(intro)

Welcome to the Business Transformation Podcast. I’m your host,Heath Gascoigne. This is a show where I cut through all the hype and noise and get to the facts of what actually is business transformation and what is required, how to and how not to do it. I’ll be talking to industry experts and professionals to share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you start, turnaround, or grow your business transformation. By the end of this podcast, we have some practical tips to use to make your business transformation a success. Whether you’re just at the start of your journey or midway through, I hope you enjoy.

(interview)

 

[00:00:00] Heath Gascoigne: Hello. My name is Heath Gascoigne, and I am the host of the business transformation podcast. And this is the show for business transformators who are part business strategists and part business designers, part collaborators, and part negotiators business transformators have moved past just business design and includes oversight of implementation of those business designs and business transformations and includes stakeholder management, coordination and negotiation.

 

[00:00:24] Heath Gascoigne: If you work in strategy, development and implementation and work to ensure that the strategy is aligned to business design and technology, then you’re probably a business transformator. This is a show where we speak to industry experts and professionals to share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you start, turn around and grow your business transformation.

 

[00:00:44] Heath Gascoigne Welcome to the Business Transformation Podcast, and in this episode we are talking to one of those industry experts. We are talking to none other than Jim Hart, solution architect. Full disclosure, Jim and I have haven’t met before. We’re connected on LinkedIn. Jim is going to be the, almost the sole representation of all stakeholders that have been on the program, on the, on the podcast so far representing technology.

 

[00:01:09] Heath Gascoigne So the no, no small ask for, for Jim. So Jim, it comes from a background of as a, a solution architect’s now filling and in a, in a role. And we’ll get into it shortly of an organization healer.

 

[00:01:28] Heath Gascoigne Okay. Jim brings over 25 years of technology, product development, and business experience to deliver measurable results through oversight and implementation of systems, process, technology, and discipline. He has the technical expertise to deliver our own hands approach and the management and al experience to lead cross-functional teams to succeed.

 

[00:01:47] Heath Gascoigne Jim’s experience as a product leader, project leader rather involves demonstrated skills in organization development, project management, training, coaching, and mentoring. Technically, he, he brings experiences in mobile technology, product development, software as a service se, technical business analysis and business process assessment.

 

[00:02:06] Heath Gascoigne Jim has filled several roles, many roles that that stretch back to the start of this century and prior to the end of the century, as current CEO of JR. Heart and. Where he has been in this role for nine years. Prior to that for 12 years. Stint at Senior Lu, l p as a senior business transformation consultant, PR practice manager, director of operations.

 

[00:02:32] Heath Gascoigne Also co-founded a product and r and d custom Apps business and director of Direct business development and Solution architect at Sea Era, and the list goes on. Jim, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you on the show. Pleasure to be here. He excellent, Excellent. Okay, so we had a, we had a quick little discussion offline before we got started.

 

[00:02:56] Heath Gascoigne Now you have just so, so for the reader’s perspective, for listeners, the audience, we are going to keep from your vast background to, to three, three points. We’re going to cover. You’ve, you’ve done the transition from a solution architect to know what you call an organization healer. We’re going to talk through that

 

[00:03:13] Heath Gascoigne And secondly the process that you follow. We had a little brief discussion about what, how businesses are currently operating or the way that they train and employee and hire and what the advantages of that are, but also its created something else. And then third industry. What is happening in the industry right now at the moment that you see that is either helping or hindering business transformation or even organizations themself, which is probably going to tie in with your organization healer, that you do something with that organization to help them in some way.

 

[00:03:44] Heath Gascoigne Okay, so take us on that journey is that you are enterprise, you are solution architect, and now you are moved into this, this other role. Yeah, so I don’t, they certainly aren’t mutually exclusive. I, I kind of, for the, for the bulk of my career, I focused on solving problems with solutions, with, with technology process.

 

[00:04:07] Jim Hart Right., Yep. And what I’ve discovered most recently, and it, and it came to me really through some personal things, is that, that people move best when they, when they can incorporate their. Right. So, what I find of course is that is that there’s tons of things in an organization that is prohibitive of them finding their why either personally or organizationally.

 

[00:04:38] Heath Gascoigne Right? The, the style of communication from executive down through the organization Yep. In most organizations, right. And especially organizations that will hire someone to help them transform their business is dysfunctional. And so as I kind of was going through really a requirements gathering for a product that was in process and, and should have already had all the requirements documented mm-hmm.

 

[00:05:03] Heath Gascoigne is that there, there’s no prioritization, there’s no why or purpose driving the things that organizations do. So that’s sort of where I started realizing like, The solution’s flying. You can tell somebody how to do something and how to solve a problem, but if you don’t change how the organization views the priorities of those things and bring this idea that that culture doesn’t come, and I’m, I’m quoting this from Steve, Steven Jenkinson of, but culture doesn’t come from our capabilities, Culture comes from our limitations.

 

[00:05:48] Jim Hart Culture doesn’t come from our capabilities, it comes from our limitations. That’s right. And that’s what has to be imposed, I think in, in organizations, in order for them to not be dysfunctional, is to realize their limitations. Right. To, to think about things up front, right? So, a lot of times if, if a, an organization calls and says, we need a new e r P system, we need new technology, the technology’s hindering us, right?

 

[00:06:16] Jim Hart I think the first thing you and I realize is that the technology isn’t hindering you. Right? You Yep. You put it in right? You configured it, customized, it did whatever you did to it. Yep. And now you’re at a place where you’re at a block and the block isn’t really the technology, the block is your organization.

 

[00:06:33] Jim Hart Right. And how you consume information. So going back to that, right? When we, when we walk in and we see that the, the first instinct is to start looking for new technology. And that’s where we really have to start of ask the organization, what is it you’re trying to do? And why? Why are you trying to do it?

 

[00:06:54] Jim Hart Yeah. What’s not working right now? Right. And this sort of gets into the process thing of getting people to address what their limitations are. What is a budget? It’s realistic for this. Right. And people will con, they’ll often say, Well, we don’t have a budget cause we don’t know what it It’ll cost. Yeah.

 

[00:07:12] Jim Hart Well, yeah, totally inappropriate, right? The budget should come from you’re making this much money. Here’s your profit margin. Here’s where you have room. Here’s what you think your efficiency gain will be. This should be your budget and you shouldn’t spend any more. And if you do, you better have justification on the backside of why that’s going to make more money at the end.

 

[00:07:33] Heath Gascoigne Right. For shareholders, for the organization, all of that. So, those kinds of questions really are about. Healing the organization. They’re not about solving the problem that the organization thinks it has. So, it’s their, the def they their default modis operandi, which I’d call in another project or another call is, is, is to always look at the problem, but actually the symptom that they think it’s the problem.

 

[00:08:05] Jim Hart And they go, okay, let’s solve that problem. So whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to step back a bit and ask what you said. What’s, what are you trying to do? Why are you trying to do it? And then the third one is about the limitations. What are limitations? And they say, I don’t have a budget. And so that, that’s a good way over, Well wait a minute, break it down.

 

[00:08:23] Jim Hart You do this man’s revenue, this much profit. If you were to replace that system on X amount of costs, that potentially is what your budget is, right? Yeah. And then again, we come back to, and, and we discussed this a little bit before, is., one of the largest problems in today’s business world, right, is that monies free.

