Episode 123
Digital Transformation Done Right: Why Technology Isn't Always the Answer | Valentina Coin
In this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, a detailed discussion unfolds between the host, Anthony, and Val, a digital transformation consultant from Via Technology.
They explore why staff are leaving organisations and delve into the integration of technology within business systems. Val elaborates on the necessity of reframing relationships with technology and not rushing to adopt tech solutions without proper strategic planning.
The conversation spans various elements crucial for business success, such as the importance of understanding the real problems within a business, setting a 'North Star' for measuring success, and aligning people within the organisation.
Don't miss this informative episode of Biz Bites! Listen to the full episode now and access exclusive bonus content. Subscribe to our channel for more valuable insights and business tips.
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Connect with Valentina on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/valentina-coin
Check out her website - viatechnology.com.au
Check out Val's offer here: https://www.viatechnology.com.au/offers/systemised-business
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Transcript
Why, what's the main reason why our staff are leaving?
Speaker:Is it communication between team?
Speaker:Is it technology provided?
Speaker:In recent years, the word system has consistently bled and merged
Speaker:with the concept of technology.
Speaker:So when we say system, more often than not, we might mean a piece of
Speaker:software or a piece of technology.
Speaker:You, we can call it a 1% shift in how we relate ourselves to technology.
Speaker:But it's more than a 1% shift, I think.
Speaker:Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites proudly
Speaker:brought to you by CommTogether, the People Behind Podcast done for you.
Speaker:Because we are all about exposing other people's brilliance.
Speaker:Don't forget to subscribe to Biz Bites and Check Out Podcast done
Speaker:for you as well in the show notes.
Speaker:Now let's get into it.
Speaker:Hello everyone and welcome to Biz Bites, and I have a special guest today that
Speaker:I know is gonna give us some really amazing insights, but I'm gonna let her
Speaker:introduce herself from the beginning.
Speaker:Val, first of all, welcome to Biz Bites.
Speaker:Thank you so much for having me, Anthony.
Speaker:It's a pleasure.
Speaker:So how do we go about introducing you?
Speaker:Ah, the question, all questions.
Speaker:Look my business is via technology and VIA is a digital transformation consultancy.
Speaker:That's the best way we can explain that.
Speaker:And we work with companies.
Speaker:To help them ultimately grow and scale faster.
Speaker:But what we help them do is we help them reframe their relationship
Speaker:with technology so that they can have it as a tool supporting the
Speaker:delivery of an experience, whether to their clients or to their staff.
Speaker:This is what we like to do.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:It's that changing of that relationship is so huge and important.
Speaker:Now, isn't it?
Speaker:Because we seem to be just like technology has just been going on a steady ramp
Speaker:and the rate that it's coming into, whether it's the rate that it's coming
Speaker:into businesses or not, certainly it's the rate that it's been coming in terms
Speaker:of into our news feeds everywhere.
Speaker:You can't avoid it.
Speaker:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker:And with all the excellent marketing experts we have out there who are
Speaker:helping the software companies become more and more appealing I think we've
Speaker:definitely seen a shift in the recent years to, I. Trying to portray technology
Speaker:as a, as close as possible to a silver bullet to solve a business problem.
Speaker:And we all love a quick solution,
Speaker:but sometimes it isn't quite that.
Speaker:And so that's where, that's what we've found a lot.
Speaker:And you're absolutely right Anthony, in saying that maintaining
Speaker:and enhancing that relationship.
Speaker:Both with our clients and with our staff, I would say is
Speaker:extremely important these days.
Speaker:So it's not only about keeping our clients happy, but also about staff retention
Speaker:and staff happiness, and all of those different elements that CommTogether
Speaker:to create a successful business.
Speaker:I. Yeah.
Speaker:And I think that's the important thing, isn't it?
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:Business is not about one singular elements, it's about multiple of elements.
Speaker:Technology seems to be crossing over into all of those elements today.
Speaker:And having an impact everywhere.
Speaker:So I suppose that's the interesting question.
Speaker:Where do you begin?
Speaker:Where do you begin?
Speaker:Not from technology, that is our answer.
Speaker:Where do you, but where do you begin when you start to look at a business?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because they've, do, they come to you first saying,
Speaker:Hey, help us with technology.
Speaker:I. Or and then you have to turn it around, or are they, aware in the
Speaker:first place that it's not that?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a very good question.
Speaker:Look, typically yes, the answer is our clients do present with a
Speaker:technology challenge or with a business challenge and the request, can we
Speaker:please solve it with technology?
Speaker:And what we do is we take the slow down to speed up approach.
Speaker:So there's a little bit of a conversation that usually happens along the lines
Speaker:of, yes, technology is very powerful and is potentially part of the solution.
Speaker:We just don't know that yet.
Speaker:The risk of starting with technology we have found is
Speaker:that technology is an amplifier.
