When Your Systems Fall Short, Your People Fill in the Gaps
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Make Others Successful, a podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies to help you build a better workplace. My name's Mitch, if we haven't met yet. And I'm joined with Matt and Mike here. I just looked at the wrong one when I said that I know their names.
Mitch:This is Mike.
Mike:I wasn't gonna say anything.
Mitch:And this is Matt.
Mike:But I could totally try to be Matt for at least one episode.
Mitch:Yeah. I
Matt:don't mind being called Mike.
Mitch:Good luck. What are we talking about today? We are talking about a recent sort of learning, pondering that we have been thinking about in the context of one of our projects with a client. And it it's around the concept of when systems fall short at your organization, people push themselves into a world of some might call it shadow IT, some might call it their own little silo where they decide to work their way in order to make it work for them. And then that kind of feeds into itself and promotes this further siloed environment that perpetuates and is really hard to break out of.
Mitch:And so we're gonna talk about that world if you felt like either you need to do things your own way so it finally works with you or you have seen that happening at your organization. We're gonna be talking all about that today. Sound good? Yeah. Cool.
Mitch:So why is this deeper than like, we we we're thinking about using the term silos in the context of this episode title. But then we said silos is from some lenses that makes sense to call it silos, but it's really something maybe a little bit deeper than that. Do we wanna talk to that at all?
Matt:Yeah. The way I would say is silos is actually a a symptom, not a problem. Right?
Mitch:A symptom of the problem.
Matt:Yeah. Like, there's multiple reasons you could have silos and the concept of being siloed is it can be cultural, it can be based on something that happened that created the site. Like, it can be for lots of different reasons. Just because you're siloed, that doesn't I don't I I think it's more of a symptom of the problem.
Mike:It can it can be just simple as responsibility assignment. Different departments in the organization. Yeah. Right? Natural like, they have things
Matt:to take care separation.
Mike:It's natural. Yep.
Mitch:Yep. Got it. So it's silos are a downstream effect of this problem, this this Reality. Reality of working, people wanting to work in their own way because maybe the system or the business falls short or the culture is naturally inclined to let people work that way.
Matt:Yeah. Does everybody does everybody know understand what we mean? Like, maybe maybe the I don't I'm not sure everybody really understands.
Mitch:Give us give us the lowdown.
Matt:Yeah. Mean, so what we're really talking about is, you know, people call it silos, people call it lack of communication, you know, different people working different ways. There's lots of ways people talk about it, but it really is the concept that you end up with many kind of mini organizations within an organization. A related term probably is kingdom building. There's a number of ways you can talk about it, but it's a core problem of like not all rowing together towards the same objective.
Matt:Feeling like I can't impact the bigger organization because I'm in my own little world or not knowing what somebody else is doing that impacts my world. Right? There's lots of additional, like, more detailed symptoms, but that all rolls up into this feeling of we're in silos, we're disconnected, which ultimately is caused by a different problem, which is a lack of cohesive leadership and strategy, which is largely what we're gonna talk about.
Mitch:Yeah. And I feel like this is sort of a spiritual successor of sorts to excel as a trap, which Mike talked about Yeah. Way back when when maybe it's not intentional, but when you use a tool like Excel to build your process we we talk about it a lot in that other episode, but it perseverates this this is my document, this is my spreadsheet, this is my domain. Everybody, either stay out or make sure you do it this way, and it creates this world where this person has their kingdom or these couple people have their kingdom. So check that one out if you find yourself in a world of deep Excel business processes.
Mitch:Can we talk about the the why this happens in the first place? I feel like there's tons of different scenarios that could cause this. You wanna should we go through some of those?
Mike:I think the big one for me, where I always start, is it's usually out of good intent Mhmm. And giving people power to solve problems within their little realm in inside of their kingdom, and then never bringing it all back together. So people are given a budget. There's a problem they need to solve. They're empowered to solve that problem.