 

[00:08:47] Jim Hart Mm. Right. This, this idea that interest rates are at 0% or have been, right? Yeah. What organizations will do is they just buy capability. They buy capacity, they capitalize it, right? Yep. And they basically shirk that they’re, they’re basically shirking profits from the shareholders. Right. If we look at their return on invested capital Yep.

 

[00:09:13] Jim Hart Every time they go out and they spend more to buy capacity or capability, the shareholders lose. So, but they don’t lose immediately. Right. Because it’s capitalized. Because it’s ta amortized over so much time that they don’t see it, because lots of people aren’t looking at like, Yep. So that’s one of the problems.

 

[00:09:38] Jim Hart And then we also discussed. The way that through current hiring practices, current lack. Right? So, so we have these innovators that come up with an idea and they start a business and they go get cash, right? But they don’t know how to manage a business. They’ve, they’ve never been trained what management looks like, and they’ve never stopped to think about the philosophy of management of what management’s job is.

 

[00:10:04] Jim Hart Right. Which is to solve problems. So they build these organizations of diffused accountability. They hire expertise at the lower levels, right? And they follow this pattern. And you’ll hear it taught in business classes that you should push accountability as low in the organization as you can. But I don’t think that’s right.

 

[00:10:26] Jim Hart I think the, the right way to approach it is to push. Responsibility. Yep. As low as you can, but accountability has to be a human, it has to be a single person right ahead of, at that level, right? That puts the responsibility of the manager director to solve problems. People in the organization raise problems up.

 

[00:10:53] Jim Hart And it’s that accountable person’s responsibility to solve those problems. That’s why they’re there. Otherwise why have management? Yep. So, listen there, just pause there for a minute, Jim, just to listen so they can pick that one up. Is there, there’s a good point there about accountability on one, one person.

 

[00:11:10] Heath Gascoigne What you see in a lot of organizations is that they have accountability or decision making by committee, right? And then, and then so who’s responsible? Well, it was that group and then so, and, and then well, who’s head’s on the line? If the shit’s the fan, who’s going to, who’s on the chopping block? No one.

 

[00:11:25] Heath Gascoigne Well, they tell you how well this is going to go shit because no one’s going to lose their job for it. Yeah. It’s everyone’s responsible and no one’s accountable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So projects go along, right? And you, you see these meetings, right? We’ve been in these meetings where someone walks in and goes, oh yeah, we’re going to be late on that.

 

[00:11:43] Jim Hart And. You know, everybody just goes, Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Right. But, oh, but again, right. We’re, we’re back to the idea that there’s, there’s no limitations, right? Mm. That somehow this is all going to work out and it, and it just drains Yeah. The organization, right? Yeah. Project after project after project. It’s just an expectation now that all projects will be underestimated and they’ll just be delivered late, and it’s okay.

 

[00:12:07] Jim Hart Yeah. Right? Yeah. But if people got fired when the project didn’t come in, if they had accountability monetarily or career wise, virtually changed, right? Yep. Yeah. I, I bang on a bit about the, the 70%, you know, depending on whose stats you look at, look at, Gartner will say 70 something. If you look at McKenzie will say something else, but they’re above and below 70% of these transformation projects fail.

 

[00:12:33] Jim Hart And to that point, yeah, they fail because no one’s held accountable. And I go, oh, we’ll just start. We’ll give it a four month call down period, and we’ll kick it off again. So, yeah, but it’s, you missed the opportunity, you wasted the budget. And in terms of equity and your investors in stakeholders, like, well, their return on investment, oh, you’re going to raise some more money.

 

[00:12:52] Jim Hart Oh, gets alluded. And don’t worry about that. We’re doing it again. It’s going to be okay. What? It’s crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I can’t tell you and, and look. As a consultant, we can only do so much, Right? We, we coach and we mentor the executives. We help them understand what’s going to happen, why change is so difficult in an organization.

 

[00:13:18] Jim Hart Mm-hmm., what their responsibility is for communication. Right. But honestly, as a consultant, we, we go so far. I mean, our process is sort of built this front end, right? This, this is what it’s going to look like. Here’s the deal. We’re not going to do an RFP because they’re dumb, they’re stupid. Right? They’re just what ways for somebody to bill you by the hour?

 

[00:13:39] Jim Hart What we’re going to do is we’re going to describe your organization. We’re going to talk about the problems in the organization for vendors to look at. We’re going to expose the risks to this project for you and the vendor, and we’re going to build Matrix that says, hey, here’s what at risk you need to address on your side, right?

 

[00:13:57] Yep. Yep. But at the end, when I don’t want to use that. Term where the rubber meets the road, but I don’t know anything else to say right now. Like when the actual execution of the project happens. A lot of our executives, even with all of our coaching and mentoring, because they don’t have an organization that enforces accountability.

 

[00:14:19] Jim Hart Yeah. They freak out and they come up with excuses of why the project can’t start. They delay the start of the project, they push, right? Yeah. They, they come up with unreasonable demands of the vendor right after the contract’s been signed. And we see this and it’s, again, it’s because their own internal organization doesn’t have an accountability structure that says you either get this done or you’re out of job.

 

[00:14:44] Jim Hart Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what your job is. Yep. Yep. So we see it all of the time. It’s, it’s crazy. Okay, so now, Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Go ahead. Yeah, so, so that, is this the problem? It’s like we are talking earlier, you said when organizations will see a problem and they, that the symptom is, ah, technology is a problem, and go, let’s go.

 

[00:15:06] Jim Hart So, so now we know the problem is no accountability. How do we get accountability? Yeah. Well there’s, there’s a whole bunch of things going on that are in the way of building good organizations and account building. So I think on a philosophical level, it is about education. It’s about training executives to understand their role in the organization and building accountability into the organizational structure.

 

[00:15:42] Jim Hart So you know, it would, it would look something like a young CEO, and when I say young, I don’t mean. Age, but I mean with company, right? Yep. Starting really a company focusing on what’s going to happen when they’re successful. Okay. So what we’ll see a lot of times is that innovative people are focused on external sales, right

 

[00:16:09] Jim Hart Yeah. Matrix market, where it comes like everything outside of the organization, right? Yep. They will hire like-minded people because they want build they want build, they want to build, right? Yep. Yep. But I think that one of the key factors for a young company is bringing in someone who has solid operational expertise.

 

[00:16:29] Jim Hart Who’s asking the question, what happens if this works? Mm-hmm., right? I mean, we’ve seen a, pets.com was such a great example, right? We’ve seen so many companies that were on the verge of having something absolutely brilliant, right? And it could have changed the world. And when they get there, they can’t operate.

 

[00:16:50] Jim Hart You know, I, I, I had an experience, I worked at a, an ad online advertising company and we built a, a statistical regression engine that could predict someone’s propensity to click on an ad, on a display ad, right? Yeah. And we used an off the shelf $10,000 piece of software and we implemented this thing and sort of built some business rules around it.

 

[00:17:17] Jim Hart And it had the pro, it had the, the capability of predicting someone’s first pen to click with a 98% confidence. Geez. Now, whoa, printing actual probability of them clicking was only a thousandth of a percent. So, 90 of the time, we knew that a thousandth of a percent of the time, someone would click on the app.