Speaker:And so if you start with inefficient operation, if you start with silo teams,
Speaker:if you start with an inefficient process that hasn't been properly mapped out
Speaker:and you apply technology and automation to it, you just going to increase.
Speaker:The chaos and this reliance on the technology almost giving away
Speaker:the ownership to the technology to truly systemize our business
Speaker:is one of the biggest gripes that I have with the industry lately.
Speaker:But that's why we exist.
Speaker:To have those conversation and to shift that dynamic a little bit.
Speaker:And so where we like to start to answer your question, 'cause
Speaker:I've said where not to start.
Speaker:Where we like to start is really by slowing down and being
Speaker:strategic and really understanding.
Speaker:What is this business that has come to us?
Speaker:What is the problem that they are presenting with?
Speaker:And can we go 7, 8, 9 steps upstream to really figure out what is the
Speaker:problem most so than the symptom?
Speaker:Getting clarity on the complexity of the business that is in front of us.
Speaker:How is the business operating?
Speaker:Can we enable some visibility and do we understand how the
Speaker:business measures success?
Speaker:That is really where we like to start from a strategic perspective.
Speaker:And then the second step that we often take and we would thoroughly
Speaker:recommend anybody does, is having a look at the alignment of the
Speaker:people that belong to this business.
Speaker:And so what that looks like is.
Speaker:At every layer of the organization what does the leadership team
Speaker:alignment look like and the middle management and the team on the ground?
Speaker:What is each group's perspective and what expertise do we have in
Speaker:the house to support the transition?
Speaker:Once we've got it all mapped out, then a, it becomes really clear
Speaker:if this is a technology problem.
Speaker:Or B, you might already have the right technology in place and
Speaker:you're not really utilizing it well.
Speaker:Or C, we can have a look at processing people and focus on those two areas to
Speaker:get the uplift that we're looking for.
Speaker:A lot to cover there.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Tell me as a starting point.
Speaker:I'm fascinated by the measurement of success because I think this is a
Speaker:phrase that is used a lot, but often not really thought about too much.
Speaker:And people's default is.
Speaker:Bottom line.
Speaker:It's measurement of success is, okay, last year we made X amount.
Speaker:This year we made X plus Y. Therefore that's a measurement of success.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it might well be set in relation to expectations.
Speaker:So if X plus Y is only 10% improve and we had, imagined it was going to be 20,
Speaker:then we might also say that it's not been as successful as we would like.
Speaker:But those kind of projections are often.
Speaker:Based on gut feelings or desires that are completely out of our control.
Speaker:So measurement of success, how do you get into that in the first place?
Speaker:Because I imagine you're hit first of all with those kind of basic responses.
Speaker:100%. What are they called?
Speaker:Vanity.
Speaker:Yeah, there is a lot of that in the measurement conversation.
Speaker:And also of course, bottom line financial.
Speaker:That's one we see a lot.
Speaker:I guess my answer to that would be we would expect that every business
Speaker:answer to this question be different.
Speaker:And if it isn't, this is where we start digging and ask are we
Speaker:really going deep enough on this?
Speaker:Is this really how we're gonna measure success?
Speaker:Typically we do an exercise, and this is something anybody can
Speaker:do that we call the North Star.
Speaker:We do it at different stages depending on the project, but it's in, in essence
Speaker:what it is understanding out of all the different things that you could choose as
Speaker:your North Star when you're implementing technology or re-engineering processes or.
Speaker:Restructuring your org chart and your roles and responsibilities,
Speaker:what is a north star that is going to drive our choices in this project?
Speaker:And together with the North Star, we choose what's the measure of success.
Speaker:And so suddenly by choosing the North Star, the measure of
Speaker:success becomes almost obvious.
Speaker:If the North Star is our staff turnover reducing by X
Speaker:percent, and that's the goal.
Speaker:So let's go a little bit deeper.
Speaker:What does that look like?
Speaker:Why, what's the main reason why our staff are leaving?
Speaker:Is it communication between team?
Speaker:Is it technology providing too big of a learning curve, whatever that may be?
Speaker:Let's really give richness to this north star.
Speaker:And then the measure of success comes to light.
Speaker:Yeah, I can totally see that.
Speaker:And I think it, it's such a hard thing though, isn't it?
Speaker:Because you write what you said in the beginning.
Speaker:We have these, vanity matrix that, that people are increasingly drawn to.
Speaker:And I think we've spoken about it on the program before that, we live in
Speaker:a day and age where that measurement is pushed on us, constantly because
Speaker:why didn't more people like our post whatever it might be, and why did
Speaker:they like this one and not that one?
Speaker:And, it's trying to understand things that are out of our control
Speaker:more often than not of all.
Speaker:But second of all, that don't really matter.
Speaker:I've had this conversation with people almost on a daily basis in relation
Speaker:to podcasting, where people say to me.