Mike:Everybody feels great about it. They do great work. They actually come up with a creative solution, solve the problem, and they've invested a bunch of time and and money maybe. And then they never nobody ever comes back up for error and says, okay. How does this work with the bigger picture?
Mike:How do we incorporate this with the rest of the organization? And they go off and do that for few quarters. Right? And then by the time you get three quarters down the road, now you're in a situation where you've maybe created some additional layers of problems on top and you've invested and you can't unwind it very easily. And so that's one of the the places that I think it starts most often because it's usually well intentioned.
Matt:Yeah. I I completely agree. An example of when that often happens, that scenario that you're talking about, is when large changes happen with an organization. Mhmm. Maybe we're opening up a new office in a different location.
Matt:Maybe we're merging with another organization and now we've got these two different ways of working that need to come together. Or perhaps we're starting up a new line of business. And, you know, those things oftentimes need leaders and people who are empowered to make decisions and make stuff happen for the business, which is all really good. And and nobody, you know, that's that's not the problem. The problem isn't that you're enabling people to do that.
Matt:The problem is exactly what you were talking about of that at some point in time, that has to come back into the fold. You have to come back around and go, okay, cool. That's awesome. How does that work with the rest of our systems? How does that work with with everything we're doing?
Matt:Right? Because when they were implementing that, maybe they created a spreadsheet to solve a problem. And that worked because we're just trying to get this done and doing it any other way would have taken a long time. But you need to have the the ability to say, that's awesome. But now we need to do take that to the next step.
Mitch:Yeah. Maybe their culture or the way that they work treats those sessions, those opportunities as instances to make something better rather than it being a constant ongoing no matter what effort that Yeah. Is constantly folding things back in. The other one that comes to mind is when the culture is naturally inclined to do this. Maybe you don't know how it started, but that's just how people are working.
Mitch:And some people are naturally inclined to just work that way. And so it becomes this problem that you're not exactly sure how it started, but it just keeps going and going and going because people are inclined that way. And so, like I said, sometimes the root cause is hard to determine, but a culture that thinks this way can continue to feed into the life cycle of it of it becoming more and more of that problem because gets defensive over their stuff.
Matt:From an outside perspective, it looks like Band Aids on Band Aids on Band Aids. Yep. From an internal perspective, it looks like I would be bleeding to death if I didn't have the Band Aids, so I need the Band Aids.
Mitch:Right.
Matt:And so people protect that and try to make sure those stick and are are are doing their job.
Mitch:Yeah. I feel like this also could relate to some of our conversations around IT and IT posture, where if IT sets things up way locked down in order to protect something, or in some cases call it like it's an easy button, it's easier to just lock it down than think critically about it, they treat it that way, which then promotes people to either need to work around it or build their own little mini business within the confines of what they're given access to rather than treat it as something that can elevate above themselves and and affect other people, which requires some IT cooperation.
Matt:Yeah. So a bad relationship between IT and the rest of the organization can exacerbate this problem. You have somebody who's gone out and and done good work and made something work for them, And then now you need to bring it back in. And rather than the IT team going, this is really awesome. You did a great job doing this thing.
Matt:Now we just need to figure out how to make it work. Let's let's let's partner on this and figure out how to how to they go, that's shadow IT. Why did you do it that way? That's a terrible way to do it. It doesn't comply with our security requirements.
Matt:It doesn't comply. The relationship can be difficult thing in that world. Or they can just have a general posture of we don't allow those things. We're just not gonna allow it. And not recognizing the intent and the value and the and the benefit that comes from that.
Matt:So that's one, like, systemic structural problem. The other thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about that is it also can come from a a lack of leadership. Focus isn't the right term, but, like, buy in, if you will. So I see this when Stewardship?
Mitch:Yeah. Heard that Yeah. Term thrown around
Matt:and Stewardship probably isn't a bad another isn't a bad I don't know know that's a perfect term, but it's definitely another Yeah. Another term that's valid here. Like, if a leader is just looking at it going, the bottom line's doing good. We've got our our customers are happy. Perfect.
