DevReady Podcast

DevReady Podcast E50 - The Future of Well-Rounded Leadership with Christine Khor

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to the CEO of Peeplcoach.com and talent executive, Christine Khor. During their conversation, they discuss thought leadership, the benefits of executive coaching, and how to overcome fear in the marketplace.
At the beginning of the episode, Christine talks about what coaching actually is, and what it is not. She provides her background and discusses why she has a passion for helping people to improve their processes and their work-life balance. Going off the cuff for a moment, she mentions the fact that being a braggart about workaholism is not a virtue, and that Gen Z and the Millennials might actually have that part right.
She shares some industry insight into how executive coaching works, who it might be right for, and how people might get started in the coaching process. Christine believes that all people will ultimately benefit from coaching, and they can take their renewed perspectives back with them into the workplace to enhance their productivity and passion. This means having a diverse team around you to help make tough decisions. It also means not being afraid. It’s not as simple as just choosing not to fear things, though. It takes work, and Christine’s team of coaches at PeeplCoach know how.
Ultimately, the leadership at any startup is trying to create value for their investments, and executive coaching can help to maximize the returns on those investments by preparing leadership for any challenge that may come their way. You can reach Christine at the contact info provided below.
Topics Covered:
● How executive coaching helps you understand your limiting beliefs.
● Managing work expectations against working your life away.
● What should you take in if you want to coach others?
● Diversity ultimately creates better outcomes.
● First, try recruitment matching.
● Coaching yourself through fear—and managing to push you forward.
● Be careful about how much focus you put on money.
● Your startup is looking for value for money, not for what is cheap.
● The kinds of people that are ready for coaching.
Key Quotes:
❏ “Marketing is like psychology but for brands.” (2:00)
❏ “What we think of us impacts us more than what other people think of us.” (7:15)
❏ “A coach is not a friend or a partner.” (10:25)
❏ “Part of what a coach does is to question, to poke, to probe—to get a better understanding of who you are.” (12:00)
❏ “Me being proud to say I’m a workaholic is actually not a good thing.” (17:45)
❏ “By not being a tech person, I am not restricted by what can be done or what can’t be done.” (20:30)
❏ “How do we bring values and goals into the recruitment process?” (29:00)
❏ “It makes you a better father, brother, worker...to be passionate about your work.” (31:30)
❏ “The financial reward isn’t enough of a motivator...you need passion and drive.” (35:45)
❏ “The biggest mistake that I’ve made is with the investment side, the non-tech part of it.” (38:50)
❏ “Being a startup means being frugal, but not being cheap.” (41:00)
❏ “Who is your target? It’s everybody.” (46:45)