 

[00:17:45] Jim Hart Which doesn’t seem like a lot, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But on a billion ad impressions per day. Yeah. It’s a lot. Yep. So we launched this thing in the middle of the night and we were looking for clicks. Right? That’s what we were looking for. Yeah. And this engine worked so well that I think I talk about this company now because I don’t think they exist anymore.

 

[00:18:07] Jim Hart We had a campaign running for Vonage, a phone company, and they were one of the first VO phone companies. All right? Yep. And you know, we had been running the campaign for three or four months and it had a certain amount of clicks that it would deliver every month, and that’s what they were buying.

 

[00:18:22] Jim Hart Okay? Yep. When we launched this thing, it delivered all of those clicks in six seconds, that all of the clicks for an entire month. It delivered in six seconds. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It crashed all our landing page servers. Right. We had to do a make good right. Thinking upfront about what could go wrong, what could go right, right.

 

[00:18:45] Jim Hart And how that works. The biggest problem that we ended up having is that the executives in charge never thought about how to sell this product. Like how change their sales model. They ended up abandoning them. After I left the organization, they ended up abandoning this beautiful product. It was the first predictive click gathering engine out there on planet.

 

[00:19:09] Jim Hart This was in 2005 or something. Wow. Yeah. And they ended up abandoning it because they never thought, what if it works? Yeah. What are we going to do? How do we need to change our organization? Right. This is what young organizations need to do, and I think having that philosophy from the top will, will build layers of accountability into the organization because everybody understands the why Yep.

 

[00:19:36] Jim Hart Of what they’re doing. Right. They’re not hyper focused on the what and the how. Focus on the why up to the why. Why are we doing this? What’s the benefit? Who’s, who gets to win when this, when this goes, right? Okay, the why is a big one, right? Yeah. So yeah, that’s I, on the last project, last client that they had a lot of work done what they called OKRs.

 

[00:20:03] Heath Gascoigne And I get asked a lot between those two OKRs and, and I, I use one vision that breaks vision to strategies, objectives, and measures. And they say, oh, we’ve got, we’ve got the vision. I said, the vision actually is the why. That’s the why. That’s the big why. Why are you doing this? What’s in it? What’s in it for you?

 

[00:20:19] Heath Gascoigne  Then your business has got the W I F M, what’s in it for me? This is, everyone’s looking at this why to see where they can see them, their self in it. If you don’t have that and they say, Oh, we got the OKRs. So OKRs is your outcomes you want to achieve, and they are the ok. The KR part is the key results being the metric.

 

[00:20:36] Heath Gascoigne You can measure it, but why? Yeah, and they, they keep going around on the OKRs. Well, refreshing them. I said, you are missing the point though. You do know. Yeah, there is no why. Yeah. It’s, it’s put, it’s putting the horse or the cart before the horse. Yeah. The car, yeah. Beauty cart before the horse hits that.

 

[00:20:55] Jim Hart Yeah. Yeah. They I think they’re going to learn the hard way on that one, so, Okay. Yeah. So, the, the definitely the, the why first, not the, not the what and not the how, which, which must be almost a paradigm shift for innovative and young companies to go, okay, new tech, this is the how, you know why we’re doing it.

 

[00:21:13] Jim Hart Oh, the, what we’re doing it for. Because we, we got the capability. We just brought it, we got money for free, and money’s free right now, and then go, But why? Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so there’s, that’s one part you said there was the, the philosophy part, the education training, you know, and so you get the executives in the organization, you got to build, you’re building that capability in the org structure.

 

[00:21:35] Jim Hart We’re doing the not the decision by committee or yeah, decision by committee. It’s one person accountable. So that’s built in. Then the other part, you, you talked about there was the thinking upfront. The thinking upfront about, you know, if it goes well, do we have the ability to support it?

 

[00:21:54] Heath Gascoigne Yeah. No one’s thinking about that. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, you, you said decision by committee. Yeah. You know, holding one person accountable. I think that’s, I think that’s right. And I don’t want to discount the value proposition of committee, right? Mm. Yes. But what we’re losing is that what should happen in committee is debate.

 

[00:22:18] Jim Hart Right. Yeah. That’s what really should happen in committee is debate. Yeah. There should be disagreement in the organization about how and what, Right. Everyone should agree on the why they shouldn’t be there. Yeah. But on the how and the what, and it can’t. There’s lots of times where in these young organizations, right, You think about, I went to a product management, you know, conference one time, and most of it was just the same nonsense that you see at all the conferences.

 

[00:22:50] Jim Hart But this one keynote speaker, and I wish I could remember his name, he stood up and he, It was right about the time that the iPod Mini came out and he held up the iPod Mini, right? Mm-hmm. Yep. He goes, do you think. Steve Jobs or anybody at Apple asked any consumer how to improve on an MP3 player in order to come up with this or how to improve on the music industry.

 

[00:23:18] Jim Hart Hmm. And the answer was no. Right. The answer is no. There’s no way that the consumer could have fathom that. Right. I mean, for them it was, how do we make our CD players smaller? Yeah. Not, how do we put a thousand songs in my pocket? Yeah. Right. So there is benefit and we have to leave room for the brilliant house and what, Right.

 

[00:23:46] Jim Hart And we can find a why afterwards, but what We’ll we, what we’ll find a lot of times in innovative companies is they abandon or expand their why to fit the latest how, or what. Right? Yep. So, at some point you say, okay, I’m going to put a thousand songs in my pocket. Why are we doing this? Who do we sell this to?

 

[00:24:12] Jim Hart Who benefits from it? Right? Yeah. And then stop. And I think there’s a, there’s a thing to be said about inside of organizations. It is, it is almost impossible to have disruptive innovation when you have a solid cash flow product. Yep. So you think about what happened with the iPod, right? And it just sort of got smaller and bigger, you know, bigger past, smaller size.

 

[00:24:41] Jim Hart Right. And, and there was from Apple, there was, there wasn’t really any big, big disruption after that. I mean, the iPhone was sort of a separate product, right? And sort of consumed that product. But you have to realize that that disruptive innovation is cannibalistic to an existing cash flow product. So, follow that back to saying like, once you discover that, why, like, you got to stick with it or you got to figure out how to change it at some point and, and you start with that.

 

[00:25:12] Jim Hart Mm-hmm. The start. The start and the end of the why is the why. Yeah. Yep. Okay. The yeah, I, yeah, the why wise message. But so, you point there around that companies can start with the, the what and the how and to work and then say, okay, this is the why. And then, and, and then refresh, update. And for really truly disruptive innovation is when they have this, a big why, but also you the hell is, you know, the product works, it does what it needs to do, but there’s cash flow behind it.

 

[00:25:44] Jim Hart Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Now we talked about, well, that was a, that was on the, the building accountability. Now what about. You know, good go between the, the three, three points there in terms of the industry, you know, like in terms of consultants who, there’s probably particular companies that call in consultants and those companies are in a certain state of health, if you like, and probably some history that they have with consultants.

 

[00:26:16] Jim Hart So they’re familiar with what they think they can get from consultants, but that also encourages, I don’t know what you call it, maybe a crutch that they have now. Don’t want to make certain decisions themselves, or in some cases what the senior executives will do. They don’t want to make a decision. They’ll bring us some consultants to make the decision or say it’s their decision, but truly they would just didn’t want to say it themselves and blame the consultants.

