← Embracing Digital Transformation
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- [00:00]
A
And then they've got broad industry experience, they have broad functional experience, and they also have that polished consultant skill set. But they can just focus on what does the organization need? What is the culture here? What. What communication channels should we leverage? What considerations from a rollout perspective should we be engaging with? And the technology partners don't have. They. They don't do that. But when they work with us, they don't have to do it because we'll do it for them.
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B
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation, where we investigate effective change, leveraging people, process, and technology. This is Darren Pulsford, chief solution architect, author, and most importantly, your host on this episode, navigating change in established industries with Lindsay Phillips, founder of SkyFi Studios. Lindsay, welcome to the show.
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A
Thank you. Glad to be here.
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B
Hey, Lindsay, I. You know, you caught me off guard because most of my guests have listened to parts of the show, but not the whole thing. But you're ready for this first question, because everyone knows I only have superheroes on the show. Lindsay, you're. You're ready for. I want your origin story. Give it to me.
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A
All right. Thank you. Yeah, my origin story maybe a little unlikely. It starts with Green graduating with an English degree and entering the world of work expecting to kind of do great things. And it was 2007, 2008, so I couldn't find a job.
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B
Oh, yes, I remember that. That time.
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A
Yeah, dark times. But I kind of got my foot in the door as a receptionist through a temp agency at an oil and gas company in Colorado and ended up answering phones for, like, three years. And because I needed to pay my bills and my loans were due to. And luckily, I was at a company that really prioritized upward mobility and, like, promoting from within. And so they said, hey, you've got an English degree. Do you want to go make training materials in our IT department? And I said, I'll be a professional writer. Like, to be a technical writer. And I was like, I'll write quick reference guides. I don't care. That's so cool. And so moved to Texas, became a technical writer and kind of started out in that change space, moving up into kind of being more, you know, strategy and planning of organizational change management, really focusing on IT solutions and getting them rolled out effectively. And I just kept running. I mean, you know, this, like, wait.
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B
That'S a big jump. That's a big jump from technical writing to being a strategic change agent. And like, you. You just jumped that. Like, that was no big deal.
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A
Well, luckily, again, they were. It was a company that really wanted to, to foster that. And so they gave me a ton of opportunities and a lot of chances to try something new and they were willing to take a risk on. Yeah, I was 24 at the time and they're like, yeah, get in there, give it a try. But I kept running into the problem of I'm trying to make these beautiful change plans and we're trying to roll out this, these really creative strategies and development gets pushed and testing gets pushed and training gets compressed. All my beautiful plans have been ruined every single. And I was like this is a system. Like this is consistently happening. So I pivoted into project management and so I started to kind of carve a niche of I'm still in technology, I'm doing technology projects but with a stakeholder view. Like I want to be rolling out projects with an end eye on how is this impacting the organization. We will trust that our technology SMEE's are doing the right thing and then I'll make sure that it's getting rolled out effectively.
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B
And so, so in oil and gas, I'm sure it was, it was in the early 2000s, they were probably playing around with ideas of agile, but probably very waterfall still.
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A
Still very waterfall. Yeah. We had a couple agile projects. But the bigger challenge for oil and gas is you have so many folks out in the field who work, you know, non standard shifts. And so, you know, you have to be thinking about that when you're developing training plans is how are you going to get both shifts and people are out on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. You're not training them the way that you would for a corporate worker. So yeah, it was kind of a good place to sharpen my teeth and get some experience.
- [04:15]
B
Oh yeah. Especially in an industry that, you know, is, is, I'm not going to say ancient, but well established. How about that? Right. Their processes are very well established. Well, we've been doing it this way for 50, 60 years and things get delayed. Right. I mean, I mean this is, those are hard organizations to be a change agent in.
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A
Right. I think our most. The biggest shock that I saw while I was working at that particular company was after Deepwater Horizon and the federal government rolled out massive regulation as it should have, that was an appropriate way to respond. And we had a year to get it in place and so it was very much like get it in, get it done, everyone needs to be on board or you could go to jail. And it was like the most effective.