DevReady Podcast E49 - Ecommerce and Customer-Centric Design with Ben Shapira

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to digital marketing strategist Ben Shapira about digital marketing, ecommerce strategy, and how to link your target audience to your product.
In the early days, e-commerce was so expensive. But now, almost all companies will benefit from creating an online presence. And it has never been easier. Ben talks about a variety of tools that companies can use to better understand the personalities of their customers and effectively grow their businesses. The more you understand about who your customers really are, the more you can deliver in the way of what they actually want. He provides examples of Target and Costco, and how they combine different marketing tactics to play to the interests of their consumer personas.
Ben also describes attribution methods, which ultimately let business understand the nature of how their customers interact with the brand, as well as how long it took them to become a customer.
Here are the attribution methods described:
1. First-click—When did they first interact with us?
2. Last-click—When did they become a customer?
3. Linear attribution—Tracking all points of engagement between
Breaking into this field of digital marketing may seem daunting, but business owners can use free resources to start experimenting with research on their own.
Here are the three main websites for gathering user data:
1. Pew Research
2. Nielson Data
3. Helix Personas
Once you have a handle on what you consumer personas are, it really would be advantageous to bring in an outside professional to help understand what to to next.
The= key takeaway from this episode is how to actually grow your digital marketing. Ben says the best way is to:
1. Educate yourself about consumer personas, who your customer base really is, and other extrinsic data.
2. Bring in someone from the outside to help you analyze and make sense of that data.
3. Create an actionable plan to bring your customers what they really want and turn them into brand loyalists.
Topics Covered:
● The barriers to entry into ecommerce are low today.
● Traditional marketing approaches don’t really apply in the digital space.
● Why you need to understand your audience for digital marketing.
● Understanding market research tools to boost digital profitability.
● How to serve your customers to become brand loyalists.
● “Single-source” models attribute multiple streams of disparate data to one individual.
● Using Google Analytics to boost your understanding of your audience.
● Turning your conversion rates with the right data.
● How Costco has engineered the layout of their floors.
● Less is more: satisfy your customers with less.
Key Quotes
❏ “When I started, Microsoft frontpage extensions were all the rage.” (1:20)
❏ “Just because you have an internet presence doesn’t mean you’re going to have sales in the long term.” (2:30)
❏ “Social media builds a richer story around our customers.” (6:45)
❏ “It’s more important to ask questions than anything else.” (4:25)
❏ “Every business has at least two personas.” (5:00)
❏ “Personas are not monolithic: they are a general best-guess.” (12:30)
❏ “We can make inferences based on a single piece of hardware: your phone.” (13:25)
❏ “The data that’s being collected has both positive and negative connotations.” (18:10)
❏ “Personas are bad for privacy but good for companies and consumers.”
❏ “Even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you are interacting with it, and they are tracking your engagement.” (21:45)
❏ “Investing a little bit upfront in the research side will ultimately return a lot in the long run.” (28:20)
❏ “The way Target markets to mom, she will sacrifice brand names for herself so that she can buy brand name stuff for her kids.” (31:00)
❏ “It’s really important as a business owner to surround yourself with experts in the field.” (33:30)

DevReady Podcast E48 - Storytelling, Modelling & Creating Value in a Start-up with James Bilson

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to the founder and CEO of Primary, a tech consulting firm based in the Greater Melbourne Area. They talk about the challenges of modeling, working with clients, and the art of storytelling.
James talks about his history in the tech world and expresses some of the frustrations he experienced as an early developer. Among these are the problems he saw with the companies that used the agile model. He speaks to why agile doesn’t really provide any solutions for the customer, and what tech companies need to do is create models that address real problems to create real value. Andrew and Anthony share in this frustration because of all the projects they have been on where apps were developed that ultimately did not create any value for the customer.
The key takeaways from this episode iare James’s ideas that modeling is probably the most important step in the early stages of development, and that you can add value to the user’s experience by involving them in the story that the product is telling. In other words, storytelling has the power to create a meaningful experience (and valuable interactions in the real world). By building and model and developing a “scaffolding” of storytelling in your application, you can provide your customers with solutions they actually want instead of meaningless products that offer no value and ultimately hurt your company in the long run.
Topics Covered:
● Getting customers to clearly express their needs in the startup phase.
● The agile approach as a “solution” to real problems.
● The world of use-case models.
● PHP and user-management systems.
● The problems with novel tech and integration of systems.
● Storytelling as a way to connect the user to the app experience.
● Defining what the software actually should be doing.
● How just jumping in will often build the skills you need.
● Start by building a model.
Key Quotes
❏ “We were a hacker shop—we were just making it up as we went along.” (6:00)
❏ “I ended up building a lot of stuff that was beautifully crafted but did stuff that was stupid and that nobody wanted.” (8:55)
❏ “I agree that the agile solution that’s been bandied around--I don’t think it is.” (13:00)
❏ “You want to create a series of stories...that merge the tool and the communication piece.” (15:40)
❏ “A user must end up doing something of value to them in the real world.” (19:32)
❏ “Interfaces as an organizational structure are not great.” (22:35)
❏ “If you have too many conditions in the story, then the story arc is lost.” (25:40)
❏ “You can involve the other dev people [in the modeling process] and they can have real value.” (30:35)
❏ “Sometimes the answer is no dev, not pursuing an outcome at all.” (34:00)
❏ “We link processes that people are already carrying out.” (36:12)
❏ “It’s a massive win if you can take even just one or two iterations out.” (37:55)
❏ “There is this reticence to get started—just jump in.” (39:00)
❏ “The product will evolve over time as your relationship develops with the customers.” (44:10)

