Speaker 1:
Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience.
Speaker 2:
Hey, welcome again, everybody. We’re excited to be here again with Thomas Douglas, the CEO of JMARK, and along with the rest of the crew. And today, our topic is, Truly Awesome. It is about how technology helps your company to be consistently awesome. And Dax, I know you have some opinions about the word awesome, as we’ve had extensive conversations on it. What is… Break it down. I mean, everybody, that just means something Nirvana-ish that is out there. Everybody has a different opinion. What does it mean to be awesome?
Dax:
I would actually say that I think it’s okay that everybody has a different opinion, because everyone is going to have this ideal in their head of what awesome means for their business, for their employees, for the leadership of that business, and for this ideal place that they want to get, weather, how they’re performing on a day to day basis, or how the goals, the next level up that they want to move their business onto, and this ideal of who they want to be as an organization. So I think it’s okay. I think the key comes when you are able to communicate those and when your MSP is willing to listen and understand what consistently awesome means to you, and helps you get there. Helps you achieve that for you, not just their idea of consistently awesome, but your idea of consistently awesome.
Thomas Douglas:
Yeah, I think you’ve got to nail that. One of the… I think we’ve talked about this in prior podcasts is, it’s a little bit like trying to describe love. It becomes really different, because it’s different for every person and it’s different for every environment. The fun thing about what we get to do in our organization is to help people to be successful. I mean, it’s a gift if you think of it in that way. And so we get the opportunity to go in and understand what happens on a day-to-day basis, but the goal is to empower people at the end of the day so that they come into work and they know that their technology is going to be awesome, that it’s fast, that it’s efficient.
Thomas Douglas:
They can get their job done. They’re empowered for success rather than the horror stories that we hear prior to coming into a lot of environments where it’s like, “Oh my gosh, everything is so slow. I can’t get anything done. I can’t even print.” I mean, it becomes these painful moments and we want to shift those so that the perception is that there is nothing that I can’t achieve, because I’m so empowered for success. We’re really empowering people. And that’s something that I get really excited about every day.
Thomas Douglas:
We can’t hear you, Todd.
Todd:
I have double meat, looks like. The other thing too that I was mentioning, or that I was thinking about was that technology is also an enabler. It’s not just about the experience that someone has, but it’s an enabler to take an organization and help them to innovate and help them to create new products and help them to collaborate better and to connect better with their employees and with their customers. And a lot of people look at technology as a necessary evil, or as an expense. But the truth is that, that paradigm, that thought has to be totally reversed, because technology is the enabler that can create the awesomeness that most people go into business for, whether it’s to make money or to help people do something or accomplish something. Technology is just a massive enabler and we’re seeing it in almost every single industry right now, whether it’s healthcare, transportation, oil and gas, banking, it has just spread the gamut where technology is ruling innovation.
Thomas Douglas:
Well, you mean you laid it out there? And we said this before, and I’ll say it again, Todd. The big thing that I hope companies are starting to get an appreciation for is that every company is now a technology company. There’s not a single one that doesn’t operate without technology. And if, as an organization, they don’t have the focus on empowering people through technology, they’re really not empowering people.
Thomas Douglas:
There’s only so much energy, so much capacity, so many calories that can be burned every single day. And if you’re burning your energy solving technology problems, or even tolerating technology, then you’re not creating creativity. You’re not empowering people to get innovative. You don’t have permission, because they’re dealing with bullshit every day. And really what we want them to do is to have those creative juices flowing, the energy focused in the right area, to empower the organization to go to that next level, to come up with the next big idea, to serve clients more efficiently and create a better experience for our customer’s clients. And so it’s just the tip of the iceberg to say consistently awesome with IT, because that really unleashes the ability for people to be creative and be awesome as well.
Dax:
I think Todd mentioned transportation, which made me think of a perfect example is this, as we have a few clients who are in the transportation industry and they’re serving their clients and their customers, means keeping their trucks on the road and keeping deliveries going out. And as we all know currently, that has been so important over the last few months of being able to ship things places, get items, whatever it is, whatever they’re carrying to the places they need to go, and we’re supporting them in their office. We’re not putting tires on the trucks, but we’re supporting the people that are giving the routes to their drivers and doing all these things behind the scenes. And without that, they couldn’t do the consistently awesome job of making sure that their trucks arrive on time and making sure that things get where they need to go.
