Is Digital Transformation a Lie? | E7 - Hard Refresh - An ISSA Podcast

Sa.

Welcome back, everyone, to the hard refresh. It is just Karina and I today as your hosts. We decided that we had to come in and, like, keep things real every once in a while in our episodes. So it's just us going to banter back and forth. No.

What do you mean, just us? I feel like we're just as good as everybody else. Kaden.

Just us, no guests. Guests are amazing. You're gonna get a little bit more insight into how our two truths and a lie will go today. We'll get to that in a second. But today's topic is going to be a fun one, so make sure you stick around. We are going to dive specifically into a lie. You know, we're kind of in this two truths and a lie mindset. So we're going to talk about a lie today. That is digital transformation. A lie. That's what we're going to talk about. So. But Karina, we're gonna. We're gonna go with you first on this. Two truths and a lie.

And I literally just told you to be prepared, and I'm not prepared at all.

Dang it. Okay. Two truths and a lie I went to school for. But you already know this about me. Dang it.

I'm trying to think of, like, what you don't know about me.

Okay. All right, let's see. All right, so I have a twin sister. I went to Europe for a year in college, backpack through Europe, and I have three kids.

Hey, I don't know if we've had this conversation before. I have it so many times. So I'm a twin and I don't remember. I remember you reacting to that, being like, no way, because. And now I don't remember if you said you had a twin. And I totally forgot. Now I'm like, second guessing myself because I remember the conversation some time ago. Dang it. I think it's one or two. I'm gonna go with one. I don't think you're a twin.

Dang it. I was like, so close. It's gonna. I'm gonna do it. No, I do not have a twin sister. I always wanted a sister. I don't know if I wanted a.

Twin sister, but I did always want a sister.

I have two older brothers and I.

Did go and I backpacked through Europe when I was in college and I have three kids. Ryan, Ryder, and Kay.

That's awesome. Yeah. My. When. When I was thinking about when I told you I had a twin sister, I remember you being like, nah. And then you said something And I don't remember if it was just like, what are the odds if I'm a twin as well? Did that happen? I've had that happen before when I tell people and they're like, no way, I'm a twin. Well, now I can't use that one.

No. Well, I already know that you are a twin, so you can't use it. I feel like you're going to be.

Really good at this because a lot of things that you tell me, I'm like, no way.

Okay, go tell me.

All right. Well, first and foremost, I was born 10 minutes apart from my twin, and it was a C section.

Okay.

The second one is earlier on in my career, one of the tasks I was given by a boss of mine was to mount a generator on top of his car for a road trip so that. So that they would have power inside the car.

Okay.

And then the third one is I did theater in college.

Okay.

Wow. I mean, those are.

Okay, so let's unpack this a little bit. Number two, did you have workers compensation?

Is there anything that happened to you when you did that?

Workers comp. Oh, like if I was injured?

What if you, like, electrocuted? Did you get a.

Was everything okay with that situation?

I mean, the company had workers comp.

Okay.

I mean, nothing happened, so.

Okay.

All right.

And can I.

So can I ask questions?

Yeah. Right. Where did you put the generator exactly? Like, on top of the car.

I think this is cheating.

It's totally cheating.

I mean.

Yeah, let's say it was on top of the car.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm gonna say that lie is number one. It wasn't 10 minutes. Your mom did not have a C section.

She did have a C section, but.

Was it 10 minutes?

No. That would be super fast. We were born within, like 60 seconds of each other.

Okay, so that was the lie.

That was the lie.

Yes.

I knew it.

I knew you were immediate one after the other.

So are you older or are you younger?

By 60 seconds, I'm older. Okay, so what is your twin sister's name?

Emma.

I feel like she has to come on the podcast.

I need to meet Emma. I need to know Emma. Emma, if you're out there, please come on this podcast, send her this episode, please.

She's. She's a busy stay at home mom with three kids under the age of four.

Okay, yeah, maybe Emma can't come to the podcast.

Maybe I always joke with Kaden and.

Tell him I'm the Peruvian sister he.

Never wanted because I have started to send him all of my videos of, like, decorating my office and just random text messages at 7:00am which is like, what, 3:00 clock in the morning? 4:00 clock in the morning for you?

You're probably like, karina, stop now.

I did get three text messages that went off this morning. Was it this morning? It was like, 4:35am My time. My wife's like, who's texting you? And I was like, I thought my phone was on silent.

Karina, I'm so sorry.

I really need to be better about that.

But when things come into my head, I just rattle off. And also, like, I. I know that I text you a lot, and then I'll respond in my head, and then.

I won't actually respond. And then I'll go back and be like, God, what a jerk I am. He responds right away, and then I don't respond back. So I'll get better about it.

My apologies.