DevReady Podcast E47 - The Future of Parking with Mosstyn Howell

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Mosstyn Howell, founder and CEO at UbiPark, a startup that streamlines the parking experience for drivers in the greater Melbourne area. UbiPark has completely digitized the entire parking experience. They call it SNAP: search, navigate, access and pay—directly from the app. This allows customers to automate the whole process of parking, removing troublesome fees and interactions with staffers.
Mosstyn shares his experience as a parking lot attendant to eventual tech company founder and how all the work along the way opened him to the idea of automated parking. One thing Mosstyn hammers on in this interview is the importance of the team. That no matter how foolproof your idea is, without the right team, it’s going to be very difficult to translate that to real market value. Andrew and Anthony also discuss funding strategy for business ideas like these, when you only have friends and family to help support the costs initially. Mosstyn is fortunate enough to reflect on the fact the UbiPark has seen delightful returns for his earliest investors.
Finally, Mosstyn and the hosts talk about growing a business in the middle (and wake) of a global health crisis. Mosstyn opines that there has been a trend in the tech world for some time now to move to a remote work model, it just needed a catalyst to set it off. He believes that the world will more than likely transition to more remote work options after analyzing the great cost real estate is to business. He shared one story of a company paying $8M a year for parking spaces alone. Remote work, along with automated parking to ease congestion, could grow the bottom line like we’ve never seen. Mosstyn is excited to be on the frontline of this change to the way we think about parking.
Topics Covered:
● The challenge of finding the right people to come around.
● Raising funds on your own in the initial phases.
● Building the product based on feedback.
● The restrictions that Apple often places on developers.
● What do you do when you don’t have all the answers?
● Bringing development in when you have the funding to do so.
● Clarity is key.
● Remote working as a trend ahead of COVID.
● COVID’s changing mindset around tech and productivity.
● How UbiPark is providing the platform to spring into other value markets.
● Do your due diligence.
Key Quotes
❏ “I needed the best app in the parking industry.” (5:35)
❏ “Every time I took it to a new tech company, they said we had to start again.” (8:25)
❏ “By the time you set it up and get it out to market, it’s probably not exactly what they need anymore.” (13:00)
❏ “We want our customers to search, navigate, and pay for parking right from the car’s touch screen.” (16:20)
❏ “Listening to the customer is the number one thing.” (18:10)
❏ “There’s no right or wrong way to build a product.” (21:35)
❏ “If you don’t have a documented plan in place, it becomes very difficult.” (30:00)
❏ “There are pivots that are required, and there are trends in the thinking.” (38:30)
❏ “They’re going to invest in YOU.” (41:00)
❏ “The key is to make sure everyone on the team is on the same page.” (56:40)
❏ “You have to make sure you’re going into it with the right idea.” (1:00:00)

DevReady Podcast E46 - Why Innovation Depends on Process Improvement with Yuriy Tyurin