 

[00:26:38] Heath Gascoigne So what is, what’s industry doing well? Is it helping with the, with the companies, companies trying to transform? Are they creating a void? It’s kind of a mess. Honestly. So I think there’s, there’s a few things, right? So, I’m going to say that the, the billable hour model, right? Yep. The billable hour model Yeah.

 

[00:27:03] Jim Hart Yeah. Is, is, is super detrimental to organizations being efficient and I mean, our clients, right? So if we’re, if, if we’re billing for effort, whether it’s through some level of C that grants us that capability, or if it’s just because that’s how we’ve always done it, right? Yeah. This idea that somehow someone would pay for effort or activity Yes.

 

[00:27:32] Jim Hart Instead of results is inappropriate, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s a good one. That one it is, It is almost like, Like I, when I go into projects and I see, look, they’re not managing risks very well and I go, you know, the reasons why. There seems to be you’re going to have either no risk meeting at the start of the program.

 

[00:27:50] Heath Gascoigne And, and then people will get this impression that I’ve now dumped 200 risks in the raid log and Jesus Christ, I hope I never have another meeting like that can get my two hours back in my life. That I’ll then I’ve now lost and that now that I have logged it, I’ve ac recorded it as now managed. No, you’ve just dumped them in a raid log with someone else’s name on it who probably doesn’t even know about it, and then hello two months later, boom.

 

[00:28:16] Jim Hart That raid is now an issue because no one, the risk is that issue because no one wanted to manage it and go, you know, if, if these consultants were managed their risks better and they didn’t have, you know, the time and the delays didn’t happen, you know, and you are rewarded on outcome as opposed to process or activity.

 

[00:28:34] Jim Hart Some of these projects might actually be successful. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that there’s a, there’s a whole bunch of projects that where the consultancy themselves become a problem, right? Mm-hmm., they become, but they have every incentive to do so. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So again, unless you tie a successful outcome to some piece of accountability for the consulting organization, Right.

 

[00:29:04] Jim Hart  And, and look, there’s exceptions to this as well, right? If, if, if a consultant is there to be a coach and a mentor, Right. An advisor, that’s all. Yeah. Then that’s, I mean, I think that’s good, right? I think for, for executives who don’t have it, to look for experience outside Right. To have it, if they’re not getting it from their board of directors to, to bring a consultancy in, but still, right.

 

[00:29:33] Jim Hart  The arrangement should be such that it’s like a subscription arrangement, right? So it’s a, you know, a flat fee per month and you get, you can limit the hours right up to this many hours or something. But the, the whole idea that somehow the effort as opposed to, cause then, then what you’re really paying for is you’re paying for knowledge.

 

[00:29:54] Jim Hart You’re paying for, right? Yeah. For, for guidance, right? And then so, but, but even when you go see you know, a psychologist nowadays, right? It’s a flat fee. They don’t, they don’t charge by the minute or by the hour, the flat fee, right? This is what a session costs and it could be 40 minutes or it could be two hours, but this is what it costs and we all should be looking at that relationship as if we, if we don’t understand the value proposition of it.

 

[00:30:30] Jim Hart  We should get comfortable with that, that the value is the knowledge and the experience that a consultant can bring right? From their past endeavors that can help you get somewhere faster, right? Yeah. More efficiently. Is it, That’s the key one there faster when you are rewarded on time and materials, there’s no incentive to do it faster?

 

[00:30:56] Jim Hart No, there’s not, in fact, every incentive to be opposite, right? Yeah. Yeah. I told you a little story before that I always loved to tell people. Yep. You know that I had a client and she called me up and she wanted me to do something, and she asked, What’s your rate? And I told her, I, I don’t, I don’t have a rate.

 

[00:31:16] Jim Hart But this project seems like $1,200. And she said, Well, What if you do it in an hour? And I said, well, then it’ll be $1,500. Yeah. And she just laughed. But she got it. All of a sudden, she’s like, I’m like, you want the answer to this question? And the faster that you get it, the sooner you can move on. Yeah.

 

[00:31:37] Jim Hart So I won’t charge you the extra 300. If it only takes an hour, I’ll just, I’ll give it to you for the flat rate. Yeah. But it’s, it’s, it’s interesting the way that, that the world and business sees effort as value. Right. And it, and it’s, it comes down to this, the, it’s the same thing when we go down into the organization and we start looking at production lines, Right.

 

[00:32:04] Jim Hart That everybody on the line is getting paid by the hour. Right. And their role is to do what they’re told. They’re, they’re not supposed to solve problems. Yep. No. Think you Right. Because they’re getting paid by the hour to do what it is. The supervisor, however, right. That’s a salary person, supervisor, manager, and that person is there to solve problems to make sure that all of the people on the line can do what they’re supposed to do at the rate they’re supposed to do there.

 

[00:32:32] Jim Hart Right? Yep. There are no problems with the machinery. There’s no problems with the organization. There’s no problems with the workflow, The scheduling. Like that’s why you have management. Yeah. They’re accountable for that. Yeah. That’s a, That’s a good one there. Yeah. The I like that, that’s helping with when you’re talking about organization design and organization structure and having your roles and responsibilities and span of control and how much, you know, autonomy, the low decision making versus complex decision making.

 

[00:33:03] Jim Hart Do you need to have more managers, or they have the autonomy to, you know, work cause their experience and cause of that experience is going to cost you. And so, well, I don’t want to pay for it then. So, okay, you’re going to get limited skill set. They’re going to have, need more of these people and that, that’s the that’s really.

 

[00:33:18] Heath Gascoigne When you’re talking in organization design, if you want to have, and then we’re going to talk, use the comparison with consulting businesses who, their model is billable hours and they have, which, you know, I’m not sure where I originally saw this about the, the, the finders, minders and grinders model and the, the, you know, the finder.

 

[00:33:38] Heath Gascoigne  He’s, he’s, he’s the one that. Goes around the business, looks for work. The minders, they mind the grinders. The grinders do the, the, the work. They’re the specialists. They’re almost the experts that they, they, they can do only one thing. They might be good at process mapping or, you know, some particular part of their project life cycle.

 

[00:33:57] Heath Gascoigne But they can only do that one thing. You take them out of that, they’re like, fish out of water. They’re useless. Right? And then, yeah, so then you get the mount minders who mind the grinders, and then the, the finders, their role is to go and find the work now. And, and you got a special kind of finder, the face man finder.

 

[00:34:11] Heath Gascoigne And their role is to go around now, actually, they turn up on the end of the project, they change one word and the presentation change one word. Take all the credit for the work.

 

[00:34:23] Jim Hart As long as they’re bringing it, and I don’t have to chase the money, I don’t mind that so much. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that, that model there of the in organization design is that, you know, that’s bottom heavy. And that’s where, you know, it’s going to, and in terms of billable hours, those are the guys that are really clocking up the hours.

 

[00:34:40] Jim Hart Yeah. But that, Yeah. Yeah. And then, right. So really what we have is, is a problem with education on the purchaser side, right? I mean, these organizations are just responding, right? The, the, the big foreigners, they’re just responding to what the world is sort of asking for. And again, it comes back to the idea that in the world, The only organizations that hire we consultants are dysfunctional.