Told Karina this a few days ago. I was just like, you've made it into my top nine favorites of text messages. Where's my text message with Karina?

That's the amount of text messages he.

Get from you guys. That's something.

Always bugging him.

Well, I wanted to do something with my sister Count, because I have seven sisters, but I was like, no, she'll remember that.

Yeah, well, I know. I knew the sisters, and I always.

Want you to talk about the sister. Like how you have seven sisters. I think that's why we get along so well, because you get me.

All I've done my entire life is just.

Yeah, I'm putting on makeup.

I'm showing you aesthetics, palettes, decor. You're like, I get it, I get it.

And it's unfortunate that. I mean, not unfortunate, but they're all older than me, besides my twin, technically, so I.

You guys are the babies?

We were, yeah. My oldest sister is 16 years older than me.

Your mother is a saint and your father. Both of them. What's Christmas like? And the holidays? Are you guys always, like. Do you try to get together? Is it difficult with seven?

Yeah, it's pretty rare that everyone's able to, like, fly in and get together. But usually we're the gathering place because we house my parents.

Okay, nice.

And so we're. Yeah, we're. We're pretty busy around the holidays.

I can only imagine this.

This holiday season for Christmas, we're going out to my wife's family in North Carolina, so we're gonna go spend, like, three weeks out there.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. So okay, so how many grandkids?

Nineteen.

Wow. Nineteen grandkids?

Yeah.

Holy.

My wife and I are, like, behind. We're the ones with only one child.

He better get on it.

I know.

And your daughter is Four.

She's four.

Okay. Yeah. It's time, Caden.

But we're in playing hockey.

I. You need to show me a video of your child playing hockey.

I'll send you one of the coolest.

She's going to be so cool. I love it.

Yeah. All right, well, let's dive into some quick control. Karina has some cool updates for us and reminders.

Yeah. So do check out the Great API debate. It's posted in live. It's so great API Debate. Open Ecosystems versus Walled Gardens with Gerald from Brightco. And stay tuned for the next episode. It's going to be with the Brain Corp team, David and Gavin. And it is called We Want Full Autonomy until We Don't. So stay tuned.

Sounds gonna be fun. I'm excited for that conversation.

Same.

Yeah. And if. If you have interest, I just want to put this out there just because the committee in and of self is still relatively new. And so if you have interest in giving back to the industry and serving, reach out and let us know. If you're technology enthusiasts and want to be involved in. In helping and having conversations and weeding there, let us know. We could always use more help. So.

And I'll interview you. Kaden gives me a hard time because I made.

I made him interview, and I did not make you interview for the committee. I just wanted to get to know you. Okay, this is really funny story. Before we move on.

So Sam from Kaden's team wanted to be a part of the committee. So he texts me and he said, kaden, text me saying, Sam wanted to be a part of it.

And I said, of course.

Like, we'd love to have anyone, right? Like, we. We want volunteers. This is a collaborative committee. Whatever. And so Kaden's like, okay, well, are you gonna meet with him? And I'm like, no, I don't have to meet with him.

He's like, you interviewed me. You have to meet with him. I'm like, oh, my gosh, that is hysterical. Okay, so now I have to interview all these people? How dare you, Karina can't just let.

Anyone walk through these doors.

We gotta be selective. Sip. No, we won't. Guys, anyone that wants to help can help.

And we are grateful to have you.

By the way, what happened to Sam? Is he not gonna do it?

I mean, it was spring break, and.

You know, he just, he's not serious enough. Okay, well, Sam's out.

Sam's out then. Sorry.

But Sam, if you're listening, permission denied.

Yeah.

Access to.

Okay, we have 15 minutes. No big deal.

Yeah, let's dive into our discussion today. So, clearing the cache. Our discussion today. Another lie. Is digital transformation a lie? Karina, why this topic today?

Okay, so I'm feeling this pain point, right. I've been working with a lot of companies and digital transformation is incredibly painful, but necessary. Right. But I think from a digital transformation there's two sides of this. There's a technology and system transformation. There's also a very big piece which is the cultural transformation. And so what I'm finding is if culturally you're not changing and embracing this new mindset and understanding what it means to go through a digital transformation, you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

Yeah, I. So this is several years ago. I was at a conference and there was a booth there that I was just interested in learning more about. And he was, the gentleman was talking about like, oh, you know, we are, we are software. And I was like, I was a little confused. He was just like, we've taken this entire like 3 inch binder of like paper processes and this had to do with like facility auditing. He's like, and it's now all in Excel. And I was just like, my mind did not say that that was software, but is it digitally transformed? Okay, like, yes.

Did you digitize it or did you digitally transform?

So it's like, okay, now it's electronic, but is it truly a transformation of process? Because like, still part of their process was like, well, then we have this Excel and then like all of these photos are in a shared file in OneDrive. And I was like, da. So yeah, it's interesting because this concept that we often try and help people understand is like moving from paper to digital. Right?