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony have a conversation with Yuriy Tyurin, founder and senior consultant at ConceptAngle Consulting. Yuriy is an expert in automation and process improvement, which his firm, ConceptAngle, was founded to help businesses achieve.
A tried and true software developer, Yuriy made his way into automation and consulting when he realized he could apply his knowledge and experience to a wider set than just construction and army engineering.
Yuriy suggests that awareness is the first step to improving processes. “I don’t need to tell people what their problems are,” he says. You only need to ask more questions. Once someone in leadership becomes aware of a problem, they can then be more susceptible to discussions around process improvement.
Beyond asking questions of his clients, Yuriy urges founders and team members in leadership to question themselves. The only way to really grow and tackle innovation is to keep improving, which is the opposite of settling for “what we’ve always done.” The businesses that fail to recognize this—that fail to see how to address their own problems and innovate in a breakneck world—will ultimately not be successful. ConceptAngle wants to empower businesses to improve their processes and keep a knife’s edge on the competition.
Topics Covered:
● The language barrier Yuriy encountered as a Russian living in Australia.
● Software is merely a tool, and it should be treated as such.
● Purpose is the only intrinsic motivator that can drive people.
● The importance of meaningful impact.
● The value that people bring to business.
● Coaching, coaching, coaching.
● Process improvement through problem solving.
● Questions matter--that’s where innovation happens.
● The danger of building “solutions” that have no problems.
● Why you need to diversify your organization’s knowledge store.
● Keep asking “why” to get a better handle on value.
Key Quotes
❏ “When you come from a management position, it’s very difficult to get back.” (7:20)
❏ “Software by itself doesn’t improve anything.” (9:40)
❏ “Technology is a multiplier. If there are problems in the organization, technology will only multiply them.” (11:00)
❏ “Money is a good goal, but it cannot be a purpose.” (13:30)
❏ “Every activity contributes to something meaningful.” (17:45)
❏ “We’re not human doings, we’re human beings.” (21:00)
❏ “Ideating on a new technology is where innovation sits.” (25:00)
❏ “You cannot deliberately solve a problem you don’t know about.” (26:00)
❏ “We should be questioning the way we operate.” (30:00)
❏ “You need to be adding value.” (32:30)
❏ “If you’re not making a profit, you can’t help your next customer.” (35:15)

DevReady Podcast E45 - Leveraging Data, Optimizing for Sustainability with Blue IoT with Bob Sharon

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Bob Sharon about his journey to building an ambitious cloud-based platform for the management of smart buildings and the built environment. Blue IoT’s globally recognized suite of products and services reduces energy and maintenance costs while increasing human comfort, safety and productivity.
Bob traces a long and varied IT career that has culminated in Blue IoT -- a transformational start-up driven by his passion, vision and the remarkable team he has assembled. He shares both the personal and entrepreneurial challenges he has encountered, from early setbacks to fostering a healthy team culture to understanding client needs to adapting evolving technologies within a burgeoning new space.
Blue IoT has developed a range of leading edge technologies, platforms and sensors of all descriptions combined with data analytics and interpretation, machine learning and AI. The company is driven by Bob’s hunger for excellence, commitment to making a difference and progressing towards a more sustainable future. In this far-ranging conversation, he describes the path, the people and the values that have fueled his company’s rapid growth.
Enjoy a deep dive into how Blue IoT is pioneering the reduction of risk, carbon footprint, energy, maintenance and operations costs for a multitude of built environments – offices and malls, governmental and university buildings – that impact individual lives and the planet every day.
Topics Covered:
Bob shares his tech background and personal history with entrepreneurial trial and error.
There’s no failure – unless you fail to embrace and grow from lessons learned.
Start-up success depends upon putting together a strong, cohesive, collaborative team.
How Blue IoT evolved to become the world’s first building management platform.
Bob details some of the nuts and bolts of Blue IoT’s suite of service offerings.
Covid19 as an opportunity for Blue IoT to help facilities mitigate risk with bleeding-edge monitoring and environmental management techniques.
Developing client interfaces and customization.
Answering client questions related to Cloud resiliency and redundancy.
How Bob has leveraged seed capital to organically grow his business structure, including staffing, marketing and employee retention.
Outsourcing: pitfalls and process.
How Blue IoT team members break down in terms of R&D and technical delivery.
Pointers for establishing and guiding an advisory team and eventual board.
What drives Bob. Hint: Passion is a primary ingredient.
Advice from Bob to his younger entrepreneurial self. Hint: Tenacity is key.
Key Quotes
“Data centers are the homes of the world’s data and the amount of energy they consume is the same as aviation (prior to Covid19), so a massive carbon footprint.” (1:38)
“I made a lot of mistakes. I took a lot of things for granted. Didn’t consult. Thought I knew when I knew nothing.” (3:55)
“One day I’m going to write a book: ‘100 Ways How NOT to Run a Business’ ” (3:48)
“What’s most important is that (employees) are psychologically invested, because we don’t want people who just come to work 9 to 5.” (7:01)
“In the end what happened was something so much better in that we ended up inventing the world’s first IoT cloud-based building management platform.” (10:28)
“We’re the square pegs in the round holes; the crazy ones doing crazy, bleeding edge things like deliver amazing outcomes.” (15:25)
“We’re getting under three years to ROI, not counting the savings on unplanned maintenance and staffing and resources.” (22:50)
“What happens if there’s a disconnect from the cloud? How is the building going to keep going… It’s a common question from clients.” (24:19)
“There’s no impediment to continuous improvement, continuous optimization, because we’re continuously using our machine learning and will soon be using artificial intelligence.” (26:10)

