Our Toolkit for Successful Engagements

Mitch (00:06):

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Make Others Successful, a podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies to help you build a better workplace. Today, we are sort of pulling the curtain back on some of what we do here at Bulb in some of our projects, some of the exercises and tools. We're calling this inside our toolbox, some of the different methods that we use when we're engaged with clients, just interviewing teams and helping align some of their technology strategy. So the purpose of this is twofold. It is first to share helpful exercises. So maybe you can use these at your own organization and help align your team and get some consensus around technology. And then the side benefit is sort of like, hey, if you were wondering at all what it would be like to work with us and kind of get a glimpse into what some of those activities look like, we're going to go into some of that too. So let's dig in. Anyone have any thoughts on this topic that they want to get off the bat? Get right off the bat. It's a good topic. I like it. It's a good topic from Matt Dressel, everybody. Alright.

Emma (01:15):

I think the only thing I would add is sometimes it can be confusing, especially within consulting agencies of what do we actually do. So I'm excited to talk through what these exercises look like and then also hopefully give some examples of really success stories and places where we've seen these exercises pull different insights out and bring us to a better outcome. So sweet. Hopefully it'll be helpful.

Mitch (01:40):

Cool. So yeah, we have this kind of separated into four different segments or four different sort of purposes that we have in the context of our projects. The first is setting the stage. So the first thing that we want to do in the context of setting the stage, this is early on in a project with a client where we're just getting to know them a little bit, maybe meeting their leadership team and kind of getting alignment around why we're here and what we're doing. Who wants to start us off? We're going to talk about kickoffs and leadership interviews.

Emma (02:18):

Matt and I have done quite a few kickoffs and leadership interviews together. I'll take kickoffs and then you can kind of run with the leadership side of things. So we do always start a project with a kickoff. Sometimes this can feel almost redundant if you've already gone through a ton of contract negotiations. It's like, yeah, everyone should be on the same page about the project and the outcomes and what it's going to look like. However, if you don't have a kickoff, you run the risk of not being in alignment and the entire project can completely spiral out of control or you get to the end of the project and it's not in alignment with what the client or the team thought that they were going to get. So running a kickoff really helps all of that. Specifically what we do at our kickoff, and we'll talk about this in a minute, is the hopes and fears exercise. But all of this is pointing towards making sure at the end of that meeting you're leaving knowing what the next couple of weeks or months or one week, if it's a short project, it's going to look like what's expected of everyone, roles and responsibilities, outcomes, deliverables, and if there's any questions, you address those right away. So the value of a kickoff cannot be overstated.

Mitch (03:26):

Yeah, I think what's interesting is that what you said about everyone comes from different places in the client's organization where you can't just assume everyone understands all the context around this is who we're working with Bulb digital, and here's why. What we didn't put down here is actually we do an internal kickoff first for our own purposes. Very true. So that we show up to the client meeting with us all on the same page. So it's largely to get the client's team on the same page with us,

Matt D. (03:58):

Right? Yeah. So let's talk about that for a minute. I think the purpose is the same. We do it a little bit differently, but our internal kickoff is because I might've sold the project, Mitch might be doing the project, Emma's leading the project, and maybe somebody else is working on the project as well. Of those people, maybe only one or two of them know very much about the project at all at that moment in time. The kickoff, that internal kickoff is about getting everyone in alignment on what's the expectations, what are we doing, how much budget do we have, where are we going? All of those things. And then the external kickoff is for a very similar purpose because we don't know how much has been communicated with their team about the project. Has that been communicated the way that we want that to be communicated as the people actually delivering this outcome.

(04:48):

And so a lot of the process, and it is quick, we try to go through it pretty quickly. It's not something really long and drawn out. It's matter of fact. It's like, Hey, here's the people, here's what they're doing. All of those things. But it's really key to make sure everybody's on the page. I don't know how many times we've come a meeting, kickoff meeting and several people have responded. Actually several. I think one customer we talked to, they said, when we started the meeting, I was like, oh, this is just going to be another pointless meeting that I have to go to. And by the end of it they're like, wow, this was super valuable. I'm glad we did this because we're now all on the same page.