Speaker:Measurement of success, is it about how many downloads?
Speaker:And I said, no.
Speaker:If you want 10,000 downloads, I can buy you 10,000 downloads.
Speaker:Not gonna cost you that much complete waste of money and time.
Speaker:But if your vanity says that you need to have 10,000 downloads,
Speaker:then we can do that if you like.
Speaker:And I think that's people are having to understand the idea
Speaker:of quality over quantity.
Speaker:Is a difficult one.
Speaker:When you are constantly being fed this whole idea of, but
Speaker:they got more likes than me.
Speaker:100%. And I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker:We see it near everywhere these days.
Speaker:We see it when we personally engage with our marketing team.
Speaker:And at the very beginning, not with the current marketing team where we're with,
Speaker:but a previous agency was putting in front of us all those vanity numbers.
Speaker:And at the end of the day what are they boiling down to?
Speaker:Are we being as deep as we could be with the assessment of what
Speaker:the success look like for us?
Speaker:Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker:And so once you get past that and you're starting to look at what is
Speaker:a real real kind of measurements of success, is the starting point
Speaker:then revealing itself in term?
Speaker:Where does it tend to be more often?
Speaker:Is it tend to be more often in the people?
Speaker:Is that whole idea of that particular area, something that is Rev tends
Speaker:to be more revealing rather than it being, oh, it's the technology.
Speaker:We're a little bit behind it.
Speaker:We're not using it properly.
Speaker:I think you've hit the nail on the head that it is often a people
Speaker:related measurement of success.
Speaker:We give it depth and richness by attaching maybe numbers to it or attaching a
Speaker:particular tech or process to it.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, all of those are just tools to deliver on a. Person
Speaker:or a group of individuals, a group of stakeholders, whether they be clients,
Speaker:staff, leadership team family members of your clients, whoever they may be.
Speaker:At the end of the day, these are all tools to deliver that individual an experience
Speaker:or a feeling or a state of mind in relation to our services and our business.
Speaker:That is what we have found.
Speaker:So when you're talking to the board, you might talk in terms again of reducing
Speaker:staff turnover by 5%, but in the end it is about putting the wellbeing of
Speaker:your team front and center, and then all the decisions that we're going to
Speaker:take along the way will make sense.
Speaker:Because they will take us toward that North Star rather than having
Speaker:to take a decision at every step.
Speaker:When you are choosing between efficiency versus experience, if what you desire
Speaker:is your staff member's ease of use of a particular software, for example,
Speaker:it becomes really easy to pick two software, compare the training material
Speaker:provided, and go, yep, that one's easier.
Speaker:Yeah it's it interesting, isn't it?
Speaker:Because I think you, you do have to increasingly look at the bigger picture
Speaker:and the longer term impacts, and it's the, it's easy to go for the quick wins
Speaker:because the quick wins are there to be had at times, but the quick wins can.
Speaker:Deto, you there's a, there's that kind of famous expression,
Speaker:which do you take the the short long road or the long short road?
Speaker:And I think there's a lot of that happens in this day and age with technology.
Speaker:And they take the little, the short road thinking it's going to be quick, but
Speaker:in the end they have to double back and go around to, in order to get there.
Speaker:So it's actually taken them longer to get there.
Speaker:Then if.
Speaker:That have looked at the bigger picture, taken the long road in the
Speaker:first place, 100%, and it comes back to those 1% shifts in direction.
Speaker:If we map the way at the beginning, we understand where we are going.
Speaker:We may not know exactly the path, but we have the general direction in mind.
Speaker:We can quickly see if we are shifting one degree to the left, one degree
Speaker:to the right, and we can adjust.
Speaker:If we look in front of us, it looks like we're going straight.
Speaker:That looks like the right way, but then 1% by 1% by 1% we might change path.
Speaker:And I imagine then that the part of the thing is you're starting
Speaker:to dig a deep into the company and working out, first of all.
Speaker:If they have systems in place.
Speaker:Then whether those systems are built, as you said at the beginning, on flawed
Speaker:ideas or whether they're actually built on something that's sound and scalable.
Speaker:100%. And I guess.
Speaker:To expand on that a little bit, I feel that language plays a
Speaker:particularly important role in what we do and how we approach things.
Speaker:So when we use the word, for example, we use a lot the word system,
Speaker:and I feel that in recent years, the word system has consistently.
Speaker:Bled and merged with the concept of technology.
Speaker:So when we say system, more often than not, we might mean a piece of
Speaker:software or a piece of technology and system to us specifically and to our
Speaker:clients, isn't equal to technology.
Speaker:So when we talk about businesses having a system in our view, a system is.
Speaker:A mechanism by which we can achieve a consistent result every
Speaker:time, but it needs to take in.
Speaker:So you might think it's a process, right?
Speaker:All I have to do is write down my process and here we go.
