Get ready to supercharge your business with the latest insights on AI and automation! In this episode of Getting Sh*t Done in Business, Dwight McLeod from Capstone Strategy Group shares how simple AI and process improvements can help you work smarter and grow your revenue. Get practical tips and fresh ideas to keep your business ahead!
00:00 [Music] woke up early in the morning grab my coffee now I’m roaring ready to face the day and getting hi welcome to another episode of our getting sh*t done in business podcast where we dive into deep business topics with industry experts as well as learn about technology marketing and operations in business my guest today here is Dwight McLeod of Capstone strategy group who is here today to talk about business and Ai and process Improvement and why business owners need to embrace change so welcome and thank you so much for joining us Dwight thank
00:44 you s I’m glad to be here awesome so I guess just to get started uh give us all a quick introduction um to you and your business and your background and what why you’re here today my business well we started probably 20 years ago and I started process Improvement 30 years ago uh working within 9x family if you can think back to how far along that was um 9x is the predecessor to Verizon um so that was about 30 years ago and what we found is that we would sit and we would do all these wonderful um decision tools you know
01:25 view flow gra flow graph Vis charts and everything else only the find out when you get to it nope we can’t do that nope we can’t do that nope we can’t do that so you’ve got all these Brilliant Minds sitting in a room deciding what’s going to push the build business forward and you’ve got one group saying no so we were enamored by that idea and we tried to help a lot of companies through that process um but then tools started to come out that made it possible not to avoid it but to sidestep them when you
01:59 had to so that we could do things so tools like RPA where you can emulate human behavior with software and so it made it possible to design those changes and then Implement them without having to do a big budget overhaul to get you there yeah that makes sense and I can only imagine um you know how much that has come in the past you know I was G to say the past 20 years but even in the past five years there have been massive changes to you know to business Improvement business technology automation obviously AI is um quite popular kind of in the
02:38 mainstream now whereas you know five years ago it was mostly in the kind of it uh technology sector now everyone’s using it and I mean sometimes I see it used as a buzz word when it’s not even really AI um that’s that’s a whole another issue um so what are kind of what are the big things that you have seen kind of change in the past few years that businesses need to embrace and what are the things that just never change in business H the thing that changeed business more than anything was Co covid made Business Leaders realize
03:12 that those beliefs that they had held on to were so long that you had to be in the office that you had to do this that your productivity only came from me measuring your keystrokes Etc really wasn’t true and so they started to see people become much more productive and happier and contributing more to the business as they began to have this hybrid model of work so that I think I’ve seen change the most unfortunately Business Leaders are baby boomers right baby boomers like myself that are approaching 70 or late 60s and
03:51 they hold on to beliefs that they developed in the 60s and 70s and unfortunately the world has moved well past the 60s and 70s and so we’ve got to help them learn how to do the things that are necessary to lead their business effectively nowadays yeah and um I I definitely see a lot of that I mean I was I had already been running a remote business for five years when covid hit so for me like obviously everything changed in the world but my business just kind of kept on going although we did more Consulting around
04:25 you know helping businesses Move online um and there was that huge Minds set shift that proved that you know people can uh change their mind and adopt a new way of practice and obviously you know I’m a younger woman and many of our clients are you know baby boomer Boomers like men in their 60s we work a lot in the trades which are you know traditionally lower Tech Industries law which is a traditionally like lower tech industry um so every day we uh we face those I don’t want to say uphill battles but those that kind of mindset shift
05:00 resistance where we’re trying to you’re like okay well you know what what if you just try it this way or what’s holding you back or what are your hesitations um like how do you overcome those when you face that with business owners many times because we work a lot with government agencies and their role is really to employ citizens right so they can generate tax dollars Etc through people that are employed the first thing they say is wow if you bring that technology in here I’m going to have to
05:27 let a lot of people go so my first question to them is so tell me do you have enough people now to get the work done and the answer is usually no no no we don’t so so if I relieve them of 60 70% of their make busy work and they have that time to focus on your clients would that be a benefit to you and so you have to get people thinking a very good friend of mine says people don’t mind change they just resist being changed it’s a it’s a slight Nuance to to how you look at it but when you’re
06:07 forcing people to change something you know it’s it’s hard you know it’s like taking a shower right you take a shower every morning and you do the same thing day in and day out until you hurt your arm or you hurt your shoulder and now you can’t move that arm where you used to use it now you got to change the way you shower and it’s almost like doing something brand new again right so it’s the same thing when you’re trying to get people to change something they’ve done for years and it’s been moderately
06:41 successful they don’t hear the sucking noises which is all the profit being sucked out of their business because they’re doing things in an oldfashioned manner but they’re still making money so they’re happy it’s really getting them to see that there’s a different way I won’t call it a better way there’s just a different way and it can produce different results yeah that makes sense I always tell people that automation doesn’t reduce jobs it just reduces the most miserable part of people’s jobs so they
