In this episode of the Getting Sh*t Done in Business podcast, we will chat with Dwight McLeod from Capstone Strategy Group and talk about the necessity of adapting to change in business, from sudden shifts to gradual trends. Discover how to utilizw technology and automation to streamline business operations and stay ahead in 2024.
00:00 [Music] woke up early in the morning grab my coffee now I’m roaring ready to face the day and getting hi and welcome to another episode of getting sh*t done in business podcast we have our guest Dwight McLeod from Capstone strategy group returning um if you were listening to our last episode he talked a lot about processes in business process Improvement and streamlining that if you miss that episode I highly recommend checking it out we’ll make sure that we link it in this one so welcome back Dwight I am so
00:38 excited to dive in this episode and talk a lot more about change in business and technology thank you Seline good to be back awesome so when we started chatting before we were recording we were talking about how change is constant um in businesses and that that scares a lot of people but it’s it’s a universal truth so talk to me a little bit about about change what type of what type of change businesses experience and you know why it’s especially relevant in 2024 businesses always experience change and
01:11 if you don’t believe it just do a snapshot of every 10 years and look at what the top 10 businesses are 10 years 10 years 10 years 10 years right you don’t hear much about Xerox anymore it just isn’t as a thing anymore you didn’t hear about um Salesforce at all 10 years ago because it wasn’t so change forces things to happen and you have to kind of embrace it um you can’t be afraid of it because it is going to make things different where you are and that’s okay different is not bad different is just
01:52 different yeah that makes sense and I mean there’s probably lots of types of change in the world but there’s kind of two I think ways things change one is that like Sudden Impact something happens and you’re forced to change like a major pivot in your industry obviously Co was a big change for businesses maybe you lose a key person maybe um very suddenly something like public perception of something changes so there’s like that kind of sudden change and then there’s also gradual change um
02:23 where you don’t really notice a change happening because it’s very slow but all of a sudden you kind of look around and you’re like this is isn’t where I was a year ago or three years ago things are different so I know Sudden Change is easy to identify how do you kind of in a business identify or track that slower change and how do you know when and how to adapt to it so we we encourage all of our clients to have five key performance indicators at the top things that when a CEO comes in or a CFO comes in they can
02:57 look at those five measurements and see how effective Ed their businesses Behavior those five measurements are then linked to measurements as they move down through the organization and they all feed up into those funds so that at any given time snapshot can tell you do you have more sales coming in do you have fewer sales coming are you booking the same level of Revenue are you booking less Revenue do you have your more people on the bench or are they all out doing billable work so those are things that every every leader should
03:33 know and as it goes down the line if those things change they should be able to key into it and go to the folks that are responsible for it and say okay why do we have more people on the bench what’s happening well we don’t have as many sales coming in so we don’t have projects for them to go but we can’t get rid of them because of project won’t be able to handle it so you’ve got to have that balance and that’s what your key performance indicators tell you you know if you don’t measure it it won’t get
04:01 done 100% And I mean this is probably a loaded question because it really depends on what on so many factors but how how should a business so let’s say you know they pick your advice they’re tracking these you know top five kpis and they start to notice to change maybe sales are going down maybe something else is changing um and a lot of businesses you know when I talk to them they’re stuck they’re like okay we know this isn’t but we don’t know why and we don’t know what to do with it like if you think about
04:31 levels of awareness there may be symptom aware uh possibly problem aware so what how do you nurture businesses through that kind of like awareness and strategy level to go from hey these are these are the numbers they’ve changed we don’t know why to like what’s the action that comes out of it one of my one of my good friends in in business partners um is fond of saying projects don’t go off a day at a time they go off a second at at a time and so every day you should be doing something to understand how your
05:11 business is progressing or not progressing that day because now is your time to fix it and get on top of it maybe you know we talk everybody’s talking AI now so everybody you go to watch Ai and we look at them and say so tell us about your underlying based technology what is it all right tell us about your data sets how clean are they do you have duplicates in your data sets that would make it impossible for you to identify one specific thing and if the answer is yes then let’s start with cleaning up the data and getting that