Thomas Douglas:
And we all want to make sure we have our toilet paper. And that is a big deal. Kristina, you’re in that creative world, you had positive experiences and not positive experiences with technology. Share just what it’s like to be the person who is expected to come up with the next marketing idea, the next creative thing, the next wave, when you get bogged down into the technology BS, I’ll describe it as, rather than being free to just do what you want to do and need to do.
Kristina:
Yeah, I mean, the difference is absolutely night and day. It’s everything. Everything I do is on the computer. If it’s not working, what can you do? I mean, it shuts down your creativity, stress levels are through the roof.
Todd:
Phone calls to me, text messages to me.
Todd:
What do I do?
Dax:
And I think it actually extends beyond that, because we’re talking about Kristina, but if Kristina’s having trouble, then yes, she’s on the phone to Todd, which causes him a problem. And maybe I’m waiting on something. Maybe I’ve got a meeting with Kristina and then that has to change, because Kristina can’t talk to me right then, because she’s dealing with her IT issue, and that cascades into something else. And I mean, we’re all interconnected, and so a problem for one person is really a problem for multiple people in almost every case.
Todd:
Absolutely. The other thing too, that I want to make sure people understand is that it’s easy to say technology is an innovator or technology is an enabler. And while that’s true, I mean, there’s innovative technology all over the place, but really what we’re talking about is essentially this idea, again, of minimum right to play. Essentially, you want your technology that you have, whether it’s computer server software, cloud services, whatever it is, to be optimized in a way that helps you move fast, that increases your velocity. And a lot of people think of technology as this invisible thing or Tesla or something like that. And it’s really right in front of us, it’s the things we use every day. But the things we use every day can be optimized in a way and can be delivered in a way that enable individuals to have success, and that enable you to be able to have the time and the energy to innovate and to create new products and do all those other things to be more awesome.
Thomas Douglas:
Yeah, you hit on a couple of different things there Todd, that I think are important to expand on. And one of them that I’d point out at first is, consistent. You don’t lose weight by going on a diet one day, off the diet the next, on a diet the day after, off the next. You lose weight, you get in shape by being consistent. It’s consistency that creates the outcomes. And so you can have really good technology, but if it’s not consistently awesome, if it’s not consistently doing what it does, then it doesn’t empower that attitude that we’re talking about that allows for the individuals in the organization to have the attitude of innovation. It creates a, “Well, I hope I can get my job done today” attitude, and that’s not what business leaders want. They want people to come in and go, “Man, let’s run, let’s go, let’s accelerate. Let’s expand, let’s come up with new ways to create revenue inside our organization. Whatever it may be, let’s generate the marketing materials to bring in more clientele.”
Thomas Douglas:
It’s the consistency of that, that really creates the attitude for success. And so when we talk about just innovation is an earmark in technology. It’s not just something as simple as saying, “I’ve got an iPhone and it replaces a whole bunch of stuff, and it’s a cool piece of technology or whatever.” It’s about a culture of an organization. And I think that, that comes from building in creating a strategy, a suite of products that come into an environment that create the consistent outcome that make it great for everybody to understand and then really drive all of those things forward. And so from my perspective, it’s not the PC, it’s not the cloud, it’s not servers. It’s really the recipe for success all the way through the environment that helps people to accelerate and have the right attitude.
Todd:
Yeah. And the other thing too that I don’t know if it’s overlooked or just not considered, but when anybody in an organization is moving towards something, you mentioned this idea of energy. If Kristina has planned to work on a certain video, a certain campaign at a certain time of the day, and she wasn’t able to, because of technology, it’s not so much that she won’t ever be able to do that, but now it might be she’d have to stay up late to get something done or something else has to move out of the way. And when you start taking into account the energy of the organization and the delays that can happen, it’s not enough just to get something done, because something could still be done just by working longer hours if technology delays you, but it’s about getting something done in an optimized way that consistently gives you energy to keep doing things.
Todd:
Because when you have a problem like that, and you end up working till the wee hours of the morning, trying to knock something out that should have been done during the day, you come in the next day and you are not consistently awesome, you’re tired and you’re down in caffeine or whatever it is. But I think that’s where we got to change this mindset again, from a business perspective of, it’s not so much, “Oh, well, call IT, they’ll fix your issue. Call somebody they’ll fix your issue.” It needs to be working. And it’s not about this be through reaction, because the reactionary effect of bad IT is what drains the energy of employees.