Speaker:And again, some people might call that process procedure,
Speaker:SOP, the way we do things.
Speaker:All of those have become synonym, but each one of those has a specific meaning to it.
Speaker:So to us.
Speaker:A process is really good to have, but you can't really
Speaker:have a process without people.
Speaker:The analogy we often use is the, one of the journeys, since we were
Speaker:talking about direction and journey.
Speaker:If you think about taking a journey you can have a people heavy business.
Speaker:So you might have a traveler that's going somewhere on foot.
Speaker:They might walk and walk.
Speaker:They're gonna go a little bit further.
Speaker:But there's going to be maybe no direction, and they're not
Speaker:gonna go very far on foot.
Speaker:You then start layering in some strategy and some processes, and
Speaker:what that might look like is we understand where the business is going.
Speaker:We have a vision, a mission, we have values guiding us, and we have
Speaker:mapped how our business operates.
Speaker:So that provides us the lay of the land, and we can plot which one is
Speaker:the fastest route to get from point A to point B. Guided by our principles.
Speaker:That's very good, but we're still going on foot.
Speaker:So once we've got that's when you layer in technology.
Speaker:And the picture I have in my head for some reason is jumping onto a red Ferrari.
Speaker:Then we're cooking with gas and we're really moving forward in our business now.
Speaker:That's what we would call a system.
Speaker:The combination of those three pillars.
Speaker:I think that is an important lesson for people to understand is getting
Speaker:a hang of those three pillars.
Speaker:And seeing how that is going to move you forward.
Speaker:Because I. The tendency is to just take one of those little things, isn't it?
Speaker:And I'm interested as to how hard it is to stop people from doing that, because
Speaker:I imagine there's lots of examples of that when you already go into a business.
Speaker:Oh, of course.
Speaker:People heavy business we work with.
Speaker:A lot of businesses in the care industry, disability industry, and
Speaker:those being highly operationally complex businesses, but also very high care
Speaker:businesses, people first business, right?
Speaker:And you've got a number of operators and brilliant minds in the industry
Speaker:that are really proud of building a business built on their people.
Speaker:Except that, that if there is an imbalance towards people, that can become very
Speaker:risky from a business perspective.
Speaker:Because what happens when your people are walking out with all
Speaker:the knowledge that they have?
Speaker:What happens when they become so embedded in the process and so much part of how
Speaker:things are done that they end up becoming the bottleneck for your business growth?
Speaker:Because Sarah in accounting is really proud of her skills and we love her.
Speaker:She's amazing.
Speaker:She's an A player.
Speaker:She helped grow our business from where we were to where we are
Speaker:now, but I. Sometimes there is a risk in a people heavy business.
Speaker:Equally process if we rely on processes and believe we can create checklists and
Speaker:SOPs and manuals for everything with video manuals photos scan a QR code and listen
Speaker:to a recording on how to do this task.
Speaker:And we seem to believe that we can create that and expect anybody to pick that up.
Speaker:From, we can expect to bring someone in our business.
Speaker:They can pick up all of our manuals and deliver work to the quality that we want.
Speaker:Then we are forgetting the people element, which is the nuance of, yes,
Speaker:I've done the 10 steps, but where is the nuance on how we deliver those 10 steps?
Speaker:And equally with tech, I've spoken so much about tech.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:That is the interesting thing when it comes to the technology as well,
Speaker:then it's plays off all of that.
Speaker:And choosing what's right for individual businesses is important, isn't it?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Because there tends to be a blanket, oh, you should use this.
Speaker:And it doesn't matter what.
Speaker:What field that's in, in terms of the business, whether you're talking
Speaker:about a CRM, whether you're talking about a content, sort of situation
Speaker:of a chat, GPT or any of these other ones, or you're talking about
Speaker:something that's gonna deliver systems or even more process delivered.
Speaker:There's a myriad of different technologies and some of them are quite specific
Speaker:to different industries as well.
Speaker:Yes, 100%.
Speaker:Look, I think again, technology is a great tool.
Speaker:Technology is an amplifier, and there is definitely.
Speaker:A. Temptation to talk to our business colleagues, talk to our
Speaker:comp friendly competitors, and ask them, what are you using?
Speaker:Is it working for you?
Speaker:And if they say, yes, it's great to jump on, then we trust the judgment,
Speaker:we trust the council, and we might go and purchase that platform without
Speaker:having done the work before to assess whether it is right for us or not.
Speaker:And it might work out.
Speaker:And I, I really believe that when recommendations are made, they are
Speaker:always well intentioned because that piece of technology might work for us.
Speaker:So when we recommend it to others, we truly believe the strength of that
Speaker:platform that fails to take into account that every business is different, and
Speaker:even two businesses delivering the same product to the same audience in the
Speaker:same geographical area potentially.
Speaker:Can do so with very different priorities, with D, very different values, with very
Speaker:different flavors and the technology.
