Breaking Down the Four Essential Parts of Building a Great System with Nick Foy, Founder & CEO Silverdale Technology
In this episode of Exploring Growth, host Lee Murray talks with Nick Foy, Founder and CEO of Silverdale Technology. They discuss the importance of building effective systems for scaling companies. With over 30 years of experience, Nick introduces the 4 steps to build structured systems. This episode offers valuable insights for leaders looking to enhance their business processes.
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Nick Foy
00:00:00
Ambiguity breeds creativity. Yeah, right. So, you know, so when your process is ambiguous, right. you're going to get a lot of creativity now to use your, your phraseology on a level five employee. That's okay. Right. Creativity is good. That's what's productive. Level five. That's what they're there for, right? From a level one employee, that's the last thing you want is people being creative okay.
Lee Murray
00:00:25
Well because that creativity is not going to lead to your production or your company. It's only to their production for themselves.
Nick Foy
00:00:31
That's right. Exactly. That creativity may be completely unwanted in your process, right?
Lee Murray
00:00:39
It's not a secret that founder CEOs of second stage companies and their teams should be building systems as they scale. When I was introduced to Nick Foye, founder CEO of Silverdale Silverdale Technology, our conversation was all about building systems. So I thought it'd be great to have him come on here and break down essential elements to building great systems. And if you want to fortify your systems, this is going to be a huge tool in your tool belt, I'm sure of it.
Lee Murray
00:01:10
So welcome to the show, Nick.
Nick Foy
00:01:11
Greatly. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Lee Murray
00:01:15
Yes. So, tell us a little bit about your background and why do you know about systems?
Nick Foy
00:01:20
Yeah. So, you know, you can probably tell I'm no spring chicken, to this world. And, I've been doing this now for over 30 years. my career first started, a long, long time ago in a factory that made video recorders. So that gives you an idea of how old I am. but my my time on the production line, at, the video recorder factory was cut short after only three months, where I promptly got fired for, being a disruptive influence on the production line. and, you know, and that story, you know, I was only 16 at the time. I didn't know anything. but what was evident to me back then was, you know, my job on the production line. I was right at the end of the production line. I was doing some, rudimentary type form of quality control.
Nick Foy
00:02:14
And what I figured out is what I was doing was I was fixing mistakes that were happening further up the production line. And, you know, in my 16 year old head, that just didn't make any sense to me. and as soon as I figured out that that's what was going on, I started shouting across the production line that the people that made the mistakes to say, hey, I got another one, a fix, another one of your mistakes. And, you know, eventually my team leader said, you know, you're going to stop shooting across the production line. and of course, I didn't I didn't.
Lee Murray
00:02:45
Have that take about five minutes.
Nick Foy
00:02:47
Yeah. What, a day long. but but as a result, I, I was promptly fired for just being a disruptive influence on the production line. But, you know, even to my 16 year old brain, this that whole thing just didn't make any sense to me, right? Why would you accept a failure to further up the process, and then have to employ someone to sit there and fix the thing? Like.
Nick Foy
00:03:08
Like it didn't make any sense to me. and that was kind of my introduction, I guess, to, you know, I didn't know any of the terms back then. I didn't have any training, you know, I just knew in my gut that something just wasn't right, you know? and, you know, once I got fired from the video recorder factory, which, thinking back in, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. you know, I don't suppose I'd still be there. Now, no one really needs video recorders, but, you know, when I left there, I then worked for Glenmorangie, which is a great, Scotch whisky company. For those of your listeners there who enjoy a dram or two, we'll be very familiar with that name. and I worked there for like six and a half years, and that was a great education for me. And, you know, part of my role there actually was moving between different teams and figuring out how the company worked and how things moved from, you know, from marketing to sales to manufacturing, distribution, finance.
