Episode Transcript
Stephenie Langston:
Hi everyone, thank you for joining me today as we talk about change management with Kyle Glick from TSI Consulting. TSI Consulting works with clients to better understand how people, processes, and technology can cohesively work together within an organization. Hi Kyle, thanks for joining us today.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Yeah! Glad to be here.
Stephenie Langston:
Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about TSI and the type of clients you typically work with?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Yeah, absolutely. TSI (or Transforming Solutions) was founded a little over 26 years ago by a group of Anderson consultants, who were really working to focus more on the customer experience side of consulting rather than just rolling up and saying, “This is what we do, and this is how we do it.” We really wanted to work collaboratively with our clients. So, that remains our focus here, high quality delivery and that collaborative approach to everything we do. As far as service offerings, we do a variety of things. Organizational change management, as we’ll be talking about here today, is right in the center of our target. We also loop in a lot of business process improvement [and] some customer experience work. We do a lot of work with software vendor evaluation and selection—and that can range anywhere from an ERP and a cloud-based system, all the way down to some smaller systems or a CRM. So, some pretty big software [is included] in there. And then, program management as well as what we’re calling “delivery effectiveness.” As far as who we’re working with and the organizations that we work to support, we work both on the higher education and the corporate side. We span a variety of streams and industries, and we’re really just working with growth-focused organizations that are either trying to grow, trying to improve, or have experienced some challenges (maybe some projects that didn’t go well that they need to have us come in and help rescue and bring them back). Our focus is always with rolling up our sleeves, being elbow-to-elbow with those clients, trying to build those good relationships, and delivering awesomeness for them.
Stephenie Langston:
I like that approach. I’ve seen it quite a lot and I admire it quite a bit. Just the fact that client relationship, even on our end, is key to success and even long-term success. Understanding at the core what people mean. Unless you’re rolling up your sleeves and getting in there, you don’t get that perspective.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
It helps us really get a better understanding of the client itself, and it helps garner a little bit of trust and a positive relationship. We don’t want to just come in and say, “We’re the experts here. Do what we tell you to do and don’t question it.” That’s not our approach. It may work for some, but we try to be a little bit more collaborative. The other thing that’s unique about us (as an organization) [is] a lot of groups these days have some sort of relationship or financial connection to the platforms that they’re selling or the platforms that they’re implementing, [but] we are technology agnostic. We don’t take any kickbacks from Salesforce or Netsuite or any of those organizations. We really think that that helps us be more client focused. Our only objective here is to get what is best for the client, not to try to pad our back-ends by selling what we’re partnered up with. [It] works for a lot of firms, [it’s] just not our approach and not how we tend to run things.
Stephenie Langston:
You already touched on it a little bit, but for today’s topic we’re really going to be focusing on how you’re helping clients and more on that technology side of things. So, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into what that covers, starting with a higher-level question of why change may be needed within an organization and what your thoughts would be.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
I mean, we see a lot of reasons for change. The generic, stereotypical answer is change is always needed. We always need that “continuous improvement,” as we call it. There may be a lot of different factors going on. We break it down into a couple of different categories. The most common things we see are organizational needs, organizational goals. You may be looking to scale or right size your organization. You may be focused on some process improvement or some process redesign. You may be working on some continuous improvement. There may be some situations going on with your technology (we call it “tech redundancy” or “tech overspend”) where you’ve just proliferated your technology footprint and now you have six [different] software that all go out and do the same thing, and you’re paying subscriptions on all of those, AND you have to support all of those, AND you have to update all of those, AND you need the infrastructure. So, the cost gets pretty big, pretty fast. A lot of technology, these days, is being sunset. There’s some legacy technology out there that’s still [requiring] on-premises database storage and they’re not supported anymore. And so, organizations are reaching out and saying, “Hey! We’re going to run out of our useful life here and we’ve got to get this going.” So, aging technology plays into it a lot. Now, more than any other, there are constant changes in the industry, whether it be regulation, seeking to move to the cloud, online enterprise, [or] increasing competition. As the world grows, those barriers to entry may be down and you may be saying, “We were leading the pack 10-15 years ago, and now we’ve got to figure out how to maintain that and how to really grow that.” Or you may be looking to expand your product or your service offering, and you need to update your technology and your process to go along with that.