DevReady Podcast E44 - Communities, Data, and Change-ActiveXchange with Alex Burrows

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Alex Burrows, founder and CEO of ActiveXchange, a community sports organization that helps people with leisure management. He works with national and international sports organizations to help community outreach with fitness and activity programs.
ActiveXchange partners with a swimming program in Australia. Their partnership allows them to show the local governments the social value that these fitness programs actually have, which can in turn further their financing and sponsorship.
Alex discusses his journey toward developing this kind of software and why it matters to him. The most significant impact that Alex would like to see ActiveXchange accomplish is connecting health fitness programs to the 100 million Australians who need it. ActiveXchange gathers user data that partners can then use to tailor programs and access support from their local government and civic organizations. Ultimately, ActiveXchange seeks to make it easier for more people to get and stay healthy by using smart tech. Alex believes this can only be done with the right team: make your critical hires early and keep those people onboard. It will be so much easier to carry out big visions for your company if you’ve got the right people to deliver them.
Topics Covered:
● Security and operations.
● Leisure markets.
● Integrating fitness systems into the community.
● Focus as a challenge: understand what to do with huge pools of data.
● The value that AI and machine learning adds to massive data sets.
● The benefits of creating a “sticky network.”
● Getting the first hires right is vital.
● Questioning your thinking is hard to do, but it opens up different opportunities.
● The obesity problem in Australia.
● Creating industry partnerships to build healthier, more active communities.
● Improving data processing for gyms.
Key Quotes:
❏ “You are doing a favor to that system provider by giving them fitness usage data.” (12:20)
❏ “How can I best support my franchisee?” (15:40)
❏ “We are trying to positively influence 10 million people on a rolling basis—how they’re active, how they’re healthy—through offering sporting and leisure opportunities.” (17:45)
❏ “It’s important to have a really clear purpose.” (19:00)
❏ “It’s about keeping as flexible [as you can] as long as possible.” (22:15)
❏ “A lot of the time, organizations just want to be connected around more data.” (25:00)
❏ “Hire people that have a passion for the area you’re working—it means they’ll go the extra mile.” (31:30)
❏ “Just having a chat with someone outside your box can open up different ideas.” (34:20)
❏ “Software can be challenging right out of the box.” (37:10)
❏ “A third of leisure centers are at risk in Australia.” (43:30)
❏ “We need a good team to deliver any outcome.” (53:05)
❏ “Maybe don’t jump at every opportunity—you need a plan.” (57:45)
❏ “Sometimes life happens for us.” (59:00)
Contact Alex:
● Connect with Alex on LinkedIn
● www.activexchange.org
● Email Alex: alex@activexchange.org

DevReady Podcast E43 - Leading Sales by Guiding the Customer with Peter Strohkorb