07:13 can their energy on more valuable work more interesting work work that actually requires a human brain um and I know you know you said like you kind of talked about at the kind of high level like business owner decision maker um they’re going to be motivated by profit if you tell them that they’re going to be more profitable that they they can service their clients better with their existing team and you can talk about the benefits you know it’s easy to get them on board but of course especially you know at a
07:37 government level or with larger businesses there’s um there’s a whole bunch of levels of employees and there might be you know there might be new grads or people who are younger and they’re still learning so they can be kind of molded um or they’re ready they’re more willing to adapt and sometimes there are people who have been in the exact same role at the exact same company for 20 years and they’ve done everything in the exact same way and so I you know it’s probably like their
08:00 brain’s not as elastic they really have that strong muscle memory uh how do you kind of approach that change management and getting the team bu and not just at the leadership level so we always start off with understanding your people your processes and your technology and we tell all of our clients for the first month you’re probably going to think we are the dumbest people you’ve ever hire because we’re going to ask you questions and you’re going to say you don’t understand that and so we start to ask
08:32 questions and we start to unravel things and one of our partners is I’m going to use the term anal he asked some of the most minute questions to dig into things as an example we started with a six-page layout of what the business process was by the time we asked our months worth of questions we had 67 pages of process because people had taken for granted a lot of things that they as humans do that if I’m going to help software emulate I’ve got to know what all those steps are and so that’s how you start to
09:08 to see things and then people begin to realize H these guys are on something they know something yeah that’s that’s true and I bet you find so many gaps in processes or in efficiencies as you’re going where they and sometimes people even as they’re saying it out loud they start to realize that it doesn’t make sense or they’re why do we do it this way um so when you you know when you’re building your Solutions do you find that even just the act of kind of talking it through is already improving the
09:42 processes um or do you really try to stick to what they’re doing already to start and then go through it as like a second step to refine their processes most people don’t know what their processes are they just don’t have a clue right so when you start to sit down and say to them this defines the activity that your people are doing and we we once did a job at um an organization in New York City and we had three people doing the same job one was getting it done in two hours one was getting it done in two days one was
10:18 getting it done in a week and so the one that was getting it done in two hours was the quote unquote disgruntled employee but she had been there and been passed over for so many times with younger people coming in she would train them they would get promoted move on and she never got anywhere because she was the disgruntled person but she had all the knowledge once we got her confidence and she started to share with us you know there’s easier ways to do this now we started to reshape the process and show
10:50 it to people in a laid out format so it goes from 47 steps 12 or 15 right and so the the time that element that it takes reduces tremendously and so now you can get other things done now because she was disf frontal she was getting her work done and not doing anything with her extra time once we showed her how to get things moving and we got them to recognize her for what she was she became a model employee and started really really turning things out so sometimes you have to look for those Diamonds in the Rough that are sitting
11:26 there underneath the surface and they’re just kind of biting time because they’re collecting a paycheck every week or every two weeks or every month whatever it is and they know nobody’s interested in what they believe or or no let me just kind of go along this is what you told me to do that that’s what I’m gonna do it’s stupid but I’ll do it you know and once you find those people man your job becomes so much more rewarding yeah that’s true I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve met with someone whose
11:55 title is maybe like secretary or Administrative Assistant but you start talking to them and you realize they’re just a severely underpaid director of operations because really they’re running the show um and they and but a lot of times their opinion and their voice isn’t like valued and so they don’t speak up because in the past they haven’t been rewarded for it and you find out that there’s so many inefficiencies that they’re just Plastering over because the higher up Executives they don’t really care if
12:23 something’s frustrated or not frustrating or not working correctly or anything like that they just want the end result so are creating all these like Band-Aids and patches for processes to keep things running smoothly when if someone had listened to them they could have just been so much better for you know all these years and most of them keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the real things they’re doing tucked away somewhere so nobody has it so when they leave you got to bring them back as a consultant because nobody knows what
12:50 they’re doing yep we’ve uh We’ve definitely seen that or you know you mentioned there’s three people who do one job um and that’s good with cross training when processes are documented but we’ve also worked where one person there’s only one person out of like you know a seven Branch firm or an ad employee firm only one person who knows how to do this or only one person who this does this task so if they go away or get sick or leave suddenly there’s this huge knowledge Gap and nobody knows
