Tracey Spicer
From engineering solutions and data analysis to ensuring more sustainable and ethical global supply chains, Rebecca and Zachary Zeus are a husband and wife powerhouse teaming up their companies and helping other businesses reassess how their information is used to become more competitive. They’re part of a community of trust architects, solving one of the most challenging global problems. So, are they game changers? Let’s find out. I’m Tracey Spicer. Welcome to Game Changers.
Tracey: Bec, congratulations, you’ve just been made Co-CEO of BizCubed. Tell us a bit about the business and what makes it so successful.
Bec: I like to refer to us as a better decisions company. What we do is we take the pain out of data, and we identify efficiencies to free up your time to make better decisions. The way we do that is through creating data ecosystems that work for people. And we’ve built a team, a business culture and a methodology that helps our customers achieve that.
Tracey: I think a lot of people would love to have the pain taken out of data. Now you trained as a chemical engineer, you’ve got a master’s in Environmental Engineering, so as a leader, what’s your vision for the company?
Bec: Well, leaning into robust, sustainable systems is our strength in building and giving the value add back to our customers. Ultimately, Zach is the visionary, and my strength has always been executing that vision and making it real. So that’s the key thing that we’re going to be leveraging as we go forward.
Tracey: Something I’m curious about is that most large companies have their own data centres or technical engineering teams. How does Bizcubed change that?
Bec: We think about data differently and the way we approach it. We don’t come in to sell you tech; we come in to help you do better with what you have. We do that through our engineering methodology. We help build those data pipelines, open up bottlenecks, and identify what’s underlying any inefficiencies that are happening. We can come in and make your data operations more sustainable, such as reducing single points of failure. There’s a lot of knowledge kept in single people within teams about how to operate things. And we help capture that knowledge for the long term.
Tracey: So clever. Zach, you founded Bizcubed back in 2006. Where did you see a gap in the market? And how do you do things differently?
Zach: The big thing that we really focus on is how do we help business teams take advantage of the data ecosystem that they have more effectively. And what we’re trying to help them achieve is their strategic vision. When I started the company in 2006, I’d come out of New York running a big data team. And what I saw was the opportunity to close the gap between the business teams and the technology teams in the use of data. And that’s the core strength of the Bizcubed team, our methodology, our approach to teaching people, our approach to capturing that knowledge Bec just described. And that sort of line makes a big difference to our customers and provides continuity over a long history of the business.
Tracey: As the new Co-CEO, how do you think that Bec, with her experience and her academic qualifications, will change the organisation through her leadership?
Zach: Well, fundamentally, she’ll make it a lot better. So the thing that Bec has always done, no matter what role she’s had, is build world-class capability. We were brought to Australia so that she could bring a settling production plant up to international standards across the South Pacific. When she was in an environmental role, she rolled out a global carbon traceability system ten years ago, more than ten years ago. When she came back to Australia, she built a world-class incident investigation system. So she’s always built these world-class systems and processes and methodologies. And what she’s done since she joined Bizcubed has really lifted our systems and processes, but she’ll just take that to the next level in the new role.
Tracey: Of course, the company has grown like topsy in the past couple of years. Bec, how’s that impacted things like recruitment processes?
Bec: One of the things we’ve been really excited about is seeing that stay stable through the growth. We overhauled it a few years ago when I joined the business as an employee, and we really redesigned it as a culture-first approach. We really look for company values fit and who the people are as a person, because you can build skills, but you can’t change those fundamental values. By leveraging that, we’ve introduced components to reduce bias as well. That’s one of my passion areas. We actually found that it kept pace with our growing customer commitments. That, plus our onboarding program, is probably where we’ve seen the biggest impact.
Tracey: I love the sound of your approach to reduce bias because we all have artificial intelligence at the moment, but it’s not all good, is it?
Bec: Yeah, you really need the people components in there.
Tracey: Yeah, and the right culture. Now, Zach, you’re not leaving the business. Tell us about PICS Global and this phenomenal, best-ever job title of a Trust Architect.
Zach: I am leaving the day-to-day operations of the business. But as Bec mentioned, I still maintain a strategic role within the organisation. But what I’m doing with that additional capacity is starting a company called PICS Global. And what we’re doing is we’re building a global community of trust architects. What trust architects do is they sit at the intersection of policy, commerce, people, technology and large language models or artificial intelligence to help ensure that as we grapple with the changes that are coming with ESG, carbon reduction and scope three traceability, organisations have the opportunity to not just comply with mandates pushed down on them. They actually have the chance to flip that on its head and build their communities, their value proposition, their companies, and the unique capability that they have, and take that to the market in a positive way that allows them to increase their margins, increase their resilience, improve their understanding of their supply chains, and really build out the next generation of business and community and culture that takes advantage of tech, but doesn’t get ruled by it.
Tracey: Would you say it’s helping companies get on the front foot at the intersection of ethics and business?
Zach: Yes, not just ethics and business. But it gives businesses the tools to keep the promises they’re already making. We see this in lots of different industries, where what’s printed in the annual report doesn’t quite translate to reality. And that causes massive disruption to their share price when people find out. It also causes quite a lot of internal disruption to their culture. Because if you’ve been in the marketplace, promising that you’re doing amazing things, and then you get caught doing something wrong. And oftentimes, it’s one out of 100, or one out of 1000. Just a little pocket of the organisation making a mistake that undermines huge amounts of people’s work and intent. And so building the capability to really take control of that and manage that effectively is really what we’re focused on.
Tracey: One thing that’s coming across loud and clear with both of your companies and the work that you do for other businesses is getting the culture right from the get go. Bec how do you see the synergy between these two companies ongoing?
Bec: One of our strengths has been building sustainable, robust processes so that customers can have confidence in their data. One of the logical next steps would be leveraging those strengths to support building data. Trust architecture.
Tracey: All right, what’s next for this dynamic duo?
Zach: Just maturing the companies and the families and the communities and cultures that we’re in and just building on the strength that we’ve built. And helping the people in those ecosystems do a little bit better each day.
Bec: Like I said, I’ve got a passion for building systems that work for people and supporting that. So I really am looking forward to having the capacity to really work with our teams, to grow with the company, to develop their leadership and to keep BizCubed’s culture thriving.
Tracey: Congratulations, you are both game changers. And is it fair to say you’re creating game changes within the organisations that you’re working with?
Bec: Yeah, absolutely. We’re game changing for our team with a lot of the different ways of working that we’ve built in our culture, and we’re activating game changers within our customer’s organisations. So when we’ve done that, most effectively, those game changers within our customers have been promoted, because they’ve have the time freed up to do that strategic work and accelerate into their goals.
Tracey: Well, that is brilliant. Thank you both so much for your time.
Zach: Thanks, Tracey.
To find out more visit: BizCubed at https://bizcubed.com/