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B
Well that's messaging.
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A
Everyone was very motivated.
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B
So all right, so so far all we've learned about change agents is if you can get the US Government to pass a law that people go to jail, they'll move, they'll change.
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A
It helps. And it really helps. Yeah, it could be worse. Change method.
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B
Well, I think we've seen this. We saw it during the pandemic. External forces forcing organizations to change and they could move so fast. I mean it. Organizations I were working with that had 18 month plans. All of a sudden those 18 month plans became three week plans and they were done. And it worked.
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A
I experienced the same thing. And because we were trying to come up with a change plan for Microsoft Teams and how to train people and get them bought in. And then it was like, oh, they're bought in because they don't have a choice. They're at home. So.
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B
So, all right, what does that tell us about, about these things? I mean, the human, the human factor is, is probably the, the biggest impediment to change then.
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A
Right. And when, when people are completely bought in and they have full commitment, you will get.
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B
Happens quick.
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A
Yeah. If everyone's in agreement and you have full commitment, it will happen. Yeah. So. So after that. Yeah, so after that I ended up getting a severance package and was kind of at a place where I was like, I can kind of do whatever I want to do. And so I decided to start to carve out this niche of program management with a stakeholder perspective and was doing some contracting work and met a woman who is now my business partner. And we were looking at change management from two different angles because she had grown up in consulting and I had grown up in house. But we were seeing the exact same problem from two different lenses. And she mentioned she had an idea for a business. And I said, if you ever want to work on that together, call me and I'll partner with you. And she called me three weeks later and was like, let's do it. And so that was three years ago. So yeah, that's kind of how. And we all see the challenges and the gaps that exist. And so it's trying to come up with creative ways to, to address those.
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B
So, so it. Do you see? Besides, we already talked about one of them, which is motivation. Right. Getting people motivated for the change. What other things do you see that impede change or that. Because I mean, your job is to come in and help, help organizations adopt new things.
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A
Right.
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B
So what are some of those other impediments that you see?
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A
Well, I think it really does come down to motivation and incentives. So we partner with technology firms who are rolling out systems to customers and, and you love to talk technology. Process people, they, they've got the technology cornered and they might have branched into the process work a little bit because they figured out they need better user stories and process helps inform that.
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B
Right.
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A
But they for the most part are completely neglecting the people side.
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B
Sounds like a true technologist, right?
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A
Yeah. They're like, just email them, they'll be fine.
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B
I always said, hey, my user interface that I wrote works perfectly fine as long as I, I'm the only user. Right. As soon as someone else gets involved, oh, forget about it. Right. That's kind of a mentality though that technologists have is the users are just getting in the way of my technology.
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A
Oh, Darren. I had a developer once tell me I'm not a big fan of end users and I was like, what does that mean?
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B
They're the ones that actually pay your paychecks. Right.
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A
I was like, you have to be a fan of them. So, so we're part of.
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B
You guys fit squarely in that people in the people process, technology. You guys are the people whisperers, right? You're the people in, in change.
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A
Yeah. So we like to. Our, our model is we recruit former big four consultants who are kind of burnt out on the consulting lifestyle. And so when they work with us, they can work on one client, one engagement. They get to kind of have agency over their careers and, and then they've got broad industry experience, they have broad functional experience and they also have that polished consultant skill set. But they can just focus on what does the organization need, what is the culture here? What communication channels should we leverage, what considerations from a rollout perspective should we be engaging with? And the technology partners don't have, they don't do that. But when they work with us, they don't have to do it because we'll do it for them.
- [09:56]
B
That's really interesting. Do you think that it's difficult for the technology companies to do that because they're so removed from their end users?