 

[00:35:05] Jim Hart Yes. They were functional organizations. They would be able to make decisions on their own. So, because of that Right. They’re asking for someone to come take accountability away from them, to diffuse their accountability. Yeah. And in that process, they’re perfectly willing to pay for effort because they’re not really looking to solve the problem because they’re not accountable for it at the end of the day.

 

[00:35:30] Jim Hart Right. They’re going to blame someone else that kicked and down the road. Right. Yeah. And you know, I wish, I wish like hell in our, our p. Trump didn’t ruin this expression for us, but, but good consultants. Our job is to drain the swamp and expose the rocks Expos problems, right? Ah, yes. That is a, that, that is a, that is a good one.

 

[00:35:52] Jim Hart Look, I’ve on a, not yeah. Recent project on a quite a, quite a big one is there’re going to be a, a very big organization transformation and they had just prior toing this project had just let go of, let go San a third of the organization. And so I’m coming up with the business and with the project guys, the future operating model.

 

[00:36:12] Jim Hart And that part of that model includes building back the staff that they got rid of and they were saying, Hey, you can’t do that. And I said, Why not? I said, they just got rid of a third of the staff. And I said, Okay, we had a vision, our why, and it said they wanted to do this and said, Yeah, they need to build the capability in the capacity and they can’t really don’t have it on the, And I said, You can’t do talk about that because they just let go a third, a third of the staff.

 

[00:36:38] Jim Hart I said, I know these conversations are going to be difficult, but they need to be set. Yeah. If we don’t say it, no one’s going to say that, you know, this is, it’s going to be there, ah, the classic consultant model of, well, it worked when we gave it to you,

 

[00:36:58] Jim Hart Yes. Yeah, yeah. It was just fine. We put it there. Yeah. Yeah. So technology is the same Right? As, as consultants. Right. It is a great scapegoat. It is a great, so if we have these organizations right, where you have diffused accountability, there’s a whole bunch of people that hide in these organizations.

 

[00:37:19] Jim Hart Mm. Nice. Yeah. And one of the best things to hide behind is technology. Right. I mean, you can get dogmatic about process and do it, and you have to have your t p report with the fax cover sheet and all that, right? But, but the technology one, my systems can’t do it. Or, you know, there’s just, there’s no way that that we can get that report or that data, because our technology systems doesn’t, That’s, that’s not, I mean, that’s not real, right?

 

[00:37:49] Jim Hart I mean, the, the stuff that, that we’re doing right now, there’s, there’s no new magic, right? Even in the AI world, right? We’re asking the same questions that we’ve always asked. How do we get more business, right? How do I more, how do I become more efficient? The same questions, right? People used to do this on paper all the time, so the only thing that the technology does, if it’s designed correctly is make this stuff happen faster and make it so we can do it with less people.

 

[00:38:22] Jim Hart Right. So if you think about that motivation, one of the big problems is, is that everybody knows that if technology gets good and works Yeah. Maybe they don’t have a job. Yes. That’s it. So these projects start out with all these blockers from the get go. And if you’re not addressing that up front, if you’re not taking the why down into the organization, and again, having these hard conversations, I mean, you’re talking about, and I, the one that I always am amazed at is that as a consultant, when you come in and you say, Hey, you know, you’ve got three too many people on staff, you need to do a RIF or go find more sales.

 

[00:39:00] Jim Hart You know? Yeah. If you can go find more sales, we can keep, but you need to do a riff. And you’ll typically see me, middle managers shirk at the responsibility of deciding who they should riff. Yeah. Yeah. And they’ll say, well, we’ll let, we’ll let atrophy do it. We’ll let attrition do it. Yeah. And you’re like, Hey.

 

[00:39:22] Jim Hart You’re going to lose your best people. Yeah. Yeah. That’s who’s going to go, right? Yep. Cause they can’t. Yeah. You’re going to lose your best people. That’s who’s going to go first. So don’t, don’t do that. Incentivizes them to stay and get rid of the fluff. Yeah. But those are hard conversations. Right. And in today’s world of diffused accountability, gosh, I mean, having those conversations, it’s taboo.

 

[00:39:52] Jim Hart Oh, yes. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Taboo. Yeah. We got to fix that. Yeah. That that’s, yeah. That, that’s a, that’s a real good one. That those, those conversations, I think I think, you know, probably to my detriment. Not too many times, but at least twice that I have said, you know, politically correctly. But what they, what they needed to hear, they ended up resulting in the end of the program.

 

[00:40:25] Jim Hart Cause that was, that would would’ve been the, the, the, the, what did you call it? The spoken, the forks. Okay. This is, this really is the, the telling factor that this thing should not go ahead. And had I been of a different moral and ethical dilemma than, you know, would’ve, you know, allowed the thing to carry on and, and happy days.

 

[00:40:43] Heath Gascoigne But yeah, those conversations, those are, those are necessary. But yeah, it’s, I think that’s partly also. When I talk about the skill of the business, trouble is, you know, they say, Oh, business designs and all designs. Yeah. There’s what you’re talking about the structural technical changes, right? There’s, there are people, process, technology and data.

 

[00:41:04] Jim Hart So you were talking about really the process, technology and data, the technical heart stuff, this people stuff Here, you seem to be dismissive of it or you think about it last and like that one there okay. Natural attrition like this other client. So we let go a third of the staff and so we’re doing all this discovery work and say, and even the, the people who are there, and there’s a few of them that they’re quite senior, well experienced, have this built in tacit knowledge of it many, many years and say, Oh, we used to have these good guys.

 

[00:41:30] Jim Hart Yeah, And I was like, and they’re like, they’re looking in the sky if, oh, you’re the good. And I said, what happened to ‘them all? Well, they left and well, you know, we let them go. They got the, had been here too long. That was the, that the, the payout for the pension’s going to be huge. So, we had like, and now they’re going, oh yeah, now we’re struggling, like, everything now.

 

[00:41:50] Jim Hart And, and they’re trying to get them back so they’re not coming back, mate. And so, yeah. And look, the, that little manager that, that made those decisions, whether it was through absolution or, you know, they just sort of absolve themselves of it and let it happen, or like those, those people have lost sight of the why Yeah.

 

[00:42:12] Jim Hart To bring it back around. Right. They’ve lost sight of the why. Right. Which is, you know, I mean, when you have somebody who, who comes to work to get a, a paycheck. Right. We, we have to understand that that’s real. But those aren’t the people we want for managers for super. We want people who understand the why.

 

[00:42:31] Heath Gascoigne Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. With this some, another client there, when you talked about the RFP earlier, the on the first, first thing they did on this project went straight to RFP before Discovery said, Oh, we know what we want. Said, Oh yeah, okay. And so off they go to RFP and then I said, No, no. Okay. There’s a process to this and one of the first things we’re going to do is the vision.

 

[00:42:51] Heath Gascoigne And they said, and then so PMO decide they’re going to create the vision for the, for the business. I said, and they say, Okay, so the education process, right? And it’s like, No, no. What, when we create the vision, we’re going to create it collaboratively, co-create with the business themselves. And then they go, No, no, no.

 

[00:43:07] Jim Hart We know what it is. I said, I’ll tell you what, if you do that, you are not going to bring them along the, the journey with you. And I think from what I’ve learned so far that you talk about your success is because of your people. If you don’t bring your people along with you right now, what you, you are going to lose them.