Matt:I don't need to do anything. I don't need to provide anymore. I don't need to do anymore because that's all I need to worry about. You've got a problem. Because you should, as a leader in an organization, be thinking about all of this stuff, all of the way these things connect and the way these things work, and helping and empowering your employees to go beyond just the quick fix, beyond the get the work done, make the work happen.
Matt:They need to be looking for the opportunities of saying, yep. We've done this for six months, for a year, this way. We now is the opportunity. Let's go back and and fix those. I think invest in it.
Mike:As the leader, you're one of your biggest responsibilities is to be three steps ahead of everyone else. And so when you're empowering people to solve those problems within their realm, you're you need to be beginning with the end in mind. We've talked about that before. And have the plan, like, the course in the beginning. Go solve this problem, but remember, we've gotta do this when you're done.
Mike:Yep. And then come back and follow-up on that action item.
Matt:Because they won't. They can't. Right. Right.
Mike:They're busy doing
Matt:The system the data that you built, the way that you're approaching it, predisposes them to not do that. They have a solution. Got their work done. It works good enough. Right.
Matt:It's painful for them for them to ask for money. It's painful for them to ask for time. It's painful for them to ask for all these different support mechanisms. You need to be that outlet to say, I auth not only do I authorize, I expect you to come back to me and help and ask for help to solve this problem. Yep.
Mitch:Let's talk about why does this matter? Like, on its face
Matt:Why creating problems? The bottom line's good.
Mitch:Yeah. Right. On its face, it could not feel super impactful. But what does it result in that is either maybe opportunity cost or like hidden costs or downstream effects that that might show up later.
Matt:It's it's really all about the difference between day to day operations and whether or not that's going well versus preparing for a future where you're growing and you're expanding. Right? If you're just trying to keep doing what you've been doing and, know, you're not trying to do much more, it, you know, it's not should you fix it? Yes. In principle, yes.
Matt:Is it gonna have a huge impact? Maybe. Depending on what it is. Right? Like, because some people could think about what we're saying and going, well, yeah, I mean, if the thing we're gonna solve is gonna take half as much time, for sure we should fix it.
Matt:But that's not what we mean. We mean it's not just about the amount of time. It's not just about cost savings. It's about positioning yourself for the future. And the reason it's such a problem is as you continue to bolt on these these little groups and you have all these groups and and and you continue to grow, right, you get into situations where you're so dependent on each of these smaller pieces working well that you're now vulnerable.
Matt:When any one of these starts to have a problem, the systems and processes that you have are brittle. They're heavily reliant on people and the people knowing how this stuff works. It's heavily reliant on technology that maybe your IT department doesn't know how to support. It's heavily dependent on business process that's not ideal, that doesn't have all of the checks and balances that it should have. And so then the moment something gets off kilter, the moment you try to expand it, put pressure on it, it starts to break.
Matt:That's the huge danger. Right? There's obviously you know, you look at, you know, Mike, Excel example, a perfect example. Right? Anyone's gonna understand when you go, well, this thing is running a 100,000, $200,000 worth of business, and it is taking one full time person to manage it.
Matt:I could replace that maybe by spending $50,000 on a solution, and now nobody has to manage it. Right? It just continues to work. No problem. Right?
Matt:That's a cost savings. Like, that you could make a case for that. These things are a little bit bigger. They're they're they're more systemic. They're not that easy.
Matt:And those are where you're gonna get the real value. That's where you're gonna be able to go from, you know, a $5,000,000,000 business to a $20,000,000 business because you're thinking about it right, because you've handled those things, because you've well incorporated all of these other pieces to your business.
Mike:Yeah. I was gonna say the the two things that come to my mind, I think scale is a big one obviously, if that's where you're trying to go. But I think generally people don't like to do dumb stuff.
