Latest / MaxValue Podcast / Digital Transformation Should Be Human-Centric Ft. Peter Adams

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Digital Transformation Should Be Human-Centric Ft. Peter Adams · MaxValue Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: What digital transformation means.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: So what does that what does that mean?
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Why do we need it?
0:04
SPEAKER_01: Why do we want it?
0:05
SPEAKER_01: The process of using any kind of digital technology and business operations.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: I think it's the culture and people part the most important.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Is really what digital transformation is all about.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: When you're gauging the size of that problem, how do you do that from identifying this business problem to see whether or not it's worth it?
0:36
SPEAKER_00: All businesses have technology.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: And anytime we talk about business after that, we have to talk about technology.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Because the context is the business live in the technology.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: What's something that's like a smaller incremental change of business a single, a double, going from crawling to lofting to running?
0:57
SPEAKER_00: I've always liked that perspective of yours that it's always going to be a human in that loop, or many humans in that loop, and really focusing on how they use what exists now and what you guys are trying to implement.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Technology only exists to certain people.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: People invented it.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: So all technology can do is three things.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: It can increase productivity, it can decrease risk, and it also enables new capabilities.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: So you cannot do things you couldn't do before.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: When somebody's looking for a provider for these kinds of services, what are some things that you would suggest they look for, look out for in a positive or in a negative way?
2:02
SPEAKER_00: And today we are joined by our guest, Peter Adams.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: He's the VP of Business Strategy at BACSIT.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Peter, welcome aboard.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the invitation, and it's good to be here with you.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So you have a pretty cool backstory, but I think it's better told by you.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh, why don't you bring us up to date?
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, sure.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: So uh I started my first company in 1983 as a fractional IT department helping companies basically keep the lights on when it came to the technology.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Remember back then you got brownie points if they just stayed running.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: So we worked on that for a number of years.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: That company didn't fare so well after I tried to morph it into something else, so we ended up shutting it down.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: I started another company, um, grew that uh fairly well until I sold that in uh 1999, just before the 2000s.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, then started another company about 2001 and grew that up and sold that in 2019.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: So that company was really oriented around enterprise systems and creating value for clients, not in the IT space uh in terms of infrastructure, but in the technology space in terms of what we could do with systems and uh help them run better businesses.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: I then retired from that company in 2002 and uh now out consulting on my own.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: So done a lot of work with venture-backed startups, private equity uh backed companies, and just other you know, manufacturing and distribution companies and professional service companies.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, done lots of work in the MA space, uh, doing a lot of acquisitions.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it comes with you do venture-backed companies, you're gonna get to play in that space a lot.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, I'm not really an expert at uh ERP systems, but I am an expert at how to derive value from them.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: So that is kind of I think part of the conversational talk today, because I think that's the foundation of uh any kind of digital transformation is driving value for business.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: That's right, and we'll see how to do that.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So you retired in uh 2022, and you actually you've come back to uh to work.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, first off, I know you're a serial entrepreneur, uh, so I I know there's always that that lure to just come back in that siren song.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: But uh what what's what's brought you back this time?
4:36
SPEAKER_01: Really it was two things.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: A I'm I like helping people, and my customers or former customers kept calling me back saying, can you help with this?
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Can you help with that?
4:47
SPEAKER_01: And I I really suck at saying no.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: So I I I of course said yes.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I really enjoy the work.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, I I like helping people run better businesses, I help them overcoming business challenges and thinking a little bit outside the box in ways that aren't traditionally done.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: I think it produces a lot of value for them, and that works for me.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And so that was really the biggest driver for it.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: The other driver was you know, after you've been doing this for a long time and you retire, it gets a little boring.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: So I needed something to do.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: My wife wanted me out of the house.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Keep you busy.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, if if it wasn't this, it would be the it'd be the honeydew list for sure.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So I get that too.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't you don't get it off the hook.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh so well, let's look at what digital transformation means.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've heard it, people have probably heard it around.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh it seems very vague uh as as a term.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: So what is that what does that mean?
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Why do we need it?
5:49
SPEAKER_00: What why do we want it?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
5:52
SPEAKER_01: Well we look at kind of the classic, say classic definition for a term that's only been out there briefly, but really, you know, it's the process of using any kind of digital technology in business operations, is really what digital transformation means.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: It's it's a it was a term invented by marketing people as a way to have their computer systems appear more valuable so they could sell it to you, the audience, right?