 

[00:43:24] Jim Hart And so that’s what you said is like, Yeah, you’re going to lose the good ones, the ones you don’t want to lose. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll carry it. So the, for the audience’s perspective, Jim is on the other side and, and another continent. This is, and I, I’m in the UK here, and so, you know, I, I get a lot of emails and, and messages and you see the, the comment on YouTube to say, Oh, but this is different for the us or what’s in the us and as well, no, it’s not

 

[00:43:49] Jim Hart This is a symptom of the, of, of management, of organization design of transformations that they are, you know, if you keep, But I, I sometimes pick on technology about, you know, technology will come in with the technology lens on and everything. They’ll look at every problem and go, Yeah, it’s a technology problem.

 

[00:44:05] Jim Hart It’s therefore needs to be solved with technology. You say, Well, no. So it’s like, okay, here’s a problem here that we have that accountability seems to be an issue. We’re trying to solve it by bringing in consultants, not building internal capability or capacity, throwing, throwing more money in people at the, the, the problem.

 

[00:44:25] Jim Hart And we’re still getting the same result. If you continue doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result, that is the definition of insanity. Yeah. What was her name that said that? So is attributed with it. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s it’s, well, it’s, yeah, it, it, it’s no longer considered insanity when it is at an organizational level and including our own governments, Right, who are continuing, like, they just do, they do it all the time.

 

[00:44:56] Jim Hart I mean, you think about how they responded to the things here. So, so the problem, like this philosophical problem is endemic in the world today, right? There’s very few places where, where accountability for your own way in the world is taken seriously. Yeah. So that’s sort of where I come back to this idea of organizational healer is that, you know, that’s sort of living that way in the world is a goal of mine and I help.

 

[00:45:32] Jim Hart As I’m having conversations inside of the organization, I start to realize that I’m having the same conversations that I have with myself and others about how to live. Yeah. It’s not a lot different, right? Mm. It’s about being responsible and being willing to accept the consequences for the things that you take on responsibility for, right?

 

[00:45:55] Jim Hart Is how you create good decision makers, because a bad decision is inevitable. Yep. We make them every day. Right? But willing to be accountable to take on the consequences of that decision and either rectify it or live with it. That’s, that’s the accountability that we’re looking for inside of the organization, and that’s sort of where I came up with this organizational healer title.

 

[00:46:26] Jim Hart All right. Well, yeah, so then I like it so. The you are essentially treating in which I talk about what people are naturally change averse, change averse as an individual. When you put individuals together collectively, particularly in an environment where you have this structure and norms and culture, then you, you are trying to change these group of people.

 

[00:46:50] Jim Hart You are talking about a different paradigm now. It, you thought one person trying to change was an issue. How about changing a group of people? And so you were looking at you see an organization is essentially like a person. Yeah. I mean, so remember that we, we humans, right? We, we have two parts to ourselves, right?

 

[00:47:09] Jim Hart We’ve got this animal part and then we’ve got this spiritual part where we sort of think we’re god’s because we have a capacity that contemplate our own death and consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Proactive way. Right? And so, but all we are is an organization of cells. An organization of other organisms, right?

 

[00:47:28] Jim Hart All of our macrobacteria and all of our cells that are reproducing through mitosis. We’re just an organization and it just gets bigger right as we move out. So Yes, that’s exactly right, is as I think about how one person would behave and sort of think the organization has the capacity to behave in all of those interesting ways as well.

 

[00:47:51] Jim Hart Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, there’s, there’s, I, I and this is for the, for, for the, the listeners perspective, because you come from a product, a technical background. Mm-hmm. a, a technical background, both product design, product development, and solution architect. So quite, you know, quite technical, hard structure. Just say training and, and background and, and now you are thinking more, I don’t know if it’s holistic or the, the, when you talked about the people thought, consciousness and, and spiritual side.

 

[00:48:22] Jim Hart So more or now as an organizational healer, not just these people the process technology and data elements of organization, but the, the people, their behaviors, their motivations you know, finding what motivates them. All those different elements about management, leadership making accountable responsible.

 

[00:48:41] Jim Hart So this is you’d look, you, you, this is a paradigm shift I think for a lot of technology guys that would see a solution. Like they’ll go, no, it’s, you know, what sort of tech, what the tech stack are we going to have here? What’s the latest technology? And you, and you, and you are going, Whoa. Hold, hold on guys, hold on, hold up here.

 

[00:48:58] Jim Hart So this is so for guys and, and your say genre position that have come from technology that are now maybe seen lots of things like you of a long career and, you know, turn of the century and, and technology and now in this space where you are. Going. Okay. Okay guys, if you want to follow my route that now I’m now facing.

 

[00:49:19] Jim Hart Because you are going to, like you’ve said earlier about a lot of these projects, there’s the similar kind of symptoms, similar kind of behavior that’s led to this point, and they’re banging on change the technology. You know what, if you do that, it’s basically putting a plaster on this problem every single time.

 

[00:49:34] Jim Hart And it’s going to be 2005, we’re going to do it 2017, 15, 20, 22, 30, 40, same problems. And you, you, you’re getting incrementally marginally little improvements. Not transformation, but little improvements maybe at the dip here and there, but you’re not really learning and growing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then to, to further exacerbate that problem, the decision now of which technology to use.

 

[00:50:00] Jim Hart So if you, if we, if we talk about EIP mm-hmm. is almost like because most of the products out there. are working toward ubiquity in terms of the relationship between the customer, the product, the manufacturing, the distribution. Mm-hmm. and the finance, like they can all do it. Right? But we’re talking about flavor.

 

[00:50:31] Jim Hart So we’re, we’re now really saying if I am a food, You know, if, if I’m in the, in the business of producing food, that somehow there’s a huge difference between chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Hmm. No, there’s not. It’s preference, right? Yeah. There’s a huge difference between ice cream and say an apple.

 

[00:50:56] Jim Hart Yeah. But not really. If you think about in, in terms of calories and protein. Yep. Right. What do you can carbs, fats, Right. Again, we’re just talking about sus thing. The technology’s becoming the same where everything can kind of do everything. Yeah. Right. And you don’t need technologists anymore. It’s all in the cloud.

 

[00:51:18] Jim Hart Yeah. Yeah. Right. All you need to do is have somebody make sure that your network’s secure and that when you are doing things and processing information, it’s secure, it’s fast, it’s redundant. How do we back it up? How do we, So the technology piece of it. Like being able to hide behind that is going to go away.

 

[00:51:39] Jim Hart Mm-hmm., right? I mean it’s, it’s, it’s already happening. So, for, as a technologist, right? You, you sort of have to sort of stop and sit back and say, why are these organizations having this problem? It’s not because they don’t have the right ERP. Right? If they can’t do MRP manufacturing resource planning, it’s not because they don’t have the right e r P system.

 

[00:52:03] Jim Hart It’s because nobody ever asked the questions to decide how they were going to do Mr. P because they could do it on paper. It’s just math. Yep. So no one taught them? Well, they haven’t learned it yet. And that will probably be some consultants that wouldn’t want to teach them. . . Well, as long as like, and, and so more than anywhere else.

 

[00:52:29] Jim Hart We consultants should start our pitch with my job is to work myself out of a job. Oh. Job is to help you get to a place where you can do this on your own. And it’s not just this thing. Like you have to realize that it’s not just this thing that I have to teach you, but if you’re already asking me this question, I know that you’re dysfunctional.