Matt:Oh, yeah.
Mike:And when they find themselves doing the dumb stuff to deal with friction in between the silos, they don't like to be in that situation. And so employee retention is a real issue. Like Yeah. How many years do I have to do this before I go find someplace that does a better job of the same thing? I think that's a big one.
Mike:And then the other thing, it's kind of related to scale, but it's about freeing up time so that your people can focus on your customers. Right? And and that human connection and building relationships because that's the most valuable thing in the universe. It's more valuable than all of the ones and zeros and numbers in the spreadsheets. And so I think those are the areas that we can stand to gain a lot from when it comes to our people and our customers and
Matt:More than just the dollars and cents.
Mike:More than
Matt:just the dollars and Yep. 100%.
Mitch:Yeah. I feel like the couple other notes we have here is just some maybe symptoms that, again, at face value may might not affect the bottom line, but they're they're inherently affecting the bottom line because of what they are, where different teams are working on the same things. They're they're just in different silos, solving the same problem in different ways. Or if they can't work in an efficient way that allows leadership to visibly see how things are going and make judgment calls across how things are working, then they're making decisions off of bad information and just scattershot everything instead instead of something that feels streamlined and easy to turn this dial up here and pull this lever here. It it just feels band aid, band aid, band aid, band aid.
Matt:Yeah. Your your comment about the leadership being able to dial things is we didn't talk about it, but that is also a knock on effect of solving this problem. Like, without it, you're you're Each silo or each each group is doing their own thing and it's very hard to be like, I'm just gonna I'm gonna mess with things from a higher level, which can seem like micromanage or like may sound like micromanagement. But it actually is enabling leadership to support the team rather than in this in the other model, you're dependent on the team doing everything and knowing and understanding the bigger picture because you have very little input into what's going on.
Mike:Mhmm.
Matt:I thought that was really that's that's we didn't call out before, but I think that's a really powerful one.
Mitch:Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Let's let's bring it down to as close to real world examples as we can. I feel like there's a few situations.
Mitch:We're not gonna, like, talk specifically about clients, but we can talk about the the situations. Do we wanna talk about kind of how this has reared its head in in a few different contexts?
Matt:Sure.
Mitch:Yeah. I'll I'll start. Okay.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah. So just recent client that that we've been working with, they struggle in the messy middle, I would say. So they do like their work, they do very well. They're they know how to deliver and execute, and they have a lot of people that operate in that middle space who are holding it all together.
Mike:And they're entering data multiple times in multiple systems. They don't know which system to look at to have the right copy of that same data. Makes decision making difficult. In their particular case, they do have they're a large organization, so they have different practices or departments that have different responsibilities in the in the organization. But then they've also been over time compiled through acquisition.
Mike:Mhmm. And so every time a new company is acquired, they do something really great, which is why they're they're being acquired. And so then they get trusted with their realm and they do things a certain way and they need to be integrated in the business. And we've been through some mergers and acquisitions and that's a difficult thing. And so there's some level of, well, we're gonna honor the way they do things because we don't wanna completely shoot them in the foot.
Mike:We want them to keep making money, but they need to be integrated in the whole, and so how do we solve that problem? And that never, at least in my experience, it often never gets solved all the way. Right? It's it'll get solved partway, and then the larger organization will move on to the next acquisition, and now they're busy with that and they'll get 60% there. But then there's always that messy middle left over.
Mike:And I think in this particular case, there is a lot of that messiness just still left over from several of those transactions.
Mitch:Mhmm. There has been so much messiness left over from those transactions.
Mike:Messy, messy, messy.
Matt:Yeah. So it's an interesting thing because exactly what you said, like, when you buy and acquire, make an acquisition, especially for big companies, there is a everybody needs to use our systems of the from the larger organization most times. But the solution to using those isn't always we're going to adopt that tool and modify that tool to work for your business. Right? Because maybe they work a little differently.