Speaker:We believe technology should fit how a business works rather than
Speaker:a business molding itself to how the technology is captured.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Such an important little differentiator.
Speaker:Yes, we touched on the beginning, but I think it's so important for people to
Speaker:understand that that point because it is so easy to be drawn by the technology
Speaker:now, particularly as we hear the hype around different pieces of technology.
Speaker:You must use this, you must use this, and people just jump straight
Speaker:into those things and it's.
Speaker:Creating chaos within itself.
Speaker:I've seen it with even simple things around content.
Speaker:Oh, we get this and we'll produce content.
Speaker:And I was only talking to someone the other day where, you
Speaker:know, some of these services.
Speaker:And without naming the specific ones, we'll come back and we'll say, here's
Speaker:the content and here are the sources.
Speaker:But if you actually dig deeper, those sources aren't real.
Speaker:So sometimes it's making this stuff up now.
Speaker:How and why that is happening.
Speaker:Let's not even go there.
Speaker:But the point is that you can't be completely reliant on it.
Speaker:Plus, if you are.
Speaker:There's nothing stopping me asking it to do exactly the same thing and say, and
Speaker:delivering the same piece of content.
Speaker:So what is the actual point of that?
Speaker:Yeah I think that human differentiator, and that's just
Speaker:an example in the content area.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But that human differentiator, I. Comes into so many aspects of a business.
Speaker:'cause it's those little tweaks.
Speaker:It's if you put it into in the realm of cooking, right?
Speaker:We all might have a recipe for chocolate cake, but we're all
Speaker:gonna be slightly different, there's a little secret ingredient.
Speaker:My grandma used to add a little bit of this, so we add a little
Speaker:bit of that, or it tastes really good if you put this on the side.
Speaker:That's the beauty of it and you can't lose sight of that.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:I love me a good analogy.
Speaker:Especially if it's about food.
Speaker:You understand me?
Speaker:You understand me, Anthony?
Speaker:Yeah, no, I think you are absolutely spot on with that.
Speaker:And I am glad that you are slowing us down to really focus on it.
Speaker:'cause it is really one of those.
Speaker:You, we can call it a 1% shift in how we relate ourselves to technology, but.
Speaker:It's more than a 1% shift, I think especially these days
Speaker:with the unbelievable platform that you alluded to earlier.
Speaker:And we love it.
Speaker:It's part of our daily life.
Speaker:Today, there's no point denying it, but let's remember that it
Speaker:is a tool, it is an ingredient.
Speaker:It is a spice in our cooking cabinet.
Speaker:Let's not just go all out on the spice and.
Speaker:Forget the eggs and the flour.
Speaker:What I've even found fascinating in, in that area, and so let's call it out
Speaker:for the content sort of side of things.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Is that there are multiple tools that you can use.
Speaker:So there's chat, GPT has the big name, no doubt about it.
Speaker:That is the one that everybody has heard of.
Speaker:There are ones on the next level and there are ones on a level
Speaker:underneath all of that as well.
Speaker:And what I found fascinating is.
Speaker:Most people are just going we've just, we've tried a couple.
Speaker:This is the one and that's the end of it.
Speaker:And it's but is there any reason why, you know, depending on what you want,
Speaker:this will work better for this one and this will work better for that one.
Speaker:So why you just nailing it on one?
Speaker:And I think that's one of the things that businesses need
Speaker:to recognize as well is that.
Speaker:It may not be a case of just choosing one.
Speaker:And the temptation I imagine is particularly if you're a,
Speaker:if you're a Microsoft person, there's a Microsoft tool.
Speaker:If you're a Google person, there's a Google tool.
Speaker:So there are those ones as well as the, the general ones like Chatt,
Speaker:PT, and and a number of others.
Speaker:So sometimes the decisions that businesses are making are just led by the technology.
Speaker:Again, rather than actually thinking about different.
Speaker:Uses and different people that are using them.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So Rich, I think we could probably spend hours just on this topic.
Speaker:Quick couple of things that come to mind as I hear your perspective on that.
Speaker:I definitely agree with the sometimes whichever tool is in front of us,
Speaker:whichever tool might be the most convenient is the one we take.
Speaker:And I would actually offer that sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker:It really depends on what use, what importance that tool is going to
Speaker:play in the overall business system.
Speaker:Is it delivering on a tiny little portion of it and everything else is going to
Speaker:be supported by strong system, strong processes, and it is very people powered
Speaker:and we use that for a 1% of our results.
Speaker:Fine, as long as we're aware of how it thinks and how it takes decision.
Speaker:And I guess on that, it's really important to remember that AI and all
Speaker:of those amazing tools, let's use them, but let's keep in mind that they might
Speaker:not be the best fit for every task.
Speaker:It's almost what we describe to our clients is AI is a bit like a black box.
Speaker:You put something in the black box.