 

[00:52:51] Jim Hart I need to teach all these people up here. Yeah. How to ask the right questions. Yeah. Teach to decisions. Yeah. And then that the what, back to the, that the top of the hour we talked about. Yeah. Was the thing that’s lacking is that, that the ability to make decisions. Yeah. Okay. So, Alrighty. I like what you said there about my workers to, to get myself out of this job.

 

[00:53:18] Jim Hart That, that is, yeah. Your job is to get yourself out of this job. You know, I, I take that approach too, and I think it’s almost, for some clients it’s like, did he actually really say that? Yeah. Like, yeah. So, you are sure. So, you know, like I, I quite like going in and making an impact and seeing how quick I can leave and leave them with the capability and now I can go do something else and go do another one.

 

[00:53:39] Jim Hart I, I really like that. And then I’ve, I’ve been back to a couple of clients who call me for a drink and walk into the bar and they come and kiss and hug me and they go, You guys are right. I said, oh, our life is so different now. It’s going. Yeah. That’s what I like. Cause and I go, there was one, there was one time I did this, quite a big program that at, I had to do the presentation to the sponsor of the approach that was already approved by the program manager and program director.

 

[00:53:59] Heath Gascoigne And they, I had to go to the sponsor and the sponsor said for the, the directors and manager said, you got to take it to the board now for approval. And I got to, we got to get the sponsor signed off all it. Okay? And so I went in there and gave the pitch and he said, Okay, he, I understand your six step process.

 

[00:54:15] Heath Gascoigne I sudden understand everything about it, but I want you to start at number five. And I said, I said, Okay, you want me to start at the end basically? And he, I said, so you want me to do exactly what the last two guys have done before and this year? He goes, Yeah. And I said, Okay, so if you give me 20 minutes, I’ll come back with that.

 

[00:54:34] Heath Gascoigne He like, I’m going to get, I’m going to go get out of the drawer, you know, exactly the same thing. Yeah. I’m going to save you all this time. We’re going to, you know, and you’ll give it back to you. And he goes, Well, no. He says, Hey look, there’s 53 entities around the business and around the country. And they do this, the same process 53 different times.

 

[00:54:51] Heath Gascoigne And I said, Great. Just give me one. We’ll just call that the baseline and it’ll be some, it’ll be, you know, above the way the, the aspiration to where they want to work, and others is going to be best practice. And we’re going to call that best practice. And so we end up delivering the project. Took nine months and I came back to the board and, and did, presented the, the Target operating model, the roadmap.

 

[00:55:10] Heath Gascoigne And he goes, He, I’m going to take it. And minute 10 minute take is there. He asked the, the minute taker, pause the meeting, he said, I want to make a special mention. I want to get this recorded. Heh, I want to thank you for a job well done. You did what? You asked you, you first, you gave us the time and the, in the roadmap, but you did the unthinkable.

 

[00:55:27] Heath Gascoigne And I said, What’s that? He goes, you documented the undocumented business. And I said, Oh. I said, well, thank you, thank you. But I, I did, I said the beginning, I had an approach, but I didn’t have the knowledge that your people. You know, the people, the people, your people in the business had the knowledge. And I said, I’ll give you, I’ll do the approach, but I need the, I need the people.

 

[00:55:43] Heath Gascoigne And you sed them to the projects for that. I thank you. And it was them, those, your own people who did this work. It wasn’t me. I taught them how to go do it. And they went around the country, did the facilitation. I said, this is where the, this is what you’ve now built, the muscle these guys have got. And I said, that’s what I said from the beginning, that when I walk away, you guys will have the ability to do it yourself.

 

[00:56:05] Heath Gascoigne And he is like, He’s got to be kidding. I was going, yeah, I was going, No, mate. No. So that you guys, that’s I think the role, as you said, that’s the role of the consultant should be right. As to, yeah. Bang on, bang on. Okay. So Jim, we might wrap it up there. I think, how did we go? We, we covered our three points.

 

[00:56:27] Heath Gascoigne We did. Okay. I wouldn’t want to, Yeah, so geez, that’s a lot for me to wrap up. I was taking notes the whole time. If you saw my head, my head down. So just quickly, if I can summarize. So we, we were, we’re going, we were discussing our three points. There being your role and journey from the architect, the process you follow, what’s happening in the industry right now?

 

[00:56:47] Heath Gascoigne We covered it and, and, and bits and pieces, but there is initially it is a bit of a symptom of maybe consultants themselves have, have not been helpful. That they have created a crutch in, in of companies where, in companies themselves have now by default will go look at a problem, treat that problem as the actual problem.

 

[00:57:06] Heath Gascoigne But that’s the symptom, not asking the questions. You talked about the, the, the why being a major priority. It’s a probably a, a lack of focus. They, everyone’s got probably down now, down there. The what and the what, what the hell. But taking less time about understanding the why. And you talked about everyone in the organization might not agree on the what and the how, but if they don’t agree on the why they shouldn’t be there.

 

[00:57:31] Heath Gascoigne Yep. Yep. Okay. There’s So yeah. What’d you say? So, ask the, Yeah, they might have the first thing that you do is you ask about the what? Ask them the why, and then ask them about the limitations. Yep. Yeah. I think that limitation is the key one. I think that’s the one that’s probably missing. Yeah, I think, I think that there’s, that’s right.

 

[00:57:54] Heath Gascoigne That that, that they, there isn’t anybody, when you, when you ask that question, you get back done like stares. Yeah, yeah. It’s the, it’s the, it’s the, what do they call it? One, the, the, the, the fluoride. The fluorides there. Yeah. Okay. So, you got to ask, you know, there’s, I think it’s, it’s almost like the like I, you know, one of the previous clients would say, I’ll pick on safe here for a minute.

 

[00:58:17] Jim Hart And they’ll go, it’s used over there. And it’s used over. And I’d say, Okay, that’s good, yeah. So how are we going to use it here? It’s like, and so the, the business will say, but it’s the with the choose, I said, Yeah, you guys are, you’re not asking the right question. You, you, you are, you are stopping with the range of questions you should ask.

 

[00:58:37] Heath Gascoigne The first, you say the, what, what do you want to do and why you want to do it, and what’s the limitations of you doing it? Oh, we don’t have the budget. You sure you don’t have the budget? Let’s have a look at that. So, like, you got to ask the right questions. Yeah. They’re not asking the right questions. Yep.

 

[00:58:50] Heath Gascoigne Okay. So the largest yeah, the, the biggest problem, one of the biggest problems in, in the market right now, and is that money is for free. Yeah. Yeah. And if money being frees changing, right? I mean that’s, that’s changing as we speak. Yeah. Right. Interest rates are starting to decline. Advice is starting to climb.

 

[00:59:07] Heath Gascoigne What we, what we. What we will likely see out of that is companies panicking, right? And bringing in big four type firms to look for efficiencies. Yep. I, I suspect that’s, that’s next on the agenda. You know, and I, I think what will happen with that is, and I pick on big four here for a second, is that they are good at optimization, but the optimization also comes at a cost that were optimized to the absolute tilt at a cost of something.

 

[00:59:41] Jim Hart And that cost is usually custom experience. Well, so look, I, I, I don’t know how much time we have, but this is, this is a huge other point, right? Is that if, let’s use an automobile as an analogy, right? And I’m just, I’m making this up off the cuff, so if I mess it up, I apologize. But if we take the automobile right and.