Matt:Maybe they have some different needs and that's how they were being successful and it was a differentiator in their market. Because they're not going to necessarily change that bigger one, these little augmentations start cropping up where, well, I'm gonna build this thing that I didn't have before, but it's what I have to have so I can still do what I was doing and still integrate with the bigger system. Right? And that type of thing is happens all the time. And it's and it's interesting that you said we've been through it and And it's it's interesting to see how much effort is put into doing it and yet it still isn't always successful.
Matt:They spend a lot of money large organizations will spend a lot of money on a merger and acquisitions strategy, and they'll do lots of things. And a
Mike:lot of
Matt:those things are really good, but they'll
Mike:miss and the key ones that you and I have been directly involved with, I'm thinking of one in particular, to this day, I don't think they ever solved the problem of fully integrating those teams with each other in terms of No. Tooling, approach to the products that were being developed, like it's they're still all now legacy components of a larger business. Yeah. And it's
Matt:And in that one in particular, it's because it's so much different than what the what everything else was. Right. Right? They didn't just buy a smaller company that does exactly the same thing. Most people don't.
Matt:They buy a company that is in a little bit different space, doing a little bit different thing, and creates this challenge. And it's, you know, we've helped a couple of organizations through some challenges related to this and a lot of it has to do with we talked about IT partnerships. We talked about like it's all these little things and it can take a long time for it to really start to to get through. So
Mitch:Yeah. I'll say from my perspective for this client we're talking about, what stood out to them was they have so many good people. They are hard workers and smart that are all committed to helping the business. And it's really hard to recognize the situation happening. Like, when we lay out this scenario that we are seeing to company, a lot of times what it feels like is they have thought about the individual symptoms and they say, oh, it's really nice to see it kind of packaged up together with a bow on it so that we can conceptualize it from, I think this is the core problem that they need to solve, that those downstream things will get resolved, that they know about, they feel familiar, but they haven't necessarily been thinking about it through this lens.
Matt:Yeah.
Mitch:And so it's I'll I'll say it's hard to recognize sometimes, even if you have super smart people who are capable.
Matt:The reason that is really hard is because you need to actually step out of the silo outside of the smaller area and think bigger. You need to say, what would this look like if I solved all of them or most of them or treated these as one big thing rather than a one particular problem? Which is scary for a lot of people you know, people go, well, that's gonna cost me more money. It's gonna take me more time. It's gonna have more impact on the business.
Matt:And those things are generally true
Mitch:In our case
Matt:but the value is gonna be there, more there.
Mitch:Yeah. In our case, they invested money with us. Right? We had to get paid for it. We also required tens of hours of, like, their people's time.
Mitch:Like, I don't it's maybe in the Depending.
Matt:It's it's yeah.
Mitch:Could cross over into the 100 Yeah. Hours of time pretty easily. And much of it was spent looking at each other being like, okay, you're talking about your silo. That doesn't really matter to my silo. Why am I here?
Mitch:And I think that just goes to show another instance of we need somebody thinking at one level abstract higher because everyone is so laser focused on on their thing.
Matt:So So I'll give it we were talking about examples. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring another example in. And this customer is going through a big IT change. They've decided to to switch and and consolidate onto a specific IT platform. And they made that decision at the top level and everyone in the IT organization, etcetera, decided that that's, yep, that's their smart idea.
Matt:Like, let's cool. Let's go make this happen. But nobody really thought about the impact it would have on all the other groups. And because they're all much like the other organization we're talking about, just getting work done. Mhmm.
Matt:Banging things out. Making stuff happen. Like, they're focused on just I'm gonna get this I'm empowered. I'm gonna make this happen. Right?
Matt:And so then when the change finally applies, it's a problem because the new platform doesn't work for some people. And in some cases, it doesn't work because they don't know how to make it work. In some cases, it doesn't work because they don't it doesn't have the same features. And it's it is a it's a challenge. And it cut that that particular one, it's a a very tactical one scenario, but it's very much like we're gonna solve this one problem for this purpose, and I'm not really gonna think about what every what are the all the all of the other impacts because it's gonna be good.