Stephenie Langston:
To kind of touch back on that tech redundancy, I do see that a lot with our client base. One of the benefits of SafetyStratus overall is that our safety and our software platform encompasses a lot of different pieces that were otherwise [separated]. People had [about] six systems. They had one for chemical inventory, they would have one for incident management (risk assessments) and they’re all managing those separately. I think, at least with SafetyStratus, that’s typically how we’re first interacting with clients. They’re frustrated with doing that kind of management.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
I was just talking to a client maybe last week. I really thought about the way the technology cycle has gone. We started with, “Let’s just build and do one thing really, really well.” and then it branched into “Okay, we do one thing, now let’s go buy these other software that do these other tangential things and bring them into our package.” Some of them integrated better than others, and now what we’re seeing with a lot of software is kind of like SafetyStratus. We recognize that those tangential value additions are really important, [so] we can get what we call that “one-stop shop,” or that central source of truth that does it all. Maybe it doesn’t do everything perfectly (or really, really well), but it does everything to a functional need and you [can also] take it from that 90-80% out of the box and really customize it (which I think we’ll touch on a little bit later in terms of change management), but it’s very common and it’s great. It’s a huge value add for the client who’s investing in the software, because [of] exactly what you said. Especially for larger organizations that have allowed people to operate outside of their I.T. bubble and just go out and buy whatever they need. “Oh, I heard about this at a conference.” or “Oh, I used to use this at some place I worked.” And so, they bring in…think about Adobe Sign, E Doc, or Docusign (just a simple software like that). We may have five or six instances across a campus or an organization, and each one of those has a price tag with it. So, the more that we can bring it into that central source of truth, or that centralized system, [the more it] really improves our ability to manage. It all comes back down to data these days, too. So yeah, really good observation there. The other types of elements that we’re seeing these days [are] environmental and COVID-related elements. [Also,] everybody is becoming more customer-focused, and that can be internal or external customers. Oftentimes, we think of the paying public as our only customers, but really it’s everybody within our organizations that’s using our systems or our services, and, as I mentioned, regulatory market people. All [these factors are] things that lead into why it’s so important to keep your change and your technology up and really embrace that need for change.
Stephenie Langston:
I’ve seen that as well, especially with everything we’ve gone through. I would say that not only the past two years with COVID, but even before that, [there was] that shift towards being more environmentally focused. You’re helping companies that are being held more responsible for their social and environmental impacts, and technology does play a role in that in helping gather data. And then, just streamlining things, even cutting inefficient processes, saving time and energy, and overall leading to [easier adoption of] more sustainable practices as well.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Absolutely, and that continuous improvement (when you have that sustainability.)
Stephenie Langston:
Leading into that, how can technology help? I know from my perspective, working at SafetyStratus, it’s really creating that one stop shop so that people can move quickly and do their jobs efficiently. Overall, what have you seen in terms of “return on investment” with technology change?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
We tend to couple our technology change with our process improvement. As we start to look at things through the process improvement lens, identifying those areas of waste is a big area, but there’s other areas as well. We’re looking at metrics, data measurement, and data reporting, and the more data that there is, the more people want access to it. Whether fundraising, safety metrics, or functional metrics, having that data and that technology that’s able to not only capture but also visualize and present that data is extremely helpful. We look at communication and processes—how can we improve those and leverage the technology greater? Through that comes a lot of things like silo reduction. There’s a lot of situations out there where those disparate technologies either don’t talk to each other nicely or need some sort of manual intervention. That oftentimes creates departments that go work off by themselves and then say, “Okay, here’s my data. Here’s my next step for the process. Take it and do with it whatever you want to go do.” and then the manipulation happens. Well, what does that mean for my upstream and my downstream impact? Do I know what my data entry is doing to the person that comes after me? Or what is their work doing to what comes before me? There’s not often that really clear picture.
Stephenie Langston:
Well in a lot of [situations,] what I’ve seen is people are collecting the same data. They’re collecting redundant data, but not in the same way, so the information (like you said) doesn’t integrate well. So, “Person A” may have an excel spreadsheet that’s collecting first and last name and date of birth, and then “Person B” may collect last name, date of birth, and then some other metric, but they’re not actually communicating together and then you’re trying to collect all that data and manage it. It just takes time and effort that really is a waste.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
You live in that land of spreadsheets, and there’s a lot of great tools out there for doing those things, and it’s often born out of necessity. It just starts to grow (as we talked about earlier). You’re scaling and you’ve got to use those tools in order to manage that stuff, but it gets out of control fast. Then, you’re like, “I spend all my day just doing data entry.,” which [brings up] another good point. As we start to automate things, whether it be exchange of data or collection of data, or automating approvals and processes and workflows, those all create time and efficiency that allows you to go focus on value-added activities, so we’re no longer just doing all those nonvalues. “I [used to] spend eight hours creating a spreadsheet to send it off, [but] now I’m able to use the system to do that for me and I can go focus on those extremes of the tail.” If we think about a nice bell curve, instead of focusing all my energy on the middle, set the automate there, and then manage by exception. Go work with the customers (or the situations or the scenarios) that really add value to your organization. So, we’re not necessarily just taking away jobs from that middle chunk, we’re reallocating and making it a little bit smoother to work with or making it a little bit more value adds to the organization because we’re managing those other items too. Along that note, we’ve got customer experience, and then just being able to focus on those value adds with the customer, whether internal or external.
