Join host Tan Wilson for a special edition of ‘The Optimize Podcast 2023 Unfolded’ as we look back at last year's riveting themes and conversations. This episode is a journey through the most impactful discussions from previous episodes, highlighting key insights in business success. Dive into the essence of Effective Communication, understand the revolutionary intersection of Technology, AI, and Cybersecurity, explore Branding and Personal Development, and unravel the intricacies of Leadership and Team Dynamics. Plus, don’t miss our fun segment where guests reveal their desired superpowers in business. Get ready for an enlightening recap that interconnects growth, innovation, and adaptability in the business world of 2023.
Join host Tan Wilson for a special edition of ‘The Optimize Podcast 2023 Unfolded’ as we look back at last year's riveting themes and conversations. This episode is a journey through the most impactful discussions from previous episodes, highlighting key insights in business success. Dive into the essence of Effective Communication, understand the revolutionary intersection of Technology, AI, and Cybersecurity, explore Branding and Personal Development, and unravel the intricacies of Leadership and Team Dynamics. Plus, don’t miss our fun segment where guests reveal their desired superpowers in business. Get ready for an enlightening recap that interconnects growth, innovation, and adaptability in the business world of 2023.
00;00;00;09 - 00;00;31;09
Speaker 1
Welcome to a special edition of the Optimize podcast. 23 unfolded key insights from the Optimize Podcast. I'm Don Wilson, and today we're revisiting last year's most compelling themes and conversations.
00;00;31;12 - 00;01;00;28
Speaker 1
Today, we're revisiting last year's most compelling themes in conversations from communication challenges to AI's transformative impacts. We engage in discussions that enlighten and challenged our perspectives. So grab a drink and let's dive back into these moments and uncover the insights. Defining Our Year. Theme one Effective Communication. Our day begins with the pivotal essence of effective communication a cornerstone of business success.
00;01;01;00 - 00;01;26;06
Speaker 1
In this highlight reel, we're revisiting the most compelling segments of our past episodes, featuring insights from industry leaders and experts. They don't just discuss effective communication. They demonstrate its profound impact on real world business scenarios. Get ready to be captivated by these influential conversations and discover how communication can be your gateway to success in the competitive business landscape.
00;01;26;08 - 00;01;50;18
Speaker 1
For me, I mean, as you said, it doesn't always go smoothly, right? And so I've always understood and wanted and sought after good captures strategies because good capture strategies lead to good proposal strategies. What I sort of intimated at the beginning is while I focus on proposals in my organization, we do some limited capture and we do some limited capture, mostly out of necessity.
00;01;50;20 - 00;02;27;22
Speaker 1
When you find that the capture hasn't been developed properly, what happens is you constantly seek the answers, the information, the strategy, the solutions, the discriminator, the gaps, etc. that you're missing for the elements of telling the true compelling story. And so I think for for me, I see things like that not necessarily always going well when you haven't developed and documented, frankly, a really well developed capture strategy becomes one of those things where you then sort of have to peel back the onion from proposals and get to the core, the center of, I guess, the goodness of an onion in order to get to the actual story there.
00;02;27;22 - 00;02;54;03
Speaker 1
So so yes, we see that that doesn't always happen. I think as as beautifully as we would like it to. But I definitely like to see good capture strategies documented in proposals. Absolutely. You read my mind completely, because I was thinking about the handoff. And one of the other mantras is that we can't read minds. The proposal team cannot read minds.
00;02;54;03 - 00;03;15;28
Speaker 1
And so, you know, we sometimes will see, even during light, a team or a red team or even further along the process, you'll see comments of like, why is it this, you know, in the proposal, why are we talking about x, Y? Why wasn't Y highlighted? And that's because it's living in the head of a captured team member or an executive or PM.
00;03;15;28 - 00;03;36;25
Speaker 1
But it was never transitioned, transitioned over either through a solution ing session or a documentation. IT documentation. You media kickoff briefing or notes in a capture record. So I'm not a fan of busy work or, you know, documentation for document escape like, you know, big big slide decks of like capture like 100 slides like no, I'm not a fan of that.
00;03;36;28 - 00;04;00;14
Speaker 2
We talk about all the time not going to say work like bound to say it, the fallacy. It's proverbial carrot. We constantly chase and it's like, but it's true. And not just, you know, in proposal industry, but American culture. The way that we work is very different from a European culture. We are taught early on to to drive work ourselves into the ground.
00;04;00;14 - 00;04;18;10
Speaker 2
And if you are not pulling, you know, extra hours or whatever, or being the top seller performer, then you are not successful. And that's not true. We're all successful in our own way AS and it looks different for everyone. So with these capabilities and with this time, keep yourselves well. Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk.
00;04;18;15 - 00;04;45;14
Speaker 1
100% Preach, Testify. I want to say work life balance is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you put it in, you'll you're going to suffer, right? So when Anatoly was speaking earlier and she said, we saved 70 hours of of human labor by running invisible thread. So for your team, for those 70 hours, did you then give them 70 hours more worth of work to do, or did they get to go pick up their kids from practice this afternoon?
00;04;45;14 - 00;05;03;24
Speaker 1
Because they had time to do that? You know, for us being and and I think it's a generational thing. I think, you know, Gen X be what it is. You know, we were driven, we were independent, we were latchkey kids. We're not going to deny that. We know what we need to do in order to get through our lives, and we're just not going to stop.
00;05;03;26 - 00;05;23;26
Speaker 1
So if the tool is giving us our time back, we owe it to ourselves to take that time. Speak with your leadership. You brought me a tool. It gave me more time. Does that mean I can do more proposals? No, it does not. We had in one of my earlier jobs, I had a leader say, if I get you another proposal manager, how many more proposals can you do?
00;05;23;28 - 00;05;52;27
Speaker 1
My answer was none. My answer was, I will do the ones I'm already doing even better. Yeah. If you're not using that time that you get back to make your product better, you're just making more products. Not any better. How do we ensure clarity and engagement where when we're trying to convey a company's branding narrative without, you know, going into this alphabet soup or industry jargon?