Nick Foy
00:04:07
Right. It was all it was a great education for me and figuring out how businesses hang together. And then, you know, from there I moved then into warehousing and third party logistics, which was kind of a particular interest. And mine are really interested in supply chain and how things can move and hang together. And and then from there, it was actually a very natural progression actually into consulting. and I worked for Capgemini for a good few years and focused really my education, I guess there was really on formalizing some of the stuff I'd been doing. So that's when I was introduced really into the formal structure of things like Lean Six Sigma, you know, project management, you know, PMP and all that great stuff. and that was kind of where it all started coming together as the. Oh, okay. I've been talking. I didn't know there was a name for it. Right. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:04:57
People were doing this kind of thing, right?
Nick Foy
00:04:59
I just thought that's what everybody did, right?
Lee Murray
00:05:01
You found your business.
Lee Murray
00:05:02
You found your community.
Lee Murray
00:05:04
That's it. Exactly.
Nick Foy
00:05:05
It was great. You know, especially in the lean. part of it was for me. you know, and, you know, my my role at Capgemini was really interesting because, we were taking kind of lean concepts that were traditionally focused on manufacturing. and we were employing those lean techniques and principles to logistics and supply chains or warehousing and distribution, and that hadn't really been done. back then, we were fairly new at this. And, and so trying to understand how the principles applied. so things like value stream mapping, you know, I, I, you know, enjoy a good bit of value stream mapping and process design. There you go. any, any, any excuse to build a we actually use BPM now. any excuse to build a BPM. I'm your man. so, you know, I guess, you know, throughout my career, you know, it's been everything from the production line all the way through to what I do now.
Nick Foy
00:06:00
And, you know, starting Silverdale. You know, my I've always been involved in, technology, and ERP systems as well as kind of the physical process, which I really enjoy, and that intersection of how the system is, the computer system, the employee and the physical movement of product really comes together. That's that's kind of I was going to sum up my entire career, really. It's it's that intersection of those things. And, and that was the inception of Silverdale really was take what, you know, experience I had and what I enjoy doing. and then create a company that does exactly that. And, you know, getting back to the original question as the round, systems, we actually tend to call them mechanisms here, but it's exactly the same thing. We just refer to them as mechanisms. And this was something that we picked up from, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. So I spent six years working at Amazon and, you know, picked up some great tools and techniques from there.
Nick Foy
00:07:02
And one of the things that really stuck with me is kind of Jeff's, definition of mechanism. So, you know, Jeff always said that, you know, good intentions don't work. Mechanisms do. and, you know, we take that we've taken that like a step further here at Silverdale and really breaking that down. What do we really mean by that. Right. And so a really great mechanism okay. is made up of four constituent parts. There's the process the tool, the adoption and audit. And if any one of these four things are missing then you really don't have a mechanism. Right? it's just a good intention. It just makes you feel better. So, you know, a good definition of a good intention is when you you've done it. I've done it. We've all sat in meetings when we all look at each other and go, wow, we really should do something about that. That's a big problem. Everyone says, yeah, yeah, we really should. Yeah. you know, and everyone walks out thinking you achieved something, but you really didn't.
Nick Foy
00:08:00
Right. you just made everybody feel good for a few minutes, and then the next meeting, you come in and you say, hey, didn't we talk about this already? Well, yeah, we did, but we didn't do anything, right. Yeah. And that's really where Mechanism's comes in.
Lee Murray
00:08:13
I love that and I, I first of all, let's, let's start by saying, I think that I got the right guy on the call because you're definitely qualified. I think you are qualified to talk about systems for sure. so that's good. And, and I know that like sort of the premise of what we're going to talk about here is like the essentials of building a great system. You outline them, briefly there. what? So, so that that turning point from, I guess, start starting starting Silverdale was that sort of like where the light bulbs kind of went on for you in your career to say, okay, all this makes sense now, and now I have, I, I have what it takes to take it to the market.
Nick Foy
00:08:52
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I always knew I wanted to run my own company. The problem was I just didn't know what it was going to do. you know, I didn't go through formal education, so I'm not an economist. I'm not a marketeer. I'm not a, you.
