Dr. Dhru Bee welcomes guest Marcus Britt, Senior Manager of Technology for Under Armour, to the show to talk about technology and people. Marcus discusses how he has an equal career history of tech and HR and how that shapes his career ideology of people first, then process, then technology. Marcus believes technology shouldn’t be done for the sake of technology but instead done to enable and help people. He uses his HR background to relate to colleagues and C-Suite leaders alike when explaining technological advances to them. As he tells Dhru, if you aren’t in the technology for the right reasons and you don’t have your people and your process in a great place, all technology will enable you to do is finish bad work faster. Dr. Dhru and guest Marcus Britt discuss all aspects of how tech intersects with and affects people. They talk about AI and the rush to adopt it before truly understanding how it may affect people in a company, why ensuring you’re on good footing before advancing is vital, the interconnectedness of business, the best kind of leadership qualities Marcus has experienced, and why self-awareness and patience are two of the most important virtues for getting ahead in any industry. Their conversation is insightful and engaging, and shines a light on the people technology should be focused on.About Marcus Britt:Marcus Britt is the Senior Manager of Technology at Under Armour. He is a transformational leader with experience in technology, project management, continuous improvement, human resource management, planning and business continuity. Marcus has a proven ability to implement comprehensive technology solutions while maintaining a business driven mind-set.—Contact Dhru Beeharilal | Nayan Leadership: Website: NayanLeadership.comLinkedIn: DhruBeeFacebook: NayanLeadershipYouTube: DhruBeeContact Marcus Britt:LinkedInUnder Armour LinkedIn__TranscriptDr. Dhru: [00:00:02] Hey, everybody. This is Dr. Dhru Bee and I'm here to welcome you to my podcast, Ikigai Leadership. We're going to be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we'll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing and all things business and entrepreneurship. Dr. Dhru: [00:00:26] Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another edition of Ikigai Leadership. I want to thank you guys for joining us today. I'm here joined by my good friend Marcus Britt. We just met recently. We kicked it off pretty hard at the Blackstone Technology Conference in Charlotte because we're both apparently nerds, which is awesome. Marcus Britt: [00:00:41] Absolutely. Yeah, I claim it. I own it, man. Nerds forever, man. That's what I love. Dr. Dhru: [00:00:45] Absolutely. It's the only way to be, man. So. So, yeah. Marcus, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll talk a little bit about the Blackstone Technology Conference, talk about our conversation there. But before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself, man. You know what kind of work you're doing right now. What do you like to focus on? And what brought you to the Blackstone Technology Conference? Marcus Britt: [00:01:01] Awesome. So a little bit about me. Currently, I have the pleasure of working at Under Armor and I am the senior manager of Digital Teammate Experience. It's a technology role, but it doesn't sound like a technology role. It's pretty cool, right? But our focus is really on kind of aligning technology and making sure that the experience for our teammates is good. Right? I mean I think that's where I can consider us to be an experience economy now, it really drives everything, right? So making sure that the processes, the systems, data, all of that stuff is good and it provides a good experience for our teammates. That's really what matters. I've been in technology now for around 20 years. I'm a little bit of a weird bird in that I've had a chance to spend time in tech and HR about equal times, equal parts of my career in both, so I have a unique perspective on really kind of understanding how people, you know, what people's needs are in the organization, how they move around an organization, how people feel in certain spaces, and then also having technology and how to enable that, right, to make that go. Because I'm a firm believer you don't do technology for the sake of technology. You do technology to enable and help people, right? If it's not a tool to make things better, it's really useless. So being in that space for a while I had an opportunity to work at some great companies and really focusing on that. And like we talked about, I'm a super nerd, I love Marvel movies, anime, Legos, I got my Lego back there, my motorcycle back there. So just enjoying being able to really understand technology in a deep way and then helping people and understanding people and helping merge those two together. That's really what my DNA ...