00;05;52;29 - 00;06;18;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, I definitely agree. It's it's really easy to get lost. I like your your the way you phrase it in a jungle of jargon. And yeah, no group deals with more jargon than government contractors, the alphabet soup and all of the acronyms and really to to be able to clearly articulate your value and the problems that you solve, the pain that you take away.
00;06;18;06 - 00;06;46;18
Speaker 1
And, you know, just understanding who it is that you're trying to influence are really key. We at Ocean Five, we work with government contracting companies and we see a lot of techno speak on their websites or capability statements. And even just talking to them, you know, 1 to 1 in person. You know, most often the people that these companies are trying to communicate with are not actually the technical people.
00;06;46;21 - 00;07;09;00
Speaker 1
So people need to keep in mind that you're creating messaging that really needs to speak human. And, you know, don't assume that people that are, for instance, coming to your website and reading your RFP responses are the technical people. What the people the what the people really want to know is how are you going to solve their problems?
00;07;09;02 - 00;07;36;00
Speaker 1
They need to solve their problems. They need to meet their deadlines and they need to achieve their mission. And they're not really concerned with what gadget gizmo service you're going to do it with these people. These people are people. And and they need to know how you're going to help them. We found that often having an outside party conduct a strategic meeting of all the stakeholders to draw out all that critical information and then condense it down.
00;07;36;00 - 00;07;53;19
Speaker 1
And and so they can actually now clearly articulate. How do you think that the internal champions and all those kind of involved can effectively foster feedback and how and what does that feedback look like for success?
00;07;53;21 - 00;08;17;08
Speaker 3
So that's a great point about the kind of feedback loop on the two key points, and they kind of ties in with our previous discussions. When you do any kind of change management being a small to medium business or being an enterprise, it is really important to have an understanding of how you're going on the actual rollout, how you're going on the actual change of behavior.
00;08;17;11 - 00;08;43;29
Speaker 3
And the only real way you can do that effectively and yield a successful result ultimately is type cycles, type feedback loops, situations where instead of considering, okay, we're going to roll this out, I'm six months, in six months, we're going to see if it's working or not. Instead of that, you look at kind of two four week increments and you just tighten it down and you allow yourself the ability to course correct.
00;08;44;01 - 00;09;03;02
Speaker 3
So it's kind of a fundamental tenet of, you know, an agile approach. I mean, in the world of I.T, we talk about agile approaches, meaning tight delivery cycles. The rationale for doing that is that you type embarks on a very tight timeframe and you check the results. You need to understand what results you want and you see whether you're in the right direction or not.
00;09;03;04 - 00;09;19;14
Speaker 3
And then you shift course as you need because life doesn't work in a static way. So it's not like we have this master plan. It's going to take, you know, four months to conceive and then we're going to roll it out. It's going to be on her for six months and then we're going to see the results. It's much more.
00;09;19;17 - 00;09;52;09
Speaker 3
Okay. The first month is what's our initial place that we want to see change. It's a tiny sliver of the overall objectives. Let's measure that. Let's course correct as we need a set of people involved. And that's an entirely you know, it's completely dependent on effective communication for that. But the coordinating party and in a large organization that's a dedicated person in a smaller organization, that's going to be a part of the C-suite in some way, it'll be a part of their silos, their weekly starters calls.
00;09;52;11 - 00;10;12;28
Speaker 3
Okay, we bought this software. We expected sort of to do X. Is it doing X? Who's supposed to be using it or are they using it? Have they been trained on it? Are they getting the results we thought we would get when we actually signed off on the purchase order on this in the investment? Because if you don't do that and we we have examples where a customer is and it's befuddling, it's it's crazy.
00;10;13;01 - 00;10;37;02
Speaker 3
They buy our software and they pay no attention to the post-purchase point. It's almost as if like they believe it's just going to magically work on its own. It isn't. And if you don't have your people using it effectively and we spend a lot of time and energy, you know, having our staff or our customer success stuff, working closely with our customers once once the software is bought.
00;10;37;04 - 00;11;00;24
Speaker 3
But if if you can't get that engagement on the other side, it's a waste of time for all concerned. It's like the old phrase goes, You can bring the horse to order, but you cannot make the horse drink. And in this case we see it. And it's it's a very strange thing. You wonder why would somebody drop X swindlers on a piece of software when they're not going to actually give it a fair cricket actually been successful.
00;11;00;27 - 00;11;13;28
Speaker 3
And that is right back to that whole idea of how do you do successful change in behavior. And that is predicated on the huge to huge extent on effective communication, both internal and external.
00;11;14;00 - 00;11;44;04
Speaker 1
Into technology. And I next, we discussed the world of technology and artificial intelligence, exploring the nexus of innovation and practicality. And these segments, Our podcast sheds light on the intricate processes and evaluation approaches governing cutting edge technologies and integration and adoption. We'll hear from our thought leaders and experts who embrace these advancements and critically analyze their potential to revolutionize our industry.
00;11;44;07 - 00;12;08;17
Speaker 1
This journey is not about adopting new tools. It's about opening our minds to the possibility of technology. And I join us as we explore the transformative power of these technologies and unwrap how they can be harnessed to propel us into a future with untapped potential and unprecedented success. How do you perceive AI's influence, especially given the small business and edge like you've said?
00;12;08;24 - 00;12;31;28
Speaker 4
Great question. You know, you're watching in real time how AI is making a change, and I do want to take it back a little while. I've been doing a lot of robotic process automation. RPA wasn't called that before was just process automation. And there were other things that you would do because we've been building automated business processes for a very long time.
00;12;32;00 - 00;12;58;25
Speaker 4
This falls in line with what people started to look at A.I. as, as a way of just automating certain things, added a future machine learning element and machine learning just kind of tapped that machine learning is where you taught the machine to learn from the different things that you are putting into the system so that data you're feeding it is allowing it to train itself and it is able to learn on its own.