Emma (05:23):

And a big part of that is the hopes and fears exercise, which can be a really powerful brainstorming session. Another really important aspect is, and I think it's actually the same client that you were just talking about, they have a ton of initiatives going on, and so sometimes it's really hard to place where this initiative falls within others and fits. And so lots of times the project sponsor on the client side can then have that platform to explain to whoever's in the room, whether it's leadership or some of the end users, this is how this fits with the other initiatives we're doing, and this is what's expected of you. Whereas we wouldn't really be able to bring that context, but it gives them a place and a platform to do that. It just creates a lot more powerful outcome.

Mitch (06:01):

Let's talk about hopes and fears for a second. I know we've even resisted putting that term on our website and everything because it sounds like this soft, squishy, not super valuable thing. But what is a hopes and fears exercise and why do we do it?

Matt D. (06:17):

So hopes and fears is all about if I'm just presenting all of the things that come on our SOW that doesn't get at what people think about it. And I as a person who's running a project want to know what you think about it, both the good and the bad. And I think everyone else in the organization should hear those same things. And so the point of the hopes and fears is to really give an open forum to say, what are the things that you're hopeful that this accomplishes? And what might be some challenges or some barriers to accomplish that so that, oh, there's concerned about this. Okay, cool. We can either maybe in my mind I'm going, oh yeah, we've got that already covered. That's something we handle all the time. Or maybe I go, oh, wait a minute. I don't know that the way that we're currently thinking about engaging here will address that. Maybe we need to think about that a little differently.

Mitch (07:08):

Let's talk tactics for a second. What actually is,

Emma (07:12):

Yeah, so let's take an example. We're doing a project. Let's say we're going to help an organization use Microsoft 365 more effectively. So we'll set up an actual whiteboard digitally. Usually we could do this. We've done this in person too. So think about a whiteboard, think about the left side of the whiteboard. It says hopes. And below that, everyone will get sticky notes and can write what their hope is for this project. Think about this example. What is their hope to using Microsoft 365 more effectively at their company? So it is somewhat narrowly focused and we want it to be within the scope of this project, but really anything goes as far as what is your hope with that? Do you hope your team feels more connected? Do you hope you send less emails? Do you hope? These are some examples, and it can kind of go off the rails in some ways, but that's a good thing.

(07:59):

If people share contacts that we would've had no idea, we hope we stop losing employees every week. Oh, you have people quitting every week. Certain things like that can kind of come out. And then on the other side of the whiteboard, you'd have fears. And we do really try to help people brainstorm past, just I hope the opposite of exactly the opposite of what they wrote on the hope side, but more hesitations or obstacles. So thinking through icebergs that could be out there waiting for us or things that have happened in the past. So again, that context is super valuable to us as consultants because we don't have the context of what has gone on, what initiatives failed, why they failed. So all of that kind of comes out another term for this exercise that people may have heard before. It's emptying the cup. So we're really trying to empty the cup on this topic and just get the best starting point so that we can hit the ground running with the rest of the project.

Mitch (08:54):

Yeah, I like that part you said about fears, where it's not just the opposite of hopes because we are entering a room with a bunch of people that have history together and we don't know exactly what we're walking into. And if we're just looking at us as, oh, another group of doing this project and it's just going to happen the same exact way x, Y, Z project happened last year, that is so helpful for us to dig into and learn about so that we can, what happened there? Avoid, yeah, what happened for sure. Let's transition to leadership. So that's sort of our first getting to know the project team, getting aligned with what the purpose is and making sure that we're all on the same page. Then we usually talk to leadership. That's usually a core part of some of our projects. What does that look

Matt D. (09:47):

Like? Yeah, so first of all, let's talk about what leadership means to us. So leadership is someone who is the buck stops with them related to the work that we're doing. In many cases, that could be somebody in it, that could be somebody in hr, it could be the CFO, it could be the CEO. It is someone who is owning at an executive level the outcomes for this thing and anyone they want to bring. So if there's other leaders or other important people, they need to be part of that discussion. And as part of the leadership interview, what we're trying to get out of it is why are you doing this project? What's the real reason? What's the business reason why you're doing this project? Which should have come out a little bit in the sales process and should have been hinted at previously and may have happened as part of the hopes and fears.