Stephenie Langston:
I really like focusing on that value add, and I like that terminology as well. I’ve heard it several times prior to this conversation. A lot of our clients were working with safety professionals and I think for a long time there’s been this focus on trying to manage things like spreadsheets, or using an access database or something like that. And so, giving them the ability to use their skills (their safety skills) rather than having them do the data management piece, they can really, like you said, focus on “Where are the problems within my organization that are going to cost us time and money when something bad does happen or where are we going to get fines?” and things like that. [You’re] giving them peace of mind that they can trust the data that they’re generating, and automating some processes so that they can actually use the skills that they’re trained for, to really focus in on those high consequence items.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Right, and the way that we started this portion of the conversation is with those metrics. So, if we’re putting that data in, we want to be able to get it out in a nice clean form. We want to be able to manipulate it and really have it tell us what we need. Data is funny, because there’s so much knowledge there, but unless you (to your point) have the skills to manipulate it and have it tell you what you need to know, and have the tools to be able to tell you, it may not be useful. So, how can we really leverage that technology to give us useful information that helps guide our future decision making and our strategic thinking?
Stephenie Langston:
In shifting that a little bit, we’ve talked about why you need technology and why you may need change, so how does TSI then (kind of the big question) help clients choose new technology? Because that’s also a big discussion. Who are the key players? Who are we [having] get involved? What’s the whole process look like for TSI and getting that conversation started?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
That’s a great question. We have a really robust methodology when it comes to our software vendor evaluation and selection. It’s not just “throw some darts at the wall” or “Hey! I read a of couple articles, let’s bring them in.” It does a couple of things for us that we can touch on as I go through this list, a couple of key points. The number one thing we do when we start out is we create that buy in. So, just like I started the conversation here, rolling up our sleeves. Getting down with the subject matter experts and really generating excitement about the change. People don’t like change, everybody knows that, but if we can come in and say, “Okay, listen. We’re going to listen to what you do now. We’re going to listen to your pain points. We’re going to help you call out those opportunities.” [Sometimes] talking about what I do now, and why I do it, and how I do it, is almost as uncomfortable as the change itself. So, they may be saying, “Why are you making me talk about what I don’t like to do?” But that really helps us start to generate things like the business case—how are we going to justify the need and understand the need for the spin (the financial impact), without that understanding of what’s going on at the grassroots level with those subject matter experts? Oftentimes those subject matter experts are people that have never been asked, “What do you think? What’s your input here?” So, when you sit them down and say, “We need your help, because you’re going to be the ones pushing the buttons.” they go “Oh man, I’ve been wanting to share this information for a long, long time.” So, sit down with them, get them really comfortable with it. Get that message out there, develop that business case, and then we started talking requirements. We focus on those functional requirements: what do you need to get out of this system? Just like we were talking about with SafetyStratus, we want to understand:
- What parts of the technology are you going to use the most?
- What parts of the technology maybe aren’t as important to your flows?
- What are you going to need to customize or configure, beyond what comes out of the box?
So that we don’t have to go through this long process, and really that helps us select the ideal fit. Everybody does mostly the same stuff. They may do it in different ways, and so what of those ways fit best for your processes? That requires a little bit of future vision definition, which is part of not only our process improvement but our software vendor evaluation. What’s the future vision of the organization? How do you want to grow? How big do you want to grow? What do you want to do with this technology once it comes in? Then that goes into the requirements as well, functional and technical requirements. How do we interface with systems?—All of those types of good questions too. From there, we can do some process improvement work, where we’re talking about your key processes and your needs that are unique to your organization. What am I going to have to work with this system to do, that nobody else has to do, because this is how I do it? How can we automate or standardize some of those processes? And then, ensuring that the technology will fit those processes as “standard” or “out-of-the-box” as possible, so we don’t have to spend on customization and configuration. Otherwise, let’s just go build our own technology. So, from there, we can also talk a little bit about customer experience. Again, we focuse not only on those external customers, but those internal customers as well (the other people that I’m working with and whoever’s using the technology on a regular basis.) From there, the last couple of steps [are that] we use those requirements to create that request for proposal, we solicit, we get responses. We evaluate those responses, based on those requirements, so it’s all founded in our decision to go forward (our future vision, our requirements, and our processes.) We love, love, love to create a demonstration script for those vendors. So, we may say, “Okay vendors, we’re going to go through these five or six functional areas.” We set them up in a nice logical [game plan]. We’re going to set up the profiles, we’re going to transact against them, and then we’re going to report. We say, “Here’s (I always call it) the answers to the test. Here’s exactly what our client has said is most important to them in selecting a software. We want you to demonstrate exactly these points, step by step. Don’t vary. Don’t do anything else.” That does a couple of things. Some vendors love it, some vendors hate it. Some vendors say, “Oh man, this makes us really uncomfortable. We want to stick to our demonstration.” Well, what we want to do is to be able to compare those vendors against each other really easily, and so, having that scorecard to be able to do that against those requirements really, really helps. It also ensures that they’re not just going to show us what they do really well, they also show us what they don’t do so well, and they say, “We need a partner to do this or we need a configuration.” It’s not always a bad thing. We just want to know [when] going into selection so that there’s no “gotcha” surprises coming out. So, we evaluate those vendors on a couple of things and then (finally) negotiate the contract and implement.
