What's Broken in Your Business Right Now? | Between The Builds

Chris Fay: Welcome to Built with Purpose. I am Chris Fay, and this is the show where vision meets execution and leadership leaves a legacy. From design studios to innovation hubs and product lines to skylines, we meet the people building more than great companies. They're creating culture, driving impact, and shaping what's next. These are the stories and strategies behind how the world gets built with purpose. Builds kicking off in the summertime. Hope everyone's having a ⁓ an amazing summer. By now, when you're listening to this, your kids are probably getting back to school. You know, college football and ⁓ if if if and if you watch pro football is right around the corner, you know, we're a month or so past the ⁓ the World Cup and a pretty exciting ⁓ pretty exciting finish there. And ⁓ you know, obviously we're kind of thinking about what the latter part of the year is gonna look like, and then before you know it, we're gonna be in a 2027. It is amazing how fast time flies. So, you know, last week, if you got a chance to listen to the last episode, I had a really cool conversation with Michael Shank. ⁓ you know, Michael is a is a consultant. He's ⁓ he owns, he's written book, ⁓ he ⁓ he's he's built a software technology. I mean, just a really, really sharp ⁓ individual has come from years and years of of financial consulting and and major ⁓ business transformation. And you know, it it really the conversation really resonated with me as I think about some of the change that we're trying to make inside of our organization. And it was funny. So I I, you know, when I looked at Michael, one of the things I noticed in the background is he had a guitar. And, you know, I saw that in the background because every day when I walk in the front door of my house and I look to my left is my my wife's ⁓ office. So so like the front room, ⁓ she converted into her office and she's got like a mahjong table in there and everything like that. ⁓ she painted it this this because she'll probably listen to this, I'm gonna say this amazingly beautiful pink coral color. ⁓ but but Chris Chris Fay doesn't go in that in that space very often. But what it is is it's one quiet place that you can go if you got to make a phone call or go do something at the front of the ⁓ at the front of the house. And so right when I walk in, up against the wall is my old guitar that I got when I was in high school. It's still sitting in the case. It's over up against the wall. I haven't touched it in probably six months. And so what was cool about that is, you know, so like I tried to play, I started to play guitar in ⁓ in ⁓ in high school. I played a little bit in college, I put it away. And about every two to three years, I'll pull it out and I'll try and play a bit. And then I get distracted or frustrated or something. And actually, you know, trying to play guitar is a really interesting, or playing any instrument is a really interesting test of how your mind works. You know, you can you can go to true musicians that can pick up an instrument, listen to music, and be begin to play something immediately. I ne I never had that skill set. I was always, I was always more of the like, if you show me how to do something and I can watch you do it. I have a pretty high chance of being able to do that same thing. So like in guitar, when I when I would take guitar lessons early on, if you could kind of show me how to do things, I'm a visual learner, I could do that. But if then you left me on my own to just go like freestyle on the guitar, I would completely freeze. Same thing. I've tried to play the drums in the past. I can play drums along with songs, but if you asked me to just kind of play, I would just kind of hit hit a ⁓ hit a wall. And so honestly, that's one thing kind of to d to today's conversation. ⁓ that we'll dive a little bit into. But so anyway, so I see Michael's guitar in the background. I'm like, hey dude, like what's up with the guitar? Do you do you play? And actually he uses it as a prop to tell his story. And this concept of, you know, a fool with a tool is still a fool. You know, the instrument in the background is completely worthless unless you learn to play it. And so we we use that analogy to kind of talk about transformation in companies and transformation in in teams. And how much money is being spent on trying to transform ⁓ organizations. So so here's the here's the harsh reality, all right? And and ⁓ maybe not a harsh reality, we probably all know this. Every business can can be better. Every team can be better. There is no perfect company, there is no perfect team, there is no perfect organization. It's funny, this this group YPO that I'm that I'm a part of, you know, often so I talk to a lot of ⁓ CEOs and business owners and you know, you talk to other people and they start telling you, you know, about their business and what they do. And there's this sense that like, you know, you know kind of a dirty laundry about your own business and you know what's going well and what's not going well. But usually at first introduction, you're not telling everybody all the crap that's going wrong. You're telling them the all the all the stuff that's going right. So, you know, you introduce yourself and you have these frontline ⁓ first kind of conversations with these with these CEOs and they're telling you about their business and what they do and how they engage their team and how they're growing. And, you know, if you do that five or 10 times, all of a sudden you're like, man, everybody else's business seems to be in such great shape, but yet I'm struggling in these areas inside of my company. But the great thing about YPO is you get through that stuff really quickly and you start getting into the actual details. And what you realize is that everybody's business is screwed up. Everybody has problems. Everybody has challenges with