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A
I think it's twofold. They know it's important. Like if you asked any of them should clients be doing ocm, they all say yes. I think part of the challenge is technology contracts have such long sales cycles. It can be six, nine months. We're seeing some that are like 12 month sales cycles right now certainty and then it's a three to six month implementation. And the change resource is generally part time. For these like mid tier consulting firms, it's not, this is not SAP for every project. You don't need a full change part time. Well, how do you manage a bench with that kind of pipeline and then delivery pressure and so for them was very logistically challenging. And the more OCM you bring into the sales cycle, the more questions customers have. And the sales people are like, they're incentivized to close the deal. So they're like, I like to think about it like my doctor says I should go to the gym. He's not my personal trainer, he's not going to make me go to the gym. The trick the partners know folks should be getting ocm. They're not going to do it for them. They're their technology partner. And so we've found a lot of success with those partners saying hey, this customer really needs it or they're asking for it and come work with us and together we can deliver what will be successful for this customer.
- [11:26]
B
That's, that's really cool. I never, you know, I never thought of hiring an external firm to do that. I would say, hey, no, we, we, we got to build this kind of subject matter expertise in, in house, right? Otherwise we're constantly dependent on somebody else and we don't really understand our customer then.
- [11:47]
A
Well and Darren, that's so funny you mentioned that because when we started SkyFi three years ago, our first offering was COE. We'll come in, we'll help you establish your OCM center of Excellence, we'll train your people, we'll help incorporate it. And there was zero interest. There was no interest because they were like, it's too complex, it's too hard, we're not interested. We just want you to come in and deliver for us. And so we kind of had to pivot to say, well how. There's so many challenges around that, how would we solve that? And, and so we came up with this resourcing model of like there's lots of people who don't want to work full time and so if we can just give them a part time contract so they can raise their kids or do volunteer work or do whatever else it is that they want to do with their life, everybody wins.
- [12:30]
B
So this is really interesting because it fits well into one of my other guests on the show where they talked, in fact their, their new episode, their episode just came out this week that we're recording and their next one is, comes out, they have two episodes back to back and they talked about future job market as being a studio portfolio type of career where I have a lot of little part time jobs And I'm specialized in certain things. So for, for this ocm, specialization is a, is a real value that I don't need a whole big staff to staff up and all the. I can hire boutique shops like you, like you guys and say hey, you know, I need someone to come help me with this aspect of it.
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A
Yeah. And for us it's the same thing. We've got, we don't call it our bench because they're not employees. We call it our roster. And you have to apply to join, you're interviewed and you know, or referred. And then we're able to go to our database and say, okay, we've got an opportunity in healthcare. They're rolling out an HR solution. Who do we have? Who's the perfect family fit? And sometimes we'll have stuff where it's like a last minute, we'll just email the roster and say who wants it? It's this many hours over this many weeks and we've never not had someone interested. So it's pretty, it's pretty cool. It's very. That is a lot of people doing it because I think it's increased risk because they could all leave and our knowledge walks out the door. But they want to be here because they like what we're building. So we haven't experienced that yet.
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B
So explain the type of personality because not everyone can do this. The type. Yeah, the type of personnel because you're dealing with humans.
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A
So for folks who are joining our team, they are generally solopreneurs. They might have other stuff going on and they're just looking to supplement their income while they're building their business. We have people who have multiple irons in the fire in terms of family or volunteer work or other things they're passionate about. I think the folks who won't thrive in this environment are folks who really want a full time team. They get their identity from work and we've had some folks join to play that role and they struggle and they don't, they don't enjoy it, they don't thrive.
- [14:48]
B
That's really interesting. So you're looking for self motivators, want to come in, help but aren't looking for full time. The camaraderie of a full time job, you know, all, all those things that, you know, some people thrive in that environment. They want a 9 to 5, sit in a cube, sit in an office, have meetings, people like that. Right. That's not.
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A
And that's. Yeah. And we do offer like if someone wants full time work, we let folks stack Contracts. It's like we'll try to get folks as many hours as they want, but it's still very fluid because you have a start date and an end date and it might be six months and there might be some overlap and there might not be. So, yeah, it's very fluid. And so anyone who. Now the challenge for change managers and project managers is we like control, we like to manage change. And so it's kind of difficult to let that go, you know, for yourself.
