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As someone who has leads global teams through API integrations, data projects, digital transformations, and more, Keith Nichols understands what it takes to get the most out of his people. He prides himself on being “a metric-driven coach,” a leadership style that emphasizes communication, accountability, and analytics.
“If your teams don’t have communication and accountability, then you won’t respect them as a leader and they won’t respect you,” he says. “Throughout my career, I’ve focused on putting processes in place and using various tools to get a consistent set of metrics in order to help teams perform at their best. One you see how a team is performing, you can then figure out how to turn the tide, if need be.”
In 2021, Nichols brought that perspective to Jostens to help the memorabilia manufacturer realign the IT team and to chart a strategic roadmap for the function. Since then, the senior vice president of IT has reorganized the team around key centers of excellence and helped the team expand its customer base and capabilities using data as a North Star. He has also revamped the way IT manages stakeholder expectations with a philosophy that he’s been using for over a decade.
“We’ve relied on a methodology I call ‘planning by percentages,’ which looks at how much time our team is spending on administrative, maintenance, and new development tasks. Essentially, we’ll plan with those high-level buckets in mind and look to them to manage expectations, making sure we don’t overpromise or underdeliver.”
“I consider myself a metric-driven coach who works with my team to understand the business, tools to use, and frameworks to standardize on.”
Keith Nichols
That’s not the only stride Nichols has made in driving efficiency and optimizing the IT team’s time. He and his colleagues have also put in a lot of work to improve how employee hours are tracked.
“When I first got here, teams weren’t doing time tracking in the tool they were doing all the work in. They were entering in their time in a separate tool, so the hours didn’t always align to the work being done. We’ve been able to add a feature to allow teams to track their time directly in Jira, which has significantly increased the accuracy of hours and the work being captured.”
IT leaders like Nichols often run into a common dilemma—as they climb up the corporate ladder, they get further away from the work their teams are doing. Meanwhile, technology and innovation continue to evolve and as strategic decision-makers, they can’t “be in the details of everything,” Nichols says. That’s why he aims to stay in touch with his teams at Jostens through coaching them.
“You have to just drive value where you can and being a coach is a good way to do it,” he says. “There’s a reason sports teams have them. Coaches deal with process, help align the team, deal with morale, help the team perform at their highest, and they focus on ways to create a good IT culture.”
He continues: “I consider myself a metric-driven coach who works with my team to understand the business, tools to use, and frameworks to standardize on. It’s also important for me to have authentic relationships where my people enjoy working for me.”
“I would say, ‘This might sound weird, but I think what I’m doing to do something that doesn’t exist yet.’”
Keith Nichols
Growing up, Nichols loved English just as much as STEM. A part of him also knew that he was destined to innovate. When people used to ask him what he wanted to do for a career, his answer reflected that.
“I would say, ‘This might sound weird, but I think what I’m doing to do something that doesn’t exist yet.’”
In a way, he was right. The internet and other instrumental forms of technology didn’t grow in prominence until three or four years after he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University. In recent years, he’s been working on a master’s in technology management at Vanderbilt University’s remote program.
Enamored by the technological evolution, Nichols started his career as a managing editor for ZD Internet Magazine in 1996. There, he channeled his love for IT and humanities into columns on emerging technology trends and tutorials on emerging coding standards. He also created a script library that showcased the uses of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML to add functionality to websites for developers.
He went on to lead global commerce and SaaS platforms for retailers like Sephora, Restoration Hardware, Zinio, and Delivery Agent. He’s looking forward to what the future holds at Jostens.
“When people take a look at Jostens, they may perceive them as a hundred-year-old scholastic company,” Nichols says. “There’s a level of truth to that but there’s an incredible amount of opportunity to innovate in the brand, and I’m excited about taking advantage of that.”
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