Matt:It'll be fine. Right? But it solves my IT compliance, like, all of that problem. And, you know, in that case, it's a little bit more of a, again, a symptom, but it definitely sparked them to start having the right solution. Right?
Matt:Like, they started to say, hey, wait a minute. The more we do this, the more we make changes like this, the more we try to grow in this way, and the more we behave this way where somebody's empowered to just make a decision that's gonna impact everybody, like, we're gonna have problems. So we need to start managing that better, doing that better.
Mitch:Yeah. And same client, they had a lean on the AI side towards, I I I'm smart enough to weave all these tools together and integrate them into my processes so that my processes are like whiz bang Clean. Awesome. But they weren't necessarily thinking about it from the lens of how does the everyday How
Matt:do I empower users?
Mitch:Yeah. Access AI and and have it help with the the 20% of busy work that doesn't exactly fall into a particular process. And so we had to urge them to, again, stop thinking about it from this siloed lens instead of think about it from all the lenses. And I'll say even in both of these scenarios, there's a degree of we have such a strong desire desire to help them think about it this way, first and foremost. Secondarily is solve it, for sure.
Mitch:But we we have a pretty strong bias towards you need this mindset first. And so it's common for us to have to like reinforce this quite a few times. They say, okay, I get it but it doesn't necessarily help me solve it. Today. How do I actually do that?
Mitch:Is there any generalized how do people solve this situation?
Matt:So it's a culture thing. Empowering people to look at the silly thing that they have done and empower them to recognize that it's silly and then ask for help. Like, hey. We should stop doing this and have somebody on the other side that's gonna listen. And then number two, for me, it's about a leadership and a a strategy around everything that everyone is doing needs to work together for this common purpose.
Matt:And it's okay to say, hey. That doesn't work for me. And it's also okay to say, I wanna try something different. Right? But it all has to roll up into something that is that's going to help and going to work.
Matt:Because ultimately, people can take a direction from a leader that is, yes, go ahead and do this thing. Go you're empowered to make this do whatever you need to do as something as a statement that exists for in for eternity. And in most cases, what leaders really mean is you're empowered to solve this problem and then come back and figure out what the next evolution of the solution is. Mhmm. And when I say that, I say that mostly for problems that are impacting the bigger organization.
Matt:Right? Problems that are impacting another department, problems that are involve another group. Right? The moment you're you're empowered to solve those things, I need you to just get this thing solved for me. That's great.
Matt:But then you need to loop back around and go, okay. We now know what a solution is for this. What's the best solution? And what's the benefits of the best solution versus what we're doing today? Right?
Matt:Like, it it's a it's a mindset, a culture, and a leadership approach that gives space for that. And that doesn't mean some people who may be listening to this might be go, well, Bob and Matt and Mike and Mitch are all saying we gotta all come together and have a committee and and decide. That's not what we mean either. It doesn't take very much for someone to make a decision about how one of these things might work, but it needs to be the right through the right lens. Right?
Matt:And the first lens is all about just getting it done. The second lens is about, okay, how should this fit in the broader scheme of things? And I'm I'm I am I do not want committees. I do not want people to spend months and months and months sorting this out. I wanna empower them to help solve this the rest of the way.
Matt:I want to tell them it's not good enough just to solve it this one time for three months. I want people to know that it's okay for them to come back and say, I need more to do it the right way.
Mike:Where do you feel like change management consultants fit into that?
Matt:Yeah. That's a great question.
Mike:Like there's a whole segment of the consulting industry that is built for this purpose.
Matt:Yes and no. Change management is really about managing a change. So there's gotta be a change. Right?
Mike:We're talking about, at least in the context of these customers, this is the way that we have told them to approach it is it's constant change. Get ready. Correct. It's lifestyle change, not a magic pill. Correct.
