What we talked about
Ben Helland unpacks how strategy turns into outcomes for learners and employers at Western Governors University (WGU). As Principal Product Strategist, he partners with the Schools of Business and Health to design long-term roadmaps that serve working adults and an expanding 18–24 segment. He explains why WGU measures every big bet against three lenses:equity, completion, and return:and how a jobs-first mission shapes programs, support, and pace of innovation.
Show notes
Ben Helland entered college thinking he would become a child psychologist, spent years in a PhD program he quietly hated, dropped out without marketable skills, and then spent the next five years learning finance, BI, and cost accounting entirely on the job. That circuitous path turned out to be the exact preparation he needed to run strategy for one of the largest universities in the United States. At WGU, where nearly 200,000 students are enrolled right now, he applies scenario-based planning to help schools make decisions whose consequences will not show up for years.
What we covered
- WGU measures every initiative by three criteria: equity (does it expand access?), completion (will students finish?), and return (does it improve their earning potential?), Ben says if you grade opportunities through that rubric, you naturally see different competitors than any other higher ed institution would.
- The School of Health and the School of Business require fundamentally different planning horizons: nursing programs are so tightly regulated that strategy has to be laid like plumbing before construction begins, while the business school can pivot quickly and experiment freely.
- Scenario-based planning, the tool Ben learned at WGU and has since brought to clients through his firm Veridat, forces teams to write detailed stories about four possible futures defined by the two largest uncertainties outside their control, not to predict what will happen, but to have predetermined responses ready when signals of any scenario appear.
- A large European publisher with 10,000 employees hired Veridat to run this kind of planning just as generative AI arrived in early 2023. At that scale, Ben says the strategy-to-execution gap only closes if long-term directional decisions are broken all the way down to hiring choices and budget plans that a frontline employee can understand.
- He turned around a small business for a local owner who had tried to sell for a year without success, acting as interim CEO, Ben rebuilt staffing norms, training manuals, leadership structure, and legal compliance from scratch until the company was acquisition-ready, which he describes as learning more in that engagement than in almost anything else in his career.
- His advice to his younger self: the distance between where you stand and the floor when you are in your twenties is much smaller than it feels, take risks then, because the recovery time from failure is short, and betting on yourself carries better odds than most people assume.
About Ben
Ben Helland is Principal Product Strategist at Western Governors University, where he partners with the Schools of Business and Health on long-term planning for an institution that now has at least one alumni in every county in the United States. He also runs Veridat, a strategy and advisory firm he founded after his first stint at WGU, and previously worked at ETS launching skills-based assessments for K-12 students.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-helland-b7084b56
- Website: https://wgu.edu
Episode 70 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:00) Welcome back to the PreVetted Podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we are joined by Ben Helland. He’s a principal product strategist at Western Governors University where he guides long-term strategy across the schools of business and health that serves 70,000 concurrent learners. Previously at ETS, Ben helped launch
based assessments that elevate durable skills for K-12 students. As WGU’s head of strategy and insights, he built a university-wide planning practice aligning 8,000 employees and sharpened WGU’s mission as a catalyst for economic mobility. Beyond WGU, his advisory and operating work spans Holonik,
inside trucks, HBCU center of excellence, and even turning around a small business through to acquisition. Off the clock, he’s a dad to a drummer and a rock climber, spouse to a yogi social worker, an avid trail runner, and a slightly better than average guitarist, always open for swapping book recommendations, debating the Utah youths, and he cannot resist to a Dutch
Ros Americano. Ben, welcome to the show.
Ben Helland (01:26) Thank you, Federico. Happy to be here. Excited for this.
Federico Ramallo (01:30) Awesome, I’m honored to have you here. ⁓ So at WGU, you’re partnered with each school to develop long-term strategy. What differentiates, what difference do you see in priorities between education, health, business and technology?
Ben Helland (01:33) Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, it’s a good place to start. I think some, a little context about my history with the school is that I’ve done two stints there. So my first round, as you mentioned, I was kind of more at the, you know, president’s office level where we were driving strategy across the schools and the concerns at the university at large, corporate development matters, launching new businesses, those kinds of things.
And now specifically where I am right now, I’m assigned to two of those schools and WGU is pretty unique in that it only has four schools as the largest university in the United States of America. Right now there’s almost 200,000 people going to school right now. It is squarely focused on providing education to people who are looking to get a job when they’re done. Like that’s the primary outcome that we measure our success on is, you know, what, what
economic gain, what job progression, what career advancement did you gain because you went to our school? So specifically right now I’m working with the School of Business and the School of Health. And some of the differences between those schools you might expect, right? mean, one of them is very standardized, like the path to become a nurse is pretty direct, right? There’s lots of laws and regulation, whereas an MBA, it’s pretty wide open. You can do a lot of stuff. You can have a lot of room for flexibility and those kinds of things.
So some are prescribed, some are not, but the things that are. maybe more surprising that differences between the school is like maybe speed at which that they can move because of some of those regulatory decisions that they have to think through. One can iterate a lot quicker than the other, so the school health is the one that has to move a bit slower. So when you’re providing strategy.
and thinking long term for a school of health, it’s like, you know, if you’re going to remodel your house, it’s a lot like that. You have to think ahead a lot about where are you going to put the kitchen? Where are you going to put the plumbing? Where are you going to put the electricity? Because if you make that decision now, it’s really hard to make a quick pivot once you’re six months down the road in your remodel, right? Whereas, you know, the business side, can
They can be like, well, let’s try this. And if it doesn’t work out, we can pivot to another tool and the impact isn’t as large because, you know, the speed at which they can access is different. But there are similarities too. You know, they’re both looking as WGU as a whole is, is the right amount of flexibility. Students want to be able to say, and that’s why they choose us so often is like, I can’t have my butt in a seat at five o’clock on a Tuesday. And I want to be able to choose when I go to school.
