Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
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Ready to unlock transformational success? Well, you can learn more about Lean agile mastery and how to become customer centric with today's guest for your leader trying to get more from your business and life native, so join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.
Jean Lee is the founder of radar consulting and author of Lean agile mastery, mastering the five C's for customer centric success, over 15 years, he's lead transformations generating 75 to 700x revenue and near perfect customer satisfaction for his clients. Jane's mission is to share this proven blueprint. So organizations globally can multiply revenues and enable agility. Jamie, Welcome, John Bell.
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Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you being on our show.
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Let's jump right into your origin story.
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Yeah, so you know, as you mentioned, I've got about 15 years experience driving what I call lean Agile transformations. In the business world, you know, there's reference to Agile transformations and lean Agile transformations. I like to think of my transformations, incorporating lean, agile, best practices. And so I've only been able to drive, you know, a couple of successful transformations, because it's not easy, it's not easy to do, because it includes, you know, collaboration across the enterprise. And in many instances, you know, typically, like in traditional organizations, many functional departments operate in silos, right? They've the VPs, or the, you know, senior executive, they kind of run things their own way. And, you know, kind of operate in this silo mentality. So what I've tried to do over the, over a decade or so is tried to drive behaviors that enable that what I call the LA five C framework, right, and that's customer centricity, collaboration, coordination, communication, and then coming to continuous improvement wraps around all of those other four C's. And, you know, like you mentioned, some of those results that we've been able to drive include new revenue, multiples of 75, to 700x. And, you know, boosting CSAT to, you know, in one organization in CSAT was stagnant like 8.0, we drove that all the way up to 9.3, after the first year of the transformation effort, and this is doing that, while we're also optimizing business and software development lifecycle processes. Alright.
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Want to go off there? I want to start though, with the idea. I think it's like 80% of transformations fail, right? Like, for all the reasons you've explained, in your experience, what are the most common pitfalls that lead to that? You
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know, I think one of those major pitfalls is just executive buy in, right? Like, you need to have the Chief Executive Officer, the CEO, or the chairmen really driving this effort for all of their C suite executives, right. Because, you know, the analogy I like to use is if you have this puzzle of, you know, a happy face customer, right? It, the parts of those puzzle represents different parts of the organization, right, different functional departments, sales, marketing, ops, customer support, you know, professional services, legal, InfoSec, compliance, you know, imagine all of those parts making up that puzzle of that happy face customer, right? If you put all those pieces together, like that's, that's the challenge, right? Like all of those pieces, acting seamlessly together, that that's going to deliver a outstanding customer experience, right? Vice versa, if they don't, like, for example, like they're very closely related organizations like sales and marketing, right? If they don't work well, seamlessly together, the customer, the effects are going to be felt by the customer. Right? And the same thing goes for other parts of the organization. So first and foremost, I think it's executive buy in. And then number two is just the ability of those functional leaders to to come together, right and to enable what I call a cross functional collaboration, right, and coordination and communication, right? All those functions need need to be able to work together. Right. So having a shared that shared vision, having a focus on customer centricity and having driving behavior, yours right is one thing. There's always talk, right? People always talk and organizations talk to a lot of talking about, yeah, we're customer driven. But when you look under the cover, right, that may not be the case.