(10:41):

But we're really trying to say, what's your perspective on this? What's the outcome that you're looking for? What's the result you're looking for and how is that going to change your business? What's your expectations about how that will change the business? And those conversations can be very transformative in a couple different ways. Number one, because you can get those leaders all talking about the thing that you're trying to do and really thinking about how it might change their world, which sets the expectation that they should be caring about this, right? That it should change what they're doing and should support the thing. And if it doesn't, then there's a problem, right? Then we didn't do our job, something didn't work. So it's really the format of it is pretty open. We have a series of questions and an approach that we take, but that approach is fairly open in regards to what we can talk about. We've had people to add in all sorts of stuff from the side a little bit that isn't really in scope directly, but might be a little bit tangent to the project. And that's okay too. We want to understand those things and really

Mitch (11:52):

Figure out the why. And we will go into some of those exercises here in a second. But I think, I don't know how all other tech consultants work, but I imagine this is maybe a unique part of us or how we're unique in the space is like we're not just walking in and working with it and trying to implement some technology. We're like, Hey, get us a meeting with your C-suite so we can make sure we're all strategically aligned.

Emma (12:18):

So I was going to say the hardest part of a leadership interview has nothing to do with the actual interview or the most challenging part. It's the scheduling. And so we actually typically schedule this meeting before we even have the kickoff, before the project gets going at all. However, I will say, whether it's our great sales conversations or just setting up the project at the very beginning, every project we've done has created a space to get their c-suite or whoever is in charge of the people that the project's going to impact because they really see the value. And I think that speaks a lot of the time to the types of companies we're working with. They're coming to us for help and they really want to implement a solution there, so they're willing to spend the time.

Mitch (12:59):

Yeah. I remember years ago when this concept came up where we're like, oh my gosh, we're going to meet with all the leaders of a business and how are we going to do that? You just ask, say, this is part of our process, and all of a sudden it happens. It might take a little bit of scheduling and iteration, but that's the way to do it. We make that part of our process, and I think it's been really helpful to even just get to know people so that we understand all the players as we make progress through the project.

Emma (13:31):

And recently we did have an example of a client who was a bit hesitant at first because it was a lot of leaders. It was a hard scheduling challenge. We almost gave up on not including some people, but in the end we got everyone together. And afterwards he did actually pull me, and this was Mike to the side, and he said, this was one of the most valuable exercises our leadership team has done this year. Yes, that's awesome. And that was really neat for us because we had pushed really hard for it, and it was really cool that he saw the value in

Mitch (13:59):

That. Awesome. Nice work. Let's talk about some of the exercises that we do. We're calling this segment understanding of the client. So we're sort of getting aligned. We understand what we're trying to do, but now we sort of need to get in their corner and understand exactly where they're at so that we can move whatever needle that they're trying to move. So we have two different exercises that we commonly do. One is ing and one is uncovering the why. I'm going to go ahead and run with one of them, even though I'm sort of interviewing you guys. I have been doing this ING exercise for a little bit. And the core of it is understanding how the project team thinks about their company and groups them according to different segments within their company.

Emma (14:53):

Different audiences,

Mitch (14:54):

Different audience. Yeah, exactly. And what we do within there is understand in regards to what we're trying to impact with this project, what does that group think right now? What is their perception of this thing? Do they have any feelings associated with that? Are they just tired of just being drowned in email and they can't get out of it? And so do they actually take any action because of that because they're so tired and exhausted now they just ignore emails or they just let the inbox fill up and who knows? Sometimes things just never get read. So we go through that, what do they think? How do they feel and what are things that they do because of how they think and feel? And so we go through all of the different audiences and an organization and document that live in the meeting and then we hit pause and say, okay, this gives us an understanding.

(15:52):

Let's talk about what we want them to think and feel and do. So what's the transformation that we want to cause and make happen during or at the end of this project? So then we go through, Hey, we don't want them to be exhausted by their inbox. We want them to be comfortable and not be overwhelmed. We want communication to feel easy and seamless. And so we want them to then be open with each other and communicate with each other and not look at it as, oh my gosh, I'm just filling up someone else's inbox and they feel like they can stay on top of things. So we go through each of the audiences and document that again, live so that we can then look back at the end of the project and say, did we move this needle? Is this something we made progress on?

Emma (16:39):

So what would we say are some of the things that we uncover within this exercise? A few that come to my mind are we often understand the outcomes that they're looking to get out of certain groups of people. And I don't mean get out of those people in the transactional sense more. We want to enable this group to be able to get data reporting easier so that they can make data-driven decisions. And so we often get to these bigger outcomes while going through what do they think, what do they feel, which can feel really flowery, but it really drives home the bigger question of, well, why? Oh, so that they can make decisions based on data or that they can get more work done because they have too many emails in their inbox or So it's these different things that more flowery questions will lead to actually bigger outcomes. Yeah,

Mitch (17:30):

Think it's some thinking for sure.