Thomas Douglas:
Or average IT even, I think it can be just as bad. You bring to mind an old saying that success begets success. And I think that, that’s exactly right. Success with IT begets success with people that begets success of the organization. In any one of those cascading areas of failure, just like you talked about the access, it’s not in a bubble, it doesn’t just happen in one place. There is a cascading effect of missing deadlines of missing the ability to collaborate, missing meetings, missing the customer expectations. I mean, if you don’t launch a campaign on time, it can have an impact for months ahead. And that’s a major problem. If you miss a deadline on a project, you can get financial penalties associated with it, or the ramifications can go on and on. And so I believe that one of the first foundational points of every organization to set the company up for that success, is IT. Success begets success. And it just cascades upward in a very positive way when it’s done right.
Dax:
I think there’s one other small thing that we haven’t touched on a while, I mean, I say small, but I believe it’s a big thing in the end, is that when organizations are set up with technology that help their people succeed, that draws better people to your organization, because everybody talks. People talk to their friends and say, “Yeah man, it’s tough to get my work done, because the IT sucks at work. I spend this much time doing my work.” And somebody else says, “And I mean, it’s awesome. I get my work done and I’m set up and things just get done and it’s flowing.” And people know, and people will hear these things and people want to work for organizations where they’re going to be able to succeed. And it truly does change the outcome of things when people know that about your company.
Thomas Douglas:
You’re talking about the culture of success. You mean, you’re going to bring people in and they’re either going to have a bad attitude, an average attitude that I’m just going to do what I need to do to get by, or an enthusiastic attitude. And if you want to bring in people that have that enthusiastic, positive attitude into the environment, you’ve got to set them up for success. You can’t have great people with bad technology and expect outcomes that are at the high end. If you’re paying top talent or if you’re paying people to be successful, one of the foundations is setting them up, and that culture perpetuates just like anything else. If you’ve got a negative attitude of IT, you’re going to walk to get a coffee and you’re going to be frustrated and you’re going to bring others down, because negativity begets negativity. And so when you empower people and they’ve got a good attitude, because they’re able to be successful, it perpetuates and cascades through the company. So it’s really fun.
Todd:
One of the things that’s always bugged me and I’ve seen this for years and years and years. I’m sure you guys have seen this too, is when you’re talking about technology for a company, and there’s a refresh on the table, for example, where they have a lot of systems that need to be replaced and the conversation goes to, “Oh, let’s just get the same system for everybody.” That’s what it is. Or they really bring it down, and of course there’s going to be budget concerns, but they bring it down to the lowest cost model that can get the job done. And while sure that saves a few bucks on the budget, it’s not creating the consistently awesomeness that business owners really need to be looking for, because everybody in the organization doesn’t use computers like the same.
Todd:
Everybody in the organization doesn’t use the same exact software and systems and there’s power users, and there’s users that just use a few applications and that has to be taken into account. And of course you want some level of consistency in the organization with technology, but you can do that without making it a stamped copy and treating everybody as if they’re the same, because to truly make the success, you have to give people the tools to empower them, to create success.
Thomas Douglas:
Absolutely. And that folds into a whole series of things that has to be done on the backside. I mean, consistently awesomeness doesn’t come from computers. It comes from the whole suite of activities, the management that goes on, the best practices that are implemented. So you can have the power user and you can have the average user and you can have even a low end user that’s just coming in to do some data entry really quick or whatever the case may be. And it’s absolutely okay to cater the technology around those, as long as you’re building a strategy around how you’re going to support that whole environment to deliver those outcomes, to make sure that the experience is positive and that all of the back end is aware of what needs to happen, and the outcomes you expect on the front end.
Thomas Douglas:
And that takes a serious strategy. It’s not easy. And then there’s hour week. As an organization, we put more hours into the hidden things that we do now than we do in the front side. And that’s exactly the way that it should be. There should be more proactive work done to make sure a network runs well, then reactive work. And when you get that formula right, you get the outcomes we’re talking about.
Thomas Douglas:
You’re muted.
Todd:
I think that’s a good side to wrap up this conversation. In a previous podcast, you talked about guaranteed outcomes and here we’re talking about something a little bit above and beyond the guaranteed outcomes. And that’s the consistent awesomeness that you get from your technology, from your IT support from your systems. And that is so vital and it should be expected from a good match services provider. So if anybody has any questions that we can answer, if you’d like to learn more about how JMARK is consistently awesome with our clients, please reach out to us at www.jmark.com or give us a call and we will start the conversation later.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, I’ll see you.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and helps convey that at JMARK we are people first and technology second. To learn more and discover additional content relevant to your business, please visit us online at www.jmark.com or at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You may also call us at 844-44-JMARK. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you again.