Speaker:And then you fish something out or the AI fishes something out for you.
Speaker:Versus for example, something we're asked a lot is can't this
Speaker:software, why do we need a software?
Speaker:What we need?
Speaker:Why do we need a custom development solution to this?
Speaker:Can we do it with ai?
Speaker:The difference there is AI is a black box situation.
Speaker:I. Put something in, fish something out.
Speaker:You dunno how it got to that conclusion.
Speaker:Sounds about right.
Speaker:Whereas with coding custom development, you can build technology, you can build
Speaker:with software that is going to really methodically follow a process and follow.
Speaker:You can let it do action A following B, following C, and
Speaker:then bifurcating that action.
Speaker:If this, then that we can go into all of this, but that we know how it reasons
Speaker:and we can control the outcome versus ai, you never know what the outcome
Speaker:is, whether it sounds right or not.
Speaker:And the second thing that came to mind, just 'cause it's such a rich topic
Speaker:continuous improvement is something that we're really banging on a lot about.
Speaker:And I. There is a degree of intentionality in choosing a
Speaker:platform and choosing a process and choosing a way to manage your people.
Speaker:But we do need to recognize that as our business grows, as our people grow.
Speaker:That is not going to be right for us anymore.
Speaker:So we need to, as we make a choice, almost immediately put in place a
Speaker:continuous improvement structure.
Speaker:Sys a system to manage your systems so that we can keep reviewing and
Speaker:keep assessing, is this serving us or is there something else out
Speaker:there that could serve us better?
Speaker:And what we have to recognize as well, of course, is that the rate
Speaker:of change of technology is so great that what you tested, a year ago may
Speaker:not be relevant anymore, that, that may have moved so far that, it's,
Speaker:you have to reexamine it as well.
Speaker:And there's a case of how often can you review and look at these things.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's I can see a future whereby there is.
Speaker:Within businesses, one or two people whose task it is simply to be testing
Speaker:on a regular basis and measuring that testing and then going back and
Speaker:retesting, it's a bit like it's a bit like painting the harbor Bridge.
Speaker:By the time they get to the end, they've gotta start all over again and do it.
Speaker:And I think it's a bit like that with this, it's just, you've gotta set.
Speaker:Some reasonable parameters for when you do it, but the truth is, I know
Speaker:that, I paid for chat GPT over a year ago, used it for a couple of months and
Speaker:decided I wanted to use a different tool.
Speaker:And that's, the reality is that what I tested is not the same anymore.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's a beautiful example there.
Speaker:I think to answer your question, what is a reasonable timeframe?
Speaker:I think for most businesses, and it depends on industry and how quickly
Speaker:it moves, but for most businesses, I'd say six months is reasonable.
Speaker:You might bring it down to three if it's an industry that
Speaker:moves really quickly, but.
Speaker:In that case, so the example that I might make is if you are assessing,
Speaker:is my current platform serving me or is there a better one out there, then
Speaker:probably look six months to a year.
Speaker:Otherwise, your investment even a year, I would say otherwise, your
Speaker:investment's not gonna pay off.
Speaker:But if you've done your work, you've booked chat, GPT, you've tested
Speaker:it for two months, you've assessed it's not the right one for you.
Speaker:You've jumped somewhere else, you've found your best match.
Speaker:Then I wouldn't go looking for at least a year for another best match.
Speaker:What I would do every three months, however, is I would take some time to
Speaker:get either in touch with my software vendor or look at the new feature release
Speaker:page if there is one, and go and have a look what else my current software
Speaker:provider has released that is new.
Speaker:So I'm still continuing that intentional, continuous improvement journey.
Speaker:But I'm not looking outside.
Speaker:I'm not hopping from software to software 'cause that comes with
Speaker:its own cost and its own headache.
Speaker:But yeah, that, that's what came to mind.
Speaker:You can keep that improvement mindset.
Speaker:And this is what I said at the top of the of the conversation.
Speaker:We need to shift our mindset around technology.
Speaker:Not hopping technology, but how can we incrementally improve the technology we
Speaker:already have and make the most out of it?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It's so important for doing that because there is no doubt that there is a.
Speaker:Push for those that are operating, that technology, that have brought
Speaker:it to you to constantly improve it.
Speaker:And so even keeping pace with that alone is and of itself difficult
Speaker:because you're constantly having to test it, see whether it's working or not.
Speaker:See if it's going to meet.
Speaker:Your needs or not?
Speaker:It's very difficult because sometimes you find that the features that you
Speaker:liked disappear or they move around.
Speaker:I think that's one of the one of the classic cases that I often see when
Speaker:you fixed on a particular technology and you might join a, a. Group of some
Speaker:description that has questions that people throw up, and more often than not,
Speaker:it's about, oh, I used to go up to the top right and click on this to do this.