05:53 correct because that is what AI is going to utilize to give you the information you’re seeking so you maybe don’t need AI as much as you need looking at the internal process and data collection and how that’s done I mean the computer doesn’t know you know you identified me as Dwight McLoud my first name is William so I’m in some places as William McCloud I’m in some places as William D McLoud I’m in some places as W Dwight McCloud the computer doesn’t know and doesn’t care those are six or seven
06:27 instances so until we can clean that up and understand how things are operating it’s going to be really impossible to understand where that erosion is taking place yeah that’s true and I mean the name is a really good example we work I mean we work with a lot of Industries but in particular when we work with law firms um something that law firms have to do to be compliant is a conflict check where they have to make sure you have no conflict of interest with anyone well when names are in the system um as
06:57 you know different names maybe nicknames Maybe like married versus maiden names um or you know sometimes if you’re talking about potentially in you know criminal law people intentionally uh hide or change their name um and so it’s like what are other ways that you can identify people you know maybe by like email address or phone number or home address or date of birth um but you like you said you still have to have that data and I’m just curious um because I know you work with AI what what type of
07:29 AI in business do you do you typically work with just out of curiosity we tend to work more with automation um because we don’t believe companies are ready for AI yet they think they are what they’re ready for is chat GTP where I’m sitting on the phone and you know I’m I’m looking at something and I want to know what as an example we’re starting to do some work with Nicha and we wanted to know what nicha’s plans for 2024 and 2025 were go cat GTP you ask them that it will go out and grab that information for you
08:04 because it’s public access information but now when you start talking about how to run your business with AI if you don’t have that level of information somewhere where it is reliable you’re not ready for so there’s some steps that you can take we show people the greatest dist bottom zero step one step two step three step four step five to where you become a center of excellence each one of those steps has specific accomplishable activity that needs to be done and and none of it’s getting rid of
08:40 people yeah repurposing those people to do things I listened to fared Zakaria last week described what AI is going to do for the medical profession and he said you you know you take a doctor and a doctor that works with women doing mammograms right something all women do all the time and depending on who you are and and your body makeup you get different false signals sometimes my wife gets a signal that says she has dense breast material and in the beginning before her doctor knew he would call her back for
09:18 something that basically said um he was you have a problem we have to discuss this and so on and so forth but now that he’s been with her for 10 years he understands what this is well if you take Ai and you give it your test and it flashes that up against two million other tests that have been run you can look at the similarities what if a doctor thing three 400 of them maybe so what is the level of accuracy that’s going to come out of looking at two million quite quite interesting right what do the doctor become well he’s no
09:55 longer a diagnostic person what the doctor becomes is a life coach that says to you Seline here’s some things that we spotted people that have had this have lived longer when they’ve done these things so let me help you understand some changes you might need to make you know for high blood pressure for high cholesterol for this for that here’s some Chang that we know you could make that’ll help you live longer and a more effective life so that’s what the doctor’s going to become now think about
10:26 all the doctors that are 60 or 70 they’re leaving before that happen trust me yeah nothing to do with that but that’s what that’s what’s going to happen with some of this technology that’s coming it’s going to make you rethink the way you do things 100% and uh I always say like more data I mean obviously it has to be accurate data um and so that’s a really interesting I think application of AI where they would have good data sets and they would have you know reliable information I’ve also
10:57 noticed the way a lot of people use chat BT is it’s just it’s skimming the web you don’t know if its information is reliable or not you it also can’t critically think about the information it’s giving you um a good example actually um recently I I recorded a rant um on this that I posted as a real is people are using it um for job applications when you know I was hiring I started realizing very quickly because I can spot it uh all these job applications out of hundreds of applications many of them were written