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And you can very clearly see it on a lot of websites. When they just keep mentioning us, I, we it's like, it becomes becomes very clear, like, probably not the most customer centric, right? Otherwise, you'd be focused on you need this you are doing, you know, providing that value upfront. Very good. Yeah, controlling type and we. So, we've talked multiple times now. And you've shared some of your stories about the actual most successful transformations that kind of put you on this path. Even I would love for you to share those, or at least one of those with the audience. Yeah. Oh,
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yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So yeah, one of those opportunities, it was for a professional training institute in Seoul, Korea, this was a government sponsored training institute, what they did is they offered PD use right professional development units for engineers. And so a lot of these engineers in Korea, you know, if they wanted to upskill, right, then they would take courses at this institute. Well, the the CSAT was really stagnant here. I mean, it was a government sponsored Institute. So they conducted regular surveys. And the survey results were not good, right? They often the trainees complain that the classes were too technical, or too boring, a number of other complaints. And so what I did initially was I actually taught a course myself specifically, entirely in English, it's the first time it was ever done. And, you know, the course and I got, we actually got some real positive feedback. And so what I pitched to the executives and the chairman of the board is that, hey, let's go full fledge with this thing? Let's make a full on program, right, not a two week course, but actual, like, four month program. And, you know, I got a lot of objections to that, like, Oh, that's not going to work, you know, like, yeah, that's not going to happen 100% English, you know, that's not going to fly. And so what I did was I said, Listen, let me get some data, or let me do some research over the next three months. And so I call this voice of the customer program development. And so I conducted surveys, focus groups, hundreds of interviews, and gathered data, right from 1000s of these trainees over a three month period. And then what we discovered what I discovered, actually, what was the aha moment was that these trainees didn't care about PD use or getting, you know, updating their their certifications, like they didn't care about that what they really cared about, it was the ability to compete in the global marketplace. And that meant being fluent in English, right? Because not all of these employees can work for a Samsung or LG or can de you know, these global organizations, and so they wanted to be able to work for another global organization. And, and they wanted in particularly in project management, but they needed to be versatile in their communications, right. So that was their primary objective is to be able to compete in the global marketplace. And so that really kind of reshaped the institute's mission and vision. And once I presented that to the, to the administration, then they were like, okay, you know, we'll give you the budget that you're looking for, to build this. And so, one year later, after developing this project management training program, we certified 1000s, over 1000 trainees per year. We that revenue, multiple multiplied net new program revenue of 75 times or $8 million in the first year. And then CSAT, increased from 8.0 to 9.3. And meanwhile, we also develop technology, right, to actually scale the business. So now we went from, you know, having hundreds of applicants to now 1000s of applicants, right, that my staff actually managed manually. They work with Windows folders per applicant, and that took forever right, it was just very painstaking work over time. But once we installed the self registration and application system, where candidates can self serve, they registered, they submitted all their documents themselves, and then the system would track the progress As of completion of those applications, whereas my staff had to do that before. So, you know, again, people process technology, all that came together, from, you know, this voice of the customer program development.
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That's awesome. And so is that where you would recommend people start if they were looking at transformations within their company? Or is there somewhere else that, like a startup should be considering in order to make it happen? Oh,
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yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Voice of the Customer is definitely one of the the best practices and tools that should be leveraged, right, because, like I said, that organization, the administration, and even some of the executives, like they didn't buy it, right, they didn't buy it, they didn't believe that it would fly. And so you have to, you have to do the research, and you have to gather data. And then from that data, you, you know, hopefully will derive some insights that will inform, you know, program or product development efforts.
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Right. So you've mentioned a couple times now, the executives tend to be one of the hardest, like nuts to crack. And in order to make this happen, what are like? I mean, you've worked with a lot of companies at this point, like, what are some of the things you've seen work pretty consistently, in order to kind of win them over? So you can at least get your foot in the door to start a project? Right,
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right. Yeah. So you know, it's, it's storytelling, right, telling stories like this, for example, I educon. Another key store was at Pilani, which is a Fintech startup company. And so it's really just trying to, you know, get get their ear, get their attention. Ultimately, you know, if they don't have an open mind, then, you know, it's, it's not going to work, regardless. Right. But if they're open to new approaches, best practices, what I've found is that, you know, not all organizations or leaders are open to industry best practices, right? Even though they, you know, they say they are I mean, in actuality, that's, that's not really the case. Right? For whatever reason, right? It could be that, hey, you know, maybe they don't want a new, they don't want to do a new initiative, right? Or it's too risky, right? They might perceive it as being too much of a risk, or it's too big of an initiative. Right, whatever it may be, right, they're just not ready. So I think it's a matter of, you know, being open minded to, to best practices, and then, you know, be willing to commit, right as the other thing, right? Is that, Hey, okay, if you want to do this 100%, then we need to really be you need to be 100% committed to the effort, and then where I need these executives to support, then they should be able to step in and say, hey, look, guys, this is this is worth the effort, right? This is worth the ROI. And, you know, delivering customer satisfaction. So, you know, get on board.
