examples of corporate strategies, such as in-house venture capital teams like Google Ventures, and relating the story of the product that “saved” Nintendo: Pokémon. The best-selling part-reality game wound up largely with Nintendo after some big-name companies passed.
The instructor related that observers thought the graphics and such were very cool but that it took a leader to see how it all could be packaged and monetized—a leader perhaps with the wherewithal of a top CTO.
“These are not the types of guys who seek the limelight,” Cather at Trace3 said. “It’s unnatural for people that grew up in tech.”
The program should allow the techies to “pick up a lot of confidence.”
It isn’t a moneymaker and may never be.
The first year had about as many students as the second year, 20 or so, but with less marketing.
Beyond innovation, classes and workshops include “How to Think Like a CFO,” and “Power/Communication/Influence,” taught by an Irvine Co. executive.
Beecher hopes such classes and training, the leadership and confidence they instill, will turn today’s CTO into tomorrow’s COO or CEO. That person, armed with new soft skills, would be more than a liaison to Trace3; they can drive more business to the consulting firm.
“A lot of what we do creates goodwill … but if our clients become antiquated or slow, then Trace3 follows the same plight. Our goal isn’t to cash in but create goodwill and loyalty.”