 

[01:00:05] Jim Hart We optimize the transmission. Mm-hmm., right? We basically make it so that the transmission is so efficient that there’s little to no slip, right? Yep. And we have a gear ratio in there that’s optimized for fuel efficiency, right? Mm-hmm. So there’s little to no slip of work, thinking about fuel efficiency, right?

 

[01:00:28] Jim Hart And then if we haven’t also thought about the tires, right? And the engine we’re in big trouble. Cause now there’s no room for flex. If that engine doesn’t have enough horsepower to drive those gears, the transmission’s not going to slip and let it, There’s no anymore, right? Mm-hmm Yep. The tires are shot.

 

[01:00:50] Jim Hart All of our efficiency is for not, right? Yeah. Because, well, this is the same thing that’s true for businesses. If you optimize in the middle, if you optimize manufacturing without considering supply and demand in reality, Right? Yep. You’re lost, like you’re lost. You can be as efficient as you want in the middle, but if you are not timing that to what the actual demand for your product is, right.

 

[01:01:17] Jim Hart On a forecast basis, and then tuning that to what the output and what your capacity is, you’re still lost because now you are efficient here, but there’s still going to be waste on these things. Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. There, there is no demand, and you can’t, you, you might have the demand, you can’t meet the supply or other way around.

 

[01:01:37] Jim Hart You don’t have the ability, you’re efficient at the front, but you’ve got no business coming in the front door. Yeah. You, you, so you’ve got to write your check somewhere. So, if you’re going to increase efficiency, right, you have to go in with the knowledge and the message that you are either going to increase efficiency in order to increase your sales, your demand, or.

 

[01:02:04] Jim Hart You’re going to rationalize the business somewhere. RIFs closure, plant closures somewhere, right? If you make this more efficient, you’re going to have excess somewhere and you’ve got to get rid of it in order to actually make it, in order to realize your efficiency. Okay? So, the optimization question is there’s going to be at some waste at some point in time, so you need to, like you said earlier about ask the question early, that these questions are.

 

[01:02:35] Jim Hart So, so then, then if there’s going to be really, it’s like these, that safe example, they say what it works is we could be smart about that question. How does it work here? So, well, it’s going to be inefficiencies. Okay. What sort of inefficiencies? Well, you just optimize the middle supply demand is going to be impacted in some way.

 

[01:02:55] Jim Hart If you’ve got that. Okay, then you’re, you’re right. If you think of things in, in terms of systems, then you, you might be okay, but don’t look things in isolation. Yep, yep. Okay. So we, we get to the largest of the biggest problem right now was money, but as you said that it’s changing the organizations we’re buying in, so they’re buying in capability, buying in capacity, but that, that part there about management and accountability is still the, the big.

 

[01:03:24] Heath Gascoigne And that’s where we got into the conversation about pushing down an organization. Accountability, but that’s wrong. Should be pushing down responsibility, accountability. And we took that about that as there. And then you talk rightly about accountability is with one person, not decision by committee.

 

[01:03:41] Heath Gascoigne Committees have a role. So be clearer. The role, the role of committee is debate. Yep. Not, not decision making. That’s, that’s I think the part where, Yeah, all the organizations get caught up. So, And that’s the accountability part. They want to put one person’s head on the block, so No, you put one person’s head on the block, and you see, you see results.

 

[01:04:02] Heath Gascoigne Yep. You don’t put one person’s on, you put everyone’s head on the block. No one’s head’s getting on the block. That’s right. And then, and then there’s the 70%, Yeah., who was it, that guy? Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s, I’ve seen that with requirements. And so, who’s, who’s the owner? Well, the group, the business is on authority.

 

[01:04:21] Heath Gascoigne No one person. Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. I, I look at that and they go, okay, we’re going to get a few, you know, we’re going to get the house in order here. And that is one person. Okay. What else we talk about there? Everyone’s responsible. No one, No one’s, but no one’s accountable. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Focus on young organizations.

 

[01:04:41] Heath Gascoigne They got to, they want to focus on, and that’s what they do. They bring it externally. They focus on external environmental market share innovation, but their internal side of it about this accountability side seems to be missing. Yep. Yep. Okay. And what do we say? The thinking up front, which isn’t done the organizations, you should focus on the why not the what, nor the hell.

 

[01:05:09] Heath Gascoigne Yes. Put the cart before the horse that we took discussed about the committee that committee’s role as the role of debate, not decision. Everyone can agree on the why. They may not agree on the, what the hell, but everyone needs to agree on the why. We talked about the example there of the iPad, about the consumer.

 

[01:05:26] Heath Gascoigne Did they ask the consumer? No, probably not. But what the outcome was that they had an amazing product because the why was, Well, I’ve now got from a perspective, from a client’s perspective or consumer. They’ve got 10,000 thousand songs in their back pocket from technology. Guy goes, we’ve just put a 10-gig storage in his back pocket.

 

[01:05:47] Jim Hart right? Yeah, yeah. No interest to the, that there is no interest to the consumer. Yeah, the industry problems right now were Was the bus, the billable hours model? Yeah. That is not, that is not helping. And so from a consultant’s perspective, it is that the, what’s the value proposition is not clearly understood.

 

[01:06:08] Heath Gascoigne The, the, the client thinks that they want effort, but they want act what they actually want as a result. And they’re willing to pay for effort because that part there is that, that part of that confusion around accountability. They’re quite happy for the, the, the thing to take a long time because they no longer, they’re not accountable for it.

 

[01:06:27] Heath Gascoigne So if we get back to the root cause, it’s all to do for accountability. That’s, that’s, yeah. That’s the, Yep. Okay. And then we talked about, Well, really into your, your part from where you are right now and, and looking at people as organizations like people, they got that, that they are probably thoughts and feelings.

 

[01:06:48] Heath Gascoigne But yeah, and I used that analogy around people as a, as an individual adverse to change and they said, Well, as a group you know, good luck of that, that you’ve now got these other issues. But you try and understand an organization from a systems perspective, from not just the, which you, you know, as a solution architect or previous architect, the technology and data and also process, but from a, a human people’s perspective and understanding with technologists that if we continue, can technologists continue to want to solve a problem from just treating the symptom of just technology, we’ll forever have the same problem.

 

[01:07:28] Heath Gascoigne And it’ll just be kicking the can down the, down the road, solving the same problem two years later, five years, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Geez, we, we covered a lot of ground there, Jim. We did, my man. Thank you very much for your time. What’s going to happen now is that it’s going to go up on all the all the podcast channels.

 

[01:07:48] Heath Gascoigne When it does, I’ll let you know on LinkedIn so you can share it, do whatever you want in it. But there’ll be a YouTube video. It’ll have you and me side by side. So, if you’re okay with the makeup today and that you, you look the part, then there’s going to be no issues. Yeah, no issues. Okay, cool. Yeah, there has been, unfortunately, quite a couple of girls out, the couple of ladies that have been on here, and I said, Okay, we’re recording the video and Oh no, I got the pause for the makeup, so we had to re Yeah, so we’re okay.

 

[01:08:17] Heath Gascoigne Go live on the video as it is. All right. Yeah. I appreciate, Thank you very for your time, Jim. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Okay buddy, cheers.