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B
Yeah, that's. That's an interesting dilemma. Right. Because yeah. Project Matt, I, I have a little bit of background in there and my wife will attest to that. I like to be in control of my environment. Right. I want to know what's going on. So there's a lot, there's a little bit of uncertainty there. So you, you gotta, you know, that's an interesting position.
- [16:12]
A
Yeah, it's really. Yeah. Because people don't become change managers because they're super cool and flexible and like, go with the flow. Because if you're like that, then you're like, don't manage it. Just roll it out. It's fine. Like go move fast and break things. You know, we become change managers because we want positive experiences and we don't want to like ruffle people's feathers unnecessarily. And so, yeah, that control cannot exist if you are in this. I don't call it a gig economy because these are more than Uber drivers. It is that sort of bite size contracts. But we also, because it is higher risk. It's like you're only here short term and it might be part time. The high. We pay a much higher hourly rate because we want to be the first if we call, we want you picking up the phone and we want our excellent folks to want to come back to us.
- [16:58]
B
So this fits very much into kind of the, the portfolio career.
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A
I'm excited that futurists are seeing this because this is what we're seeing.
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B
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly what they were talking about. They say they, they predict 85% of the job market will move into this space. I think that's high because there's a lot of people that I know, right. That no, I want some security in, in my job and things like that.
- [17:26]
A
Well, the biggest, the biggest challenge, aside from the sort of identifying with your employer kind of challenge is healthcare. And so for folks who don't have a spouse who works somewhere with a W2 healthcare, like, it's. That is like the biggest hurdle that folks have to kind of tackle. So, you know, I'm still trying to cook up some, and I've found some cool opportunities, like there's some, you know, medical sharing programs out there. And so it's not quite insurance, but it's, you know, at least something. Right, but that's going to consistently be our biggest challenge.
- [17:57]
B
No, I bet it is. All right, let's. Let's talk about an engagement that, that you have the sorts of things that you bump into that you, you're seeing repetitively, and then your ways of overcoming those. Those changes in. In these organizations. So do you have a category of, or have you seen a category of impediments to change that? You can stick your finger and says almost guaranteed every single time. This is one of the things I see.
- [18:30]
A
So some of the sort of consistent challenges is if you have a sponsor of the project who's never rolled out an enterprise solution before, it's very different to roll out a tool to the whole company versus just to your department. And there's a lot of politicking that needs to happen, and there's a lot of relationship building, and they don't necessarily have the experience doing that. And so once you've done it once, like, you know, a lot more the second time, but trying to help those leaders through so that they can have. They can start to pave the way for the rest of the team is pretty critical. So we really try to get in as early as we can and do some, they would call it, comms development. Like, there's been so many times we've joined a team and they're like, well, we don't have a. We don't have any messages. We've been waiting for you. We don't have any key messages. And I was like, what's in your charter? Like, I mean, happy to do that with you, but, like, you shouldn't have waited for us after you've signed contracts. You should have already had that kind of figured out. And so that sort of lack of experience and sometimes lack of maturity of the sponsor can really kind of delay some of the change work that needs to happen.
- [19:37]
B
So you, you sit in between the sponsor and the technology teams and kind of bridge that gap and say, all right, guys, you're missing this whole chasm in between because you haven't done this before. We have. This is so getting them to sit down and talk together, create a charter. These are essential things.
- [19:57]
A
Yeah. And especially because the kinds of companies that are asking for, they know they need change management Support, but they don't have internal capabilities. They generally don't have a whole lot of internal OCM experience. But they know they need it, they've heard about it, they want this to go well. They're like, this is my opportunity to impress the C suite. Like, I need this to go well. And so they, yeah, they, they don't have some of those sort of basic engagement skills yet. And they see it as sort of still tactical, like, build me a comms deck. Like, I need a comms deck. You're like, we will build that. But that's not what's actually happening here.
- [20:38]
B
So they don't even have the strategic capabilities in, in, they don't have that muscle memory because they've never done it.