people, with processes, with growth. Like nobody has it all figured out. So that means that there's this amazing opportunity to grow and to take the next step and to transform your company to become a better version of itself, you know, week after week and month after month and year after year. And so one of the stats that Michael threw out there was that companies spend 3.4 trillion dollars a year. Trying to transform themselves. I mean, think about that. $3.4 trillion. And I actually took that back to our business. I was like, gosh, how much money have we spent trying to transform ourselves? You know, buying new technology, ⁓ investing in new roles, moving to new business units, you know, launching new products. I mean, it is, it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, probably just for a business our size, and we're not that big. So you start thinking about these larger organizations, but the scary thing that Michael talked about was that 70% of those efforts fail. Seventy percent. So if you do the math on that and you take $3.4 trillion times 70%, that means that $2.4 trillion of transformation spend is basically thrown out the window. I mean, think about that. Two two-thirds Over over two thirds of the money that you might be spending on transforming your business might actually fail. And so it was a really interesting conversation about why is that? You know, you think about you just you buy a new piece of technology, you buy a new accounting platform, or you roll out a new AI tool set, or you you buy a new CRM system, or you you launch a new product offering and stuff like what what is it? What's the problem? Why do that why does it struggle? Is it the technology? Is that new CRM system that you just purchased? Is it is it the CRM system's fault that you didn't successfully transform transform your business? And what Michael said is it's not the technology, it's the people and the process. And so few companies actually take the time to understand how their company runs. You know, especially as your organization grows or your group grows, it's harder to have a good feel about everything. If you have a very small business and maybe you've got You know, 12 to 15 people, it's pretty easy to know how things run across the business. If you have an organization that has 5,000 people and you need to understand how it runs inside how your business runs and who does what, it's much, much harder. And the thing that Michael really talked about is that most companies don't take the time and put in the energy and effort to really understand how their businesses run, how their organizations run, and who owns what step. So oftentimes we might be like, ow, I you know what? I need a new CRM system for my company. We don't have anything. We got Excel and you know, XYZ is doing this and they're doing this. And I need a new CRM. Let me go try, let me go try and shop shop for a new CRM. Okay, demo, demo, demo. All right, boom. I'm gonna I'm gonna add this one. Perfect. Now let's implement this CRM system in our business. So we just bought a tool and we're bringing it into a company that we really don't fully know how it works yet. And we're expecting to be able to implement that tool into our company and have it be successful without making sure that we're taking the time to understand how data and people and processes move through our system so that when we select the right CRM tool in this instance, we're able to apply it and augment it to the way that we do business and also potentially change the way that we do business by leveraging those best practices. And so ultimately he talked about. You just most people don't know how your company runs. You don't really know all the steps and all the people and what it takes to make your business run, whether it's finance, sales, technical, manufacturing, or whatever. And the people that have the highest likelihood of success are the ones that actually take the time, spend the energy, spend the effort to go through and understand what's going on in the business and then begin to transform processes. And so this is one thing that we talked about. So obviously part of our business, we have a part ⁓ part of our business is a consulting, ⁓ a consulting practice. And you know, when we're implementing new technology inside of our our business, like we're worried about the cost, we're worried about the time, you know, everybody's busy doing so many different things. It's hard for us to slow down and to take the time to go, you know, ⁓ really understand the business to implement this this sort of stuff. And so oftentimes we'll hire a consultant, hey, why don't you come in and help us do this? But meanwhile, We're still running the business. We're trying to make money and do these things. And we might be setting ourselves up for failure. But I will say that's really where a consultant can help us. If you bring in an outside party that you're paying that has really no major skin in the game in your company, other than making that that process successful, they can then go through your organization to understand how things run, synthesize that information, and apply the technology. But so many companies try and self-implement or they get They get ⁓ sticker struck. They're like, ⁓ I don't want to spend that much money on a consultant or I don't want to spend that much money on a piece of technology. We'll just kind of do it ourselves. We'll handle the change management ourselves. And what I've seen is when companies try and self-manage ⁓ change management, that is where there's a high likelihood of a failure because they're not taking the the time. You might have one or two ⁓ in in invested buyers or stakeholders in the business, but everybody else is trying to do their job. They're trying to go execute what they're doing every day. And it's very, very hard to rip up to rip the time needed inside of a business to really understand what's going on. And so when you're trying to implement new technology, trying to implement a ⁓ a new process, that's where having an outside party is worth it. But whether you do it inside or whether you do it outside, you have to invest in the time and you have to invest in in the process to go and understand how how your organization works before you bring a tool in. And then once you bring a tool in, you have to be diligent about implementation and driving change management and training and adoption and doing those things. I mean, think about the last last piece of technology that you bought in your business. Did you do you did you really do enough due diligence early on to understand how that's going to apply to your business? And then on the backside, did you really train your team and drive adoption and run this through your business, or did you do a little bit on the front end, buy the tool, get it implemented? Do a little bit on the back end and expect it to work. I would say that latter situation is probably what most of us experience. And I think that's why this $3.4 trillion a year is ultimately 70% ⁓ failure rate. We are not taking the time. And I don't care what you're talking about. You could be talking about changing ⁓ an athletic team or, you know, a board that you're on or a team that you're leading. We have to take the time to really understand how that current organization is operating. Once we understand that foundation, we can then start talking about what problems we want to solve and how we want to solve it. And then one thing that I'm not great at, folks, I can tell you this is the sustainment of driving that utilization and adoption. So once you choose a path forward and a new process or a new piece of technology, you have to then also invest the time in making sure that it's successful. And for the teams and people that do that process, they understand what's going on, they select the right processor tool and then they spend the intense amount of time on the back end of drive utilization adoption, they are part of that 30% that sees these massive success rates. But I would argue the rest of us don't take enough time on the front end and don't take enough time on the back end to drive these things to success. So I think about that in your company as we kind of wrap up today on this between the builds and some of the things that we talked a lot about You know, AI and technology and and all that that we can get into at a later date. But I I think about inside of your business. What's one process? And you'll hear me say this a ton. One of my favorite books is The One Thing. It's it really helps kind of ask the centering question. What's the one thing that you can do ⁓ today, tomorrow, next week, ⁓ so that everything else becomes ⁓ less important or unnecessary? You're gonna hear me say that a lot. It's a great book, go check it out. ⁓ but but what's the one process in your company that's broken? You know, if look across your organization, your team, your church, your board, you cannot tackle everything at one time. It's just unreasonable to do that. ⁓ and and everybody gets excited, everybody wants to tackle every problem, but if you tackle every problem, you get nothing solved. So, so what is the one thing? If you look across your company, what is the one process that you believe ⁓ will help either drive your growth or your profitability or is dragging you down the most? And then Can you effectively map that process out in today's state? Do you know the people? Do you know the steps? Do you know the process? And if you cannot answer that question, do not go to step B, which is trying to find a solution. You have to first understand the biggest pain point or the biggest opportunity that you have inside of your organization. Next, you need to understand how it actually works today. Whether you hire a consultant or whether you do it yourself, you have to invest the time. And that's the next step. Once you can truly document how things happen today, then you're ready to go start finding solutions for that problem. And so then go source and find what's the one ⁓ solution that you can bring in to help drive that forward, get that implemented, pay for implementation, pay for training, ⁓ overinvest to make sure that it's done. And then how are you driving sustainment of that on the process? You can't just drop new technology on a team, be like, here you go, go fix your own stuff. You have to make sure there's accountability to driving that. ⁓ on the back end. So it is a long process. You have to do it in a in kind of a myopic tunnel. And that's my challenge for you today. What's the one thing you can take action on that needs improvement or that can help accelerate your growth or profitability inside of your business today? Next, go map it out on a document. Put it on a lucid chart, map it out in Excel, map it out on a on a on a board, however you do it. Once you map it out, now go start trying to find solutions to that problem. Once you find the solution, make sure you overinvest in driving utilization and adoption and traction on the back end to drive that process to success. Once you've achieved success, you're now ready to move on to the next problem. So we got some cool guests coming up. I've ⁓ really excited. We'll continue to talk. AI is out there, coaching. We've got some athletes coming on the on the ⁓ on the podcast coming around the corner and really excited for ⁓ what we have season ahead. Keep your comments and thoughts coming. With that, continue to build with purpose and y'all have a great day. Okay, thanks for joining me on Built with Purpose. If you have enjoyed today's episode, subscribe, share, and leave us a review. It helps more bold leaders find the show. For resources and show notes, visit our website and connect with me, Chris Fay, on LinkedIn. Until next time, keep building great companies, cultures, and legacies with purpose.