Speaker:Oh yeah, they've moved it to the bottom left now, and you have
Speaker:to go through this menu and that menu to get to, and it's like.
Speaker:There might be a valid reason for it, but it's ha but that's the, it's those
Speaker:little things combined with the leaps that are being made so dramatically.
Speaker:And I and I don't use that word lightly, because they are dramatic in a lot of
Speaker:cases about what it's capable of doing.
Speaker:And then the question is examining whether you should be doing it.
Speaker:Sometimes you feel like, oh, it's there, therefore I should use it.
Speaker:That's a also within itself, a very difficult one to slow that
Speaker:temptation down to go, oh, it can now do this, so we should do this
Speaker:and going, but do we really need to?
Speaker:And does our audience really need it?
Speaker:Love those questions.
Speaker:Absolutely fabulous.
Speaker:Taking the time to slow down and ask themselves, ask ourselves those question.
Speaker:Brilliant.
Speaker:And going back to what we were saying before, if we've done our
Speaker:North Star exercise correctly.
Speaker:We should have the tools to answer those questions because this new feature
Speaker:that's been released, is it aligned with the direction we wanna take?
Speaker:And sure, sometimes the answer isn't as straightforward, but
Speaker:most of the times it will be.
Speaker:So if we were truly honest in that exercise and we didn't do it as a
Speaker:vanity exercise, one might even say that's gonna guide our decisions.
Speaker:Let me ask you this question 'cause it popped up in a in another podcast
Speaker:episode that I did previously, and I'm intrigued in your response to this.
Speaker:So the tendency when businesses are looking to scale is the
Speaker:immediate driver is often create more efficiency so they can scale.
Speaker:So often it's cutting back in order to grow.
Speaker:The question is whether more can be driven out of what you've got already
Speaker:to increase that scale rather than looking to just hack things away,
Speaker:implement sec some technology and say, there's more efficiencies here.
Speaker:Therefore we can scale, where is, where does that balance lie, particularly
Speaker:when you're sitting on the cutting edge of technology implementation?
Speaker:I love that question.
Speaker:Yes, there is a. Assumption that efficiency is always the answer to us.
Speaker:We are very picky about this.
Speaker:For us personally and for our clients, we go back to experience.
Speaker:So what is the experience that we want to deliver our clients and
Speaker:what is the experience that we wanna deliver to ourself and is efficiency.
Speaker:Going to take us there to make an example.
Speaker:And something that I do, uh.
Speaker:It's, it is something that I talk about a lot.
Speaker:If we talk, so let's assume we have two businesses and they both wanna scale
Speaker:and grow, and they both are looking for a piece of technology to help
Speaker:them manage a they have to take some bookings appointment booking perhaps.
Speaker:And so they're looking for a piece of technology to manage that.
Speaker:At the surface level, you might say I know a really good software,
Speaker:let me put that in place.
Speaker:If we go and dig deeper and understand what experience is each
Speaker:businesses delivering their clients, you might start discovering that.
Speaker:One is a gym, a 24 hour gym that offers a PT service and their demographic
Speaker:is a young, 18 to 25-year-old male who really wants the efficiency
Speaker:at the tip of their fingers.
Speaker:They wanna be able to book online at any point in time, and they
Speaker:don't wanna talk to anybody.
Speaker:Just wanna.
Speaker:Get to the gym, lift some weights, do the PT session, and then leave.
Speaker:In that case, a fully automated cut as many costs as you can.
Speaker:Make it efficient.
Speaker:Inject some AI smarts so that whichever PT you book before is the top choice
Speaker:at the top of the list, what have you.
Speaker:That's the right choice.
Speaker:If the business we are looking at, for example, is a. Let's say
Speaker:it's a doctor's practice in a residential aged care facility, right?
Speaker:They still take bookings, but the value of.
Speaker:Making a booking for an aged care resident for an elderly person should be able
Speaker:to actually turn that action of booking a, an appointment into an interaction
Speaker:with another human to be able to walk up to a desk or pick up the phone and
Speaker:have a talk with the receptionist with whom they've developed a relationship
Speaker:and being able to have a chat about their nieces and nephews and the
Speaker:weather's changing and what have you.
Speaker:That becomes part of the experience.
Speaker:And so efficiency in that case wouldn't be something that I'd be recommending in
Speaker:terms of let's replace the receptionist with a booking system, but how can
Speaker:we find still powerful systems to support that receptionist in doing
Speaker:their job the best way that they can?
Speaker:Efficiency sometime is the answer, but more often than not, you can elevate
Speaker:that to the experience and sometimes the experience we wanna give is efficient.
Speaker:Sometimes the experience we wanna give is intentionally inefficient because
Speaker:that's part of the value we provide.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There is so much there.
Speaker:And again, we could talk for hours just on that little part alone.
Speaker:I just wanna ask you a couple more questions before we wrap things up and one
Speaker:of them is a little bit different because I wanted to ask you as a thought leader.