Lee Murray
00:09:05
Know, probably better for it.
Nick Foy
00:09:07
I think. So, you know, it's not done me any harm that way, but, but but it was always a case of I knew I want to run my own company. I just have no idea what it was going to do, whether it was going to make stuff, sell stuff, you know, whatever what it was going to be. and so when I decided, you know, I had the opportunity to actually go do my own thing and I was like, okay, well, I'm just going to just come up with a list of stuff that I'm good at. I'm going to come up with a list of stuff that I enjoy, and I'm going to create a company around that.
Nick Foy
00:09:36
And that's really where Silverdale came from. And, you know, and it is that, you know, intersection of business process of systems and mechanisms and, you know, ERP systems. And I think, you know, that's been something that, you know, an industry wide problem of, you know, implementing ERP systems and bringing very much, Real world practical solutions. You know, we kind of I like to call ourselves like the antidote to the traditional ERP industry. Right. Okay. Because we just don't do it like everybody else, right? It's just not our you know, we're not an ERP implementation company. It's not what we do. You know, we're we do the things that you know, me, I'm personally very good at and enjoy doing. And guess what? There seems to be a market for that.
Lee Murray
00:10:20
Yeah. Who would have thought? Right. Okay, well, let's jump into it. Let's let's look at the first one again. Four essential parts of building a great system, or as you say in Scottish mechanism.
Lee Murray
00:10:32
Right. Okay. Installation process.
Nick Foy
00:10:36
Yeah. So processes. you know, the very, very first step. And actually, you know, these are in sequence. So once you know, if you're going to try and do something, you need to understand the process, right. you know, within lean, of course, you know, without process there can be no improvement. Right. so if you can't point at something and clearly identify, hey, I do A, then B, then C, and sometimes I do D, or maybe in this circumstance or do E. What's interesting to me, Li, is that, you know, it's amazing how many companies and how many people we speak to as part of our, kind of onboarding and sales process that when you ask them, hey, can you just explain your process kind of high level? How do you buy stuff? How do you sell stuff? And it's just really interesting to me how many people actually can't really describe that. Right.
Nick Foy
00:11:26
well, sometimes you do this and sometimes you do like, oh, but actually there's this use case where we do, you know, and you start realizing that, okay, you're you really don't have a process. And you know, how look, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, I guess now we were using Visio for doing this. Now, there's way better tools out there these days for doing process mapping and Visio. you know, thankfully, and but it's really interesting how many companies like I probably have less than 5% in my, in my experience, actually have the business processes mapped out in any way, shape or form. Okay. And that doesn't have to be formal. It doesn't have to be Visio or Lucid Cha or BPM, right? It could just be post-its on a wall. It could just be a whiteboard. Right? Yeah. But if you can describe what happens one step after the other to have a logical start and end right with potentially some options in between, then you can describe your process, right.
Nick Foy
00:12:20
And you know.
Lee Murray
00:12:21
So one idea here I going back to my, a consulting firm I work for years ago, the owner went through the Lean Six Sigma process, and he was, very interested in applying it to the, to the organization. And so I watched him in this sort of where I learned a little bit of this, where he literally would just take a whiteboard and said, okay, bring someone in, tell me what you do, and now tell me what it is, the steps that you take to do that. And then they would, you know, draw lines. And I'm very visual. I love diagrams, I love visual, you know, visualizing things on whiteboards, all my strategies and stuff like that. You can see my whiteboard behind me. I mean, I'm always constantly, you know, trying to get them out of my head. Yeah. And so to me, that made so much sense. I'm resonating a lot with what you're saying.
Nick Foy
00:13:08
Yeah. And you know, getting things out of people's heads and getting them into something that we can all share.
Nick Foy
00:13:13
And again like you're right the whiteboards I've got, you know, two either side of me right now, you know that I use all the time and then using, you know, just taking a quick, you know, picture of that and sharing with people.