So that’s what they’re doing right now. And that’s like the first acceptable level of flexibility that they’re searching for. But beyond that, what would they choose to do if they were choosing their path within a program? So I want to become a a marketing analyst. How do I choose my courses within that? According to the timeframe that makes sense for me right now, those kinds of things. And every school across WG is looking for those kinds of things and increasing.
career relevant. So it’s a mixed bag Federico, but it is like a cohesive story that is set from the top, which is pretty inspiring.
Federico Ramallo (04:51) That’s amazing. Yeah, I can understand how health has a lot of more regulations. And I see the value of it on saving lives, right? We don’t want, know, so Frankenstein was a monster. don’t remember the name of the doctor, right? So Frankenstein was a doctor. I don’t remember the name of the monster, right?
Ben Helland (05:16) Yeah, he is the doctor,
not the monster. That’s right.
Federico Ramallo (05:18) is
doctor, yeah. And that type of unethical experimentation, it’s a hazard for the general public. So I can see how health will require more.
regulations I I’ve been blessed to get involved into software engineering where That premise doesn’t exist. So basically say well, you know, you’re just moving zeros and ones so there is no hazard, right? But then when you start working on it, you realize there is right if you are building a HIPAA compliant application You could leak, you know personal information a health health records or you
you could put somebody at health risk, although very unlikely, but still could happen. I can see that. the other issue that I see with regulations is that it reduces innovation. So there’s also that. So I can see how you could move faster.
Ben Helland (06:16) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (06:18) in education, in business, in technology, you could move faster because of that.
Ben Helland (06:23) Sure.
Well, yeah, it’s an interesting conundrum because a lot of the rules that are set are done so from a perspective of, you know, brick and mortar based school. So they have rules about, you know, how many, how much time, for example, like the Department of Education came across a year or so ago and said that from the time a student is ready to start taking their clinicals to the time that they’re placed in the situation within, they’re going to start.
going to prove that they’re a nurse, right? There’s a 45-day window and they mandated that. Now, if you’re going to a traditional university, you know, I’m an alumni of the University of Utah. If I was taking a nursing degree there, they own a hospital. If they want to go place a student in a hospital, be like, now you’re going to go practice your pediatrics, you know, placement. It’s pretty easy. WGU is
Not located in every state yet specifically for pre licensure, but exists in every state across all of WGU. And so what happens is like some of those rules are just. They’re not, they’re not bad because at the end of the day you want the student experience to be good and you want to walk into a hospital someday and WGU grad taking care of you and they’re they’re going to know how to place the needle and read your vitals the right way. But it just creates. Yeah, I heard you say like it stifles innovation and what I’ve seen is that.
actually the opposite. It causes us to be more creative. Those constraints cause the school to get more creative in the solutions that they’re coming up with to operate within the bounds that they’re given to qualify for financial aid, title for funding, but do it at a scale that nobody else is. Right now, you’re, for example,
There is a WGU alumni in every county of the United States right now. So the chances are there’s somebody who went, there’s gonna be 500,000 WGU alumni that are alive right now at the end of a year or so. And so there’s just this army of people who exist and are right next to you. And so we’ve found ways to innovate within those confines, but they have…
Only done so, I think, because of the mission that they’re pushing towards, which is like I mentioned earlier.
Federico Ramallo (08:37) Right, right, interesting. And going back to something you said, I find refreshing that WHO is focusing on jobs, right, on getting people, getting the students to get better jobs, right. I think that’s a down to earth mission and a very, very good one, yeah.
what role does competitive analysis of the higher education landscape play in your decision-making process at WGU?
Ben Helland (09:05) can speak to that, you know, at large with the university, but also like for myself. and I think at large it’s a, it’s a differentiator. do a lot of thinking about, where we fit in the ecosystem. I’ve bought the ecosystem of learning and earning. most, colleges think that they’re competitors or whatever they’re competing with our other higher ed institutions. And that’s, that’s not wrong, but I think we live in a day and age right now where,
You know, you have to, if you’re doing good competitive analysis, you have to segment the people you’re talking about. But for imagining the traditional college, college age student, 18 to 24, they have, they have many choices about what they could do when they’re trying to, if you’re imagining how do I get to my first or next opportunity? And so I can speak to my experience there is that we do a very thorough job of analyzing what those options are, not from a
How do we drive more revenue or get more students point of view? But like what are truly their options and how can we provide something that’s going to get them to the best option for them? So one of the, you want to get anything done at WGU, they’re gonna make you estimate the impact by three categories. Equity, does it help more people get access to opportunity?
completion, if they get into a learning experience, are they actually going to complete it? Because you don’t get anything until you’re done. And then return once you’re finished, does it compound your ability to earn? And so even with that rubric right there, you’re going to make choices and see different competitors than most other higher ed institutions will. So I would say for that angle at large for the company I’m currently working for, that is competitive analysis like
plays a major part. It’s actually part of the reason exists. I mean, the reason exists is, you know, 19 governors from both Republican and Democrat states got together and said, we have universities, but they don’t serve enough people in our states. There’s people in these rural areas and people who don’t have access to classes. So we should just start an online university together. And they did it. Like it’s this huge success story in that way. Like they saw a gap in the market and they filled it with
government money and they started a really awesome nonprofit. So it’s like in our bones, right? As for me, as like a person, like I don’t know how I could suggest a solution to the leader of the school that I’m supporting who’s asking for, hey, what should we do next? What are the opportunities? What are the student experiences that they’re going to be craving three to five years from now that we need to get ready for now, right? Like laying the plumbing and the electrical. We’re thinking about those things now.
if I didn’t have a grasp on what people are choosing from. And that’s both technologically related and also experience related. you know, there’s, there is a major shift in the belief that college is the right answer for, for people who want to get into a good job, right? A lot of people are finishing right now and having a hard time finding a job.
