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Transcript

Mastering Project Management with JS Bull · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: But I was like, let's write up the name of whatever we're going to build.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I want to know what it does, how important it is to the customer, how much work has been done, how much work is yet to do, and is the work that needs to be done front end or back end?
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: So user interface side, or like making it work right?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Sure, and then I want to go through and prioritize them.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And so we go through one.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: What a logical approach.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: And that was great, man.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It took two days, okay, to walk, to walk through these, and I had nothing else to do.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I just joined the company, right.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: This was like three days in.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: And so we start putting up the post-it notes and, I kid you not, we covered up one wall, we covered up a, we covered up a second, we covered up a third and we started on the fourth wall in the place.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And at one point I was wondering if we were going to run out of walls in here.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We're going to have to go to the next room or something.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Lots of ideas, oh, lots of started ideas.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: There were probably 26 or so that we had done development work on but had not gotten out the gate Right.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And so what I started doing is going all right, this one is important, yeah, and it's only got eight hours of work To bring it to fruition, yeah, so let's get it in the software, right, let's wrap it up Right, and we started prioritizing.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, this one's really important, but it's not as far along, but it really is truly important and this makes us this differentiates us from others, so let's go ahead and invest the time in it, and but we started cranking out.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know these pieces awesome I think that gets to where you're still.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: No, it does.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, because, like it's, you know and your approach to that, and then you're able to then not only the product side, but then you start, you know, looking at the people and what the people are doing, what the positions and the roles that they're playing, and then what are their goals, and then how do you assign metrics to achieve those goals that all roll up to the company.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I mean it is fantastic.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Like you know, it's nothing that I could really I didn't ever have.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I obviously didn't have the playbook for it, but also never had the time in my mind for it, because I mean there was more products that needed to be invented.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Right, there's, there's no playbook ever for this stuff, but I mean, make it up as you go but that's the thing.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: He has prior experience.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: He did, okay, he did, but he came in and playbooked this thing and it was laid out the road I was.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I wish you could do a movie about the, the transition, the culture.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I mean we always had a really fun invigorating culture.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: We're going to be fun, absolutely Always.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Great times and everybody's loving what we're doing, but what JS was able to do was then attach a roadmap to it so people knew what's your statements on it.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: You have three things.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, four things, and what it really boils down to and I learned a lot of this at pace industries, or figured it out at pace industries tell people what pace industry.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so pace industries.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So it's very non-walmart, right, right, uh, so pace industries aluminum, magnesium and zinc die casting.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're making components for manufacturers.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: So harley davidson's one of their top customer was, when I was there, one of their their top customers Weber Gas Grills.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know, tier two, automotive.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: You guys made wheels, didn't you, or did you?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: That was Superior.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I knew Superior did too.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: But okay, it's a different process, but a very similar business, very similar type of business Like foundry work.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I mean it's tough work, right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I mean it's very blue collar, I understand In.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I mean it's very blue-collar, I understand, in the summer in Harrison, arkansas, I'll make die castings.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I mean the aluminum is 1,200 degrees, yeah, and you're sitting next to a machine and I mean it's probably 140 degrees.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: It's brutal yeah.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: You know working in front of that machine.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you were at—.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So anyway, yeah, I just wanted to give people some— yeah it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: How did you know?
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: so much about software coming from that.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I had done that before, and so you know, my first real startup was during the first internet boom, you know in like 98.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And I was in college at the University of Oklahoma, and started a comparison shopping engine, which is so funny because it was all based on scrape data, which is what a lot of SKU Ninja tools are based on.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So it's weird.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's been around 20 years later, but it was software.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And then I was one of the founders of Field Agent, which is the first app that actually pays users, and they're still doing great here in northwest Arkansas.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: But a lot of it goes back to employee engagement and it's like one of know, one of the, and I could throw out some crazy statistics about us, but one of the reasons we were so successful is because we retained our employees At Pace you're talking about, no, I'm talking about at White Spider.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I believe so, chuck, absolutely.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: If you're going to retain your employees, you have to have a high level of engagement, right, right and um, and so I want to be part of the process.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: They want to know what's going on.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: It's super critical, yeah, and so I believe there there are four keys to having a high employee engagement, and there are a lot of other things that play into it, but four things are really important.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Number one you have to have a clear vision of the goals of the company.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Amen to that.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: People have to be able to understand it, and you.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: It needs to be transparent.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Number two they need to know what's expected of them.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Right, all right, so that comes down to personal KPIs yeah, then they have to be able to see how what is expected of them contributes to the goals of the company.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this gives them meaning, right and purpose Agreed.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And finally, they need to know where they stand at all times.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Sure, and so if you do this, then there's a path to what I'm.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I know how I'm doing.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I know that I'm because I'm doing it well, I know how it contributes to go to the company, and so I have meaning and I have purpose and I'm.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: There's a reason I'm here, right, sure, yeah, and so what we did and the fourth piece there, and you know how they stand at all times, our KPIs were 90% objective metrics that they could measure, and then 10% was are you playing well with the team?
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Sure, if you don't get the 10%, there's a problem.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and so it's very objective and it's very easy.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: With sales Sure, how many calls are you making?
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: It's a lot harder with developers.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: What's your close ratio?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Dollars brought in?
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Sure, with developers, we found some ways to do, like Jira software on hours and things they knocked out.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: But it's hard because you have to figure out how to make it objective and with some it's tough, right, yeah, I bet, but a lot of that came that the goals of the company.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: It goes back to what I referred to, strategic deployment, yeah, and so this is lean manufacturing technology production system.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: This is what I learned at pace industries and because we were manufacturing and automotive and that's what you had to do back then, right, yeah, now I hated it there, right, I was gonna be honest, like this was these were very long meetings, stuff that I did not feel like it was the best use of my time to sit in and hear it all all the time.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Sure, um, and we were doing some other stuff for the sales group within salesforce to track metrics and stuff, and so I just I felt I kind of resented it back then, right, sure, and so when I'm, when I joined, I remember this moment where I'm thinking what, what do we need here to bring this company together and have a vision and move a direction?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And I was just like crap, it's SD, strategic, strategic deployment, and we call it ST.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I'm like crap, it's SD.