6:22
SPEAKER_01: Because you're a consumer of this and they want it to be more appealing.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: That's an oversimplification.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: But really, you know, as we dive into it, the the core of the whole thing is that digital transformation is about, I think, about looking for places where you have challenges in the business where technology could be applied to solve those in some ways that aren't normally traditional.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: So and the impact on your culture and your people as a result of that.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of my my whole take on it.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: And I had I had a twist on it because I think it's the culture and the people part are the most important.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that the accumulative effect of doing a whole bunch of little technology projects on the people and the culture to transform your business and get it to perform at a level that it hadn't performed at before is really what digital transformation is all about.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, some examples of digital transformation from a real layman's term, because I don't like to get too fancy with any of this stuff.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Basically, if you had let's let's just say that you have uh a production line in your business and you wanted to do some modern tools that could detect some errors in production so that you could find them earlier in the production cycle rather than towards the end.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that kind of a system would be qualified as digital transformation.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you wanted to create a, you know, you have a website probably for your business, but if you want to modify that a little bit and tweak it to drive more customer value, maybe turn it into a portal where your customers could come in and review prior orders, see the status and stuff, look at prior pricing or old invoices or anything like that that adds some genuine value from your customer's point of view, that would qualify as a digital transformation element as well.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's all those things put together, what it what it does to your company and your people.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I think that's really what we're driving for.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, that makes sense.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's really a broad term that kind of encompasses anything to do with technological leverage.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I know you add you know quite a bit of a coaching perspective, uh, because if people don't use the you know the the new whiz bang tool, then you know that your your change management has failed and the digital transformation doesn't happen, even though you've changed the system, you haven't changed the rest of the system, which is all the people around it.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I know in in the past you said uh you know various things like, hey, identify the problem, and then guess what?
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Measure the problem, and if it's not big enough, don't fix it.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: First off, but when you're gauging the size of that problem, how do you do that from uh uh identifying this business problem to see whether or not it's worth you know engaging in any, you know, again, fancy words, digital transformation, but but in any uh technological solution?
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, all businesses have challenges, right?
9:44
SPEAKER_01: It's up to the business leaders to say what kind of challenges they have.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: If and this again, of course, outside consultants can be helpful.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to, you know, get on the bandwagon here and say you guys gotta hire me because you don't.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, but sometimes an outside person can come into your organization and ask some really basic, almost stupid questions like, why are you doing it that way?
10:08
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: If you're like most companies, you have people that you've employed for probably a long time in your business to the point where they haven't seen what the rest of the world is doing.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: They only know what you're doing.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: So having a new set of eyes come into your organization and go, why are you doing it that way?
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Have you thought about this other thing?
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Or what is the what is the outcome you're after that has you do this process?
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Right?
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at the outcome you're after and let's see maybe there's a better way to do that.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: And anytime we talk about business process, we have to talk about technology too, because the processes of your business live in the technology systems.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: If you look at the systems you have, just take your ERP or your accounting system, right?
10:58
SPEAKER_01: How that functions will drive how your finance department works and how they report and how they can get you the information you need when you ask questions about the business.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: So by changing that system, I can change how the people work.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: I can change what they can do and how they do it.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: And maybe we can take it outside of the finance department so that it's more broadly distributed so people who need to have access could actually look and see, well, how am I doing month to date?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: What's my production run so far?
11:28
SPEAKER_01: How are my costs today?
11:29
SPEAKER_01: Is this project on budget or over budget?
11:32
SPEAKER_01: Looking at those kinds of questions and reinventing the process to support that, that's often you know a really ripe time to look at and scope of, you know, what are we doing?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: What's the scope of the issue?
11:44
SPEAKER_01: How big is this?
11:45
SPEAKER_01: Is this worth fixing?
11:46
SPEAKER_01: And not everything's worth fixing.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Right?
11:49
SPEAKER_01: In any business, we have I don't know, uh pretty much an infinite list of things we could improve.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: We have to find the ones that are the highest leverage and that are implementable.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: Right?
12:03
SPEAKER_01: We can it doesn't do us any good to pick a problem that we can't solve to try and solve it.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: We'll just waste money on that.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: But pick a problem that we can solve and let's get let's start making some traction.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: I think you'll find your employees will get happier because they like to see progress.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: I think you'll start to see better results because you should be able to do more with less.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, isn't that kind of the fundamental tenet of business anyway?