Adventive AI is making entry level jobs harder to come by for the moment being. We’ll see how that pans out long term, but right now that is a reality that a lot of early college grads are facing. One thing they imagine is a solution to that. One thing people are contemplating is like maybe work like apprenticeships where you’re not going through a formal four year degree, but you’re learning underneath somebody who teaches you how to do it, an expert, and then they can help you skip that first rung.
because you’re working with them and you’re earning while you’re doing it. So you don’t have to spend money to do it. You’re actually getting paid while you learn. are the types of things that if I’m not paying attention to it and the trends and the data and the polling that we would be lost. And it happens at the top layer, but it also needs to happen where decisions are being made. And that’s kind of where we fit in the folks that are inhabiting the role that I am.
Federico Ramallo (12:56) Right, right. I think that only universities have such a major impact on people that are in rural towns that are hard to get to the physical building, right? ⁓ It’s such an equalizer of opportunities.
Ben Helland (13:11) Mm-hmm.
Yeah, totally. And I think along those lines, Federico, it’s like easy to imagine the types of folks who choose online education. It might be people who have harder access to a physical location. You might imagine an adult who works during the day and needs nights to go to school. And that is like the foundation of what built WGU. It’s 25 years old, maybe the first 15, 20 years. That was the core demographic, but are actually one of the fastest growing populations that
WG is attracting is the 18 to 24 year olds who do have choice and do have options. But 2020 changed stuff, you know, and everybody went online and they saw that they have more options and that was not a differentiated differentiator anymore. That was an experience that people may not have loved because it was kind of thrown together in a panic and everybody was just trying to continue life as normal. But once you see something that’s differentiating and that’s been done that way intentionally from the get go, it really
It’s not a, guess it would be surprising to most to say that like, it’s not just those ones that I mentioned that are absolutely the bedrock of most online learning, but there’s a shift happening where folks who may be before would have thought of something else or considering it while they want to go experience life and get their first job and understand stuff before, you know, sequestering their lives for four years to something that they’re not fully understanding as this is what I want to be when I grow up.
Federico Ramallo (14:39) Right, yeah, and I had my experience at Eastern College with a job. it was not my plan, but they kind of pulled me, know, they pulled me in, you know. So I joined Microsoft when I was 16 and they…
Ben Helland (14:54) Yeah. Yeah.
Wow.
Federico Ramallo (15:02) They basically, you when I went to the interviews, I look around, there was no other candidate. So I asked how many other candidates there are. they were, the HR woman was like, well, it’s only you. So they kind of opened a position for me without telling me, right? I realized that during the interview, right? And still, you know, they asked me tough questions during the interview, you know. And I remember I had to do the…
Ben Helland (15:18) Wow.
Federico Ramallo (15:28) the mathematical development for integrals, right? As part of the interview, they asked me, I remember how we got into that, but the interviewer asked me questions where I eventually ended up doing that, right? And it was something that I started recently, and I was a little bit ahead on…
Ben Helland (15:51) Hmm.
Federico Ramallo (15:51) school
so I had that benefit but still you know it’s not it’s not something easy right so it was kind of a no-brainer for them to hire me because because I excelled but it was funny how that happened right so when I joined
Ben Helland (16:05) Yeah, that’s a,
that’s an interesting use case Federico. mean, it’s like, for someone like you who came in with a high ceiling and kind of already had some skill before, going to college, right? It would be interesting to see how much of your knowledge gained by what you learned by working at Microsoft versus what you gained by what you learned in the classroom while you were working there and going to school. Right now. I’m not saying one approach is better than the other. I’m, I’m, I’m a multi degree.
college graduate, I think it changed my life, how I think a lot of other things. A lot of the practical things I do every day was absolutely not covered in college. And those are the kind of things that, you know, that that’s, that’s true competitive analysis to me, you can always say like, who are competitors? Who are the folks who are providing courses same as us? But when you understand the student, that is, it’s not a word we throw around around a lot.
the but essentially the consumer, person who’s buying the experience from you, that’s the stuff that they’re deciding between. It’s like, what is going to be the path that’s going to take me to what I want? Should I just go to work like Federico did? Like, should I just go work for Microsoft and get my skills that way? It seems to be, you know, that’s a lot faster and maybe more applicable. I mean, we might get into it a little bit later on in your talk, but as you get to know me a little bit more, like I’m pretty…
outspoken in my belief of like humanization. If you look at me enough on LinkedIn, it’s right there at the top. So I believe in that there are, especially in this age that we’re living in right now, there are unique things that we will only be able to do that computers, you know, it’s, know, in the next five to 10 years, we’re going to be very slow to pick up. And knowing what those things are, I’d almost be like, yeah, get the skills on the job, but like, go have an experience where you’re going to become
the deeper thinker, the critical thinker, the one who has durable skills that last long-term. And those, those come in a much different way than I think passing a test on, you know, your Python skills.