13:19 how to do their job because they had no cross training at all right and they had no process nobody knows what they did to get the job done they just got it done they never left and so nobody ever said hm we should do something about that it’s a point yeah so for any kind of business owners listening who I mean I speak to people every day who are like I know I need processes but I have no idea where to start what would you recommend as a first step um for businesses who know they need processes documented but
13:51 they’re not really sure how to go about doing it you probably never going to get it done with your own people right they they’re they’re well-intended they mean well but in many cases they have other agendas as well we just worked with a company that’s really really huge and one of their directors saw the process Road as his road to the VP job and he was blocking anybody that came in trying to tell him that he didn’t have the right answer to to the question so that was one thing and while
14:28 we were sitting and talking to folks there was one person in the room that I just kind of felt was an empty suit he was well-meaning and well- intended but when you ask him questions you didn’t you never got an answer and then there was another person in the room that was threatened by the fact that you were going to clean up what they hadn’t been able to clean up in 10 years and that threatened them and they Tred to derail the work so you have to get to we call it 3×3 Association you have to be associated in the C you have to be
15:05 associated in the middle level of leadership and you have to know the people down in the trenches because they’re the ones that are going to do things I was working for the Attorney General’s office and one of the lawyers came to me and said yeah okay break make all the suggestions you want these people aren’t going to do anything now she was a lawyer doing this thing every single day and she knew how bad it was um but she said yeah they’ve done this before they just the people at the top just don’t do anything so you’ve
15:37 got to be Associated all three levels so you can help the folks in the middle help the folks at the bottom and then manage up to those at the top and say there’s a reason why we need to do this yeah 100% um and I mean even in smaller organizations or ones that are I don’t want to say less dysfunctional but you know more well-meaning who really do want to do it people are just so busy with their day-to-day responsibilities that they don’t have time to be you know diving deep into this they don’t really
16:07 understand um you know how to write a process they don’t maybe have I don’t want to say a lack of clarity but like you said they just do it all the time without thinking about it so maybe when they’re writing down you know these steps they just automatically miss things um that they take for granted too and and they also um they don’t think through everything they do do because some of it’s embedded knowledge and it’s it’s it’s not a thought process I just do it in the morning I come in I
16:37 turn this on I do this and you know the first three things I do are this well they don’t consider that part of the process right I go out and grab data when were working with an organization that does bonding for New York State a lot of bonding all of the projects Etc they would come in every morning and they would go out and get their bond positions on every Bond they had floated and that took about three and a half four hours and from that they would make choices or decisions about whether they should trade out of one or buy more of
17:07 this or do that and so when we showed him how to do it in 15 minutes wow people were intimidated they’re like wait a minute I said but I can do it at 8 o’clock 10 o’clock 12 o’clock and before you go to lunch you can have a trend that says okay I should be doing these things well that took away a lot of their reason for being and so they didn’t want anything to do with it you know so yeah it’s that kind of resistance that you find and you have to overcome you have to really get to know
17:36 people you have to be a people person that’s the only way it’s going to happen yeah that makes sense do you ever find that sometimes you can’t overcome resistance because the problem is the person um or do you find that most of the time you’re you’re able to work with people there there are times where you’re just not going to overcome it uh there’s a person that’s entrenched they may not like you for whatever reason they’ve already made that decision they don’t know you but they
18:06 just decided they don’t like what you’re offering and they’re not going to listen to and if they’re high enough up the chain your Project’s not going to go anywhere yeah that makes sense I find a lot of times at least someone somewhere in any organization has had a bad experience with a past consultant who either didn’t do a good job or at least their perception was that the consultant um you know useless talking head I’ve Heard lots of um unflattering ways to describe a consultant who you know came
18:38 in and maybe um either didn’t fully understand the business or they wanted to put their perceptions on the business um put their process uh or their mold on a business where it didn’t fit or you know for whatever reason people have a lot of misconception about you know process Consulting about operations Consulting about business cons consult ANS where it kind of adds this extra level of resistance before you even start is that something one of the things that we tried not to do is represent anybody’s product because we
19:13 don’t feel we can be objective if we come into your business and we’ve got something we want to sell you right because that’s our objective now to sell you this tool um if that’s the case then we’re not going to look at what you have nor going to be objective about the way we go about making recommendations because it’s all going to be centered around our objective and so we try not to ever do that we work with what you have in place uh we’ll let you know we went to one place and they had a key