Matt D. (17:31):

It also enables us to identify what is the primary audience for the change or the work that we're doing. So perhaps an organization has people that are back in an office, people that are out on the field or people who are doing project management versus maybe accounting or more some other tasks. It really helps to isolate and say, well, these are the people that are really impacted the most by this change so that we can isolate and work primarily with them or maybe talk to them and deal with their problems first and then deal with others later if they're the ones that are going to be the most impacted or have the biggest problems, have the biggest challenges related to this work.

Emma (18:16):

And often through this exercise, we do find other pain points that this particular project may not address and that can be set to the side and added to a recommended next step within the company. And again, that's really all about shedding light on different issues so that those leaders can make the decisions around how they're going to solve those problems. But for sure, narrowing the focus to understand which end users are we going to impact the most, which leads us usually into the next exercise, which is uncovering the why. But you have to do ING first to really understand the groups that you're going to focus on,

Matt D. (18:51):

Or the project just needs to be super focused, right? Yes. So in a case where somebody's asking us to do something very, very focused within their organization audience, the actual audience may be very short or maybe very focused, and then it leads right into, oh, why is this a problem? Why is this challenge, which is the next piece, which is literally continuing to ask why until there is no more whys.

Emma (19:18):

It can feel annoying. We'll say why?

Matt D. (19:21):

It's the concept of taking one of these problems, one of these challenges that have been identified and saying, why is that a problem? What does that mean for you? And then most of the time when somebody answers, it won't really be the real why. It'll be something that is tangent adjacent to the real reason, and then, Hey, why is that a problem? Which might take you from something? We need better organization of our procedures. Why? Well, because nobody can find them. Why does that matter? Oh, well, because if they can't find them, they can't do their job. And if they can't do their job, what matters? Well, maybe one, and this is where different companies are all different things. Well then we're not effective and we're not making any money. Okay. Or maybe someone else says, well, then they get frustrated and they quit, and why does that matter? Well then because we don't make any money and everything ultimately comes down to money and effectiveness and organizational success, but you can have different reasons or different things that that's actually creating in a real world sense, right?

Mitch (20:39):

And that helps us connect the dots in a big way. I do want to asterisk this. I got a couple of these exercises from our friends over at People Design. We went to a workshop a while ago, and so we have kind of adapted some of this for what we do, but throwing them a little credit here, shout out. But it reminds me of maybe something that people would understand as if someone comes in and says, I need my website to be mobile friendly. Okay, why does that matter? Sure, I'm a web developer, I can do that, but why does that matter? Well, we want to make sure that people can read things on their phone. Okay, why does that matter? Because we actually get a lot of traffic on our website on phones, and we want to make sure that we're appearing as hip and cool and up to date if that's what you want to spend money on, but I feel like there's something else there.

(21:37):

Well, we want to appear that way because we're actually losing some of our customers to some of our competitors that are more mobile friendly and seem to be more friendly to the younger crowd. Oh, that's interesting. Is that a lot of customers? Oh yeah. Honestly, we sell 50% of our goods through our website, and so you start to extrapolate all this information that says, oh, this isn't a mobile friendly website project. This is a we're fixing sales bottom line project. So then we know that as we're working on this isn't our actual project, but as the web developers working on a mobile website, they are continuously integrating how does this affect sales into it as opposed to just making it look better.

Emma (22:31):

And this can be so key, especially I think you kind of mentioned the knowledge base or the intranet, understanding the pain points with different employees. One intranet we launched was at a fully remote company, so it was really important to understand the why behind where things needed to be placed. The navigation, and we do incorporate this into really any type of project and really any meeting we're having, we like to ask a lot of questions, classic consultants, but this particular exercise at the beginning of a project will help us get to that faster and then likely really integrate it into all of our design conversations further on.