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Peter Strohkorb about changing the thinking around sales, client engagement, and b2b marketing.
Peter shares his experiences in sales and talks about how the methods of thinking about sales need to change. Even though the bottom line will ultimately be “top of mind” when it comes to growth, there are other metrics that can measure the success of the sales team, and companies should be using them.
Among those assets are engagement. Peter explains that engaging your client on a personal level—figuring out how they think, and what their problems are—can ultimately guarantee you more work. The reason is that your client will see your value proposition. If you and your sales team haven’t worked through what value you can actually bring to your clients, then you’re not going to get very far.
But most important is probably that you understand what your clients’ problems are, that you understand what solutions they’re talking about. You need to put in the work to understand how you can deliver value to the client and get them to trust you on that. Best case scenario, they accept the proposal, you deliver on time, and they say something good about you to a partner. Referral work is the best work, after all, because their guard is already down. Demonstrate that you have a proven sales model, and give the customer a good experience in the beginning, middle, and end.
Topics Covered:
● The reward-oriented structure of sales needs to change.
● We need to rethink selling.
● Shifting the psychology of hitting monthly targets.
● Quality of interactions vs. the quantity of sales.
● You need a proven, structured sales process.
● Why you need a good sales tagline.
● You need to be able to articulate the value that you bring.
● How do you engage the client?
● Shape your conversation around who your point of contact is.
● Talk about how you can avoid risk.
● Creating value for our customers.
● OneTeam and “Smarketing.”
● Give the customer a good experience at all points.
● Referral business is the best kind of business.
Key Quotes:
❏ “When something goes right, people take the credit, but when something goes wrong, they blame others.” (1:58)
❏ “It’s a push conversation that becomes a pressure conversation.” (4:25)
❏ “We need to help our customers make an informed decision to buy from us.” (6:45)
❏ “Every organization needs growth, but we can change how we monitor sales achievements.” (11:00)
❏ “The biggest value we can create is when we’re working with our customers one-on-one.” (15:00)
❏ “You want a tagline that means something to your customer.” (19:45)
❏ “You want a tagline that’s about an experience they can reasonably expect from your business.” (20:30)
❏ “In this day and age, values are not enough. You have to have values, but you have to bring value as well.” (23:50)
❏ “Challenging their thinking can create a conversation that feels sales-y.” (26:35)
❏ “B2b sales is a long, drawn-out process in many cases.” (31:00)
❏ “You don’t avoid the question of risk by showing that other people trust you.” (35:45)
❏ “Once you send a proposal through, you’ve lost control of the sale.” (38:00)
❏ “The worst thing you can do is just send the proposal.” (40:40)
❏ “You want your client to feel like they’re being looked after.” (47:15)
❏ “You don’t want to help them and have them go somewhere else.” (49:40)