11:30 with chat GPT and I don’t mean like they good prompt that were customized and then they changed it a bit I mean I had 50 applications that were almost word for word identical because what people were doing was they were copying and pasting the job post and saying like write me an intro for this job post uh and hitting enter and turns out when dozens of people submit the exact same prompts into chat GPT it just gives the same answers to everybody and so I mean at a solo level like somebody might not spot that they might be like oh this
12:02 seems well written um but then for me I see you know 50 phrases that say communicating non-technical uh communicating technical terms to non-technical stakeholders that’s not a phas 50 people would just organically come up with themselves um and but all these applications they were so generic they told me nothing about the person themselves because none of the inputs were customized to the individual and so I I think it’s great that these types of tools exist that are like widely accessible for people but I also think
12:37 that there’s a huge gap um in how they are used I’m sure you’ve seen like viral things of like teachers posting uh AI essays that they received with hilarious results and um you know like so many I guess AI gone wrong and so it probably comes down to what you say is people are not even ready for you said people are ready for chat GPT maybe some people are not even ready for chat GPT yet uh I I think they they just don’t know how to use it right yeah we’re going to go away on vacation and we’re going to an area that
13:07 we don’t know so you go to GTP and says okay lay out an itinerary for seven days in Tuscany and it can do that because there’s a lot of information about that even if you just go to frers and want to read their book you know it’s that kind of stuff so you can do that with chat GTP and say I like to have some downtime in the middle of the day so it’ll skip around 12 to 3 or 12 to 4 and give you that kind of itenary that’s smart you can do that but what you should be doing with something like that is taking it
13:43 now because you said something very interesting software doesn’t think software just does right so the cognitive capability that we need to put into that resume that CV whatever has to come from Up can we use CH D GDP to say show me a resume of somebody who does this job sure but then you take that and you don’t just cut and paste that’s lazy I don’t want that person working for me anyhow but you take that information and say okay I’ve done this but I did it here in this context and you reshape it
14:20 right it’s it’s real and it’s about you that’s what we need to get people to do and that’s what we try to you know that’s the message we try to share with senior leaders you want your people doing things that improve the lives of your customer not just rotely giving them a nonsense answer so you know let’s talk about how we do that yeah so how do you how do you then go into a business and Implement whether it be you know whether it be automations or whether it be um you know a chat GPT because I feel like
14:55 automations and GPT are kind of the opposite automations you need to be Ultra specific because you want that output to be exactly exactly repeatable you don’t want the computer to think you don’t want the computer to Freestyle you want the computer to do the exact automation you want it to do um versus you know GPT is where you’re like trying to take it output and make it more creative and you are hoping the computer kind of thinks and comes up with ideas for you um so how do you we do more of the automation now because that’s where
15:24 most people are they’ve got invoices they’ve got bills of Ling they’ve got all these things that we can now restructured and unstructured data with software so that we can put it in a format that makes sense to them and we can show them stuff and we tell them none of this is to just be taken for granted and passed along you have to put eyes on it and make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to do someone has to look at this that has that capability yes I’m going to give them 80% of their work
15:58 done but that last 20% is where what you’re paying them for so that’s what we want you to do um it’s not always a well-received message because they want it to be automatic and go like that so they can get rid of people and and send more money to the bottom line but but that’s just not how business works yeah that that’s true um and then I guess one other question I have for you because you’re talking about kind of you know automations and business and taking away that 80% grunt work what are
16:26 the I’m not going to give it a specific number like top three top five top 10 but what are you what would you say are the top like most valuable or important things that businesses can and should automate that they don’t wow see businesses are so very different we’re working with a client now that has 15,700 users and every year they have to perform a task and they’ve been doing it manually forever so we came in and introduced them to a process of how to get it done in an automated fashion and