Mitch (23:05):

Yep. Yeah, it's a fun one. Yeah, you sort of have to get creative around not upsetting someone by even asking why or finding a different way to ask the question, but as long as the folks in the meeting are entertaining of the conversation, it can be quite fun to dig and prod and make sure that we're getting at the heart of things. Should we continue on to our next phase, which is mapping and digging deeper. So we kind have set the stage, we understand the client situation a bit. Now we sort of want to do a couple of things. We want to understand the technology and map that out or maybe understand more about a business process and dig into that. How do we approach those things? So the technology mapping one,

Emma (23:54):

Well, we like to start with technology mapping because I think it creates a amazing visual as far as what technology is your company using? And a lot of it comes out, people forget, oh yeah, that team does use that, or we do use that, and at the end of it, you have this huge map. We usually do, we use a tool called Whimsical. We love Whimsical, and you could use Microsoft Whiteboard though as well, and you map everything out in terms of what devices. So especially thinking about industries where you have people in the field. They might be on tablets, they might be on phones. Is it bring your own device? Are there any conditional access policies? We start thinking through devices, but then we go into software and understanding what license people have, which is super important for us. If we're going to make recommendations, we want to make sure we're in line and we're explaining any costs associated with anything.

(24:44):

But by the end of it, you have this really a picture, a technology picture of everything that the company is using. And most of the time, at least the projects I've worked on, the client has never actually taken the time to sit down and map that out and really take it in themselves to understand how much technology their different teams are using and if there's any duplication or if there's any, just things clearly are not linking together, and it seems like there's a lot of silos forming. So something magical happens when you get it all down on a page, and for us, it's just really informative so that we understand where the gaps are and that we can bring that into our design.

Mitch (25:21):

Outside of IT folks, other people might not even be able to comprehend all the different tools that people use

Matt D. (25:29):

Or it doesn't know about Shadow it. Yeah,

Mitch (25:31):

What's Shadow it?

Matt D. (25:33):

Shadow IT is the people who are going and buying online services on a company credit card that nobody knows about, and so now you've got this IT solution that is the classic thing is somebody has a server under their desk that they don't tell anybody about that's old, but that's old school now. It's like the online tool. I want use, I am having a problem with whatever I'm doing. So I buy this online subscription for $20 a month for the four people on my team, and we just start doing it. I put on my credit card, it's below my spending limit, so I'm good to go.

Emma (26:02):

Super recently we're running a workshop for a client and we were in one of these conversations and it got brought up that one of their teams just collaboration on teams, Microsoft teams is not working for them, so they just use Google Docs, which is not within their tenant, it's not within their domain, it's not somehow they have it. They were honest and the leadership understood that the tool that they were provided was not working for them, but that's a security issue, so that's definitely going to have to be something that can be moved through.

Mitch (26:32):

Love it. So we've kind of created this map so that everyone can see exactly what is being used for what and what all those line items on the bill are. So let's go into our business process deep dive. So the context around this is someone is trying to automate something or streamline something and they're maybe asking a question around how do I do this better or can I use some technology to make this work better? The couple times that I've done this is it's very similar. We start with a blank page and we say a blank whimsical most of the time and say, where do we start and where do we end and what are all the pieces that connect in between? And so the things that we try to do is kind of separate the ideal world and the current state because we need to understand the current state in order to influence the future state.

(27:33):

And so we say right now how does all this work? And so they walk through something of, oh, this comes in from an email inbox. People read it and then they go create a ticket from it or they take action on it and they route it to this person and it starts to create this labyrinth of logic and then hopefully it all comes out on one side together maybe with a little bit of pain, but that lets us see, okay, here's the process that we're tasked with influencing and helping make better. So then we can basically take it and divide it up. I feel like we commonly do this as we'll, create phases. Maybe the client hasn't even thought of this thing in phases before, but really there's an intake, there's a processing, there's a service, and then there's a follow-up or something. And so we'll lay all those out and look at them kind of in their own window and say, what would the ideal scenario be and how can some of the tech that they do have today play a role in that or does it not work? And they need to start looking into other tech in order to do that. So that's like a fly by of what that is. I think

Emma (28:47):

You summed that up really well. The color I want to give to it is oftentimes the people taking us through exactly what you're talking about of okay, what happens next are a lot of times the people that were not on the original calls are really part of the leadership. They're more doers, but then it's very eyeopening and it can almost be a therapy session. One client had joked that sharing actually how frustrating or manual the process processes and then having the leader actually there listening, oh gosh, I didn't realize you also had to do that. Oh, and then you have to do that, and that sounds frustrating. It can be very therapeutic and what is the ideal stage that we're trying to get to? And I just remember one client being like, man, this is going to change my life at work to be able to take it from how we had it mapped out to then that ideal state and have that leader involved in that conversation to hear how manual some of these processes can be.