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Because I can imagine, once you if they're already on the fence, and you do convince them to get going, as soon as anything starts to like veer off course, there's a good chance they try shutting the project down. Right. So are there I guess, one, are there ways to catch those warning signs before any of your projects are going off course? Like are you setting certain benchmarks, milestones, things like that? And then how do you? Like what kind of pre planning are you doing to make sure that we can realign and get it back on track before it? Like, shuts it down?
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Yeah, yeah. So you know, just a little with any new product development or programs. It's just really providing, you know, consistent status updates, right, on the progress that's been achieved, like you mentioned any milestones. And, you know, identifying any risks as well. Right. So you know, there have been instances where a new VP, VP, who will come on board and completely just, you know, change priorities, and things get off track that way, right. But those are, those are things that are out of out of, you know, out of your control, but those are things that do happen, right, personnel changes, leadership changes. But all you can do is really just track the performance and the metrics that the product or program is delivering and, you know, continue to get that buy in. Yeah.
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All right. Shifting gears to, I guess, what are some of the misconceptions about Lean and Agile that you you face the most? You
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know, at this point, a lot of executives and teams they understand one or the other, right? The software environments, those teams and organizations they understand agile, right? It's very, very common practice. And then with manufacturing organizations, they understand lean, right, as evidenced by the Toyota way and Toyota Production System. Right. But But organizations don't really understand this hybrid approach, right? This is something that I've advocated and been championing. And it's, you know, as far as I know, like, I'm very one of few people who's actually championing this Lean agile, right, which is a combination of the two approaches, right? Because if you think of agile being about software development, lean is about manufacturing or production. Really, this is, you know, software is manufacturing. It's like, we don't call it manufacturing, we call it software development or software production. And so lean is about, you know, reducing defects and eliminating waste. Right. And there's certainly ways in software development processes, right. And in that lifecycle, right. And so if you when it makes sense to really combine the two, right, and, you know, develop software in a very efficient manner, I
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guess, why do you think the there's hesitation or reservations around more people just championing lean agile? Yeah, you know, I
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think it's just the lack of understanding, right or misunderstanding, right? You know, again, I spoken to, you know, former colleagues and supervisors, and they flat out said, Yeah, I don't really understand what that means. Right? What does that mean? Like, leave us agile? And so that's when you start to have those, those conversations, but but, you know, in certain cases, the the, you know, the, the other person may not be willing to ask the question, right. Hey, what does that mean? I'm not sure what that means, right? Or just has a misunderstanding what it means. So I think that's the biggest challenge. Gotcha.
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Yeah, that makes sense. So educating, like, the, like, the audience is probably the most important thing right now. Yeah, for everyone listening, you are the audience, we're educating you. So, let's move into so continuous improvement, right? Is some every one you say the words, everybody says, like, yeah, obviously, we want that we do that. But it's actually hard to sustain continuous improvement. Just because of like, the motivation, right? The level like what, at some point, after starting a new project, your initial enthusiasm is gonna kind of go down, and people are gonna start going back into like, their regular grind of what they were doing before? What are some of the things you recommend organizations are doing so that they can really like sink into that continuous improvement and model? And just go with it? Like, keep keep actually driving in that direction? Yeah,
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yeah, I think one of the ways to really kind of sustain a continuous improvement effort is really to, to get some quick wins, right? You know, in any organization, there's gonna be problems and challenges and complaints, right. So for example, at the last client, fortune 500 client that I consulted for one of the biggest challenges, or actually, the complaints that I heard was that the product management team is not talking to us, or informing us that this product, this new product is coming, you know, for example, legal, right, so there are email communications that were going out from Salesforce, right to end users, and to customers, actually, and, and so legal, was not consulted. Because there were disclaimers in there that were not relevant in those email communications. And so legal is saying, Well, why weren't we consulted? With right want? I mean, we weren't even informed. And then there's other stakeholders, you know, downstream from the product and operations teams, like the training team, for example, who often says, Hey, this, this product really doesn't make any sense. Like this feature, doesn't. It doesn't drive any value for our end users. Right? And so there's downstream feedback that's not being captured upstream, right with the product management team, right? Feedback loops, right from customer support, they're getting complaints from customers, they're hearing a lot of things from customers, and that feedback is not being communicated back. Right, upstream to, to product senior leadership or management is things like that, right? That can be easily fixed. But, you know, again, just need to identify that hey, listen, there. Is this critical feedback from customers? And we need to establish these feedback loops going back to, you know, product management, right. And so I think, you know, people understand that, hey, you know what, yeah, that makes sense. Like, we need to involve relevant stakeholders, we need to capture voice of the customer feedback, loop it back to the product management team, you know, so that they can address some of these outstanding, you know, issues and complaints that are out there. I know many different examples in within agile ceremonies, for example, same organization, they didn't include the end users in the sprint demos. Right? And so I would ask them, What, why do we not do that? I mean, these are the end users who's gonna be who's going to be using the product? Why are they not involved in the sprint demos? Right? And then we have to find out after the fact that they don't like it, or you know, they don't like something about it. So, you know, it's just, you know, even just inherence adherence to existing, you know, agile scrum agile, the agile framework, and the ceremonies.