00;12;58;28 - 00;13;23;13
Speaker 4
But you've got to set those algorithms of how it learns. I don't want to go down into that. We don't have anywhere near enough time just to talk about the simple way, but the machine learning and taking it to that next level, and it's allowing for small businesses to start to leverage the intelligence of other people's craft. What I mean by that is take us back to the proposal writing experience.
00;13;23;15 - 00;13;43;16
Speaker 4
I'm somebody who I have a very good technical acumen. I've been a chief enterprise architect for it was CSC at the time, then CSR right now. Great. I was rated as one of the top 5% in the company. Because of the acumen I had for the technical piece. I was very good at doing technical but very poor at writing, writing.
00;13;43;16 - 00;14;03;01
Speaker 4
It's not my thing. It takes me a long time to figure out what words to put in place. I can take a technical bullet point, drop it into a I large language model like it, and I can turn out a proposal response in 2 hours. What used to take me two weeks to turn out because it just takes so long to write.
00;14;03;03 - 00;14;18;29
Speaker 4
So from a small business standpoint, it really helps the technical people to be able to provide their expertise quickly in a way that enables us to kind of turn out prose, prose and well-written prose at that point for the company.
00;14;19;04 - 00;14;50;03
Speaker 1
So there was a term used by one of the attendees here that I loved was being process agnostic, and I always used the term tool agnostic, right? And so it doesn't matter what process I'm trying to, you know, like improve or what's problem or, you know, solution I'm trying to provide. I looked at the process and what the problem is first, and then I decide, is there a tool to, you know, to use to kind of solve that, like in this whole like we've thrown out a lot of different types of tools here today.
00;14;50;05 - 00;15;17;13
Speaker 1
Visible Thread is a tool grammarly like there's so many out there, how do you pick the right tool for the process or do you shape the process around the tool? I love that question. People process tools, right? Where technology there's an order there, the people have to know what they're doing. The process has to be in place in order for the tool to fit into the process.
00;15;17;16 - 00;15;38;10
Speaker 1
If you think you need a tool, but you don't know why, you don't need a tool, you need a process. Once you figure out what step that is, then you find the tools that can help you make those steps be accomplished faster. That's that copilot philosophy, right? How can I use technology to make me better at my job, not to replace me from being able to do my job?
00;15;38;12 - 00;16;01;03
Speaker 1
So the way I see it is, you know, your people need to understand kind of the gist. What do you need to get out of the process? They need to then develop that process before you can even consider what tool, because that tool might change what your process ends up being. Then then it becomes a cycle. And I think for a proposal person in general, you know, we all know what needs to happen in the proposal.
00;16;01;03 - 00;16;27;10
Speaker 1
And one of the speakers earlier today said, I'm going to give my CAPTCHA manager what I need in order for them to get me a winning proposal. I will then create that winning proposal that's always been my philosophy as well. We've got to work our way back. And so for us in the proposal industry to say I don't have to spend my time creating a startup compliance matrix, I can research the customer so or I can go back and read through the CAPTCHA plan in a little bit greater detail.
00;16;27;15 - 00;16;56;10
Speaker 1
I can start using my own industry expertise to make this product better, not just in a functionality of a proposal document from a document management perspective, but from a content management perspective and an intelligence management perspective. I think those who find their time being opened up are going to be able to research more, learn more about their own organization and their own organizational capabilities, and become more of a subject matter expert from within.
00;16;56;16 - 00;17;03;04
Speaker 1
How do you perceive some of these advancements, influencing or shaping the technology adoption realm?
00;17;03;06 - 00;17;25;00
Speaker 3
So A.I. is yet another layer of kind of consideration when you think about automation and the environment. And I think there is a kind of a rush that's like pretty much every hype cycle. I'm not suggesting that generative AI is a hype cycle, but with every kind of new innovation, the Internet itself, the advent of the smartphone, A.I. is of a similar kind of stature.
00;17;25;02 - 00;17;50;19
Speaker 3
And the situation that's most important to keep in mind is that A.I. has been around an awful long time. It's the generative AI type of A.I. that is new, and that is something that's very good at certain use cases, certain jobs, and it's not so good at other jobs. So to make that concrete generative A.I. is not so good at mathematical jobs.
00;17;50;21 - 00;18;17;17
Speaker 3
So if I want to reliably, you know, do something in tech line, like read and write to a database. So user management, for instance, you would never use generative AI for user management or for workspace management or for parsing out a microsoft Word file. But you would absolutely use it for other jobs. So for instance, summarization of text, the creative element of writing good proposals, that's where a generative they can really shine.
00;18;17;20 - 00;18;45;12
Speaker 3
So I think when you're thinking about A.I. and the advances, it's important to be a little bit more considered and not rush into situation and maybe avoid some of the or at least consider some of the products that are effectively just, you know, thin wrappers around a large language model, which is the engine of of generative A.I.. So there are a lot of new products out there who claim to deliver all kinds of nirvana and, you know, silver bullet type outcomes.
00;18;45;14 - 00;19;01;10
Speaker 3
Just be a little bit careful of those. And I don't say that as a vendor. I say that as a vendor who's been 15 years building product, invisible thread, and sometimes technology and engineering takes a long time. That's just the nature of it. You can't do things overnight and suddenly deliver a robust solution.
00;19;01;13 - 00;19;31;06
Speaker 1
Along with exploring advancements. We also underscore the critical role of cybersecurity in these segments, we discuss how safeguarding digital innovation is as essential as technology. So we've spoken kind of at length about the immense potential of AI, the value of brains, but the potential and the challenges are pretty significant when it comes to cybersecurity. And like air is a great tool, but it's not without its pitfalls, especially when you're considering cybersecurity.
00;19;31;06 - 00;20;06;04
Speaker 1
So how do you view the current landscape, especially considering the importance of staying vigilant and and being proactive of its own? So the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NEST, which is a really great authority for cybersecurity and a bunch of other offshoots of it, launched their AI risk management framework this past January, which is a really relevant timeline given how, you know, things change and the policy doesn't normally keep up with that change, but they're actually really staying on top of it this time.