Mitch (29:37):

It reminds me of that undercover boss show a little bit where it's like, it's like, yeah, you really get to see how the hamburgers are made right in front of you. So yeah, that exercise is a lot of fun.

Matt D. (29:51):

The only thing I'll say about that is that our focus almost exclusively is on the current state. In those the initial meetings, in the initial discussions, we leave the figuring we might have some ideas, we might have some statements, but we really try to focus on just capturing what it is today so that we can take it back and have further conversations, have further discussions, and really come up with a plan for what that might look like.

Mitch (30:15):

Yeah,

Emma (30:16):

I would agree with that to an extent in, we do definitely have brainstorming within either that session or later where oftentimes what we create, we don't want it to just be, it's the metaphor of teaching someone how to fish. So we don't want to just be creating it all in the dark behind the scenes and then there you go, here's your fish. We also want to teach you how to fish along with us so that when other processes come up that you can feel more seamless and empowered to create

Mitch (30:43):

The right. We don't want to feel like, okay, we're going to take this behind our magic door now and it's going to come out all pretty. It's kind of like let's ask some questions, some critical thinking questions that maybe someone can use later and apply on their own without having us in the room. Right. Cool. So that was our mapping and digging deeper. Our last segment for this episode is called synchronizing and continuous improvement. So all the things that we do to during the different phases of a project, the things that we do to stay aligned with each other and keep in touch and the things that we do after projects in order to make sure that the next one is better and the things that we've learned. So all of this is all Emma here.

Emma (31:31):

Well, and I am going to say, I'm going to give credit where credit's due. This is all agile methodology really. I mean it's all standups and retros are I think the two main ones I want to bring up. Standups being it's always ideal to have short often meetings with an internal group, whether that's our small team or with the project working team that's on the client side. I definitely think meeting quicker and more often is always easier than waiting too many weeks. So that's really why we do standups. The words stand up if you're unfamiliar with it came from the idea that you would literally have the meeting standing up so that it would be a quick touch base where you talk through project progress, are there any obstacles? What are you working on? What do you need from the team? Really just a touch base, but I think that this really helps stop anything from what we call scope creep or just spiraling outside of what you're actually trying to move

Mitch (32:27):

Towards. Yeah, I remember, this is maybe getting meta for a second, but we recommended one of our clients do standups because there was this guy managing a team and his method was basically going to each one of them to get updates and learn about where they're at on their different projects. And we said, Hey, you all can learn from each other and help each other because your jobs are so similar. You should get all these people together once a week and say out loud what you're working on so that they had issues with people doing things different ways and things like that, inconsistencies. And so all of a sudden it was like everything was out on the table in front of the whole team and everyone knew what everyone was working on and it didn't need to be this big overwhelming long meeting. It was just quick, just run through it. And then everyone page, we

Matt D. (33:18):

Talk about same page, the length. It should be as small as possible. You can do, if you got a small team and you can get it done in less than 15 minutes, it should be, you should do it in less than 15 minutes. You should be not trying to get into the details. If there's a problem, use another time, note the problem, come back to it, it happen outside the meeting, after the meeting, whatever that might be. The whole point about it is to really just be constantly sharing those updates. Usually they try to do in some development practices, it'll be you do standups daily every day. You do it first thing in the morning or whenever you might do it. We do it more like once a week, twice a week kind of thing. But yeah, the smaller you can make it, the more often you can make it, the better off you're going to be.

Emma (34:04):

Which I think with some people can feel a bit jarring when they first start working with us. If we schedule a weekly touch base is like, oh my gosh, so many meetings. But after one or two they realize, oh, we really only take the first 10 minutes and if we have nothing more that we need to talk about, you get the time back and we will just move along.

Mitch (34:22):

But having that moment to as an opportunity to talk about the things you didn't know. If you needed to spin off a meeting specifically for one concept or one thing we're working on, let's just talk about that quick and stand up and get it done.