Lee Murray
00:13:24
I think even just a whiteboard where you're not really formally documenting it, just putting it, writing it down is revealing.
Nick Foy
00:13:32
Oh, wow. You know. Absolutely. And, you know, it's kind of interesting when someone explains it and you start writing on the board. Oh. Oh, wait a minute. Hang on, I forgot this, I forgot that, I forgot, you know, and suddenly the whole thing kind of comes to light. And, and what's really interesting as well, we tend to find in business process as well, is that, you know, we normally these things start with the managers in the room, right? Because they always know best. and we bring the managers in and we do the process map, and then we get someone in who actually does the thing right.
Nick Foy
00:14:02
And they look at the board and they go, oh, we don't do that. that happens before then. What does it what? When did we change that? you know, suddenly you realize that actually, the manager doesn't really know the process. and that's always a really good test of the process, right? Bring the person in who actually does the thing 100 times a day. Okay. And then we'll see what really happens. Okay. and, you know, so that that process design is a really critical part of, you know, if you if you can't describe your process from end to end, right. then there's no point doing anything else. and in our, in our industry, especially when we're looking at, you know, coupling process with ERP, implementations, it's interesting how many people think that an ERP implementation is going to fix all their business processes, right? And it doesn't. Right? in fact, it makes it worse because the ERP doesn't matter which one it is. It's going to assume that you do have a business process that you operate to.
Nick Foy
00:15:00
Yeah, and it will actually make things worse if you try and do that. Right. which is why business process is something we focus on very, very heavily. Yeah. now, one thing I would say about business process, though, is traditionally and you've probably seen this, you know, in consulting firms as well, is that what they will do is they'll come in and they'll say, okay, here's a whiteboard. Let's start mapping your business processes. Now, what we've found, now we're, you know, been around for five years now, and we've done this hundreds of times. What we find is that actually, most companies operate very similar business processes, right? so when you're looking at, for example, accounts receivable, right. Your accounts receivable process in your company, well guess what, it's probably not that different from the company next. Or the one across the street and the one the next town over. Okay. And what's really interesting about kind of the work that we do is that once we realized that, wait a minute, we don't have to start from scratch.
Nick Foy
00:15:59
We're not starting from a whiteboard. We know what accounts receivable looks like. Okay, is that we actually built our own business process library of business processes that work out of the box in the ERP system, which is Ooredoo that we use. So in our business process library, now, when we go to a client, we don't sit with a blank piece of paper and say, you know, what do you do? We give you a business process best what we call best practice business access and say, tell me why you can't do it like this, right. It's a very different way of doing it than just starting from a blank piece of paper and spending hundreds of hours. Guess what? Recreating the thing we've already got, right? Okay, so so business processes don't have to be. It doesn't have to be laborious. It doesn't have to be fancy, right? Just get it out of your head and get it in some format that everyone can look at and point at, right, and kind of coalesce around.
Nick Foy
00:16:52
Right. Right. That's the great thing about these is we can now point at it. We can see, hey, here's what we're going to be changing this thing here. This part of the process is what we're going to be changing. And it really gets everyone kind of coalesced around a common process. Right. Once you agree that, then you can move on.
Lee Murray
00:17:08
And then when you move on, you have your process. What's the next step or.
Nick Foy
00:17:12
The next thing is the is the tool okay. So once you go to your business process now we're going to move on to the tool. Now the tools job okay is to reinforce the process. So does the tool do two things. One does it tell you what the next logical thing is to do? Okay. As per your process. That's the first thing. The second thing your tool needs to be able to do is stop you from doing the wrong thing. Okay, so in lean terms, we call that error proofing or poking, right.