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A
Right, they've never done it. And they're looking to their partners. And we've have been called in several times where partners were trying, they might have sold an OCM and they were kind of like trying to fake it because they're like, well, how hard could it be? And they got in there like, this is pretty hard actually. And so they've actually called us into basically save the day sometimes. Because clients are like, you're not giving us what we need. Because the technology partners, that's not their thing. They're like, we got the technology piece. Like, I'm not worried about how you're communicating this to your end to your users. And like, that's not really my problem. But if a client doesn't understand that, I think that's the biggest. I wish every customer knew that your partner wants shared success, but their definition of success is whatever in the sow. And what's in the sow is a go live date pushing into prod.
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B
So yeah, that's right.
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A
They don't, they care. They want you to be successful because you'll get increased usage and you'll increase, you know, you'll buy future modules. But they don't actually care if you have success after go live the way you do, where you're like, my name's on this, I need this to be successful.
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B
You know, I, I, I've seen that in projects that I've, that I've rolled out. Right. Hey, I rolled it out. It's great. Walk away. I'm working on another project.
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A
Yeah, it's like it's the tree falls and no one hears it. Did it.
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B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we didn't establish progress indicators, we didn't establish any, anything to say, well, did this technology deployment actually do anything for us?
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A
Right, right. What yeah, what does success look like here? Who do we want using the tool? Like, how will we know if we were successful? Folks don't. They aren't doing that. Very, very mature organizations are, but generally the folks we use or work with are not because they're bringing us in to help build that capacity internally.
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B
All right, so the next big question I have is how. How have you seen a generative AI affect these sorts of things?
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A
So it's, it's interesting you ask that because now content is cheap, right? It's cheap and quick to create. And some, like, clients are now like, oh, I'll just do it myself. And so we had one client that we were recommending creating kind of a video commercial for a program and had kind of like, we're working towards getting the messaging defined. And he went home on a Sunday. The CIO went home on a Sunday, downloaded a tool, built it himself, sent it to our team member and said, okay, we're good. Let's, let's move on. And we were like, well, we can't. Yeah, I guess it's done, like. And so how do we a, use AI ourselves so that we can compress that delivery timeline just of making more iterative, quicker materials? But also how can we get ahead of teams doing that? Because we still need narrative. Like, we still need a story and we still need people to buy into the story. A video that is not informed by that strategy has limited impact. It's content, but it has limited impact. And so we're starting to kind of differentiate between, like, yeah, we can do that and you can do that if you want, but there's other things we also need to be doing which is more strategic.
- [24:07]
B
Well, I like that you said that, because what this should do is free you up to focus more on the strategic things so that the generation of content can happen quicker and at a lower cost. And that means I can focus more on the things that are more important to the rollout and to the continual use of, of the tools.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think it'll really impact, like, for us because we're so small. We're like a small firm. It won't impact us that much. I think those larger firms that depend so much on the training development for, for revenue, it's going to be a shock and it's going to be a big adjustment. But one of the, one of the folks on our roster was saying he had just recently rolled out an ERP solution. They didn't even make quick reference guides or anything. They just trained folks on how to go to an AI agent, type in your question, like how to invoice. How to make an invoice. Because before you'd have to go find the document and read the document and like, yeah, yeah. And it's on demand. It's easier to maintain. He's like, we're not even making training materials anymore. So I think we're about to enter a completely different world of getting folks up to speed with what they need to know to be successful.
- [25:18]
B
Yeah, no, this will be very interesting, but I think it'll actually make you and your organization more valuable because people are going to. I, I see it already. I saw it in. I, I teach at Vanderbilt University and I encouraged my students to use Chat GPT to do computer science project.
- [25:39]
A
And because you're going to anyway, so.
- [25:41]
B
You'Re going to anyway. So yeah, I'll show you exactly how to do it.
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A
Go do it.