00;20;06;07 - 00;20;49;04
Speaker 1
And the risk management framework is to help users of AI better manage the risks to individuals, organizations and society at large associated with using artificial intelligence specifically to help cultivate the trust in using AI technologies and promote using AI for innovation while mitigating that risk. And it's a 86 page document. But what it distills down into is largely having a holistic cybersecurity policy for your company, not just specific to AI, and it lends itself to the incorporation of that AI system into your overall policy.
00;20;49;04 - 00;21;20;26
Speaker 1
And that kind of comes down to the basics, right? And this has a bunch of other documentation and guides for small, large businesses, federal, etc. and most of them come down to the simple things that we know of, you know, password management and don't click on malicious links and stuff like that. But those are the foundational concepts where as a company, how you manage your data and segregate the data and don't put the production data next to the h.R.
00;21;20;26 - 00;21;45;13
Speaker 1
Data because it is a tool, it's a data aggregation tool. The purpose of it is to take all of that data, put it together and spit something else out. And so you get privacy concerns that way where something that you might not want to be aggregated into the algorithm might get aggregated. And so you have to have policies in place to mitigate that as you're onboarding an AI system into your company.
00;21;45;15 - 00;22;00;16
Speaker 1
I know when you when you talk about adoption and everything, you you also need to stress the need for heightened security with adoption. Can you talk to a little about security and elaborate on that?
00;22;00;18 - 00;22;20;16
Speaker 3
Yeah. So security and A.I. is kind of a a really important factor, particularly when you're dealing with regulated industries. And again, I don't know if the awareness is out there to the extent it needs to be. When you're looking at vendors of software. And I guess I can speak from that point of view because that's the area that we swim in.
00;22;20;19 - 00;22;47;29
Speaker 3
There are an awful lot of vendors out there, particularly ones that pop up in the last, you know, short period of time, let's say, between one and three years who are promising all kinds of stuff and who are kind of not necessarily keeping in mind what it takes to deploy software in an enterprise setting. When you deal with information security folk in that enterprise setting, they have legitimate and valid concerns about the content and the content.
00;22;47;29 - 00;23;09;02
Speaker 3
Typically, they don't want that content going outside of their firewall. So that's a tech way of saying it just has to be 100% locked down. If you think about defense or space, you think about IT services, financial services, health care. You just don't want that going into the public Internet. So a lot of companies will set up private clouds for that exact reason.
00;23;09;04 - 00;23;49;24
Speaker 3
In defense of space or in kind of more, you know, situations where you've got secure considerations and you've got, you know, skiffs going on or whatnot. These private clouds are really you're kind of your entry point if you're using Lem's large language models, which are fundamentally the engine of generative AI. If you're using GPP, for instance, which, you know, Openai was the first to democratize the whole generative AI one year ago actually with GPT and creativity, once you put that content into a GPT type parse language model, it's basically violating the security stance and posture.
00;23;49;26 - 00;24;13;27
Speaker 3
Because you don't know this. There's a number of factors here. You could be training inadvertently, but that's mostly locked down. Now. I think most of the large language model guys have kind of got options for that, but effectively your content is going outside your environment and there's a compliance implication around this. So you don't know if non-nationals are going to be able to somehow interact with that software or that large language model.
00;24;13;29 - 00;24;34;27
Speaker 3
And the reason, you know, a lot of the kind of intent of the executive order from Biden, which now is about two or three weeks old, was we can debate the ins and outs of why it's good and why it's not so good. But the intent was the security intent. So what do corporates need to do? I think they need to have a checklist.
00;24;35;00 - 00;24;59;26
Speaker 3
They need to ask the vendor, where is your Al-Alam living? They need to understand what are infosec people be able to deploy that are them. My view, and this is our stance as visible threat because we are very conscious of our security posture. It's one of our big differentiation points for the last 15 years, working with the top defense contractors, for instance, we've always, you know, nailed our colors to the mast.
00;24;59;26 - 00;25;26;25
Speaker 3
Security is the number one priority for us. That's why we are deployed into skiffs. So for us, you need to deploy and Al-Alam, which is completely isolated, it cannot be trained. It should not be leaking any data outside of the firewall. And the chief information security officer, It needs to be 100% comfortable that that is the case. Yes, there will be evolution very quickly in the next six months, 12 months around security.
00;25;26;27 - 00;25;35;11
Speaker 3
But I think in this industry, in this business, you just can't take chances on your content, your proprietary content. You just can't do that.
00;25;35;13 - 00;26;03;11
Speaker 1
The in three branding and personal development turning our focus to branding and personal development, we've had some enlightening conversations this year across a diverse set of topics. Our guest gave us deep insights into creating authentic brand narratives and importance of personal development. Here are some insights from those discussions. Can you kind of share some of your like, evolving definitions and experience with flexibility?
00;26;03;13 - 00;26;26;17
Speaker 1
You know, as your family has grown, it is growing no more. So I'm just going to put that out there just in case the viewers are like, no, we're tap it out of five here. But as your company kind of grows, because I know you want to grow your business into, you know, a different world. So how do you establish and maintain those boundaries and how do you define that flexibility?
00;26;26;19 - 00;26;48;28
Speaker 1
Well, it is to your point, it's not an easy thing to do. And it's a lesson. Still, as a woman in my forties, I'm still learning. However, a lesson that I'm learning right now. I'm in a season of life right now where I'm working more more than I have been before. Again, intentionally chosen, right? Working through all the goals that we have in my life for myself, for my company, for my family, all of those things.
00;26;49;01 - 00;27;18;01
Speaker 1
I'm just in a phase where the past year it's been a lot more work. So to your point though, with certain clients, when you're not getting up boundaries and you're not necessarily staying true to your vision and your path, here's what I found. You end up unhappy not liking the work that you're doing, whether it's because someone has kind of guilted you into that or because you've known them a long time, you really want to help out, even though it doesn't align with where you want to go, which is, you know, right?