Emma (34:37):

And in our increasingly remote and we work with most people digitally and virtually, having that one-to-one FaceTime is so helpful or one to many, I guess it's a bigger team, but I find it incredibly helpful. So that would be the standup side of things. And then running a retrospective, I would say is much more of an internal benefit for us, but at the same time, it impacts positively all of our next projects and our next relationships with clients. I've been using a lot of AI tools for retros now, and I would definitely recommend that for those listening, but creating a space for your team to solely talk about what went well, what could have gone better, and what can we do differently next time. Not talking about the project really anymore at that point, but taking sort of set aside time to think through those questions.

(35:25):

Again, this is all agile methodology, but it's so helpful. We actually do this on a company level every quarter, so I can't recommend that enough. And we'll do that within our projects and if there's anything comes up and we realize, oh, we really should have sent this to the client, sometimes that happens and then we will follow up with the client realizing, oh, we left a gap or we did this or that or that could be helpful. We should invite them to our next course given that they were struggling with this. So it gives you space to sort of reflect, and in our world today, that's just really rare, so I would definitely recommend people doing that. If you work with us, we'll do it after our

Mitch (36:00):

Project. The format of that is similar to hopes and fears where everyone gets sticky notes most of the times and you have a couple minutes to talk about different things. One of the ones that I like that you've been doing recently is What's something someone did for you that you appreciate or something like that. Then that doesn't only focus on the project, it focuses on the team and getting to know people better and stuff like that. So it can be a benefit to the company, but also relationships do.

Emma (36:30):

Yeah, and we've been using Loop for this, and so to add onto the AI part of it, there's a retrospective template within Loop. You can pull that in and then at the end of it, you can actually click copilot if you've got the license and say, can you summarize all of this and create some action steps for the next time we do a project, and it will take all of the sticky notes that people put together and create some ideas for the next time, which can be a bit of a tedious process if you have to do it manually.

Mitch (36:57):

Yeah, we did it for years and then suddenly it just becomes a single click. It's fun. Cool. We're kind of running out of time, so let's wrap up. Those are our four different segments of all the common things that we're doing with clients and projects. I'm hopeful that you can maybe take some of those and apply them to some of your own contexts at your organization and transform them into versions that work well for your internal projects. Maybe you're a consultant and you're listening to this, you can implement this with your next client, stuff like that. So let's recap really quick. Does someone want to go through the exercises really quick? Give us bullet points. I think Emma's, yeah,

Emma (37:45):

I'll try. So I think I'm going to take this from, if you do a project with Bob Digital, this is kind of what you could expect. So first off, we're always going to do a kickoff. This is going to get everyone aligned. This is going to make sure we all understand the deliverables and the scope of the project. Next, we're going to get your leadership team together because it's so important to get leadership on the same page and onboard because oftentimes initiatives won't really always, they will not go well unless the leadership is bought in. Within all of this, we make sure we do our hopes and fears exercise where people get their voice heard about what they hope for the project, maybe what some obstacles could be. So that really paves the way for us to come in and really start asking the next questions, which are ing and uncovering the why we break down, who at your company is going to be impacted the most by this project and why it matters.

(38:32):

This may sound like I had said flowery or at the beginning, but we often get down to a much deeper, what's another word for why? A much deeper reason of why we're actually doing this project. Other pieces that we make sure we complete in the early stages of the project are technology mapping. So you have an amazing visual at the end of all the technology or companies using and how it all works together, and then we'll typically go into more of a deep dive, especially if you're trying to automate a process so that we understand your current state and can design a more ideal state. Having key players involved in this conversation is always very eyeopening. And then along the way, we'll have standups where we get together for brief touch bases, whether it's weekly or twice a week to make sure everything's running smoothly. If anything comes up, we can address it then, and at the end of the project, we will always do a retro to understand what we could have done better open to feedback from our clients as always, and really turn that all into our next project. So that's kind of the lifecycle.

Mitch (39:30):

Love it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really interested to know what people think of this content, kind of going meta and uncovering sort of what we do as an organization and sharing that with you all. If this is interesting to you all, we'd love to know. But otherwise, we can wrap up for today. Matt and Emma, it was great chatting about inside our toolbox.

Emma (39:54):

Thanks for having us, Mitch. Yeah,

Mitch (39:55):

We'll see you again next time. Hey, thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already subscribed to our show on your favorite podcasting app, so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulb Digital and special thanks to Eric Veneman for our music tracks and producing this episode. If you have any questions for us, head to make others successful.com and you can get in touch with us there. You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the most out of Office 365. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.

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