Stephenie Langston:
I like the idea of a scorecard too. Being part of a vendor company as well, it’s nice to…I know I’ve sat in a room and had to choose tools and technologies and being able to have that scorecard of, “is it meeting (what you said) our functional need?” I really do love how you’re starting, when you’re doing these processes and the vendor selection with clients, [by] having them think about the feature. How is this product going to grow with us as an institution or organization? We tell our clients that all the time. We have several modules. If you look at our website there’s a laundry list of modules that we do well, but (depending on budget or even what you have the capability of doing currently in terms of change) it may fit that we’re only implementing one module. But, taking a look at our system and saying, “Will it grow with us as an organization?” I think that’s something that we do really well. Clients will often start with a single module, do that for a few years, and then, as they use the system and as they’re gathering data they’ll tack on additional modules because it’s something that’s familiar to their end users and it’s working well.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Having those requirements for those modules up front reduces that tech footprint later. Let’s say we go into a project, and we only look at one functional area or one process, and then later we say, “Oh, we need something else to do it.” Well, SafetyStratus does it, we just didn’t look at it, so we don’t know. So, we may go buy something else, and now again we get into that proliferation of technology, and it starts to go rather rapidly. So, [it’s a benefit] having that end-to-end functionality. But, again, now we’re starting to talk about breaking down silos and seeing that full end-to-end stream. The process improvement does a great job of bringing groups together that may never talk to each other. They go, “Oh, I didn’t know that the way that I do that makes you have to do five extra days of work every month. Let me stop doing that and change it up.” Then everybody’s life gets a little bit better.
Stephenie Langston:
I think it’s good to have those light bulbs go off, like “It really isn’t that bad and it’s going to make my stress levels go down as a professional. It’s going to improve the overall performance and the reception of our product or our business to the end users.”
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Right, and to our earlier point, when you say, “Okay, with a lot of modern technology, I can email right within the system or I can generate automated reports that are going to show up in my inbox.” People are like, “What am I going to do all day if I don’t have to walk to the printer 16 times to get the reports and scan them back?” Well, you’re going to focus on those value-added activities, and you’re going to enjoy your life a little bit more, because you’re not going to be so stressed about the time that it takes you to scan all those documents back in. You’ve got all your document management right in one software and you can pull everything up and access it easily.
Stephenie Langston:
I think one of the things to that point is the automated emails for approvals and things like that. [You] no longer have to send an approval email for projects, [you] no longer have to send an email [when] inventory is expiring, all of those things are automated. Then, [you] don’t have to focus on emailing the person that this dangerous chemical is expiring, [you] can actually just go and [ask] them, “Why haven’t you addressed this issue by running a report?” Seeing all the issues that [you] have, and then [you] can go focus on those.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
You set up the parameters. [Logging] everything that expires within 30/60/90 and everything that’s past date, so [you] know what’s coming too. Hopefully, [you] reduce that waste, and have less expiring material because you’ve been watching those lot codes for the last 30/60/90 days, and are like, “Okay, we either need to dispose our use of this before we have to write it off.” So, [in] the process improvement work that we do, we may talk about wasting in a variety of areas (time, cost, quality, service). There’s a lot of different things that can go into that, and it’s really important for that overall management so that I don’t have to do those manual management things. The system tells me, I just go act on that, and then I reduce my waist overall.