Speaker:In this space, how do you wrestle with staying on top of technology versus just
Speaker:needing to stay on top of the thought process itself around all of this,
Speaker:how driven do you have to be to go?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We really do have to stay on top of all of the tech because you've got lots
Speaker:of clients in lots of different areas.
Speaker:So there's a lot to stay on top of.
Speaker:But yet, here you are, we are having this discussion because you are
Speaker:a thought leader in this space.
Speaker:Is it more about the strategy and the ideas than it is about the technology?
Speaker:I. Yes.
Speaker:Resounding yes.
Speaker:It's really about, for us, our answer to it.
Speaker:It's about having a framework to think around this that we can
Speaker:apply whatever the technology is.
Speaker:It's about having our own as a business north Star and
Speaker:values and guiding principles.
Speaker:And it's also about having.
Speaker:A system to manage the system.
Speaker:So I will have a process and a piece of tech and some structure
Speaker:in my team to create the outcome of continuously staying on top of new
Speaker:technology, existing technology changes.
Speaker:But ultimately it's the strategy, the thought, the system that
Speaker:lives inside our head that is more important than the outward system.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:They're very well said.
Speaker:Again, another topic for a lot of discussion.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think that's given us a bit of an insight into how you guys work
Speaker:and how you work in particular.
Speaker:Just to wrap things up, it's a question that I like to ask all of my guests
Speaker:is what's the at heart moment that your clients have that they, when they
Speaker:come to work with you, that you wish more people knew they were gonna have?
Speaker:Ah, that is such a good question.
Speaker:It's hard to choose.
Speaker:I love aha moments.
Speaker:They come in so many flavors.
Speaker:One of my favorites is, and it's, it probably doesn't speak to what we
Speaker:do right now as much, but one of my favorites of my entire career is when
Speaker:I used to be an actual software trainer and I used to go to teams who were very
Speaker:resistant to change, and the simple.
Speaker:Approach of not treating it as a. Box, tick, exercise and sitting down with
Speaker:them and opening up my phone or my laptop and taking it slow and letting them come
Speaker:to the understanding, oh, that's what this piece of software can do for me.
Speaker:When that realization came, it was one of the most amazing
Speaker:things that I've ever right now.
Speaker:The aha moment comes more often than not when.
Speaker:A CEO, for example, who's very driven and wants the results.
Speaker:They really make a leap of faith and trust our process.
Speaker:And they say I, it makes sense if it feels very time consuming what you're
Speaker:doing, but I'll trust you and I'm sure it makes sense at some point.
Speaker:And usually three quarters of the way through that knowledge will drop.
Speaker:And I'll usually receive a phone call that says.
Speaker:Oh my goodness.
Speaker:It's all coming together now.
Speaker:It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker:We've gone through the rollercoaster of whatever project we've done
Speaker:and there is a, ah, I get it now.
Speaker:There's nothing better than that.
Speaker:I've had those moments myself.
Speaker:I remember specifically a client that we were having a one-on-one session
Speaker:and she was giving me nothing like.
Speaker:I was struggling to I just felt like I was constantly talking.
Speaker:She, but she was listening.
Speaker:I knew she was listening.
Speaker:And I got a phone call that evening when she went, oh my goodness, I got it.
Speaker:And I was convinced that she hadn't got it at all, but it was just seeping in
Speaker:and then it's just, it's exactly that.
Speaker:And there's nothing more gratifying than that moment.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:When you, when it all makes sense for everyone.
Speaker:So yes, it's seeping in I love what you just said.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think often we fear that what we are saying isn't sinking because it
Speaker:isn't immediately reflected back at us.
Speaker:We know what we're saying and it's for every thought leader out there.
Speaker:Even if you're not a man, a people manager.
Speaker:Even if you're just a worker who doesn't have a title, you might
Speaker:be a thought leader yourself.
Speaker:There is an area in which you are absolutely brilliant and you are
Speaker:sharing your knowledge with others.
Speaker:If they seem not to answer straight away and reflect it back at you just keep
Speaker:talking about it because it will sink.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And then when you hear it coming back at you as if it was their idea a little
Speaker:bit later on, you've made a difference.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:Best feeling ever.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Val, for being a part of the program.
Speaker:I've really enjoyed this discussion.
Speaker:So many different areas, so many tips and insights for people listening in.
Speaker:So thank you for being part of it.
Speaker:Thank you for having me, Anthony.
Speaker:It was absolutely fabulous.
Speaker:And yeah, I could do this for hours.
Speaker:Yeah we'll have to make another time to do that, but in the meantime, of
Speaker:course we will leave lots of information about how to get in touch with you
Speaker:via the show notes as we always do.
Speaker:So thank you again, and a reminder to everyone to please subscribe so you never
Speaker:miss an episode, and we look forward to your company next time on this bites.
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