Mike:Right?
Matt:And so So change is interesting because change managers can fall into a change management professionals can fall into a couple different categories. The end that is just taking a change and then communicating it, I I don't think they have a lot of involvement, quite frankly. Except for maybe in a feedback loop, we just applied this change, I'm getting feedback that something bad's happening, let's go bring it up. On the other end of it, which is like helping to define and make sure the change that's happening is the right change, they can be a huge part of it. If they're given a directive, if the problem they're trying to solve isn't the tactical one, but the problem that we're talking about Right.
Matt:It can transform the way change happens within an organization. It can be part of that solution. We've talked about one way this can change is to say, this group or this person is in charge of this organization's processes at a meta level. Right? That's one way to solve it is give ownership to the whole thing, to either one or a small group of people.
Matt:Another way to do it is to say, the change management team, if you actually have a formal change management team, they're in charge of taking the business problems and working those business problems to a solution with the technical people with everything else. And so then you bring those problems into the change managers and the change team, and they're trying to help come up with the right solution that will work. And they may come up with a short term solution, but then they would also be in charge of taking that to the next level and the next level. Because they're they would start with a concept of we can do it quickly, cheaply on the dirty, and then but that's not good enough long term, so we need to come back around. And they would track and prioritize that with other things.
Matt:Yeah.
Mike:Yeah.
Matt:It's a great call out in in there's lots of organizations that don't have enough people to have that as a formal thing, but if you do, it's a 100% a vital part of this process.
Mitch:Yep. Two things before we wrap up that I want to cover. The first is I have seen an attempt at resolving this with a customer recently where they tried to do an innovation challenge where they empowered their team members to come up with solutions to problems that they see at their work, they got to present it, and they got rewards according to who who was the most innovative and things like that. I view that as amazing. Like, I I love that concept.
Mitch:What is stopping that from being the solution?
Matt:I think it's about the I think it's about the implementation. Having an innovation challenge that's running year round nonstop and anyone can submit and say, hey, I think we should fix this, could be a part of solving it.
Mitch:Let's say they did it just once a year.
Matt:Yeah. So doing an innovation challenge once a year where you make a big huge deal out of it, I don't think it solved this problem in the way that we're talking about. There's two types of innovation. One is innovation that is transforming a business. The story about the guy who developed Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Mitch:Mhmm.
Matt:That is a true innovation. Right? And that is what that type of challenge would I would try to focus that on. That's not for what we're talking about. Sure.
Matt:Right? For me, what we're talking about should be an ongoing nonstop, like, people should be looking for those things and trying to solve them.
Mike:I think generally it lacks alignment and adherence to a north star. I think that's one of the challenges with something like that. Like, you could if you knew what that you were trying to get there, you could maybe incorporate that. But that's what you're kinda describing as more of like a code a thon, solve this particular problem in an innovative way. It's there's no why.
Mike:Like, why am I doing that? Make things better? Cool. But that's not really a North Star.
Mitch:Cool. Yeah. So I view it as I I view that as a good example of an effort in the right direction that with the right structure It's good intention. Could be really helpful. Yeah.
Mitch:But it require it can't be a once a year event, basically. Last call out is to any leaders listening. They feel this problem a little bit. Where do they start? How do they approach this thing?
Mitch:Like, if you could boil it I mean, give me a two minute sound bite here that we're gonna we're gonna post everywhere. What what do leaders need to do who who feel like they're in this problem, want to get out of it because it is not a pain pill, it's a lifestyle change.
Mike:I think the first step is admitting you have a problem. Like, you gotta recognize it if you don't recognize that may maybe missing this problem. Not That is this problem. Not that that tool isn't doing what I want that tool to do. Right?
Mike:So I think that's the first part of it. If you don't know that that's going on, here's your sign. Probably going on. And so then after that, assemble the right team. Mhmm.