Stephenie Langston:
I think we’ve focused a lot on the positive sides of technology and process improvement, but there are limitations, especially when we’re talking about its impact within an organization. So what are the three largest hurdles, you would say, or important questions for an organization to ask when they’re choosing or implementing a new technology?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
We always start with, “What is your capacity for change as an organization?” We collect that information. We have a “change readiness” assessment on our website that asks you a couple of questions about, “How have you dealt with change in the past? How does your leadership group communicate change? How does your ground level organization deal with change?” That way we have a really good understanding of where the shortcomings are, we can put those on a matrix, we can track them throughout the project. If we start to see people moving from that magic quadrant of “I’m ready to embrace change, it’s going to be great.” (whether they’re not informed or they’re resisting), we can course correct and move that back end. So it’s all about (just like in lots of lab work) setting that baseline, constantly evaluating and reevaluating, and then adjusting your approach from there. There may be different perspectives across the organization and we really want to bring as many of those [as possible] to the forefront early on, so that we can plan and manage those going forward. Again, [it’s] managing that change readiness over time. We don’t just start with a benchmark and then forget about it. We want to manage that throughout the project, and then managing and measuring the risks of the effort and the resources. What [resource] is it going to take away from? What part of change process improvement initiatives need to be bolstered in order to make sure that we don’t have that big fall at some point during the project and we’re bringing everybody along in the right pace? So, we always ask, “What is your capacity for change?” before we start, just like ripping the band aid off. I think that that helps incorporate everybody a little bit better too.
Stephenie Langston:
When you do…I’ve read a few articles and things like that on rescuing projects, and I think at the beginning of the conversation you mentioned rescuing [in that] TSI will come in and help rescue projects that are failing or struggling. So, what is it that you do to help get people back on track? I know that’s kind of a curveball question, but what are some of the techniques you use for that?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
The first thing that we would do is come in and evaluate “why.” Why are we struggling here? Is it a resource? Is it a budget? Is it we bit off more than we can chew in terms of functional technology? And then, from there we’ll probably evaluate how far back we need to go in order to kind of get this ship sailing right. Do we need to do process improvement before we can continue with the implementation? Do we need to go back and define the requirements better? Do we need to go back and define that future vision a little bit better? That can really help us course correct overall. Do we need to communicate better? Do we need to garner more excitement about the change? I think it’s identifying that root cause, and obviously it could be one of those, it could be all of those. So, really going back and resetting what that project plan looks like and what the approach looks like. Incorporating some of those tried-and-true methods into the system will really help rescue those projects overall. Some of them, you just say, “Well, this got out of hand. We’re way over budget.” So, we have to pause, and we have to say, “All right, we’ve got to spend a little bit to buff this up and get this back to where it needs to be, but that’s going to really help us down the road.” My boss always says, “A penny of planning is a pound of prevention later.” [Or] whatever the saying is that he likes, but essentially, we need to make sure that those foundational elements that we talked about earlier in our process are in place so that we can go forward. [There are] other elements that might cause hurdles—does the tool align with future vision? So, if we come in and a project is really struggling and we find out that we didn’t get that input from the subject matter experts, or we didn’t consider the scalability, and now we’re two years into the implementation and it’s no longer a fit…Well, let’s go back and see if we can right size those. Then [consider] what barriers may have crept up as you were moving along. Was your data not ready? Were you not properly resourced for people to do their jobs and manage the project? Because we can’t just stop running the organization to implement. We’ve still got to do those other things. Tech savvy—some organizations say, “Yeah, we’re ready for new technology because it’s going to help us,” and people are just used to their button clicks. So, we need to make sure that we’ve got that tech organization that’s ready. If it’s not, then let’s do the right training. Let’s get everybody comfortable with the new platforms and make sure we’re good to go. So, to me, all of it kind of comes down to what we’ve discussed a couple of times, in “configure versus build.” So much with technology today is, as you mentioned with SafetyStratus, “We’ve got the modules. We can do what we want to do, out of the box.” We’ll pull it out and it’s 80 to 90% ready (you may have to configure a little bit.) So, that’s really what we’re aiming for, because that’s going to help you avoid those pitfalls in the future, as opposed to, “Okay we’re going to go customize this product and we’re going to go configure and build our very own product.” Now, all of a sudden, you’re like, “Man, this project went from zero to 9,000 overnight,” because it’s a big extra lift to not leverage the standard functionality of the technology for everything that those engineers designed it for.