Federico Ramallo (18:00) Right, right, and the way that I see university is, the role of the university is universal knowledge, right? So you are master of none, right? You have a lot of knowledge, basic knowledge that…
Ben Helland (18:08) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (18:14) at first hand it feels that it’s not applicable to what you have in front of you, but it shapes you in a way that it’s so profound that it actually does, right? And if you don’t have the answer, it gives you the tool to actually find the answer, right? It’s hard to explain it to an 18 year old me, right? Yeah.
Ben Helland (18:34) Yeah, yeah, you wouldn’t be able to you wouldn’t
be able to articulate it in a way where like you probably would have believed yourself. That’s that’s kind of the opportunity that we have is the ones who are down the road a little bit, I think is to provide that advice in a sensical way. The world we live in, like currently right now, though, like there are qualifications, people want to see something that proves that you know how to do something that might be a certification, it might be, you know,
a friend that they know that gives a thumbs up that says, yes, Federico can do this and you can trust him because you know me, might be a college degree. It’s the most common one. That’s the universal translator that a lot of people have used for the past, you know, hundred years is saying, I know what this person knows because we have an exchangeable currency, a bachelor’s degree, and we both know what that means kind of. And so let’s accept him as qualified for this job.
I think there will be more and more of those currencies of skilled transference in that way. right now, it’s just if a lot of people who choose WGU and why I continue to like work at this place that I love is because there’s a lot of folks who aren’t know how to do what they need to do. They have a direction, they have a path. And then that little layer between them and that opportunity, this is
I haven’t found anything better where you can find what it is that you want to do. And if it’s within one of those four schools, you’re going to get there, you’re going to prove it. And when you’re done, you’re going to be employable, like way above most people.
Federico Ramallo (19:53) I think you mentioned something interesting about the piece of paper, the degree, the college degree. If at face value is, as you said, is, this person jump all these hoops, right? Which, know, at face value sounds, doesn’t provide any value, right? But when you get in more deep into it, it’s…
Ben Helland (20:09) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (20:12) It’s in the process, you’re shaping how you think, right? And then it’s more than just, it’s more than the sum of the parts, right? It’s more than you just pass all these tests, right? It’s a process, right? So I’ve been gaining more and more appreciation towards that, right? And then the other thing that you mentioned is that I find interesting is…
employability, i think that that’s the other part i mean on both sides as students and as hiring manager hiring from universities and i found that disconnect at one point where the university was not understanding what work our current needs as company and we had that disconnect
So I helped them get there to what we needed. Of course, it takes them years to do that. But some were able to accept the feedback and adapt, and some didn’t. And that makes a big difference on the quality of the students.
Ben Helland (21:10) Yeah, man, I I could talk this stuff with you all day. This is like infinitely interesting to me because the employer relationship to education is so funny because they they are the receivers of the product, which is like a prepared individual who who’s ready for work. I’m not going to state because like of my own personal beliefs that like that is not the only reason we should get education. There are many, many other good reasons to go get a solid education. Right. But employers are a
a recipient of that work. And it’s over time, why I’ve been paying attention to this space over the past seven years or so. You’ve heard it both ways, where they couldn’t get enough talent. It seems to flow with the… I would like to do this analysis someday, but as you watch the unemployment rate, it’d be interesting to see the kinds of polling you hear from employers. think when the unemployment rate is low and
you know, labor has a little bit more power. They say stuff like, they’re coming out of university, but like they have no soft skills. They’re really hard to train out there. They’re coming out and like they don’t know how to work and work. And then when the unemployment rates a little higher and employers have more choice, then they can find the people with the skill. They can find the people with the soft skills and the experience, but then they don’t have the technical skills that they’re looking for. It’s
It’s interesting, but I think the more and more you can get them involved in the process, they have skin in the game. then those gaps will close. And that is one thing that I think is like a core. hopefully we get to do a little talking here in the next little bit about scenario based planning. Cause I think that’s a great approach to strategy setting, but like I would place my bets on employers getting more involved in it, which, know, everything has pros and cons. Like I don’t, I don’t want to have like a.
Hey, you know, my five-year-old went to Amazon school, right? That seems a little like a Wally future, or everything is owned by a big company. essentially though, we do need to, if they want to, if they want to, if employers want to say, we need to have this skill or we’re lacking this, then they need to get involved in the process of creating the output that they’re seeking. And more and more they are.
Federico Ramallo (23:11) Right, right, and the, and I consider myself an outlier of, know, I don’t represent the majority of students of, you know, because I started my first company at 16. So, you know, again, when I joined the college, I was so ahead in the game, right? So, and most people don’t do that path, right? So, I,
Ben Helland (23:20) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (23:39) I can see how having the support of a university with formal study gives the base knowledge to most people. And then there are some outliers. Eventually, I didn’t complete my college. Work was so interesting.
Ben Helland (24:01) Yeah. And I think measuring the outcome by whether, in finite terms like that is, is, is you can understand why if you were the institution, you’d want the person to complete, right? They, they, they’re in, you know, that the benefit for them, they’re going to spend money on the education and to get the ROI on that spend, you got to have the certificate. got to have the outcome. have to have the, the, the,
currency, like I said, that will help you get in there. Like you said, there are always outliers. hear the stories of the folks who dropped out of college, you you’re Zuckerbergs, you’re Romalos. And that’s just what it is. For some people, it’s not the right fit. And I think that that’s an evolution within the next, within the last 15, 20 years of, you know, college isn’t for everybody. It’s not the right answer for everybody. But what it is, some sort of post high school experience that
Expand your aperture. So I know that when I finished high school, I had a very narrow view about what was possible. What were the things I could choose from? What were different careers that were out there? I had exposure to a few of them, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s exposure. There’s you only know what you know. And in today’s age where there’s just like so much more availability of those resources and things that you can find and look into like.