12:30
SPEAKER_01: We're in business to make a profit.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: If we're not making a profit, that's okay.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: We must be a charity then.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: But if you're a for-profit business and you're not making money, you got a problem.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: So we want to be able to drive our cost of operations down while driving the value of our products up.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: So that equation is what we need to work on in business.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: And if we can do that, even little bits over time, we're heading in the right direction.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's what we try and do.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, and I'll say the you know, from a valuation perspective, driving down the risk uh, you know, at the same time as those those two things really really is what kind of gets you there and leverages you uh from a from a value perspective.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Um when you're talking about you know being this technology strategist, basically.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Um I was gonna say coach, but that sounds like it, you know, you're teaching somebody how to use Excel, um, which hey, maybe that's that's a thing.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you have an anecdote that would help us you know identify like a real life uh uh example of how you've gone through this process before?
13:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh I got one I'll share with you because I I love the story because it's a it's a complete home run.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: Um we're working with uh a little company up in the Portland, Oregon area called Traeger Pellet Grills, which you've probably heard of before.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Um they came to us with a problem in their inventory, in their warehousing.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: So that to just kind of set the stage briefly, so Traeger makes um grills, and they're actually still in business, but this is cut a number of iterations ago in their in their business.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: But they make these grills that you burn pellets.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: And so the grill was not the real profit maker, it was the pellets.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: So they had you know apple and maple and you know, hickory and all kinds of different pellets, and you go into their warehouse and you would just see racks and racks full of pellets, all in these same, you know, kind of brown bags.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, they had a problem because when their customers would order, they would just order pellets, and the salespeople would you know look at the big stacks of bag and go, Well, we must have you know enough Applewood uh you know pellets.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: So we'll say, sure, yeah, we have that and we can ship them out tomorrow.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, it turns out maybe they didn't have them because they'd go out there and they'd look in the warehouse, all these racks and racks full of you know bags of pellets, but there was no way to identify which pellets were which, not at least not easily.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: And their inventory system didn't know, it just said we had pellets.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: So we broke for lunch.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Um my colleague ran over to uh Fry's Electronics at the time, bought a hundred dollar handgun scanner with some colored labels on it, came back after lunch and we started tagging bags out in the warehouse, and we color-coded all the you know the bags of pellets.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's you know, it's not an elegant solution, but it was highly functional because now the people could actually just look at the bags and see how many bags they had of whatever particular variety they wanted.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: That is, I mean, arguably an application of you know digital transformation, but that's a very low-level example of it.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: But it was huge for the business.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the ultimate solution, but it delayed the need for going into a fancier inventory control system by at least a couple of years.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for a hundred bucks, I thought that was a you know great investment of time.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So that's one of my favorite stories.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: So everybody, I want to take a second here to share something about who we are and why we make this show.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: You're probably here because either you or a client of yours is thinking about buying or selling a business, bringing in investment, or planning an eventual exit.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: And that is why we call this show Max Value.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: We provide you with information and insights about how to maximize the value of your business.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Our team at Town Advisory guides business owners through the crucial, often once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to exit their business.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: We use our trademarked exit builder program to help business owners prepare early, protect the value they've built, and obtain maximum value through an exit.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And the secret is our clients define what value means to them.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Taking the right steps now can make all the difference in creating a successful outcome for yourself, your family, and your work team.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: If you think you're ready for the next step in understanding and increasing the value of your business, make a comment, send me a message on LinkedIn, or send me an email.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: All those links are in the show notes.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: That that's kind of your version of the uh of the plumber with a with a hammer, you know, hitting hitting the pipe in the right spot or renting or whatever it is, you know, and and charging you know five bucks for the hammer strike, but you know, whatever, you know, the the the what it's worth to the customer is is gigantic, uh, you know, compared to you know the the time or effort.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And hey, you guys you know spent a hundred bucks of their money, you know, to to do that.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: And that was very, very worthwhile and and let them uh let them continue.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: So, like you said though, that's kind of a home run in terms of how this can work.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Not not everything is you know gonna be uh you know that big of a that big of a hit or that that big of a positive return on investment, um, although generally they are.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: What's something that's like a smaller incremental change uh that you know moves moves the business a single, a double, you know, going from crawling to walking to running?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you have a good example of that?