Stephenie Langston:
I one hundred percent agree. I think one of the nice things that we talk about when we’re doing demos and when talking to prospective clients is that we’re partners. I think that’s how all technology companies should work, essentially (at least in my opinion.) They really should be partners with their clients, because (at the end of the day) those partners are going to give you valuable feedback that will elevate your product in the long run. And then, when you create those partnerships, if you aren’t offering a certain feature or there’s a gap in in what they need [you can] start to have those conversations (after you’ve given them that 80 to 90%) of, “Okay, we’re missing this gap. Let’s come up with a reasonable plan that benefits both the client and us as the technology company.” To get you closer to that hundred percent mark.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
The way that you do it is by understanding the process. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Is it mandatory that you do it that way, or can we manipulate your process a little bit to get into the technology? What’s the right fit there? For everybody watching our conversation here today, it’s not a secret that technology companies make their money off of getting you up-and-running on your software as quickly as possible. So, to your point, for a tech company to come in and say, “We’re just going to jam this product in and get out of here and not have it working right” is only going to prolong the problem. So, having that partnership is saying, “We want to understand how you’re going to use what we’re doing and make sure that we implement this right, the first time, so that you get the value and we continue to provide you with a high quality service and a high quality product.”
Stephenie Langston:
Leading into that, (and maybe you touched on it a little bit) is really looking at the business processes, and as we’re getting into that new technology, evaluating. Do we need these processes still? Is this something that’s adding value to our organization? Is this something that we need to reevaluate and rework maybe the flow of our business process so that we’re utilizing the technology to its fullest extent?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Absolutely, and there’s a two-way street there. This leads us into an excellent point. [It’s] the chicken or the egg, right? Do we talk about processes before the technology, after the technology, or during the technology? I would hesitate to say “after,” but some people do. Some people say, “We want to implement the way that we do things now, we want to learn this technology a little bit, we want to get comfortable, and then, once we figure out what it can do, we’ll start to think about how we can reorganize.” A lot of times we’ll do a “window shopping,” or during the demonstration, we will see a lot of the functionality that exists, and that can help garner the processes too, but also, I love to use the future state definition of processes to define those requirements. So, you may say, “This is what we want it to look like.” Well, boom! There’s your functional requirements, in “This is how we want to operate. This is what we want to do. This is what we want the experience to be like.” Now, let’s go find a system that can fit those processes, again, to that 80 to 90% out-of-the-box, so that we’re not building all from the inside.
Stephenie Langston:
I think those are important conversations to have. I’d almost say, in working with clients, you have those conversations and you have your future state goals, but then you’re kind of benchmarking. I mean, what you touched on before, as you’re doing those kind of measurements along the way, through your consulting processes, you’re benchmarking through the implementation. [It may look like], “Okay, we’ve hit a roadblock. Let’s see if we need to do a business process change or maybe utilize the technology in a different way.”
Kyle Glick – TSI:
The last thing you want to do is spend a bunch of money on new technology and do the same thing you were doing in the old system the same way, and now we’re not recognizing any of that investment. A lot of times, with legacy technology, it’s hard to explore the efficiencies or inefficiencies of your processes, because you can’t pull out metrics. We don’t know how long it takes. We don’t know how many expired products we throw away each month, because we just have to go do it all manually. And so, getting to that point where we can start evaluating the things that reduce those areas of waste that I was talking about earlier is really valuable. So, that’s a big reason too, for me, to start to do that business process improvement prior to the technology. [Then] we can identify where we’re not tracking things well and where we maybe want to track things a little bit better. We can really talk about what we want our service to be. What are we going to measure our success against in terms of how do we know that this process really is better? We need all of those going into the technology, so that we can set the technology up right to give us that data that we need to get out and make those decisions.
Stephenie Langston:
Yeah, and I think those conversations happen regularly with our clients too, especially during implementation for some modules where our product is extremely customizable. That’s one of the things we pride ourselves on, because safety is such a vast community with different requirements, and the regulatory pieces change from state-to-state or country-to-country. We have to be flexible and configurable within our modules. So, we are having [customizations] of, “Hey, let’s set this up so that at the end of the day, that export is actually pulling the data points that you want.” We’re not capturing data just to capture data [and] to have [it] sit in an excel spreadsheet somewhere.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Get that use out of it.