I still can’t help but to think that at that point to where you start down a career path, now if that might be one that winds and changes or is pretty direct your whole life, I don’t know. I think there’s lots of different kinds of career paths, but the path to there, there’s gotta be choice for folks and entrepreneurs like you. learn, lot of folks like those folks learn the hard way. They get out, they get out, they…
They do it, know, boots on the ground, bump their head against walls, and that’s the education that they want and need. And there’s no other way to learn it. Other folks like to have more of a formal path. And I think there’s, there’s been a multiplicity of options that ever have come in that timeframe. If you look at the data though, there’s, there’s some negative outcomes to that multiplicity, especially for Gen Z folks who are now completing and
Sometimes you can see some data to support the idea that they don’t know which one to choose. When everything is possible, nothing is possible too. You don’t know which one to choose from. So clarity and I think a good line of sight where you can say, saw that this works. I see the outcomes. I see somebody who’s doing it. I understand how to get there. That’s what enables the choice of best.
Federico Ramallo (26:27) Right, right. Yeah, I throw my career. There were a few times where I thought, well, I should have finished. should, you know, when mostly when I’m trying to do something, I don’t have the basic the base knowledge. Right. So I have to go back and read and understand. And eventually I learned it. But I’m thinking how much time could I have saved if I have finished?
my college, right? As you mentioned, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? So, right.
Ben Helland (26:53) I, I, go ahead. You don’t know what you don’t know. Exactly. And that was
a little personal story on my end is I entered college and I had no career guidance. I took a couple of classes and I become interested in child psychology. I thought I was going to be a child psychologist. I got all the way up. I got entered into PhD school and I did two or three years of it. I was gearing up for my dissertation and like Federico.
every semester I was like, I hate this, I hate this, like every, I can’t do this, this is not the right fit. But like, there were elements about it, obviously, that drove me to it. And I started to love it, like, but they were not the things that I wanted to do for a living. So although I was highly educated, I dropped out and I had a bachelor’s yes, but like no marketable skills. Like there’s not a lot of people hiring for people who know how to do like play therapy who aren’t psychologists, right? So that was mine that
Federico Ramallo (27:22) Hahaha!
Ha ha.
Ben Helland (27:47) Like not knowing what was possible, like you can just apply and be like, Hey, I’m smart and you can teach me. But like my very first five to six years on jobs was on the job training. picked up every skill in Excel and finance and cost accounting and BI by somebody on the job who was teaching me how to do it. And I never would have picked it up if I would have done a degree in finance in the very same way. So it was very practical. But when I started getting deeper down that road, it became very apparent that like
Knowing how to do tactical things was an advantage, but people were having conversations and same things and like meetings where I just always felt like a step behind, right? Like I didn’t exactly know exactly how the pieces fit together at large. And because that became of interest to me, you know, there’s like kind of a dividing road where I could get more technical and learn how to code and you know, get better at. know, writing my queries and stuff like that.
There was things I liked about that, but it was always more interesting to me to understand like how it applied and where did it fit in the long-term plans and who were the people making those decisions. It became very clear that if I wanted to go down that road, I needed like a boot camp to get me caught up with everybody else. And that’s when I got my MBA. Like, you know, we can all discuss the societal benefits of having more MBAs or not. Like some of us are great, some we’re not, but like for me, it served a very practical purpose. It’s like I needed to get caught up. And it was super useful for me in that sense.
And then expanded my network really fast where I can meet a lot of people who were like me, were thinking same, had opportunities. And that’s, that was my take on like my formal education. Like I haven’t had any since. don’t know if I will have any more at that point, but like, I think maybe I’m an outlier too. And just my personal story and a lot of people though, more and more following kind of that circuitous path where it’s not a direct line. There’s, there’s, there’s less and less people were saying,
I knew from the age I was 12 that I was going to be a lawyer, you know, like that. And then they do that their whole lives. It just there’s a lot more choice and expandability. And I think having it meet you where you’re at and get you to the next step is the best reason to take on education. That’s like my personal philosophy.
Federico Ramallo (29:58) Right, and it’s hard to convey to the younger generations that after you feel that pain of, have the tactics, but I don’t have the strategy, right? I need the strategy. Then ⁓ after you get to that point, it’s hard to convey that to the young generations, right? Because they haven’t felt that pain, right?
Ben Helland (30:10) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, there’s
lots of ways to get it. Um, I think there’s a myriad of, this is a sense that I have, maybe I get some data to back it up, but I think there is a slew of people right now who are at that precipice of figuring out what they do next. And they’re going to get the best advice that exists right now, which is like, go to work, go get that tactical knowledge. And then.
A few years down the road, once you know they actually need the expertise and these folks get into the next level of jobs mid career, there’s going to be an influx of people who come back to a more formal education. There’s lots of ways to get it. I mean, you can learn that in lots of ways, but. I can’t help it. I think some of those folks will go seek out those experiences.
Federico Ramallo (31:05) So changing a little bit of topics. So both at WGU and Veridate, you’ve had to bridge strategy with execution. How do you ensure ambitious visions turn into tangible results?
Ben Helland (31:20) Yeah, you mentioned Veridate. That’s just essentially a small startup of my own. As soon as I left WGU the first time, WGU provided me with an experience that was just eye-opening. I meant a mentor there that changed my life. He saw in me something I never saw in myself, which is like, can do this and you’re capable of more than you thought.