Right.

But digital is more than just moving it from a physical paper to a digital PDF, right? Yeah, An Adobe, you know, sign pd. Like, the idea of that's not what digital transformation means, is making it electronic version of something. Right. So this, this reactive state to tech adoption is like the other half of what you were talking about is people don't make switches. And then usually when they do make switches, it's in a reactive state which they then try and do the smallest amount of work possible just to like become compliant with a client's request. That's what we see actually drive digital transformation. Our 22 years of history is that it's more common, not that the other doesn't happen, but it's more common than not to have clients driving people's need to change, not because of their desire. It's just they're trying to meet a client demand.

Right. When I think that you can unpack that too. Right. When it comes with digital transformation, one is the misconception about digitizing things and how that's truly not part. I guess it's, it could be a part of digital transformation, but it doesn't encompass all of it. Right. And then from the assumption of the why, like why are you doing this? Are you trying to improve operations? Are you trying to meet a client demand or expectation? Are you trying to. What problem are you solving for? I think that's one of the things we said over and over on the podcast. But digital transformation from my perspective is a very, it's not just a buzzword. I think it catapults organizations into a different category because it is such an incredibly daunting and I don't say that lightly daunting and cumbersome task, but if you can get there, it is an incredible, it's a game changer. Like not just from a productivity perspective, a wellness and balance perspective. And we're talking balance and wellness from a person and a technology, systems and software. And that's what I'm finding. Like there's a lot of opportunities to improve, but man, is it painful. It's. It's really hard. And I didn't understand because I'm very tech forward and I have, I'm with you all the time and other tech leaders that are that way. I didn't understand or anticipate how resistant team members were going to be and even putting up the block the barriers, creating committees, having these ambassadors, champions, if you will, still is. It's still having like a adverse effect. So I'm very curious to see how other organizations embrace digital transformations from various sizes.

Yeah. Often I've seen the best organizations in this industry, they look at it differently. They have learned that the digital landscape of their business has to be literally part of how they function, how they operate.

Yeah.

And how do they automate? I often, I often teach this principle is you go from chaos to order. Right. That's going from like any, whether it's pen and paper or just an organized system, chaos to order. But then you have to go from order to automation. That next level is beyond just the idea of putting pieces together that is now a digitized workflow that is more productive. There's it's beyond productivity. It's. No, I actually don't even need to do it anymore. It's automated. The notification automatically goes out. People automatically get notified. I never even know that they were notified. Right. Of whatever it is. And that's, that's like an oversimplification of automation is people getting notified. I get it.

Yeah.

There's way cooler automations out there. But we live in a day and age where people especially, especially in the software space, people are talking about the concept of an AI agent replacing jobs. Now that might be saved for like next episode on like cleaners actually being replaced. But a lot of back office things that add so much overhead to a business if you aren't careful. Right. And administration, the, the more bloated administration becomes, the more eats into profitability. Right. Which is always in this industry lacking.

Right, Right.

There's not a lot of room there. And so that's, that's what digital transformation can do, is you move from chaos to order. That's great. That's step number one. But then we got to go from order to automation. And that's through, you know, previous. If you're a new listener on the podcast, go back to previous episodes. We've talked about this. Whether it's through integrations of other platforms or maybe you've found the gold all in one tool that works for whatever it is that automation has to be in place. And AI is just pushing that boundary and the necessity of it even even further. Because if you just have a manual process that now is just all digitized, cool. It's. There's a productivity increase there.

Right.

There's a library, there's organization. Right. Chaos to order. You're not following a paper trail and filing cabinets. It's centralized. But that next stage, and that's, that's how I think of leading my company is how, how do we get more. We've done great things moving from chaos to order.

Right.

What are we going to do next to move from order to automation. And that's what people need to think about.

Well, and I love that because I wrote it down. KS to order. Order to automation. And I think one of the things that we find a lot is companies are coming to us and asking, like, how are you using AI? Like, what tools should I use? To your point about the AI agents. Right. And like, how do I implement and how do I. And it's like, but wait a minute, you can't use all these tools if you don't have a strategy for digital transformation. If you just try to hodgepodge it, you're going to be doing your organization a disservice because you're not fundamentally and foundationally, I would say, set up to really optimize that higher level of tech. And so people don't want to hear that. Right. They want to be like, well, can I just use ChatGPT? Yeah, you can. But if you're trying to create real impact and use technology like artificial intelligence, you got to go back five steps even more. Like you got to go probably seven steps and get your house organized and then you can start using things like that. That's the goal. Right. You would get to that end point of AI, but you first got to clean up, you got to do a lot of cleanup and you got to do a lot of transformation.