Stephenie Langston:
I think we’ve touched a lot on what I wanted to talk about today, including things like techniques that you’ve used, but one of the big things that I wanted to talk about is…Change, like we said, can be overwhelming. So, what are some key steps and maybe some techniques that TSI uses to keep that change running smoothly? I think you’ve touched on a lot of the things, but [if you could] create an overall picture for our viewers.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Yeah, that overall OCM. We often start a lot with OCM (Organizational Change Management.) I always get in trouble, you know, the consultants using their TLAs using their (Three Letter Acronyms). So, how do we manage that overall big picture, because (you’re right) it is very overwhelming to anybody. We start often with: what do we call our OCM critical success factors? What are the things that you have to have in place to help at least facilitate the start of your success? We start with identifying a leader. Who’s going to lead this initiative? Who’s going to be the champion that goes out there, spreads the message, and gets all those subject matter experts on board? Who do people respect the most? Who do people look to in order to be able to do that? That’s a huge, huge piece. [The] second piece [is]: how do we plan for gaps and contingencies? We know things are going to come up. We know (I’m going to whisper this) no project is ever going to go perfectly. There’s going to be reasons that you need to adjust. What’s our plan for how we are going to mitigate those contingencies and those risks? How are we going to address those gaps when they do come up? What’s our plan for escalation? So that, when they do, you’re not scrambling and panicking. You’re like, “Okay, I know exactly how we’re going to rectify this situation.” To your point, we may need to spin up another module or we may need to have another functional discussion. So, from there, we’ve got all the groundwork laid. How do we maintain and build that urgency and momentum? We want to have that excitement going on throughout the organization. We do things like creating badges during training. “You’re a superstar! Great job” and people post them on their cubicles and stuff like that. (Cubicles, what are those, right)? [There’s] a variety of ways to really maintaining that urgency in momentum going forward. Another success factor that we look at is “perfection versus progress.” In an implementation, you can go as fast as you want, and you can jam something in, but if it’s not perfect and usable once it’s up-and-ready, it’s not a successful implementation. So, we really strive to get that perfection in, and using all those requirements and those tools that we laid forth earlier in the work is really key. We’ll build and develop skills. It’s really important that we don’t spin something up and launch it, and then not have anybody know how to use it. We will have everybody be an expert in their area early on. Then that last critical success factor is really recognizing and measuring the progress of the implementation, the success of the implementation, and the change. Big time [emphasis] on the recognition. Again, make it fun. Recognize the effort in the milestones that people are achieving and putting in, that way you can keep that momentum going throughout. So, those are the critical success factors. Other things that we do that can help make change go smooth is that preparedness, getting your data ready, getting your systems ready, getting your processes ready. Getting that high level buy-in and making sure that your organization is ready for change is key. The other thing that I really like [is that] change has a life cycle, just like everything else we do. We’re going to define our needs. We’re going to plan, and then we’re going to monitor and adjust, and then, we’re going to go back to needs. So, really understanding what that life cycle is going to look like. How often are you going to monitor, adjust, and evaluate? Is it weekly, is it bi-weekly, is it monthly? How often are you going to see if there’s any needs that have come up, so that you can continuously be planning and removing any of those risks that might happen.
Stephenie Langston:
Do you come in and do revaluations as well with clients? After they’ve chosen technology, [do] you set a quarterly or yearly base and [perform] a reevaluation of where they are, identifying those gaps?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Yeah, we have lots of clients that we engage with (not only during the implementation) where we act as project management. The great thing about the work that we’ve done is we’ve become de facto experts on your organization, because we’ve learned about all your needs and all your processes. So, we can help really drive that project management. But absolutely. Afterwards, we want to stick around, and we want to say, “Okay, we’ll be back in a month” or “we’ll be in touch in a week,” and we’ll look at the processes that we said we were going to implement for your future state. How are those going? Let’s pull out some of those metrics that we defined. Let’s see how much more efficient we’ve gotten or [what] we’ve gained. If we haven’t, how do we reengineer (or reconfigure) what we’ve implemented? Is it the technology, or is it the process? We didn’t know exactly how this was going to play out in the real world, now we do. How are we going to lay that out and make it a little bit cleaner? You know that the buzzword is continuous improvement. We can’t just throw something in and then walk away from it. I own a home. [When I first got it,] I thought [I was] just going to move into my house and then, it’s going to be glory. I’m going to sit on the back porch and sip lemonade all day…I’m constantly doing something [now]. I’m constantly improving. And I think that could apply to many factors of life, so why shouldn’t it apply to my organizational change management as well? I’m constantly evaluating and improving because we know that those environmental factors are going to be constantly changing, [and they] are impacting us as well.