When my time at WGU came to an end, was like, why don’t I just try to do more of this by myself, know, same kind of lens, but like, impetus for that was not something I was expecting, which was like, you know, an individual who like ignited that aperture, the opening of it for me. So yeah, I’ve been doing that as well as some time in this job. And that company,
that I’m running has done a lot of engagements with companies of lots of sizes like you alluded to. there’s, you know, sometimes I do work very specifically to a small business like here locally. We had the opportunity there to, there was a person who was trying to sell his business and it was not ready to be sold. It was, it was beautiful. It had existed for 20 years, but he had it on the market for about a year and
People would come in kick the tires, but it was just, it was messy. And so we proposed to him like, Hey, what if we came in and we cleaned it up for you? And then we see how we do after that. And he gave us full rain. said, here you go. You are acting CEO of the company for as long as it takes to get going. we did top to bottom, everything re-imagined, you know, how does staffing work? How do we.
You know, what are the tools we use to track time? Like how do we, who are we hiring? What’s the leadership team? What are the norms about how we interact with each other? Redoing training manuals, doing a legal checkup, everything that you probably needed to do so that if somebody came in to be like, this is a well-run company. This is the money that it makes. This makes sense to me. And then it was, I learned more doing that than almost anything else I’ve ever done in my entire life. I felt like it was a second masters, you know, that we’re talking about formal education. I learned a lot about,
that sort of top to bottom thinking than I ever would have gotten in a big company where I was a piece in the pie, piece in the machinery. in that particular instance, he was able to have a successful exit, like way more than he probably would have gotten otherwise. And it was wonderful to see. So small things like that. Strategy to execution gap, like you asked for, is pretty small.
Like, you know what you need to do next and the long-term plan will only come if you hit the next step. And so, in that sense, like, the closer you can get to the problem, the more likely it’ll turn out to the way that you can be. And in a situation like that, your proximity to the problem is pretty close. So Veridat’s also done work for a large publishing company back East that
does, I think it’s like on the European top 100 companies, something like that. It’s a massive publisher, 10,000 worldwide. They hired us to come in and do some strategic planning with their executive team. It was right when AI came out, you know, I think we all remember March, 2023. And we’re like, oh, wow, this is new. This is going to change some things. And if you’re in the publishing and content business, I think you probably feel that strain a little bit more.
and so we walked in and, I, I alluded to it earlier, but one of the things that is a skill I picked up on the job, while I was at WGU was, the sense, a skill for scenario based planning. it’s the way that we did things there. and like, as a brief overview, essentially what it does is you take the two biggest uncertainties in for your, you know,
for your company, for your team, you could do it for yourself. And then what are the things that I do not know that will happen over the next five to 10 years, whatever horizon makes the most sense for you. And these really have to be things outside of your control. These have to be things that are exogenous. They’re market forces. They cannot be things that you are, you know, a decision that’s gonna be landed tomorrow. They have to be large forces. And then you, you know, like any good consultant, you turn it into a two by two.
And you spread it out into these four extremes and you write stories about them. You say in this world, this is what would happen. And you’re not making a prediction as the power of scenario based thinking is like, you’re not saying this is what we think is going to happen, but it stretches you further than you think you would to have to imagine what decisions you would have to make if things move in that direction. The, the ability of that tool is to get you out of your comfort zone. I think we all have.
a certain point of view that we see how things are going to go, but that’s usually one line. And then what ends up happening is if you make a plan to that one line, you’re betting the farm. saying, if it works the way that I think it will, things will be great. I think the last 10 or 15 years of world history has taught us that like, we don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a lot of unpredictability. So scenario-based planning forces you to
go further than you would in the directions that you’re unsure of so that you can place bets in each of those quadrants. So I’m pretty sure things are gonna go this way. Like that’s the one we all feel most comfortable with, the one that we think is most likely. But you know, if there is something unexpected that happens, like a worldwide pandemic or something and things drift towards this corner, we have something that we’re working on in that area that we can like…
scale up if we need to because strategy at any level, Federico is just like, what are you saying no to? You’re just applying the funds that you have to the decisions you have to make. And essentially, all you have to do is say, what are we not doing? And that’s a strategy. And so if you feel things drifting towards something you didn’t expect, you’re not caught off guard. You had something cooking in that area. You had a capability you were building. had something that you were
a small side bet, but now that becomes your main bet, you’re not caught off guard. So we were doing that kind of planning at a massive company with 20 to 40 individuals at a time sitting in a room doing very workshoppy things. And at that level, like your distance between the strategy and the problem is ginormous. You’ll never see the outcomes of that work. It is so directional. It is so
multi-year thinking that like, it would be very difficult to see like, how do I bridge strategy to execution? So in that sense, like, the best way to think that it’s going to work is like, you have to make sure that it still goes down to that level. The closer you are to the problem, the more likely it’ll be that it’ll actually happen. So yes, we’re making these decisions. We’re saying directionally over the five years, this is our main bet. But if that bet
doesn’t turn into an organizational structure that then turns into capability building that then turns into yearly planning that then turns into hiring decisions and budget plans and all that stuff like you have to flow it all the way down. And those are things that happens, you know, after a company like varied, I leaves and we’re no longer involved, but like a well run organization will take those long-term decisions and break them down into something that a frontline employee would understand their place in the plan. That’s one thing I also
think is super important is like, if nobody understands what the plan is, everybody, not everybody has to have all the detail, but everybody should know what the plan is. And if they don’t know and how they’re contributing to it, the likelihood of its success is pretty low.
Federico Ramallo (38:51) Right, wow, so much to unpack there. Yeah, yes, yes, I find very interesting about Veridite, what you’re doing at Veridite, I think is important. Important for the world, but also important for you as an experience, right? Yeah, and.