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we we had a another of our clients, they'd actually hired a different firm to come in and help them be more customer-centric, right?
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Their big challenge was they they wanted to get closer to the customer, they wanted to understand more, and so they they hired another group to come in and help them.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: And so specifically, my client was concerned about the cost to acquire new clients because, right, that's expensive.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, if you can retain your existing clients for longer, that has a nice, nice return on that.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: But it sounds like a great idea.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: So the consulting that other firm came in and started to prescribe a whole bunch of team building exercise and executive coaching to improve communications, to find responsibilities, make sure everybody understood the customers, which is all great.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: And they saw a tiny uptick in that promoter scores.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: But we came, you know, we also got engaged slightly thereafter, and we worked with them in a different way to look at the process by which they actually were acquiring customers and retaining customers and figuring out what their customers valued because we we did something radical like talk to the customer and say, Hey, what what do you value?
19:28
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And the customers would talk to us and say, Well, we like this, we like that, we don't like this thing.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And so we helped them design a new customer portal where the customer could actually go in and look at a lot of this information themselves, and that turned out to be you know a much more significant uptick in customer retention at the end of that process.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: And you know, just to be clear, you know, we don't sell the systems, we're not we don't sell any hardware, software, nothing like that.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: We just helped them look at what they already had and apply a slightly different wrinkle to it by asking some really basic questions.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: In this case, we talked to the customers.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: So we can do a bunch of different things to try and drive value, and that you know, that was another example of it.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're you're really kind of a human-centric technologist from that standpoint.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I really like I've always liked that perspective of yours that hey, the there's always going to be a human in that loop, or many humans in that loop, and really focusing on how they use what exists now and what you guys are trying to implement, uh is is kind of the crucial point.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it totally makes uh a lot of sense to me.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Um got to work with the whole system, not just you know, the not just the calculators.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, technology only exists to serve people.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: Right?
20:56
SPEAKER_01: People invented it.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we'll see what happens with AI, and all that's maybe off, but for now, right, it exists to serve people.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: And so all all technology can do is three things.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: It can increase productivity because it can make you more efficient and effective at what you're doing, it can deep it can decrease risk, which is great because it can like take some of the challenges out of things.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you get better data, maybe it you know helps you automate some steps and reduce that.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: And it also enables new capabilities.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: So you can now do things you couldn't do before.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: So, by my way of thinking, that's all the technology can do.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: And so, how we leverage the technology always centers around people.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: That's what that's why it's there.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, and people are the ones who are making the decisions at the end of the day.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: So getting uh you know, one of the functions being to get better and better information and quicker uh information out of your information system is you know, that by itself really is transformative because you can make better, faster decisions.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's really how businesses are able to respond or even get ahead of trends and make sure that they're they are profitable in the long run.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: When somebody's looking for a provider, I'll say provider, but a provider for these kinds of services.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: What are some things that you would suggest they look for, look out for in a positive or in a negative way?
22:32
SPEAKER_01: So let's just be clear.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Are you talking about looking for services like an ERP system, or are you talking about looking for services like consulting services like what I provide?
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Like a consultant who could help work through uh the digital transformation itself.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: So to me, the the most important thing is to find a consultant who will help you become better at whatever it is you're trying to become better at.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: Right?
23:03
SPEAKER_01: It's at the end of the day, it's your business.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And so if you want to run your business and you want to do a better job, however you define that, you want to find a consultant that helps you get better.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you want a consultant that comes in and tells you what to do, because then they got better, they have all the information, they knew why, and they left you with a task list to do.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: And I while that might be valuable in a you know in a small transaction, I think overall it pretty much does you a disservice.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: So I'd rather have more of a coaching type engagement where you find somebody who can help you think about your business.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's definitely pretty rare when you're talking about tech savvy people.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: No offense intended to anyone, but you know, if you're talking about an IT person, it's the exceptional IT person who can take that very technical knowledge and then apply it to helping people, helping a person from the standpoint of thinking strategically.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: That that's a that's pretty common, right?