Stephenie Langston:
Once you have that data started, once you started collecting those metrics that are measuring your success, whether that be technology implementation or just the process overall, then you’re also not having to reinvent the wheel. Most companies, when they embark on this initially, it’s a heavy lift. Then afterwards, they’re like, “Oh, it’s just a check in.” Kind of like your annual checkup with a physician, [you’re] just going to check up that [you’ve] actually been exercising, eating healthfully, and everything’s going well. So, I think that is key to that maintenance, and then, also just making things less overwhelming in the long run.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
One of the things organizations that we work with a lot…As you start talking about those regular checkups, what helps those regular checkups? It’s usable documentation. We go into a lot of organizations that say, “We worked with a consultant before. We did it independently, and we’ve got our processes mapped, but we can’t really use them. They just kind of sit on the shelf.” They become that shelf wear, and those are the types of tools, job aides, procedure manuals that you want to be usable or digital, so that everybody can just pull them out and reference them really easily. I know, in the safety world, documenting things (risk controls) is massive, but (again) if we have a three-inch binder that nobody can read, how usable is that? So, we really strive for documentation to be reusable. So, exactly what you were talking about. Let’s go unroll the giant map that we printed on the plot printer, let’s see if we’re still doing things the way that we said we’re going to, and if we’re not—why? Let’s do that analysis again and say, “All right, did we find a different regulation? Did we find a better way or a workaround that we had to implement because there was a snag in the way that things were set up?” and then we can go back and make those changes as well.
Stephenie Langston:
Yeah, I agree. “Utilizing technology,” it’s a broad term, but even when you’re doing a new platform there’s other things that you can implement. One of the things that we have (that I love) is those dynamic charts. You can send a link to someone. Then, you’re growing and you’re collecting data on inspections or even incidents throughout your organization. Maybe your CEO or your COO has that link that’s just this dynamic data feed, [so] they’re getting the data that they need. If you capture that as a key function that you need early on in the process (it can be set up), then that system is running smoothly (and you can do tweaks here and there), but that’s providing a lot of key information.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
There’s a lot of legacy systems out there that do really great reporting. (You may have to be a crystal reports expert in order to do it, but they do it). But now, everybody’s working on their mobile devices all the time. That’s a dashboard in your pocket. So, we very often get [the] requirement, “We want very user-friendly dashboards.” The vast majority of the technology out there now is using those dashboards for exactly what you’re saying. I click in and see all my key performance indicators right there at the top. How am I doing? What type of situations do we have going on? Their inventory [is] right there at the top. So, all the data is literally at your fingertips, and then you can make decisions quickly. It also presents it in a way that I’m not going to have to go manipulate it someplace else. Show me my “problem children,” the good ones I don’t have to manage right now, the ones that are about to be bad (that way I can prevent that.) It’s what I try to do with my children. Before they spill the milk, move the milk away, so that it’s not so much of an issue. So, really using that technology to do things like that, leverage those dashboards, is great. Taking it back to how we make the change smooth, if we can start to stress the value of all of those things that you’re going to have, the importance of what’s going to come out of them, what it will do for you, and [how it will] make your life easier, so long as we communicate, as long as we train, as long as we show that how you change gets to be a lot less scary, [then] it’s like, “Okay. I was scared of this because it was going to be something new to learn. But I learned it. Now it’s good for me and it really makes my life better overall.” So, the biggest thing for us [is] let’s make it fun. Nobody wants to be dealing with that stress and struggle every day. It’s going to be stressful. Let’s try to make it fun and really celebrate those wins and those milestones so that the change is really successful, and that it sticks. If we go through all of this selection process improvement (yada, yada, yada), and, at the end of the day, the change doesn’t stick, then you’ve spent a lot of time and money on something that they didn’t get the value [from] that you were needing and thinking.
Stephenie Langston:
Well, I think today’s conversation has been really helpful, and I really do appreciate you sharing with us some of the insights on change management and organizational change management, the overall process and some techniques that you’ve used. I would just like to say, “Thank you very much.” If people need to contact you or reach you or [access] resources, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Kyle Glick – TSI:
I really appreciate the time today. I got way more excited about organizational change management than I thought I was going to, but that’s how it goes for us consultants, sometimes.
You can reach my organization at: www.transforming.com
Pretty simple, Transforming Solutions, so if you just head there you’ll see all of the information that you need. There’s a “contact us” button. If you want to reach out to me directly, please feel free.
My email address is just my first initial with my last name: kglick@transforming.com
I’d be happy to speak with anybody individually or answer any questions via email, but [there’s] a lot of good information over at our website too. [You can] always find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as well. We post randomly and pretty frequently. [There’s] lots of blog articles and stuff out there about these very things: delivery effectiveness, business process improvement, organizational change management. So, lots of good resources out there, if anybody needs.
Stephenie Langston:
All right, thank you. I can vouch for the blogs, I read them all the time.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
I appreciate that. Writing blogs, sometimes it’s not the most fun thing to do, but it’s fun to share the knowledge with everybody and put it out there. I love to leverage, “I have this experience, let me share this out, because (chances are) there’s somebody else with a similar question or similar situation going on.” So, I appreciate that you’re keeping up with it.
Stephenie Langston:
Well, thank you very much and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Kyle Glick – TSI:
Great! Thanks, Stephenie.