DevReady Podcast E42 - Mentorship Network at Ylemer with Islam Abdullah

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony interview Islam Abdullah, CEO and founder of Ylemer—a company that connects entrepreneurs to mentors, which ultimately helps them to grow their community and their business.
Islam talks to the hosts about how technology is a tool but that you need a vision for growth. Oftentimes, we are lacking in direction with regard to that vision. What Ylemer does is set up entrepreneurs with mentors to help them fine-tune and adjust their processes for growth. This is rooted in the idea that we need to lean on the experience of others to make the right choices. And the guidance of a deep network of mentors is invaluable.
A key takeaway of this episode is that no one really knows what the next right move is. And a lot of time, that indecision can actually cripple your progress. What Andrew offers is this idea that decisiveness is the true virtue. You would be better to make the wrong choice and learn from it than to idle in indecision for too long. Islam is also aware of this and builds it into the brand at Ylemer. Taking small actions, building the trust of your clients, and leaning on the counsel of those with more experience can help you to make decisions quickly while offering the tools to help analyze and apply those lessons learned.
Topics Covered:
● Investing in blockchain.
● C-chat in Windows 98.
● Cryptocurrency and entrepreneurship.
● Producing something to be able to attract attention and investment.
● Empowering entrepreneurship to drive impact.
● The concept of the “purpose mountain.”
● Leaning on the experience of others and asking the right questions.
● Filter out what is not adding value to your path.
● Little actions make huge differences.
Key Quotes:
❏ “We have intelligence and we waste it living paycheck to paycheck.” (7:00)
❏ “What is really the vision that you want to do?” (8:30)
❏ “Facebook and Twitter changed the way we have conversations.” (12:20)
❏ “Everyone has their own story...advice doesn’t across the board.:” (18:45)
❏ “Technology allows you to scale and automate.” (22:00)
❏ “No process is set in stone.” (24:13)
❏ “Purpose doesn’t have to be overly complex.” (29:06)
❏ “Businesses have to realize that they are in discovery every single day.” (32:20)
❏ “Working with someone to guide you is very important—what is the road ahead?” (38:00)
❏ “You have no idea where you will be after you take the next step.” (39:20)
❏ “Entrepreneurship is about your mindset and personal growth.” (42:20)
❏ “Knowledge is easily obtained, but action is the key.” (47:45)
❏ “Make decisions fast.” (52:00)

DevReady Podcast E41 - Dealing with Change with Sanne Del

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony sit down and talk to Sanne Del, national operations and quality manager at Six Degrees Recruiting. Sanne Del discusses her daily life as an operations manager and how she uses data analysis to drive her company forward.
One of the most difficult problems in operations and data is dealing with change. Sanne shares how she uses her skills as a people person and as a manager to help her team deal with changes as they are rolled out, whether in company-wide infrastructure or in the small details of user interface. She is dedicated to helping everyone on her team to accomplish their tasks more efficiently and with fewer hiccoughs.
A key takeaway of this episode is that companies really do have the power to drive change with thoughtful data analysis. It’s not as simple as just looking at a bunch of collected data and hoping the solutions will come to you. You need sharp people on your team who can analyze data and provide meaningful insights, whether internally or to a client. And with these kinds of tools in your camp, you should be able to weather any changes your company faces. It’s up to, people in leadership, to guide your team through changes and mitigate loss and fatigue. These are the signs of the best teams in the world.
Topics Covered:
● Digital transformation
● Operations of a recruiting firm.
● Data analysis for operations optimization.
● Integrating with LinkedIn.
● The challenges in migrating to new systems in operation.
● Identifying problems areas and breaking down solutions.
● Change management and dealing with challenges.
● Working with integrated systems.
● Interface as a barrier to user functionality.
● Continuous learning and puzzles in operations management.
● Delivering meaningful data analysis to your team or client.
● Data without insights is useless.
Key Quotes:
❏ “We track internal and applications.” (02:25)
❏ “I make sure the information is clear and where we need it.” (04:45)
❏ “Our focus is on simplifying our systems now.” (07:10)
❏ “It’s really hard to understand what you need to do and how you need to do it.” (10:45)
❏ “Technology is an enabler; it is not a solution.” (14:22)
❏ “There’s no such thing as a perfect plan.” (18:30)
❏ “If you see a change, and it doesn’t stop you from being able to do your work, then just roll with it.” (19:20)
❏ “Things change, but you can still figure it out.” (21:00)
❏ “Sometimes systems just need tweaking so they’ll talk to each other.” (23:20)
❏ “People use only 10% of the functionality of MS Word.” (32:30)
❏ “Automation allows us to find problems more quickly.” (36:40)
❏ “If you’re not working in the technology space, sometimes it’s really lonely.” (44:30)
❏ “[In data analysis] if you don’t go in with a specific goal, it’s really difficult to find.” (46:45)
❏ “90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years.” (48:36)
❏ “Doing it for technology’s sake is the wrong reason.” (51:30)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sannegr/