24:10
SPEAKER_00: Even in in business appraisal, uh exit planning or anything like that.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people out there who can do the technical work and you know are really smart about measuring value, but that's not the same thing as being able to, first off, even just translate that that information into normal human speak, but also then make it make it actionable and make the vision clear enough that shows, hey, this is the reward that might be might lie on the other side of this effort to do.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: So uh I think from that standpoint, not only is the problem similar in some ways, or at least you know, uh metaphorically or analogous, that uh, but you know, our approach is very similar too.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And I've I've always really liked that.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, taking the consultative approach first and the rest of it, you know, the rest of the technical technical knowledge comes along uh for the ride.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, you have to have both, but again, you know, at the end of the day, that old adage about consultants, right?
25:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you ask them what time it is, they'll borrow your watch to tell you.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: It's like, so what what kind of value did we produce in that?
25:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, I would much rather teach the people that I work with how to think about their own business and maybe do it from a different perspective than they're used to.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: And in doing that, we can still accomplish all the transactions, right?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: I can still borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, but at least you'll know why and you'll know how.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: So next time you don't have to ask me that same question, you can ask me a different one.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Well, right, and it's the purview of consultants everywhere.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we get to ask some really dumb questions, which is great.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: And there are some really classic ones, like, why do you do it that way?
25:49
SPEAKER_01: And but you know, you got to use the five whys because you got to keep drilling down.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you can get to the point where people really start to sit around the table and look at each other and go, Well, I don't know why we actually do it that way.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: I said, Great.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: How could we do it?
26:07
SPEAKER_01: What would be what would be a better way to produce that outcome or a different way?
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Let's explore that, right?
26:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, what happens if we're twice the size, we have twice as many transactions?
26:18
SPEAKER_01: How will this process work?
26:20
SPEAKER_01: What if we had multiple sales channels instead of one?
26:23
SPEAKER_01: What if we had multiple products?
26:24
SPEAKER_01: What if we had what if we got rid of this product line, right?
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Ask the questions, right?
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Really generate people's you know, thinking and engagement because the secret is they already know the answers.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: They just don't know it yet because nobody's asked them the questions, and the consultant can come in and help reflect that back to the company, relanguaging it a little bit and putting it a little different perspective.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: But your people already know we just have to tease it out of them, and when we do that, they own it because they go, Oh, that was my idea.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: I got that.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Great, because now they're gonna drive the implementation of it.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Now we're helping you implement your idea to uh largely your idea, right?
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, even even if they you know they get a little guidance to get there, right?
27:10
SPEAKER_00: But uh but to your point, the buy-in starts right away.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, my I think consultants, a good consultant is like I'm gonna use a really bad analogy.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you bowl at all.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't bowl at all, I'm horrible at it.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: But I know if it weren't for those little gutter guards on either side, I'd be all I'd be all I'd be bowling in different lanes all over the place.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: But the consultant's role is kind of like the gutter guard, right?
27:34
SPEAKER_01: I want to keep people in the lane so they don't wander off too far.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: But where in the lane they want to bowl, that's that's up to them, not me.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: But I just want to keep them like focused on what they're trying to accomplish and keep them off from going out in the weeds too far.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is one of the places consultants can help a lot.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's particularly in smaller businesses, you don't have enough people to think with in your company.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're the CEO and you're talking to your staff, they're not gonna challenge you because you're the CEO.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can go to some CEO groups and hopefully you have some peer groups like that because they can be very helpful.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: But sometimes you need to bring in an outside person just you know to talk to and ask some questions with an intent in mind of producing something of value.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: That's something I mean, you have to determine what that is.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: But if you know, if you have a problem, let's let's say it's uh you know you have an inventory control problem, great.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, engage somebody to help you solve that problem that coach you in the process so you understand your business better at the end of it and get the problem solved.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: You you don't want just the business to have another tool, you want to be smarter about what it is, what the tool is, how to use it, why it's used, why it's effective, all of the things, all of all of the context around it.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: I I I think we've identified how to use digital transformation to increase the value of a business.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh if, by the way, if anybody wants to reach out to you, how would they do that?
29:09
SPEAKER_01: Well, they can obviously my email is probably the easiest way to get me, and that would be paddams at bacsit.com.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: And that says uh a company in the in the San Francisco Bay Area, but uh I actually live in Florida um and Seattle.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: I go back and forth on Snowbird, and then uh you know, we take our appliance all over the US.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now just a couple of questions I want to throw at you to do a get to know you.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, although I I know you pretty well, I'm sure there's some things I don't know.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh can you can you tell us a little bit about uh something that's not on your LinkedIn or on your website profile?
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's not a whole lot on the website profile.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: LinkedIn's reasonably good.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, well, I don't talk about it too much, but uh I so I have a black belt in martial arts because I I've got into martial arts as a way to understand um business and conflict.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: So to me, having requests come at you from all kinds of different angles is very analogous to like being in a rondori where you have people coming at you from all different places, and being able to stand in that moment and be able to work with the people, you know, deflect and blend and move in a way that I can help everybody and not get damaged myself was actually kind of a driven by you know an idea in martial arts.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: And so I started down that path and really quite enjoyed it.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Um that's one thing about me.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm an avid wine collector, avid boater.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I I uh when I'm in uh Seattle in the summers, I actually am on my boat and I take it up to Alaska and back and forth.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: So I spend most of my summers in Alaska still working from the boat, thanks to Starlink, which is a fabulous tool.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: That probably didn't need that plug there, but anyway, it really liberated me so I can work from anywhere and uh I do.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what one of my uh friends and mentors used to do kind of the same thing, but from an RV all across the US for 10, 12 years, I think it was.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of you know, thinking differently and thinking about how to uh accomplish the same thing or even something better and do it in a way that uh isn't traditional, just because it uh isn't isn't normal doesn't mean it can't work or shouldn't work.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: So I think I think that's that's super cool.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: That's super cool.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: You um okay, last one.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: What what are you reading these days?
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, I'll actually have been reading mostly fiction lately.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: Um I've been I had read a couple of business books, which I I thought were always good.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Um and so there's always a I have a a two-read list that is only increasing in length over time.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'll probably never get to them all, but just various business books.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: Um but now most I've been reading is kind of fiction at the moment.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: I figure my brain needed a break for a bit.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: That's that's what I do.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: And I it sounds like a lot of uh a lot of people I talk to are the same way, where there's kind of almost two lists, if you will, one to challenge your brain and one to to mellow it out.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I I I absolutely do think that uh most lessons are learned best through analogy anyway.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, fiction can be extremely instructive for for real life.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: Um is there is there any uh particular uh and I'll go back to the business books, any particular read that you you know stand out that you know you've always loved well, I happen to be a big fan of uh Gina Whitman's book Traction, um which he kind of reveals the uh entrepreneurial operating system to people.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Because I think in business, again, what I do really is is a derivative of operations, right?
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Help companies operate better, which there's a technology component that then finance can figure out how to measure and control, right?
33:25
SPEAKER_01: And you know that.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: So I mean it all ties together, but I think it all starts with operations because operations is what people do, and that's where I think technology has the biggest impact in your business as a strategic tool, not as a tactical tool.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: I think it has a more tactical application in accounting, but strategic, I think operations and finance are fabulous places for it, which I think is quite uh quite apparent when you start to play with books like traction and some of his other more recent books.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, I I love that one too.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: I've exposed the the team to it um fairly recently.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Not that it's a new book or anything or new concepts.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, one of the things I really like about that particular uh paradigm is that you know he quotes Gina Wickman, quotes you know, a whole bunch of other smart thinkers.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're all always on the you know shoulders of giants, but you know, he's bringing it all together in a in a in a comprehensive manner that you know really provides a system, a whole process uh to work through.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: So that that's why you know I think it it resonates with so many people you know across different fields.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Um it's approachable, it's implementable.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's got some strange language in there and some other stuff he talks about, but it's it's all companies have an operating system, you know, a way of being.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: They just don't know it.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's really poorly documented and it's chaotic, but that's still their way.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think what what Wickman's trying to do is really just coalesce that into a way so that we increase clarity because it's much easier for people to work when they know what's expected of them and how they're going to be measured, then they can perform at a higher level or not.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: And if they choose the or not not path, then they can you know go work for somebody else.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: But to your point, it needs that clarity first in order to know whether somebody's meeting the clear objective or not.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I really think that's uh yeah, I think that's very cool.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: All right.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, Peter, thank you so much for joining us.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: This has been a very wonderful segment.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: Thank you out there and all the listener land and everything.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: And I hope uh hope this has been helpful.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: If you want to know more, please feel free to reach out to me.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Please do.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: We'll put it in the show notes as well.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: All right.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Ben.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Good day to you.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: That's a wrap.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Max Value Podcast.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And if this episode provided any interesting information, hit that subscribe button, smash like, and drop a comment below.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm Ben Town with Town Advisory, and I'll catch you next time.