Ben Helland (38:55) Long-winded answer to your short question, but yeah.
Federico Ramallo (39:14) As you mentioned, gives you more, when you get into a company as a consultant, you can play God mode, right? Because you can basically, in all organizations, everybody becomes a little cog in the machine, on the big machine, and that kind of solidifies a structure, right? And that means that when…
something happening outside the company in the world, the companies, the bigger companies struggle to adapt to changes because of this, know, crystallized structure, if you like, right? So kind of the, believe that the consultant comes to help make those changes because it…
it doesn’t get involved into internal politics, right? ⁓ And that’s why I’m calling Godmode, right? Because you come in fresh and you can see the things are happening and then you can just make, propose unnecessary changes for them to happen, right? Yeah, and so I find that very interesting. And you mentioned another thing that is this idea of scenarios, right?
Ben Helland (39:58) Mm-hmm.
Federico Ramallo (40:19) I think that the predictions, you know, if…
if you try to measure the quality of the predictions and the plans as how accurate they were, I think that’s a wrong mindset to think about that because the value of the plans is not the plan itself, it’s the exercise of building the plans. Once you build it, it’s obsolete and it’s of worthless, right, ish, because there’s still value on the plan, but the highest value is on building the plan.
And as long as you have a north or a general direction of where you’re going, small deviations are not going to necessarily change that big vision that you have. ⁓
Ben Helland (40:58) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (40:59) Yeah, and having those,
Ben Helland (41:00) Bye.
Federico Ramallo (41:01) laying out the plans allows you to think on all the possible scenarios that happen, right? So that way you are prepared for whatever happened, right? Either prepare on, you know, I used to do these readiness plans, it will put a scenario and then it will put the, likeliness to happen and then the, the,
the damage that it could make and then how we’re going to diminish the damage and how we’re going to avoid that happening. So it was mostly to do risk management rather than business strategy. But I always come back to that because I think that
that allows you to be prepared, right? So you’re not thinking about how to do things, you’re just being able to execute based on the ideas that you already think, right?
Ben Helland (41:54) Absolutely. I think you nailed it right on the head. And two thoughts to base what you said is like, I think super, super smart. If you’re trying to make a prediction, you’re setting yourself up for failure. But the act of living in a possible future that you didn’t anticipate. And usually when we do this kind of thinking, either through very diet or, you know,
In the other sense, where I’ve done it, we try to place people in the world where they have to inhabit for the time where we’re doing planning that is least like the one that they’re probably hoping for. Because that discomfort, that feeling is like, look, I don’t think this is even possible that this would happen. Or even if it did, it wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t be a massive impact on us.
by dissecting it and spending a couple hours being like, well, what if it was, what would you have to do? Like they become more comfortable with the ideas like, this is possible. And just like you said, the act of planning is way more valuable than the actual plans. Cause as soon as you make one, it’s only as good as it’s shelf life, which is usually, you know, a few months, cause things change. But that act of having to live in a world where you are forced to think outside of what your current bed is, like it’s invaluable. That future.
may not ever happen, but you’re going to see signals of any one of those four, especially if it’s on uncertainties that you are really core to your business, you’re going to see a mix of all of them. And when you see this one happening, you already know the predetermined response to it that is going to be best for your part of the business or your business as an individual. you’re an entrepreneur, you’re like, okay, I see the government starting to lock down. There’s going to be more monopoly busting. I know in this world, this is what we’re supposed to do.
Is it everywhere? it in my state? Is it in my market? It does those particulars matter, but you kind of know the direction where you’re supposed to be thinking of and the bets that you deploy when they happen. And you know, it wasn’t lost on me when you said consultants come in and play God. I think that it’s like a lot of time they’re just telling you the stuff that you know you want to say and you guys, the company’s afraid to say it. And a lot of the situations I’ve been in there’s
There’s something that the executives who are running the company are afraid of, they’re nervous for. And when they talk about it amongst themselves, there’s just some level of, we don’t say that, or we can’t think that way. But as soon as, like you said, a neutral third party comes in and says, hey, I looked at the information. This seems like it’s going to be an important topic for you all. What do you all think about it? It kind of gives them this safety blanket to be like, well, I think it’s
is going to impact us this way. And it’s no longer an individual standing up and being like, I think you’re wrong, boss. It’s like, I’m reacting to this guy’s information. So I don’t know what it’s going to be. I think that it’s in vogue to, you know, point at large consulting companies and be like, they’re getting paid to do nothing. That might be true. Some of those folks get paid. Like we put out a couple RFPs.
Federico Ramallo (44:50) Yes.
Ben Helland (44:51) As some of the big companies were out be like, hey, how much would it cost to do this? And they’re like, oh, wow, two million bucks for a two month engagement. That’s insane. So some of that stuff is warranted for sure. But I think if you’re doing a good job, what you’re doing is not only helping them see the things that they’re already seeing in a clear lens, but giving them a view into.
Yes, you’ve thought about this response to it. Have you also considered this, this, this and this not to distract you, but just to say like, have we covered our bases because a lot of times I don’t even for myself like I’ve done personal strategic planning Federico like when there’s times when I’m like, what am I going to do? What are my next two or three steps? And like you think about it, but until you go through the exercise and you consider all the other steps you bring in outside parties to talk about it with you like, there’s always something that sticks. And that’s been my experience. There’s always something that people didn’t
consider, but they add it to the list of things. Like this is also something we need to consider like a bet for the future.