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That, yeah, that could
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go a long way in itself. Right.
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So what are like some innovations or new practices, right? You mentioned Best Practices earlier, I'm sure there's also emerging practices that are coming out. Things that you're seeing now are related to like the Lean agile space that companies should be aware of, in order to kind of get that edge?
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Yeah, you don't want I don't even want to get into AI. Because there's so many, there's there's really limitless opportunities with leveraging AI. But without even getting into that, I mean, just focusing on lean, incorporating lean, agile best practices, right? So we, I talked about customer feedback loops, for example, and voice of the customer. Feedback and analysis, right? Those are great tools and best practices that are not or that can be leveraged. More so today, right? customer journey mapping, for example, Value Stream Mapping, these are all Lean tools that many organizations are not utilizing, right? Because like I said, if you're if you understand agile, you're familiar with agile, you're doing Agile, but you're not doing both lean, lean plus agile. Right. And, and, you know, like I said, with, with the emergence of AI, those tools that I mentioned, right, those can all be powered by chat GBT or other
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AI technologies. Right? Awesome.
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So I guess, leaning into maybe even the AI part. What do you think the future holds for? For lean agile practices?
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The future? Yeah, well, I'm hoping that through, you know, education and the podcasts, right that such as the this one that we're able to, you know, spread the word right and educate global organizations about the benefits of Lean agile, and in that also my lean agile five C framework, right. And so that's, that's kind of my purpose. You know, my purpose right now is to try to, to educate in champion and and spread the benefits of Lean agile.
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Alright, Jane, going into our last three questions for the episode. The first being what book do you recommend everyone should read?
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Well, you know, I have published a book called Lean agile mastery, mastering the five C's for customer centric success. So that's a book that I published on this on this topic. So I really do highly recommend it. You could go to my website, lean agile mastery.com. And you can purchase it there. There's also online course and a coaching program as well. Otherwise, you know, I would I would suggest reading various books on on Lean Six Sigma. Right. So Thomas pick his decks. Lean Six Sigma handbook, is also a great, great reference book.
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What's next for you professionally?
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Next for me professionally, well, I am bootstrapped right now, I launched my own consulting company called radar consulting, LLC. And I am actually focused on helping businesses of all sizes to actually strategize, right and strategize about their AI strategy, right? And how to incorporate AI into their businesses from you know, marketing, right lead gen, you know, through that whole customer lifecycle management right from acquiring leads to converting those leads into customers using, you know, website and landing page automations to you know, customer management, right communication campaigns, email, SMS, other channels, Omni channel communications, and automating those processes. And so that, you know, businesses can achieve
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their business goals. Awesome.
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All right. And finally, where can people find you?
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My website is radar consulting llc.com. And, yeah, so on my website or on my LinkedIn, social media pages, radar consulting, LLC, is
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is where you can find
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all right, Jean, thanks for joining me.
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Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Appreciate it.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai