you are listening to the iot for all media network hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the iot for all podcast i'm your host ryan chacon and on today's episode we have rachel richter and rush shoemaker the co-founders and managing partners of inline a company focused on helping organizations align uh internally and removing barriers to allow those organizations to really thrive when it comes to digital transformation so we talk a lot about digital transformation this episode we talk about kind of what is needed for digital transformation to be successful across industries we talk about what companies or why companies still struggle with implementation even though there are new technologies out there to make this easier and then we also dive into what inline calls those silent killers these are three focus areas that organizations should be really paying attention to in order to succeed with iot and digital transformation success but before we get into that if any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot solutions development platform provides everything you need to create turnkey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything dot com that's iot changes everything dot com and without further ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome rachel and russ to the iot for all show thanks for being here this week hey great to see you ryan yeah it's great to talk to you it's been uh it's been a while since we spoke and and russ you're new to the to the to the team or the the side of things from my relationship of knowing rachel so nice to meet you great to meet you as well um so we have a lot i want to talk about today i think there's a lot of interesting things to to kind of cover from your all's perspective but the first thing i think would be good is to have you both introduce yourself to our audience quickly just tell us a little bit about your background experience who you are that kind of thing okay so i am rachel richter one of the co-founders at inline and my background is really deeply embedded in the digital transformation space and also working with organizations to more fully align their strategy and people with their technology okay russ yeah so i'm also one of the co-founders um and my background i came from um marketing and and organizational development and really um joined with rachel when we were working on a project together and we found that we had so much alignment in the way that we worked and as we talked about projects that we could um you know bring to fruition and how do we take our strengths and really um our passions for helping organizations thrive it led to the creation of alignment or of inline fantastic um so let's talk a little bit about inline here obviously rachel when i first met you um this was smart rex was what you were doing and now this is a new company which caught like actually confused me when i was reading um the the information i was trying to find smart wrecks in my data and and sheets to kind of plan and then i was like wait this is the company name has changed and everything so so tell us a little bit about the um the change in name um just why and at the same time what you all do absolutely so again um so what's smartrax and the idea behind smartrax was better requirements for better outcomes and what i realized through doing that work with enterprise uh organizations is that we weren't we were focusing on better requirements for better outcomes but we also needed better alignment for better outcomes and so the very blueprint that we came up with uh smartrax actually translated quite well in use to the alignment of people strategy and needs across stakeholders and the organization and the initiatives that we're working on and that's when russ and i started having some really powerful and deep conversations about alignment because one of the pieces that the enterprise clients uh gave to us is listen the requirements work that was really really really really important but the thing that our board and our and the c-suite and the leadership amongst these departments the thing that they're all relieved and happy about is the alignment you gave to our staff and our people and aligning it with the strategic initiatives and the needs that our staff had a lot along with the board's needs so kind of it that's the um the impetus for having this deeper conversation of wait a second so you paid for this and we started doing these other projects to create alignment and you you wanted that more right this idea that the requirement work is really important especially within a digital transformation effort but that if you don't align your people and your strategy along with your technology um you don't get the result and so we started the very framework that we had for alignment and so then we thought well what like what is it about alignment and actually russ alluded to this is thriving right we want people to be able to thrive and the organization to be able to thrive you can't do that without alignment and so that's when we switched to this idea of oh let's just be inline we'll take the framework and keep applying it to alignment well part of what what happened is um coming out of i haven't uh i've been working at a consulting company and coming out of this as i work with rachel we realized that you can have all of your requirements for an individual project but if that project itself is not um in alignment with the organization's strategy not only on paper but actually in practices uh the number one reason that projects fail uh is having an executive um champion who's not devoting enough time right so they're saying on paper this is our top strategic priority and they're devoting two or three hours a week to it when really they need to be devoting you know one or two full days a week and so um that's that's kind of at the top level that's a huge piece of this alignment where if we have an individual project that has all the right requirements but the executive champion is not devoting that time to it it doesn't matter the project's still not going to succeed because it needs that that leadership from the top and so what we're doing now is really this this beautiful blend of yes we're going to get down into the nitty-gritty and make sure we have all those requirements and everything is in alignment but we're also working with the executives to say you know if this really is your strategy we need to have the time and the resources devoted to it and full commitment from you um and if it's not then maybe we need to rethink you know the focus that we're putting on this project and look at other ways we can help your organization succeed yeah that makes a lot of sense and i'm starting to really understand kind of why the the name change and kind of the overall i guess what you've learned through coming from smart rex into uh the newly formed organization and kind of your overall focus and why it's so important for digital transformation and iot obviously so as we connect in a little bit more to the iot space specifically talk to me about what a typical kind of engagement looks like with a company or is this more of like a consulting relationship are you um how are you you know what what role are you playing in their journey of adoption um whether it's you know iot or higher level digital transformation as a whole yeah i'll jump in on this then rachel i'm sure you'll have things to add but we yeah we are coming on board as consultants um a great example might be we see a lot of organizations who are in the middle of um a digital transformation project and and lost an executive right maybe a vp of innovation left and uh while they're trying to hire a new person to fill this role the project is stalled and even when they when they hire somebody new to come on board um how do they make sure that person understands the project fully has the stakeholder buy-in and whatnot so we might come in with um with the new executive and help them get onboarded help them ensure that the process is rolling smoothly that their leadership style and the style of their team is is is um is driving or we might come in with the organization um who's saying hey you know we just lost our project leader can you help us ensure that this project is going to run smoothly and and we would also work with organizations who um they have their teams intact but they they just are at this place where they're realizing to to really execute this well um they need better alignment than they currently have you know to go from a great idea um to go from a budget and actually you know uh a basic plan to actually a proj uh a successful project that is meeting stakeholder needs um is is more difficult than people might think um mckenzie did a recent study where they surveyed a few thousand people and and the result uh was that over 80 percent i think it was 84 of stakeholders um said that when after a digital transformation project it didn't actually change the way they work or improve their work right so we're here to help fix that number interesting okay and rachel on your side um talk a little bit i guess expand on obviously what what russ is saying but i'm curious just to learn a little bit more from your perspective um kind of how this all fits into or how iot companies can be thinking about this okay so the idea is and i know that this is very basic but it's worth mentioning um because well when people think about iot it serves it's supposed to meet a business or a market need right right so for some reason that gets lost in translation the deeper you go into these projects and the tech it becomes like funk works thing where we're going to experiment and do this thing and see if the pilot works out right and then we try to translate it to the rest of the organization and scale it but like if you're not meeting the needs of the people who actually are going to be either your customers uh internal or external or meet the business or market need then that tech just kind of doesn't go anywhere and so when right people are struggling in the iot space it's normally because that it doesn't translate to the human who's actually getting value out of the thing whether that is if you have for instance a trucking company with a lot of sensors on it some of those might help the truck driver others might actually help leadership back in the c-suite understand what's happening with the fleet as a whole to be able to make moves or pivot uh strategically but if sensors aren't doing aren't capturing the right things at the right level in the right data segments right all of that's very very technical but if it's not doing it in a way that's then edible to those various groups it's not doing the job it's not meeting the business or the market need and so one of the struggles that i've seen within the iot community in terms of projects specifically is is around that right because i'm a numbers person through and through but there are there is an unlimited way to analyze information and to get use that information and a lot of times we don't get use out of it it becomes noise and so again as russ said hitting the nail on the head again it's a business or a market need there's a strategy behind it how is down to the very tech that you're using the audience that you have the customers that you have how does all of that connect back to meeting that business or market need and helping the people who are in charge of executing on meeting that need work and so you can start to see at a granular level with the actual um devices themselves and the information they provide and how they connect into the ecosystem because they don't exist in a bubble right it's usually within a larger transformation effort or other um software or hardware that's integrated how does that all fit to enable that need to be met further and what does it need mean to meet that need right some sometimes um we get confused with metrics of like technical superiority or competence to mean um to mean success but really there's only one metric of success and that is is the customer satisfied both internally and externally gotcha okay that makes a lot of sense and i oh so go ahead good if there's anything else i was just gonna say so you know and your customers might be both the executives the truck drivers example sure um it could be a regulatory group it could be a consumer group of some sort like there are lots of definitions for the word customer and so then you have to start aligning these needs within those very technical software architectures to actually give the information and the support needed yeah oh sorry go ahead russ oh well i was going to say you know another way to talk about it is creating feedback so that it's not just um a top down but we're also giving our bottom up um feedback as as projects are implemented to say cool you have this new gadget that does all these great things but um our you know we live in a in an era when we have as much information as we need we have more than enough information but are we capturing the right information and and really culling out the right pieces to help people improve what they're doing at that really granular day-to-day level right okay yeah that makes a lot of sense i appreciate kind of um kind of shedding light on how it all kind of fits to the iot space because a lot of what you're saying those are areas that i think people and companies really struggle with which also are the contributors to why a lot of iot adoption hasn't been successful so that kind of leads into another part of the conversation which i think would be great to get a little bit more detailed on which is from your all's perspective what is needed to make digital transformation or even you know break it down towards the iot space iot projects more successful and why do you think companies are still struggling with implementation even with like new technologies and new new ways to in a sense make their lives easier but they're still struggling with it right companies of all sizes are struggling whether it's because of buy-in they're getting whether it's because of budget whether it's because of legacy systems already you know you name it but for your perspective talk to me about those two areas what's needed to make digital transformation iot successful and then at the same time why are we seeing companies still struggle to get off the ground or really be successful with pilots and projects that they're deploying well i have a one word answer alignment yeah and and so you know that that's a really simple answer but um the reason we named our company inline and the reason we focus on this is that it really is the umbrella term i mean if you can get um if you can get everyone in an organization rowing in the same direction at the same pace you can do anything when an organization is fully in alignment it's unstoppable it's going to be the market leader it's going to be achieving its metrics um and so we're coming in you know there are other there are other organizations other consulting firms that kind of help um companies figure out issues and solve them but it's often here's our 25-step process right or you know it's it's just it's too complicated and so um what we work really hard to do is to simplify the process you know we don't want to we don't want to ignore real problems so we're very rigorous in in the work that we do as far as data collection as far as really making sure we understand the problem we're getting to the root of the issues um you know uncovering hidden roadblocks sometimes there's unknown unknowns people don't even know what it is they're running up against um i mean we've all experienced this right we're working on a project and we kind of we hit this block and it be we can't figure it out so we just move on to something else right that's this hidden roadblock and until that's addressed until it's it's a it's um it's communicated maybe up to another level of management or to appear who can help work on it it just becomes a roadblock that hinders the progress of a project um so so we're coming in and saying look we can help you achieve this alignment we're going to dig into you know your entire processes we're going to perform interviews with your stakeholders we're going to send out surveys with anonymous feedback we're going to aggregate that data present it back to leadership present it back to the stakeholders to make sure that everyone really understands both the goals the roadblocks the issues um so that we can then create the road create a roadmap and then as the project is implemented along that roadmap we're providing points of reference and correction so we're constantly going back to that step one here's the data we collected here is the goal of the project um here are the potential pitfalls are we actually solving those three months in six months in uh 12 months in so that it's not turning into its own beast you know that is doing something but it's not necessarily what we wanted to do um so that's my my simple answer um but it's it i think it's absolutely correct you know um it doesn't have to be complicated uh we deal with enough complicated issues in in the world today so let's let's talk about how we can um get your your team in alignment so when it comes to kind of the hidden roadblocks that you kind of were mentioning or just roblox in general i'm sure like what what are some of those specifically aside from the alignment of people within inside and outside of of of the company whether it's and or inside or outside of leadership per se um what are some of those other roadblocks to execution that you all have seen or witnessed with companies worked with yeah so um as i talk about uh the i call them actually there's what russ is talking about really is the three silent killers of digital transformation and iot transformation right so lack of alignment between people the hidden box execution and insufficient touch points so when you think about roadblocks to execution um one of the biggest is something we alluded to earlier where it's a top-down approach so very and you know most people intrinsically know this but it's helpful to say it anyways sure very seldom are the informed and the empowered in the same room right the informed being people outside of leadership on the ground right right right and the empowered being leadership so if they're not in the same room how do you be how do you make sure so the roadblock is they're not in the same room so the informed and the empowered aren't connecting the way they need to be so you can do two things one put them more in the same room the right people in the right room at the right time that's one thing which there's a whole process to that who are those people how do you find them how do you make sure they connect online right right right there's that piece that's one part of the roadblock the other part is how do you make it so that the informed become more empowered to do that work and be empowered become more informed right so now you start getting into your technical systems and automated workflows and reporting and analysis to all connect back to what russ was talking about earlier regarding feedback so that again we can move things out of the way to put action uh in place and you know when we talk about alignment i think it's also helpful here to mention how we define it right so alignment is action accurately reflecting priorities and purpose that on a personal level which might help digest the concept a bit more right when you know you're out of alignment if your priorities and your intentions or your purpose aren't actually connecting to your actions right but at an organizational level or a team level or project level or initiative level it's the same thing if the actions of what's going on are not connecting to the priorities of that thing that organization that initiative and the purpose of that initiative then you're out of alignment and so what's really powerful about this is it creates the following auditability and accountability we can now go into an organization and assess are your actions accurately reflecting your priorities and your purpose we can assess that at different cross sections and levels so when you think about a digital transformation effort or an iot initiative where as you said why is it no matter what certifications and technology we've been throwing at it over the last two decades you and i have both seen that data ryan it's the same over two decades and no matter what we've thrown at it and the thing is if we're not going back and making sure that the actions of whatever is happening is accurately reflecting the priorities of that initiative and the purpose of it and that that all connects back to the strategy of the larger organization and connects the needs of the customers right right then we can know okay this part needs to change which then leads to the the the roadblocks themselves of how do you move the informed powered into the same room and when you can't do that sufficiently how do you make sure that the empowered become more informed and the inform become more empowered because even my hands right now i have this dynamic where one's higher than the other it's really equal right so that's that's when you know you've done it the right way in terms of a power dynamic in these um initiatives so fantastic answer yeah absolutely i was curious um just to kind of expand on the points russ was making which were good good like obviously uh in and of themselves but understanding how you are thinking about it and why these are so important and why they're really contributing to digital transformation not taking off in certain areas or the way we expected it to which kind of ties me to another question i wanted to ask which is around outside of what's needed to make digital transformation successful or why we're seeing companies struggle what are what are some other more specific challenges that you've seen with on the adoption side of digital transformation like not not even just like what's not allowing them to get um or allowing them to succeed once they've adopted but even before like how are like what is stalling adoption in certain areas and certain focuses so you know is there an educational or a lack of education that needs to be to be focused on is are there different pieces that um maybe we could address or just kind of hear from your side on what's even causing people not to get the adoption stage um russ you may not take this one or do you have initial thoughts um either way i have thoughts but i know you do too and i know that we're in alignment so okay i would just love to throw out there that um the adoption process you know again so communication um is something that isn't just it should not be secondary if you're trying as an organization to be communicating why this tech adoption is important and what it does this should not be from your frame of reference it should be from your customers frame of reference so when we again if we think about alignment actions accurately reflecting priorities and purpose that person has a different priority and purpose on an individual level as a writer needs to adopt the technology than someone who's saying you need to do this thing right and so the way that i've seen and how i've made adoption successful is not through what most would call jedi mind tricks but really having that person seriously i've been asked that um having that person feel seen and heard and i really mean that seen and heard as in i'm understanding what their concerns are where they're coming from how this relates the technology what barriers exist in their workflow that's impinging or rather um inhibiting their adoption successfully a lot of times what's one of the most problematic things that i've seen around adoption is a the language used uh gets reinterpreted by someone on the ground thinking that something bad is going to happen to them as a result of this thing okay right so that's the first part is there's a whole fear of wait you're talking about automation is my job going away right so then there's oh i'm not gonna go do that i will do everything i can to resist that change the second part is what but my workflow is so easy right now why do i have to change and then it's a question of well if you had a magic wand it's one of the questions they asked or it's christmas day and you just had a wish list of things that on friday was bothering you and on monday morning you come in and shift what would those be because if that tech actually solves some of that which inevitably it does that's why it's happening right and people actually knew that they would start being your biggest supporters and even ambassadors to the adoption throughout the organization instead of a top-down adoption it starts being a middle out gotcha okay those are great points and i'll add sometimes a barrier is leadership has just tried to do too many things and done unsuccessfully it's the boy who cried wolf right so the average employee is thinking yeah we're using this today in six months it's going to be something else i'm not going to keep learning new systems and spending all my time on this yes so that's a trust issue right and and uh it does tie back to communication but leadership really needs to do a good job of of earning buy-in and recognizing um you know we say tech doesn't transform itself um it's it's the people that really are behind us and so um taking you know what we're all humans and so it's you know whether you're in the workplace or you're in the home or wherever you are the same principles apply um and so you know we really believe in show don't tell and so it's um it's recognizing that we're not just cognitive computers walking around they just need information we need to actually transform the way people feel about things we need to earn their trust earning trust allows for healthy conflict so that people can push back and express that um hey i don't i don't think this is going to be helpful this is just another one of those projects that is going to fail that that ability to have that open and honest communication so that you're earning that buy-in and then um with buy-in people actually then achieve that commitment um so it's it's the top-down saying we really are devoted to this right we're gonna do this again in six months we're putting the actual time in from day one to bring to make sure that we're getting your requirements and earning your your trust in your buy-in and you know from the bottom up it's saying um i feel that ability to push back and express you know what my needs are what my hesitations are and have that open and honest communication yeah i think it's super important to understand what what role each of those kind of top-down versus bottom-up play in the success of these deployments which you've hit on multiple times in different ways here but you just kind of summarize it obviously the buy-in from the decision makers up top are the ones who are going to allow this to go through they're going to put the budget forward to have this you know get past potentially even a pilot stage even if the person who brought it in is somebody down you know uh maybe closer to the work then on the other side is if you don't have the buy-in from the individuals who are going to be using these solutions or these interfaces on a regular basis then you're going to be building kind of blind um so i think understanding how those how both are super important it's a success and if you're missing one it's going to most likely fail um is it is incredibly important which which is kind of what we've been talking about today so this is a sure guy just wanted to add one more thing um to anyone who's listening to this a lot of the time what i've seen really upsets end users the most is when they're brought into the process too late usually around acceptance testing right so when they're brought in earlier now it's not seen as defensive how do i fight against this i wasn't consulted it's oh i'm helping build something that's better for me i get invested in this and therefore that it makes a huge difference um which then brings us back to the point of how do you cast a large net to really understand who your stakeholders truly are because we've all seen projects where people show up midstream for some reason right and you need to have a process that that makes sure that that does not happen yeah totally totally makes sense you know it's really important to do a gut check um when you're thinking of a project like this um and that means you know go through your organization and find out like do you have teams that are going outside of your systems because they just think it's too complicated and they don't have that trust we've seen this so many times where um there's a project management subscription or something you know some platform some software that the whole organization is supposed to be using and 40 of the teams are paying for subscriptions to something else right and so leadership thinks hey look we're using this great platform but the people actually using it are not actually using it or because it's not meeting the requirements they were never trained on it whatever that might be so even before you know kicking something off or or as step one you know when you're bringing on all these different stakeholders at the very beginning it's so important to say like hey are you guys actually using what we have and are you going outside of the system and kind of doing things on the dl uh right because more often than not like in a in an unhealthy organization you're going to see a lot of that sure absolutely so so to wrap this up um what i'd love to have you you both do is you kind of talk a little bit about um what does the you know what does 2022 look like like for you all what is um you know what are some exciting use cases that you're comfortable sharing even if you don't you don't take customer names but just high-level use cases you're involved in or looking forward to being involved in and at the same time if anybody out there listening has questions or wants to follow up and learn more connect with you all what's the best way to do that did you want to started you want me great no uh yeah go for it okay so um our most recent use case of this is an enterprise level organization where there were 50 people plus across leadership invested in and their organization of course invested in a digital transformation um for a three year time period and across multiple departments uh when we came in it was really to understand from the very beginning what was being missed from all of these different portfolio of initiatives that fell within this larger effort okay and also communicate that better to every company um was was quite critical because that had not gotten off on necessarily the best footing and so we actually did a combination of individual interviews across all of leadership and senior management and the c3 and then actually got into more of the staffing level and validated those results and found the key four pillars that the digital transformation effort needed to create consistently over the next three years so that they have the more star to follow because otherwise each of those projects kind of stays in its own little lane right something with marketing is is for marketing or or you know community strategy for data warehousing is that that's that thing um but if you look at that north star those four pillars across the entire uh portfolio of projects that are happening as as part of this massive multi-year effort now you can start to see exactly the priorities and the purpose of each of those things and start aligning to that which is absolutely critical and that yeah so that was very helpful for it uh how can anyone listening learn more connect with you all follow up ask questions just engage with you outside of the podcast yeah that's easy go to um getinline.com that's it i-n-l-i-g-n uh dot-com and you can um you can contact us there read some of our um our blogs and insights and fantastic get some more information we'll be launching a podcast um this year so cool um hopefully people will subscribe to that as we launch and we're also in growth mode so we're looking at bringing some more people onto our team through a merger and um and really looking at how do we help companies achieve alignment you know we're in this this time of global transformation whether that's through uh the great resignation or whether it's just companies pivoting to what does remote work look like or how do we operate differently with it with a pandemic and that's that's our sweet spot is really helping organizations navigate change and achieve alignment awesome well i appreciate both your time today it's been a fantastic conversation rachel russ thank you so much for being here um we look forward to getting this out and kind of having you uh or having our audience learn a bit more about what's going on i know rachel you've kind of been engaging with our audience for a decent amount of time now um and i know they they everything's very well received so this is a fantastic thing to kind of learn more about the new name the new company focus everything it's you're doing some wonderful stuff thank you so much it's a pleasure to be here yeah thank you both thanks a lot ryan all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the iit fall podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the thumbs up button subscribe to our channel and be sure to hit the bell notifications so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time
2022-03-03