17:00 reduced it from a 9mon job to 6 weeks right saving them3 $400,000 a year in the process that’s different than somebody who is making widgets that go out and they’ve got Logistics routes and they’ve got all these other things that can still be automated but someone has to look at it to make sure it’s going to the right place yeah look at the order that came in that asked for 200 and that we didn’t make a mistake and send 2000 right that’s the kind of things that you want the system to pick up on and help
17:36 you see because a a bot is only going to put what’s there it’s not going to fat finger it’s not going to switch numbers around or anything like that it’s going to give you exactly what’s there that’s the beauty of it now what you need is someone to look at that and say okay so and so’s trending upward let me make a stale call there and see what I can do that’s how you use that information and that’s how we try to get them St yeah that’s that’s so true um and really
18:10 quickly before we wrap up because I know you have to go soon um before we started a call today you mentioned that one thing that you kind of want to bring to our audience that you can offer is um a lowcost proof of concept so tell me a little bit more about that and uh what that looks like we offer to come in business and at a very low cost demonstrate for you what an automation would do for one phas obviously we’re not going to take a huge complicated process to do it but let’s just take one simple thing checking on something and
18:44 we’ll do that proof of concept for you um probably see if we can get the software purchased for you or something and then you just pay for the work that we do and it’s not going to be a lot of money but it’s going to help you get to a point can make a decision yeah that’s really what you need to see you know I’m not going to go blind into this if I can see it working on my data so I can look at it and say that makes sense then it’s something that I can make a decision yeah well that’s amazing because a lot
19:14 of people have a hard time like visualizing how these things how different automations can work I mean some very simple where people can be like okay I know if you know someone signs a contract it can automatically generate and send the invoic or you know like those sorts of really simple automations people can visualize but when they’re more nuanced or complicated um especially businesses who aren’t super techsavvy they just kind of get glassed like they it’s uh they need to see it and have that kind of like
19:42 interactive experience to really understand how it’s going to work and benefit their business so that’s really cool that you offer that yeah and so I mean I’m going to put all of your your business name and your links and contact information in the episode anyway in the show notes um but if somebody wants to reach out with the Reach Out to you um for a consultation to get kind of that proof of concept how would they do that uh they can they can call or they can email me or they can look us up on
20:07 LinkedIn and and come in that way awesome so I’ll make sure to include to include all that for you perfect um 914 667 4659 is the office number and it will always be answered awesome I’m gonna try at 2 am just to see I’m just kidding there you go well be answered just not by me at that point fair enough um any kind of like last comments or things you wanted to add or maybe something that you kind of wanted to tell everyone today that I just didn’t ask the right question I think we’re living in a very exciting time
20:43 things are happening so fast that yes it can be overwhelming but if you just step back and take a deep breath you know what you do very well how do we apply that to where we’re going because it’s always going to be necessary so true uh I I personally I sometimes I hate change like when Google uh they changed the little icon of the person that you dropped to the Google Street View and I don’t know why that small change made me so angry um but I like it because it helped me empathize with my clients who hate change but in general I
21:18 I love change and I get excited when you know new software options come out but I feel like change just gives you more options um in life it gives you more ways of doing things so I’m I’m definitely prange but I know it’s it can also be hassle like when you figure out the perfect process or you figure out the perfect system and then the world changes around it and suddenly your perfect system is obsolete um it can be frustrating to one of my favorite economists CJ Yung used to say if there is no change there is no
21:49 truth and so if you if you if you just think about that for a moment you know the more we learn the more things change right so if there is no change there is no truth and that’s just the bottom line that’s true and I think that’s a a great kind of thought quote message to end on so I’m going to thank you so much Dwight for being on for not one but two episodes uh which is even better and it was wonderful meeting you and hopefully you know we’ll have you on to talk in the future too because I feel like you
22:22 you have a lot of insight uh to share in the business world for sure well thank you Seline you made this so easy I app appreciate it thank you [Music] awesome in business
Dwight McLoud’s insights show that adopting change and using technology can drive significant improvements in our businesses. Watch the next episode now!