There's, there's a lot of people using technology and. Or let's, let's go with the chat GPT route. They've. I don't remember the exact numbers. It's literally millions upon millions of daily users.

Yeah.

Like a huge chunk. And was focused on America. A huge chunk of Americans are using ChatGPT on the daily.

Yeah.

And it's like, just because you use it doesn't mean you've gone through this transformation. I use it every day and half of the time it doesn't add more value. And then the other half of the time it actually lets me, like be really insightful. Anyways, the idea of that transformation process is it's supposed to transform your business, help you move to the next level, not just stay at the same level. It's just now digitized.

Right, right.

And that's, that's just, I'd say the biggest fracturing mindset that I think cripples a business is people believe. Because now I have software or technology and I'm doing it, I'm better as a business. Not. Not exactly.

Right. Well. And I love that you said that. Right. Transformation, evolution, like those are action, they're verbs. Like you're, it's the process. It's not a static process. It's evolving and changing and there's many layers to it. And I think that's also something that people don't realize. It's has a lot, you have to unpack a lot of that. And it's not something that can happen in a week or two weeks or even a month. It's a huge cultural shift that would probably take anywhere from best case scenario. And obviously the size of the company does impact this, but from my experience, anywhere from nine months to a year and a half is probably what you're looking at. It's a huge investment, not just from a financial perspective, but from a human perspective. It's a lot of resources that you have to. But again, the benefit is astronomical. Right. If you do this, you really set up your company for success and longevity, scalability, like, those are all the things that we've talked about. And you'll find that it catapults businesses.

Some people worry too much about choosing the right it, like the right solution, the right software.

Right.

Listen, you could choose the perfect software on paper for your business and still completely fail. Or you can choose something that, like, the idea is people get caught up in the right IT versus the process that actually backs of what you're trying to do.

Yeah.

I often teach the principle as well, that your decision has to land within a triangle picture. Meaning there's only three choices that you could pick from if there's more that you're trying to solve and understand. Like draw a triangle. Hey, priority number one is the top of the triangle. But then go down on this side and this side. These are two subcategories. So if you can imagine that and that's all you get to fill out, we're pointing to the top priority number one.

I'm writing it down. Tell me this again. I love these visuals that you're giving me today. Okay, so all the solutions are within my triangle or outside of my triangle?

Within the triangle. The reason why we draw things is so we visually can say, all I get to choose is top number one. And then a triangle only has two more points. So it's one sub, one sub. The idea of if you can't go after a problem with it fitting into that triangle, you haven't narrowed it down enough. Right. A triangle points you in a direction. Right. Or if you look at it like an arrowhead. Right. Because people are like, oh, it's just there's this, like, related problem. Like, that's fine. You can have two related problems that you're going along in the same direction, but it's got to point towards it. So draw a triangle, put the biggest priority on top. And. And if you have multiple triangles, that's fine. Like, visually helps you.

Like, is that cheating, though, if you have multiple triangles?

Well, you could. You can draw out multiple triangles, but you still have to pick one triangle image. Right. But if it helps, you say, all right, these are connected, these are connected. But, man, this one's gonna have, like, the greatest impact on revenue.

I'm gonna need you to be my life coach. I think you.

You give so many great. The. My favorite one to date, though, and.

I have to jump. By the way, is focus. The acronym of Focus I love. That was one of the first things you said. You told me when we first met in the interview for the committee.

I was like, this guy is so smart, but the triangle I love is so visual.

I love how you think through because the way that you structure these things, it's very tangible. Right. Like, it feels like you can grasp it because a lot of these things are oftentimes very ambiguous and it feels daunting and like, how do I even wrap my brain around it? And so a lot of this, the advice that you give is. Is super helpful. So I appreciate it.

Yeah. Well. And hopefully all of our listeners, between the conversation of Karina and I today gives you some action to go take. Go take the triangle. Focus, by the way, stands for follow one course until successful.

I was going to put that.

Yeah, it just. It means the fact that you're going to go all in and truly trying to prove out a channel, a business function, and that you're thinking of the whole thing as a concept and that you're really dialing in and focusing. Yeah, there's. There's a bunch of those. Those are things I've been taught by mentors and leaders over the years.

So I know. Stay tuned, guys, because he has a lot of really great tips and I. I just wrote down the chaos to order and ordered automation as well. So I got so much from this podcast.

Today you go and you got our two truths and a lie.

So yours were way better than mine.

No big deal.

I feel like I have to redo mine. No, it's fine.

Well, next episode, we'll let you redo yours.

Okay.

All right.

You have a whole week to think about it now, Karina.

Yeah, I have to be more creative. Mine were super lame. And I totally tell you, I'm like.

Make sure you're prepared, Kaden.

And then you ask me, I'm like, not a clue what I'm gonna say.

All right, guys, awesome. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time.