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B
And it was fun. It was interesting because a couple of my students went down the wrong path using Chat GPT or Gemini. They went down the wrong path and they got themselves wrapped around an axle so tight that it was a disaster for them. They, they got like a big fat zero on the, on the assignment. That can happen with this too. If they're not informed, they don't know how. What it takes to actually do a rollout, actually get, I use the word constituents, but that's, that's for government. Get stakeholders involved in buying into it. You can, you can create this beautiful campaign and all this stuff that goes absolutely nowhere.
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A
Right, Right.
- [26:31]
B
So you still need people that have done it before that understand the human aspect of this, that people aspect that we always talk about. It's non trivial.
- [26:44]
A
Yeah. And we started doing sort of future vision. Like what do consulting firms in 2030 look like and what do we have to do to get there and be ahead of the curve? And so we were pushing our team. Like you need to be using AI in your daily life. Like you need to become a, maybe not an expert, but like a super user of this tool. And we're starting to incorporate it. It's like, listen, we're just going to give some clients some stuff for free for a while even if they don't want to pay for it. We got to practice this and get the muscle memory and see what works and see what doesn't work. And it's.
- [27:14]
B
We're.
- [27:15]
A
I like, it's worth investing in those learnings even if the clients don't want to pay for it.
- [27:20]
B
Do, do you think that you can because you're small and. And mighty. Small and mighty. Right?
- [27:27]
A
Yeah.
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B
You think you'll be able to move faster than the big firms?
- [27:31]
A
Oh, yeah, because of course I kicked out. I'm a project manager. So I was like, what's our AI strategy and what's our roadmap? And then I was like, no, we need to build internal structures to get our team up to speed. And then we need to build whatever we think we can sell. And if we build it and try to sell it for a quarter and it doesn't sell, then it's out. What's the next thing in? And so we need to just have.
- [27:49]
B
A really quick iteration, you know, flexing those anti PM muscles. Because I know, like, oh, I need a Gantt chart. I need, you know, I need a matrix, you know. Yeah.
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A
Because we went down that route originally because of course that feels good to have a little color coded Gantt chart. Like, what are we going to do? And then I was like, we have no idea. We don't even know if anyone will buy. Like our entire business model changed because no one wanted to buy what we thought they needed. So let's give it a try. So, you know, we're focusing first on like videos because what we're seeing is folks don't want to read as I prefer to read, but I think I'm in the minority. So how can we create customized videos that reflect customers uis more quickly? And can we get that cost down to a place? Because generally they don't want to pay for it because it's so expensive. But if we can get our development process to a place where it's actually streamlined, they might actually want to pay for it and then they might get faster adoption. So it's kind of a win win.
- [28:45]
B
That's awesome. Hey, this has been, this has been a wonderful. I've really enjoyed talking to you, but Lindsey, we're running out of time, so I want to give you an opportunity to pitch your business a little bit. Whether you're looking for people to join or you're looking for, you know, customers. Where do they find out more, Lindsay, about you and your company?
- [29:08]
A
Yeah, we are@skyfi studios.com I'm on LinkedIn, so if people want to come, like, I'm constantly having conversations on there, so I'd love to have people join me there. Yeah, we're looking for folks who have consulting experience and are maybe looking for a different way of working. And then, you know, if there's anyone who's internal at a company who's like, yeah, we need just a little. I just need another pair of hands. I need another perspective to just help and I don't want to go through signing a year long contract and like I just need someone in here short term, part time. Like we might be a good fit. So reach out and we can, we can see how we can help out.
- [29:42]
B
Oh, this is awesome. Lindsay, thanks for coming on the show. It's, it's. I get to talk to people. People sometimes instead of tech people. Right.
- [29:51]
A
Well, it's fun to talk shop. I was like, I'm looking forward to.
- [29:54]
B
Oh, this is awesome. So hey, thanks again for coming on the show.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [30:02]
B
Thank you for listening to Embracing Digital Transformation today. If you enjoyed our podcast, give it five stars on your favorite podcasting site or YouTube channel. You can find out more information about Embracing Digital transformation@embracingdigital.org Until next time, go out and embrace the digital revolution.