Employee Spotlight: Maiko Nakamura - SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

FEATURED EMPLOYEE

Ask for help and don’t be perfect: Maiko Nakamura’s simple advice

Role:	Brand & Marketing Leader
Division:	Marketing
Location:	New York
Expertise:	Global branding, digital marketing, event/project management
Experience:	3 years at SYSCOM
Hobbies:	Dancing, Running, Making a café latte

Role

Brand & Marketing Leader

Division:

Marketing

Location:

New York

Expertise:

Global branding, digital marketing, event/project management

Experience:

3 years at SYSCOM

Hobbies:

Dancing, Running, Making a café latte

Maiko Nakamura, Global Brand & Marketing Leader for SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS, often finds herself surprised by all she’s accomplished in her time with the company. Coming on in 2020 to handle marketing for the NYSI team, her initial scope of work was to support sales of the SI business. Today, she’s heading up branding and marketing for the entire company, from America to Japan and around the world.

“The company was preparing to change their name to SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS,” back when she came on, she says. She recalled a previous job where she worked heavily in a major corporate rebrand, so she stepped up. “I raised my hand to manage the entire rebranding, logo and corporate identity development, and web revamp. Then I became in charge of branding and marketing of the entire US business in my second year before expanding to the entire company in my third.”

When asked how she went so far so quickly, she paused to consider. “I didn’t even realize how quickly my role had changed,” she says. “I’ve been on an endless learning curve since I started here. Very on-the-job training.” She credits the company’s willingness to let her learn on the job and trust her expertise with her rapid ascent. “They told me, ‘We’re not experts in marketing, you are. If you think something is the best way to do it, then we trust you.’ I had never experienced that kind of trust before.”

“And,” she says, “I’ve discovered my role at this company.”

Have you ever been at an all-hands meeting at work and not quite understood everything that your leaders were trying to communicate? We all have, but few are willing to actually speak up and say they don’t understand or need further elaboration. For many of us, shrugging our shoulders and hoping it all works out in the end is good enough.

But not Maiko. “I’m not afraid to ask dumb questions,” she says. “I keep asking those questions, because those are important. I represent the people who aren’t experts in IT, the leaders of companies who don’t have time to keep up with the constantly-changing IT industry.” In other words, she’s approaching these topics from a completely different place from SYSCOM’s engineers. “I ask questions, and sometimes people within SYSCOM are surprised to learn I don’t know that. They have to explain it, and through that conversation, we can create something that’s easier to digest.”

She isn’t afraid of admitting when she needs more context or information, and is even less scared of getting something wrong. “Trial and error is in SYSCOM’s DNA, we’re very agile and constantly open to new ideas.” She’s noticed it affecting her own working style, too. “I used to be more of a perfectionist, but the work culture is pushing me to expand my horizons.”

That approach is especially helpful in the digital marketing work she does. “In traditional media, once your ad runs, that’s it. You can’t make any mistakes. If there are typos in the magazine ad, if a commercial airs with mistakes, it’s your fault. You spend a lot of time making sure everything is okay.”

“But in digital marketing, you can make changes quickly. You can’t wait to create a perfect, complete thing—if you do, then someone else will have already done it and people will be talking about something else.” She finds commonality between digital marketing and IT there. “They kind of have a similar thing: be quick, try it, if you fail, pivot and try again. It’s constant trial and error, you just get used to it and get quicker.”

Our product isn’t just solutions, it’s people.

Maiko Nakamura

Brand & Marketing Leader

When it comes to the actual work of her job, one of her early ideas has been a resounding success: these recurring Employee Spotlights (one of which you’re reading right now). “When I started here, I had some outdated ideas about engineers. I thought they wouldn’t be friendly, or would be too smart to make me feel useless. I thought they’d be mostly men.” But that changed once she got to know people. “I was lucky to get to talk to a lot of people on different teams, and they’re all amazing! So different from what I thought and much more interesting. Most of the engineers are friendly, nice and helpful, and there are so many women!”

She saw an opportunity. “As a marketer, my job is to promote the brand: our strengths, products, and solutions. But we don’t just sell products and say goodbye. We sell solutions, and our people are part of our solution.”

From there was born the Employee Spotlight series, a way to showcase the people who work here in all their nuanced individuality, because we don’t just sell products—we sell solutions, and the people who make those solutions happen.

“It’s all about working with our customers. Before implementing, we do a significant discovery phase. We review the customer’s environment, network, needs and goals.” It’s important to know what they’re walking into first. “Then we install, but we need to make sure everything works properly after that. Our relationship doesn’t end right there.”

“Some projects take years, like an ERP system. It may be 6-12 months of discovery, then another 2-3 years for implementation. And then if something new pops up after the implementation, they reach out to us again.” On these long-haul projects, the product and solutions are just the end result. What the client is really buying is the people of SYSCOM. “Through the Employee Spotlights, our customers know who some of the engineers already are and how we do business. More people have a way to understand what kind of engineers we have here.”

In addition to driving sales, her insight into marketing the people of SYSCOM has help on the talent front, too. “I’ve heard most of the employees introduced by this program have appreciated the recognition—to say nothing of the professional-looking photos,” she says. “Many new hires have told me the Employee Spotlights articles helped them understand company culture. I’ve spoken to newly-hired women who said they saw that there are more women in engineering here than they thought, that there was a place for them here after all.”

“It’s about the recognition, and feeling like part of the team. What our engineers do on a daily basis can be really tedious, intricate, and time-consuming small steps, so I found recognizing that is big for them.” She makes it sound so simple. “People feel nice when somebody knows what they’re doing.”

It all ties back to selling SYSCOM’s greatest offering. “Our product isn’t just solutions, it’s people. We can’t sell people with a quick digital ad, we have to show them.” And she’s far from finished with testing and learning. “We’ve been doing a lot of webinars, and have found that’s a good way to show that we don’t just have the solution—we have the experts, too.”

“SYSCOM has always strove to grow with our customers, as the world changes. When companies shifted from on-prem to cloud, we were there. When the pandemic mandated WFH overnight, we helped customers improve their security to accommodate remote work. Today, everyone is curious about generative AI, and we just hosted a seminar featuring an AI expert from Microsoft.”

Maiko isn’t all business—far from it. She’s a working mother with a 12 year old daughter, and has always worked hard to maintain her work-life balance for her. “I’ve been working full time since she was born. There were so many moments I was torn between motherhood and career and felt guilty for not being 100% on either end.” But she’s had support the whole time. “I have been lucky to have incredible support from my family and friends. Especially other working moms, we’ve formed a village to support each other in raising our kids.”

When pressed for advice for working parents just getting started, she’s practical and human-centered yet again. “Always ask for help—don’t try to do everything yourself. There’s always someone who can help you.” And, on the other side of that coin, a message about expectations. “Don’t try to be perfect, especially in parenting. Everyone is different, just look for what works best for you, your family, and your child.”

It’s pretty good advice. If you commit to never being afraid to say you don’t know, always asking for help when you need it, and not expecting perfection from yourself, who knows? Maybe you’ll be in charge of global marketing for SYSCOM some day soon. Or, perhaps, the next Employee to be Spotlighted.