00;27;18;01 - 00;27;37;15
Speaker 1
You want to help people out. You want to be doing the right thing and being flexible. Sure. Give me a call. You know, so flexibility is important, but when you get that call out of the blue and you really can't take on this initiative or this work, being able to put that boundary up and saying, yeah, now's not a really good time, but I know somebody else who can help you.
00;27;37;15 - 00;28;12;27
Speaker 1
And providing that referral, I think that that is really important and from the boundary perspective because I definitely have taken on work and accepted work and working with, you know, my staff and my folks where I, my heart wasn't in it and it showed and it just really impacted me enjoyment of the work that I was doing. So if you were to tell your younger self or a new up and coming professional who wants to get into the business or someone who's starting out their own company, like what one piece of advice would you give them?
00;28;13;00 - 00;28;39;12
Speaker 1
Well, there's so many. Yes, I can only pick one. I mean, I can do like three steps, right? Like, I think knowing yourself is so important in being honest. Honestly, assessing who you are, what your skills are, and what you like doing. I mean, because I think so many of us end up down a path that we don't love that and that doesn't necessarily align with who we are.
00;28;39;18 - 00;29;02;08
Speaker 1
That when you can really whether it's through coaching, whether it's through, you know, just personal assessment, knowing who you are, what your skills at and what are the things that bring you joy in your life, you know, so that you can kind of set your life up to do those things, to do more of those things. I think you'll find success in your personal life and in your professional life, you know, exponentially so.
00;29;02;13 - 00;29;25;13
Speaker 1
And I think that's I think that's so key. Right. And it's so hard to teach the young professionals is that you're going to mess up and sometimes you're going to mess up really bad and you have to really kind of own it, sit and understand that discomfort or maybe the consequence of what you did and move on, dust yourself off and move on.
00;29;25;13 - 00;29;47;04
Speaker 1
Because if you strive for perfection, you will fail at every single turn. And so I like to always say, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and be kind to yourself because you might actually be in that situation another time. So absolutely. And I think you the most growth and learning that happens is through failures, is through mistakes that happen.
00;29;47;10 - 00;30;06;07
Speaker 1
Obviously, nobody wants to make the big, huge mistake. But sometimes in your career, if you make that mistake once, guess what? You're going to be way better the next time because you learned that lesson the hard way and it really sticks with you and resonates with you. I guess branding is really it's about controlling the narrative and determining how you want to show.
00;30;06;07 - 00;30;07;20
Speaker 4
Up.
00;30;07;22 - 00;30;54;08
Speaker 1
Not only really to potential clients, but also other audiences. For government contractors. It means also relating to teaming partners and potential recruits. So I'd say part of the key to maintaining authenticity is really to maintain, to maintain transparency and consistent in your messaging. Creating alignment among the key stakeholders is really it's huge and it's very often very challenging when we run our marketing and messaging workshops for our clients, the first thing that we do is really try to get input from all the key stakeholders and, you know, and try to work towards that alignment.
00;30;54;08 - 00;31;16;20
Speaker 1
I guess we kind of consider our workshops to be, you know, mostly strategy but also a part therapy session because it's just it's really amazing to see how out of alignment the memberships, the members of leadership are in their thinking. And to try to get everybody on the same page is is really can be a stumbling block for a company.
00;31;16;22 - 00;31;43;00
Speaker 1
And then, you know, once you have everybody's input then then you really just need to sit down and take a good hard look and draw out what is truly important. And then and then the next step after that would be creating very clear and concise company messaging that then flows into important tools like company website or capability statement sales pitch.
00;31;43;00 - 00;32;13;28
Speaker 1
Derek's proposals just really everything, because having the key messaging aligned across every touchpoint that your target market comes in contact with a remember that could be employees, it could be teaming partners, could be your end client influencers. You know, that is that's what actually develops and is the key to brand trust. So you want to keep in mind clarity and transparency and authenticity.
00;32;13;28 - 00;32;45;20
Speaker 1
When you're creating your company messaging and keeping it consistent, Just keep in a consistent theme for leadership and team dynamics. Finally, leadership and team dynamics has been a cornerstone of our discussions in our episodes. We explored the evolving nature of leadership and importance of fostering effective team collaboration. These episodes offered valuable insights into modern leadership and management being intentional and actively thinking and setting goals.
00;32;45;22 - 00;33;21;27
Speaker 1
Internal organizational champions are also critical in organizational change. So identify why you know what went wrong there. I think one of those things that often goes wrong is just like a resourcing discussion and having a conversation upfront. Re RFP really working through an overarching kind, a capture management strategy of a legitimate identification of the resourcing needs, internal and external, that you need to support a particular bid will save so much time, energy, effort, you know, tears as you're kind of working through these baton passes.
00;33;21;29 - 00;33;47;11
Speaker 1
Employee consultant burnout is a very, very real thing, especially in our environment and recognizing that upfront, identifying people by name, ensuring everybody's got a backup, or that somebody is being communicated with about what is happening within this resourcing discussion, I think will keep the conversation flowing. I think it will reduce baton drops because somebody is always there to kind of pick it up and run, even if we'd lost time, even if we have to restart something.
00;33;47;13 - 00;34;15;10
Speaker 1
I think some of that resourcing discussion is something that is a really key takeaway from this as soon and as early as you can identify that so that you kind of reduce the upper well, the problems that you would necessarily have with some of those burnout issues. Excellent. And thinking about resourcing, one of the ways that we have tried to make that baton pass work, especially when you're working with an external resource, you're working with a muslim management firm or independent outside consultant.
00;34;15;12 - 00;34;38;26
Speaker 1
Exactly like, like yourselves or like the company that I used to have. And we still use external resources ourselves, is trying to standardize as many of those handoff points as possible. And I want to I'm cautious using the word standardized because that sounds like really big and having an onerous and I don't I really try to stay away from that when I standardize.