Federico Ramallo (45:49) Right, right, it’s basically pushing a change in the status quo.
to do that, right? And coming as a clean slate with no skin in the game allows you to, you know, basically make proposals that when you look at in retrospect, it sounds obvious, but you you need to be that catalyst to make that change happen, right? Yeah. So we’re running out of time, so I’ll ask you one last question and then we can wrap it up. ⁓ If you could go back.
Ben Helland (45:55) Mm-hmm.
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (46:19) and give your younger self one piece of career advice. What would it be?
Ben Helland (46:23) Well, I’ll thank you for the time Federico. This has been a great conversation. It’s made me think about stuff and I’m really happy that we had it. as this is the last question, it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. You you mentioned at the top, I have two little kids. They’re coming up a little bit older now. My daughter started middle school. Like, you start thinking about what their life is gonna be like a few years from now when they’re starting to have to think about this stuff. And something that’s been sticking in my head is like,
the distance between where you are and the floor when you’re in your 20s is much smaller than you think. Like at that point in your life, there’s so much opportunity to go take some risks and be like, I’m going to try this. And if it doesn’t work, the backwards tracking that you have to do is not that big or the recovery room that you have to do is like, yeah, it didn’t work out. Big deal. go get a job at Home Depot, you unload some crates, you’re going to be okay. It’s not a big deal.
So that would be something I would tell myself probably if I could go back and say this is like, yeah, take some chances when that is the case. When things are different now, you got a wife, kids, a house, a mortgage, taking a big shot, there’s consequences for it not to work. And not to say that we shouldn’t. The people who I admire most consider those things very deeply and then say, and it’s going to be OK if I take a shot.
Federico Ramallo (47:31) It’s harder. Yeah.
Ben Helland (47:42) And that’s the other piece of advice I give myself is like, when you bet on yourself, when you are the one who’s in control of the outcomes, not everything is perfect, but like, it has a higher chance of working out than you think it will. The things that are less predictable are things that you don’t have control over. Like a CFO has a bad quarter and has to lay off 400 people. Like, oh, well, I was doing a good job, but now I don’t have a job. Like those things are unpredictable, but.
When you’re calling the shots and you’re the one doing it and you’re working as hard to make it work as you will, those odds are better than you think they are. And I know we talked a little bit about this, but like, I wish I could have been exposed to more things than I was at that age. So job shadow. I graduated with my MBA in 2017.
And immediately went to one of my favorite professors and was like, what would it be like to teach? You know, like I love teaching. I love being in front of people and like having that thing like, I do an online class class with 10 people like in a corner somewhere? He’s like, I think we can do better than that. And he, he got me. Surprisingly easily, like a course where I was teaching 100 people who this was their first semester of college and I had no teaching experience, but as I went through it,
That was a learning curve. But when I was teaching at the University of Utah, I ran into so many people like me, Federico, where I was talking to them in between breaks or at the end, like, hey, so what are you going to go into? like, well, I think I’m going to go into marketing. Like, cool, what do you like about marketing? Like, I’m creative and I have good ideas. And I’d be like, that’s good. But that’s like 5 % of marketing jobs. Most of it is like SEO optimization and analytics. Like, do you know what?
this job actually is because you’re about to spend $60,000 on becoming one of these things, right? And then you don’t want to get into it and not know what it is. This is just like a personal experience that I’ve kept having. So I just built in at the beginning of my classes, 15 minutes, I invited somebody in is like, work in finance. This is what I do every day. This is how you become a finance person. And if I was going to do it all over again, this is the way I would get to my job, just so people would have access to
Federico Ramallo (49:25) You
Ben Helland (49:47) information that they may not have while they were making the decision about what do I want to be when I grow up? You know, as a captive audience, there’s 100 people at a time. But, you know, that’s just like a passion of mine. There’s a company that I’m asked to be an advisor for is called Glimpse. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re providing very captivating, you know, one to two minute TikTok style videos exposing people to like what’s life like in this type of work so that they can
have better exposure to those kind of things. I’ll shout them out here because they’re amazing. Glimpse.org. But that’s the kind of stuff that when I look back on, I don’t have many regrets. I think everything works for your good if you allow it to. I’ve come in contact with people who, when stuff happened that was challenging in their past, they let it like fester and work against them and become a grudge. But I think anything that you experience will help you in the long run if you allow for it to. And so these aren’t
Like pieces of advice I’d give to myself because, you know, I think I’ve messed up or anything. I’m really happy where I’m at, but you know, there’s always this, you know, analytical side of me is like, how could I have optimized for this a bit more? And those are the things I think of.
Federico Ramallo (50:52) Right, right. Yeah, I feel the same. I I feel that on my side that even the painful experiences has been lessons learned that allow me to get where I am today. even those, if I’m thinking, if I remove those, well, I might not be where I am now. So it was something that I need to go through.
Ben Helland (51:12) Yeah, I’m super glad I started out in psychology. It helps me every single day thinking about how people think, where they’re coming from, mental frameworks, all those kinds of things. Like it makes me better. And maybe I wouldn’t have been as good at what I do right now if I hadn’t gone through that path. And, know, that current set of aperture that I had was exactly what I needed. I’m open to that idea. I actually am. I just, yeah, I think that in general, more people who know more is always good information.
It’s always going to be a positive thing to have more people know more things about themselves.
Federico Ramallo (51:45) Right.
Ben, amazing conversation and we’re a little bit over time so we should wrap it up. I truly appreciate you being here. Any last remarks before we wrap it up?
Ben Helland (51:57) Thank you so much for the opportunity. This has been a ton of fun. Appreciate you.
Federico Ramallo (52:01) Great. Thank you, Ben.