Mike:Like, identify some champions, some leaders, some people that are willing to put in extra effort because that's what it's gonna take. One because one of the things that I think we've kind of danced around a little bit is like people wanna like good people wanna solve problems. They work hard to solve the problems within their world, but they've got a day job. They've got like normal responsibilities. And so the people that you want involved in this type of effort are people that are willing to put in the extra time to do their day job plus.
Mike:Right?
Matt:Yeah. So let's talk about that for for a second because I think it's part of the what you're talking about, which is these aren't this isn't an easy thing to solve. Lots of people at organizations aren't capable of doing what we're talking about. And the reason for that is because it takes space, like what Mike was just talking about. You need to have the time.
Matt:You need to have the ability to step out of where you're at and put a different hat on. And then you need to be able to prioritize appropriately based on the goals that the business has. Right? Because if and if you don't have all three of those from whoever's doing this, you're gonna fail. Right?
Matt:If they don't have time, it'll never happen. They'll never do anything. If they can't pull out, the thing that they're gonna fix is just gonna make it worse because it's gonna be one problem. They just keep fixing another problem and whack a mole another thing. And if they don't have the ability to align it, you won't be seen as valuable to the organization.
Matt:It'll be seen as valuable as a one off. Oh, that helped sales. Oh, that helped whatever. Right? If you can align it to the business goals, you can all of a sudden say, we increased sales and and delivery by x percentage or we improve improve employee retention or we like, what are your goals?
Matt:What are you trying to do? What's the what's the business problems you have? And then looking at that across the business, how are we gonna solve that? And there's a lot of intertwined ways to do this. It's, you know, you mentioned identifying a team, bringing people together.
Matt:That's definitely part of it or could be part of it. It also could be, this is what the executive team's gonna be focused on. We just did a major acquisition five years ago. We still are having problems. This next two years, the executive team's gonna take this on.
Matt:Right? And they're gonna focus on it. Right? It doesn't have to be, you know, bring an outside person in or bring a bunch of people who are smart about all the problems. It can be a strategic thing.
Matt:It can be an outside an internal like, it could be lots of things. But much like you said, Mitch, and Mike said it too about you have to realize that you have that this is the problem, and then you need to start tackling it as a thing. Not just tackling one problem here, one problem here. If you continue to do that, if you continue to empower your finance team to solve a problem over here while not also talking to the finance team about these other four problems that you got going on, you're gonna fail.
Mitch:Mhmm. Cool. That's helpful. There you have it, folks. The the quick and easy solution to this problem.
Mitch:Just follow Matt's steps there and no problem. You will have it all fixed.
Matt:Are you implying that I talked really long again?
Mitch:No. No. That you you gave me my my clip, my concise And it's on paper, it's so easy.
Matt:Good thing shorts are longer now.
Mitch:Yeah. Right. Anyway, it was good chatting about this. I like all of our topics, I feel like it intertwines with so many different things, but it's a slightly different lens on a similar problem. So I hope that was helpful.
Mitch:If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions, if you feel this, we actually have a feedback form at bulb.digital/feedback. You're welcome to drop us a note and we'll respond in there. We'll either help you or we will console you and or what's it called? Where where we feel the problem.
Matt:We'll just commiserate?
Mitch:Commiserate. Yeah. We could just listen.
Mike:Some people just need you to listen.
Mitch:Yeah. We'll we'll be a listener listening ear for you. Cool. Well, anyway, thanks for chatting today you guys and we will see you all again soon.
Matt:It's been fun. Thanks everybody.
Mitch:Hey. Thanks for tuning in to Make Others Successful. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear from you. There's a couple ways you can do that. One, we'd love for you to rate our show on your favorite podcasting app.
Mitch:And then if you have feedback or topic ideas or suggestions for future episodes, head over to bulb.digital/feedback and let us know. Your input is super valuable and we'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with others who care about building a better workplace. Until next time, keep making others successful. I'll see you.