00;34;38;26 - 00;35;03;10
Speaker 1
I mean, just like do the same thing, reduce your two decisions for fatigue. Right? So, for example, have your dyslexia so easy. Right? And I'm a big fan. I have it over here on my desk. I should grab it. But Checklist Manifesto is a great book. It's very small. It's essentially the methodology that pilots use, which is called the Check Checklist Manifesto.
00;35;03;10 - 00;35;20;17
Speaker 1
The book, and it's written by pilot, is probably 20 plus years old. And it talks about using checklists. Now, you don't have to have a good formal checklist, but I'm talking about mental checklist. So, for example, if you know that every time you make a big decision, what are the next things that happen? We turn on this. We see that the SharePoint portal.
00;35;20;17 - 00;35;43;04
Speaker 1
We have all that make the folders the exact same. Every time we have a folder that says, Copy me a library, this is copy me, and all the subfolders are exactly the same. Yeah, and it's links to our master proposal template in there so that if we change the master, you always are grabbing the latest so you don't have any decision fatigue.
00;35;43;11 - 00;36;04;03
Speaker 1
And all you need is one person to know that when a big decision is made, they turn on that that SharePoint and that SharePoint Library copies the other one. So it's like a two like thing. Nobody has to ask who's signed, Nobody has to ask, how should I organize it? It's always organized, same way. So it helps with that decision fatigue up front and passing the baton.
00;36;04;06 - 00;36;22;11
Speaker 1
But it also helps that when you're doing the proposal, everybody who's coming in recognizes that folder library hierarchy. They know exactly where to go to find the cert type of documents or instructions, and they don't have decision fatigue either. They're not having to text you say, Where can I find the RFP? Where can I find the pink team draft?
00;36;22;11 - 00;36;49;26
Speaker 1
It's always in the same place on every proposal and it sounds so obvious, but those little things will again clear your brain, clear your baton passes, and just that way your brain could focus on the stuff that is added value. Intellectual capital, secret sauce and so on. Yeah. Can I, can I grab that thread a little bit? The beauty of doing things like that for yourself is that you create kind of a culture where everybody accepts that that is what they do.
00;36;49;26 - 00;37;10;07
Speaker 1
Everybody accesses and utilizes the system, the collaboration platform. Those folders get populated and they are there for posterity sake, which is great. What I think we often find is we just don't have the files, we don't know where to find things. They're launched in somebody's head. Why are we doing this again? I think I've written this past performance response.
00;37;10;07 - 00;37;27;14
Speaker 1
Where is that? So if you can get into a habit of whether you want to call it standardized or whatever you want to call it, people start using the process, people start respecting the process, and then you start having all of those artifacts available in order to expedite and create efficiencies in the future. Yeah, I'll give you a perfect demo.
00;37;27;14 - 00;37;51;16
Speaker 1
We're going to ping pong a little bit here, if you don't mind. Ten. So thinking about is stuff being in people's heads. When I came on board and my, you know, at Source, they had all their past performance. I'm sure they had all their prior proposals organized by year. So instead of by because it was in their head, because they knew inherently, yeah, we paid on that.
00;37;51;18 - 00;38;15;12
Speaker 1
It was 2019. It was 2021. They knew to go to that folder. So so seems again self-evident. But one of the first things we did was like, No, no, no, this is you organize by agency because then I don't have to ask someone, where would I find that last State Department proposal or where would I find so little things like that, even how you label it, Think about can somebody find it?
00;38;15;12 - 00;38;39;28
Speaker 1
It without asking me. I'm a huge fan of self-service. Huge. If you have a self-service mantra, then that will go a long way. With the baton passing, the efficiency and so on. I have not heard that whole self-service then That's a really great raise. I look it applies to. I use it for raising my children the year. But how do you manage millennials?
00;38;39;28 - 00;39;00;22
Speaker 1
How do you manage the gen-z Z Like, you know, like how do you manage different groups of people who have different technology backgrounds? They operate very differently. Like if anything with COVID has kind of taught us is that some of us were not meant to work virtually, like some of us were not meant like to work in a virtual environment.
00;39;00;27 - 00;39;18;14
Speaker 1
They need that creativity, they need that organic feedback, they need that connection. So how do we kind of embrace this brave new world that we have with all the challenges and still be successful? Take the technology out of it.
00;39;18;16 - 00;39;44;29
Speaker 2
All right? And how I am letting letting that fly. People. People are very people. My title title is my future keynote. It's out now. People are very people. And if you've ever heard me present before, I've done a lot of presentations about leadership and you can always count on that. But I could I could get a call right now that my son fell and broke his wrist and it would drastically change the way I am showing up in front of you.
00;39;45;01 - 00;40;07;18
Speaker 2
And so there is a constant variable. The technology, the processes take all of that out and focus on the people. Right. And embrace how someone is showing up, even if it's wildly different than the way you are, the way you communicate. And that goes for leadership to right. You may report to someone who is just a little different than you are, has different communication styles.
00;40;07;21 - 00;40;28;11
Speaker 2
But to to the point, I think it really does boil down to leadership and acknowledging differences and then also realizing that we are kind of, regardless of what your generation is or your personality style or anything like that, we now we're apparently alphas up here now. Thanks for that. You know, that that we're all kind of in the same boat, though.
00;40;28;11 - 00;40;48;17
Speaker 2
Still. We're all we're all floating in the same boat and with, you know, expectations and tools and things that are happening with us and around us. And I think when we remember that and the other key word, too, is empathy. Sometimes we have to be smacked in the face real hard before we're able to acknowledge another point of view.
00;40;48;17 - 00;41;09;14
Speaker 2
And it's unfortunate. So can you teach it? But you can certainly model it and at least be aware that we are all walking a very different path. But we come together on lots of things and lots of ways and tools and technology is certainly one of them and we're going to approach those differently as people too. So being open minded.
00;41;09;17 - 00;41;27;28
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. And I think too with people it's played to the skill train, to the weakness. And so, you know, I've managed several teams over the years and folks come and go and it's always, you know, somebody's struggling. Might want to consider getting rid of them. You might need them. They're probably going to need to be replaced.