19:47 piece of software that Microsoft was no longer servicing and hadn’t serviced for the last five years so if it ever went down they were stuck so we we made them aware that but we didn’t change that software that’s your call if you want to change it we’re just telling you the danger that you face if anything ever happens to longer Consultants that can fix this Microsoft won’t help you so you’re in trouble if anything happens to this our recommendation would be that you find another way of getting that done yeah
20:20 that makes sense and I I understand why it’s an easy trap for Consultants to fall into because it’s really easy to learn you know one soft and learn it really really really well and to fully customize it um and I mean the pitfalls are exactly what you said I’ve heard you know people say oh uh these Consultants they just had this project management system and they give like everyone kind of the same business blueprint template and it didn’t work for a business at all um so and also you know a lot of
20:48 softwares offer like affiliate commission too which I guess is attractive um to Consultants so I understand why people do it but the truth is there is no one best software for any business like our approach we usually you know we get to know their the business’s needs what functionality they’re looking for their priorities their processes and then we put together a spreadsheet comparing you know our kind of top three to five options that we find based on their needs and we work through it with the client we do demos
21:18 with the client and we same thing as you like we help the client make the right choice for them because there might be like this gold standard of CRM I’m not saying I’m not gonna everybody wants Salesforce oh not everybody not everybody needs Salesforce I’m telling you people don’t need Salesforce it’s very I mean large businesses you know definitely a lot of people can use it but it’s expensive to set up it’s expensive to you know customize and maintain you need a dedicated sales team to use it you can’t
21:48 just uh have it kind of floating around for everyone I was the one in my head was HubSpot but it’s the same kind of thing um because you know we work with for example small trade companies they get so overwhelmed looking at Salesforce looking at HubSpot looking with anything with as they say too many features where really they just need something that they can quickly and easily manage from their phone on the road that they can put in their contacts that syncs with their text really well that has a very
22:18 streamlined like user interface doesn’t doesn’t have too many fields doesn’t have too many like different kind of workflows or complicated um inter ation well I mean Integrations are good but you know like not overly complicated where they get overwhelmed and they get scared when it’s just going to be you know they’re like their field service technicians using it too um so it’s it’s not always about finding the best software because that doesn’t exist it’s like what is the best software for
22:47 this business and their needs um we try to give them three options we give them the Cadillac version Salesforce we give them the Chev UPS spot and then we give them the Hyundai Zoho desk and say okay there are three different price points they all have different features this is for Enterprise level businesses that as you say have a dedicated Force to to deal with it all the time this down here is not it doesn’t have all the capabilities of this one but right now you don’t need that so maybe you should kind of grow
23:25 into what you need because we find that businesses have basically certain points where they need to make changes right up to a million and a half2 million doar most people are doing it themselves right two million to five million is where you start seeing there is a need to change at 10 million yes you need clear processes and things taking place by the time you get to 200 million if you don’t have those things in place I don’t know how you got there right I just don’t know how you got there somebody’s working 247 365
24:01 yeah I was as I laughed because as you were saying that I was thinking the same thing like if somebody how how would you get to $200 million with no processes EXA probably probably wouldn’t for sure yeah you stall you stall somewhere around I’d say seven million you’d probably stall because you can effectively run seven million using Excel spreadsheets right yeah and all you need is a good bookkeeper a good accountant so you can do your your um ins and outs so that you know where your business is
24:31 where your receivables are where your billables are yeah you can do that but after you get above that it’s not going to happen so what is kind of some final advice you give to businesses who you know want want to start improving their processes right away um or they want to take that step like what what sort of advice would you give to businesses to get that in place if they haven’t done that already trust your people because they know what’s going on you don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room
25:02 that’s just not going to happen and trust your instincts you’ve been doing this a while you’ve gotten where you are because of your instincts trust them you know stop reading all these get smarter books that are out there you know learn what you know about your business and go from there awesome well thank you so much for joining us today Dwight and for everyone else listening we’re about to start um part two of this where we’re going to talk more about change in business and technology and AI so please tune in for
25:37 our next episode and find us on Soundcloud on Spotify on iTunes on YouTube anywhere where you listen to your podcast next episode is linked at the end of this one as [Music] well getting done in businessIn this episode, Dwight McLoud inspires us to utilize the power of AI and automation to automate our business processes. By building trust and adapting to new technologies, companies can break through barriers and unlock game-changing efficiencies. Don’t miss our next episode for more exciting strategies and tips!
In this episode, Dwight McLoud inspires us to utilize the power of AI and automation to automate our business processes. By building trust and adapting to new technologies, companies can break through barriers and unlock game-changing efficiencies. Don’t miss our next episode for more exciting strategies and tips! Watch the next episode now!