00;41;28;00 - 00;41;49;11
Speaker 1
No specific examples, but to say, let me try to fix them first, maybe they don't know. Maybe we've given something that we did not give them time to learn. We did not give them time to adapt or adjust, or maybe they just haven't figured it out yet. Maybe they haven't different. Exactly. Maybe they have a different learning style or a health issue or something that they need to get through personally.
00;41;49;19 - 00;42;17;19
Speaker 1
And as a manager, you can have those conversations one on one without getting air involved, but you can also look at that individual, you know, as a leader, what is their learning style? Would they do better with a mentor? Would they do better with, you know, take some PTO and just dial it back a minute? You know, how do you get to the best of what that person has to offer on that day at that time, if it becomes consistent or you try to fix them, they revert back.
00;42;17;19 - 00;42;36;03
Speaker 1
Then, you know, you've got a people issue, but probably you've got an attentive issue, a, you know, distraction issue or something that is short term, temporary and can be resolved and fixed if you don't try to fix the problem first, you're not going to solve the problem. You're not going to know what to do when the next person has that same issue.
00;42;36;05 - 00;43;09;21
Speaker 1
How have you been able to manage that challenge of being authentic, strategic and attentional when there's so many other external factors that kind of, you know, impact all of that? It isn't easy. You know, you with the best laid intentions, it is a daily intentional choice. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I have this great crazy morning routine that I've been doing for about five years now, probably probably around the same time, actually, probably even before I started my business, I think I was doing this where I am setting my intentions.
00;43;09;21 - 00;43;32;02
Speaker 1
I am actively thinking about it on a daily basis. Right. I think for me, keeping my life order in the way that's important to me allows me to be my authentic self. So whether it is, you know, if you believe in a higher power, for me, it's God first and then my spouse and then my family and then my friends, right.
00;43;32;03 - 00;43;49;11
Speaker 1
And then work. And it doesn't mean that work never is the top priority of the day. It just means I'm doing that check in on a daily basis. It is a this is who I am. This is what I'm going to try to focus on. Right. I might write down one day, you know, if I'm going through each of those to keep them in order.
00;43;49;14 - 00;44;08;14
Speaker 1
I want to make sure I hug my kids every day, each one of them, and tell them I love them. Right. Something like that. That just allows me to keep all the right things in the right order. It isn't easy, but I try to make it a daily intentional focus of mine to sort of stay on track. But going back to something that you said before.
00;44;08;14 - 00;44;24;28
Speaker 1
Right, the I think one thing when you were asking me about starting my own business, one component that I skipped that I think is very important. I mentioned assessing your own skills and whether you think you'd be suited for it. The other piece that helps you get the courage to do it, frankly, is to find a mentor, right?
00;44;25;00 - 00;44;42;22
Speaker 1
For me, we've talked about this before. You were that mentor. For me, that really was just, you know, you had been you know, you're finding somebody that sort of a few years ahead of you that's done what it is that you want to do. So you can sort of look and say, well, I can see how it's done right then you can sort of vision, you know, and envision yourself doing the same thing.
00;44;42;29 - 00;45;04;09
Speaker 1
So I think we had numerous conversations along the way where I was sort of dabbling in independent consulting, and you were very encouraging and you were just just do it. Just go do it right. And I think having that friendship and that mentorship, somebody who is just a little further along than you are, who's done it was a huge a huge jump in the right direction.
00;45;04;16 - 00;45;32;02
Speaker 1
So they appreciate that. You're very welcome. You mentioned the notion of having a champion to guide you through this adoption process. And I think that's so important. It brings a sense of like ownership and accountability, especially given like the evolution pace. It's such a rapid pace right now. How do you think organizations could effectively identify and empower, like these internal, quote unquote, champions to navigate through this adoption?
00;45;32;02 - 00;45;35;18
Speaker 1
You know, like voyage.
00;45;35;21 - 00;46;08;06
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a great question and it's just a thought process from my standpoint. I think the idea of having a champion internally in any enterprise organization is critical to any significant kind of behavior change process with automation. What are the characteristics of that? Champion That's a great question. The person needs to be okay. Well, firstly, it can't be a part time role and this is a huge issue, right?
00;46;08;06 - 00;46;28;15
Speaker 3
A lot of times it'll be, well, I got my day job and whatever and I'm supposed to be doing this secondary, which isn't really being empowered to actually deliver anything significant. So the person has got to be more or less full time on this. The second element of that person is that they need to have a combination of two skills.
00;46;28;15 - 00;47;06;01
Speaker 3
One is effective communication and the second is effective or effective enough understanding of tech. They don't need to be a deep dive tech person. They don't need to be a dev person, but they need to have a logical disposition. That's a tricky mix. An effective communicator with good, logical talents and skills they are around. You will find them, I think, biasing towards a younger person not to be a just and I'm not exactly spring checking myself, but I would certainly bias towards a less aged person.
00;47;06;04 - 00;47;32;22
Speaker 3
Not because they don't have the capacity, they certainly could. They're probably towards the back end of their career. They probably don't have enough energy to kind of push it through because it requires a lot of energy. It's effectively an internal consultant role and you're liaising with a lot of different teams. You're trying to do a combination of business modeling, you're trying to do a combination of kind of education, get people on board, understand the tech landscape.
00;47;32;25 - 00;47;55;13
Speaker 3
So there's quite a bit going on in that role. It is not a part time role, it's a full time role. It also can often be drawn into the kind of PMO program management office that in my experience has been the kiss of death because a lot of that office or those offices can often be unhampered and they don't have any kind of real clout in an organization.
00;47;55;15 - 00;48;13;18
Speaker 3
So the reporting structure of the person and there should be multiple of these people in on the organization. The reporting structure is important, so they need to report more or less when, say, directly into the C-suite, certainly 1 to 2 steps marks away from the C-suite because that gives them power and will need to bring people along the journey.
00;48;13;18 - 00;48;23;24
Speaker 3
So they need to have the ability to crack a whip every so often, so that there are the characteristics that gives you success. You don't do that. You just waste your time.
00;48;23;26 - 00;48;27;14
Speaker 1
It almost sounds like a proposal manager, right? You know, and.
00;48;27;15 - 00;48;53;11
Speaker 3
Then part proposal manager and part proposal manager and then challenge proposal managers is that they're considered, in many cases a kind of a back office function. They're not considered as strategic as really they should be. So, yeah, I mean, that challenge that you guys were asking, you've got an unimpaired proposal. Manager That's the doom situation. But when you've got an empowered program manager or a proposal manager excuse me, life is good.
00;48;53;13 - 00;49;09;13
Speaker 1
Name five superpowers. We also make sure that we had a little bit of fun in our episodes, and I asked each guest if they had a superpower to make their business life easier. What superhero superpower would they choose and why?
00;49;09;16 - 00;49;23;13
Speaker 3
I think it's kind of the theme of this entire conversation. It's the ability for me to help other people communicate effectively. Communication is a single superpower. I would love to be able to imbue upon teams of people.
00;49;23;15 - 00;49;52;19
Speaker 1
With a little bit of time travel to the valuation board would help. So you want to be flash like I'm a big you know, I'm a big superhero fan. I've got a son, so I know all my DC Marvel characters. So you would be less you would want to be able to like time travel. Yeah, maybe it would be a little more about the clairvoyance, you know, element of what are we really, really after here on the evaluation committee board or, you know, those folks really do in that that source selection.
00;49;52;19 - 00;50;21;10
Speaker 1
But you know, Jen, if I had a superpower would be to convince all the contracting authorities across the whole federal government to use a standard format and maybe just make it like just like a checklist or so they got up meeting and checklist again. But, you know, how many times are we seen I like to see errors, you know, in the same hour, like, come on, like name agency as like Libya change.
00;50;21;13 - 00;51;10;16
Speaker 1
And if we all have the same superpower, can we super superpower it and one day we want like that's very pokey model we all want to get you all right well since or like the transfer, we're like we just. Well, Don Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say that the the fact that I'm a controversial take as well I think the fact that companies that are also proposal consultants and that that whole thing exists is just a sign that it's very inefficient like yes we need we need competition, yes we need transparency, but the hours and days and lifetime spent cannot be healthy for the federal government in general.
00;51;10;16 - 00;51;43;29
Speaker 1
Right. So my superpower would be, I don't know some how to slice that in like half or something. I love it. I'm so many, like so many different superheroes that it's kind of hard for me to think because what you're saying, Jennifer, I would love to have and this is why I like to participate in the reverse Industry Day, is that federal agencies have because those are really great opportunities for agencies to understand from the industry side how we interpret things, how we're receiving or perceiving things.
00;51;43;29 - 00;52;19;23
Speaker 1
And so I always want to be the the character from Guardians of the Galaxy. She's I forget what her name is, but she's the one who's an MD, she's an empath, mystic male. Does Yeah, I want to be like Mantis, right? Like, you're feeling, you know, and be able to kind of communicate and convey that Because I think at the end of the day, if we all kind of understood or like put ourselves in the other person's shoes, I think it would be huge for everybody to understand where they're coming from, why, why we say what we do, why we do what we do.
00;52;19;25 - 00;52;43;03
Speaker 1
And it would avoid a lot of this misunderstanding and, you know, controversy. So for me, I think it would be Doctor Strange in his ability to see all the different permutations and their outcomes and use that to go to see the second and third order effects of your the integration of AI and kind of mitigate them as you go so they don't find out after the fact that you did something wrong.
00;52;43;06 - 00;52;47;09
Speaker 1
So basically seeing into the future and mitigating it.
00;52;47;11 - 00;53;09;29
Speaker 4
I'm going to stay on the same line of the the telekinesis or the mental power of Professor X from it, from the X-Men. He basically is able to use as the the machine to see where everyone is. So you could see all the threat and see what they're thinking and kind of work into their minds and do things like that.
00;53;10;00 - 00;53;14;26
Speaker 4
I had that superpower of doing that. I can make them take all of their bad ideas and turn them into good.
00;53;15;00 - 00;53;49;21
Speaker 1
All right, now you're really tapping into my inner geek. I am a big fan of X-Men comics, so while that I have to admit that ultimately I think my favorite superhero really is Nightcrawler, I think the answer to your question would ultimately be the superpower of continuous adaptation. So I think the winner of the ability to adjust to any situation and ensure their survival would be Darwin to an end can tie it to an actual superhero like you get bonus points for that too.
00;53;49;24 - 00;54;10;18
Speaker 1
Okay, well, I'll tell you, because I did do so. I'm part of the National Contract Management Association and Sydney and last year I spoke at one of their conferences in the Leadership Debate Chapter Leaders pre-conference conference, and they had us choose a superhero and a superpower and this one really resonated with me. That would apply in your business life, right?
00;54;10;18 - 00;54;32;27
Speaker 1
So I'll get there with because while I think flying would be super cool, I'm not going to lie. I think in I don't know how practical it would be. You know, I can't put five kids on my back and, you know, go fly off somewhere. I love the one of Have you seen Encanto? Yes. So the the cousin Dolores from Encanto, she's the one with the super listening skills.
00;54;32;29 - 00;54;57;24
Speaker 1
I got that one for me as right. A mom of a lot of teenagers right now and as a business owner. Right. Just that does try to listen and listen well and to hear people. I think that is such an important superpower. Well, that's a wrap, folks. And thank you for joining us on this retrospective journey as we gear for another year of exploration and discovery.
00;54;57;27 - 00;55;12;13
Speaker 1
Let's keep sharing, sipping and strategizing. And remember, the secret ingredient is a genuine connection, a glass of bourbon infused with a generous splash of wit. So until next time, thank you for listening to the Optimize podcast.