Nick Foy
00:17:42
and we, you know, so, you know, does the system allow you, does the tool allow you right to do the wrong thing? And does it encourage you to do the right thing and what you'll find in a lot of tools. Right. Again, it could be a system, could be whatever you want it to be. Right? what we tend to find is that, you know, they give you far too many options, right? There's far too many buttons to press. Okay. and it's not entirely obvious what the next logical button should be that you do press. And so getting the right tool in place that helps you to reinforce the process is absolutely critical. So, you know, we work with our clients a lot on removing items from screens, right. Like you don't need to see this right. That is not part of your process, not your next logical step. So I'm not even going to show you the button. Yeah okay. and that's a really key part of kind of part of our error proofing.
Nick Foy
00:18:33
So the second part of the tool and you know, tools don't have to be fancy, right? They don't have to be expensive. Right. The tools could be simply a written process. It could be a whiteboard. It could be a Kanban board. It could be whatever you're using. Right. yeah, it could be a spreadsheet. And, you know, I can't believe you said spreadsheet to me. that's because you agreed. Yeah. Yeah, it could be a spreadsheet. then we have to have a very difficult conversation, but, But, yeah, it could be right. It could be a Google Sheet or whatever, right. Whatever that tool is. But if you could, if that tool allows you to do the wrong thing and to deviate from the process and you haven't got your tool. Right. Okay. Right. and that's probably the issue with things like Excel spreadsheets, right? Is that there's lots of things you can do wrong in an Excel spreadsheet, as we all know.
Nick Foy
00:19:25
Yeah. and that's why we cannot shy away from those sorts of things.
Lee Murray
00:19:28
Like getting distracted. I mean, honestly, that's what I'm pulling from. This is like the more focused you can be on implementing your process, the more success you're going to have.
Nick Foy
00:19:37
That's it. That's it. And, you know, especially when you're talking about physical operations on production lines or warehousing, for example. Right. you know, the the least options I can show you. Right. And especially if I can show you, hey, here's the expected button you're going to press next, right? If I can highlight that button in some way, nine times out of ten, you're going to want to press this button. Yes. Right. Okay. Like that's that's what you're going to be thinking about from your tool. Right. Does it infer does it reinforce the process and does it prevent you from doing the wrong thing. So as a tool that's what you're looking for.
Lee Murray
00:20:12
That's how a marketer thinks, right? If you think about a conversion path where we're wanting to to sort of highlight the next step that we want you to take.
Nick Foy
00:20:20
So that's right. The call to action, I think is a good way of thinking of it. Right, exactly. That's a really great way of thinking. I'm going to I'm going to borrow that. yeah. That CTA, as far as the process and the workflow is concerned is really important.
Lee Murray
00:20:32
So for tools, you know, I'm and maybe you said it this way, but what I'm hearing is it's tools are guardrails to your process.
Nick Foy
00:20:40
Yes. Guardrails. Think of it as workflow. Think of it as, you know, a wizard or whatever you think of these things are is right. It's that logical. You know, here's what I expect you to do next. X ray. you know, and you don't. I'm not going to take you off everywhere else and, you know, allow you to do something else.
Lee Murray
00:20:56
Okay. So you've got your process kind of mapped out. You've got a tool that supports you. Now, what's the third piece.
Nick Foy
00:21:02
Right. And this is normally where most people stop.
Nick Foy
00:21:05
Right. Is the, the there's some process design to go by a tool or implement a tool. And they think hey job done right. and six months later they come back and go, hang on a minute, why is that thing not happening? Always. And no one using the tool or why is this process broken again? Right. Because this is where most people stop, quite frankly. Right. so the next part is the adoption, okay. And the adoption is also broken down into four parts. Okay. So when you're thinking about adoption, what we're looking for in adoption is first of all, are people aware right. Do they know they should be doing the thing? Okay. So is anyone told them right. so, you know, have you built some sort of awareness that says, hey, yeah, you should be doing this.
Lee Murray
00:21:53
It's pretty critical, right? Timeline on process and tool. You might want people to know that they should be doing it.
Nick Foy
00:21:58
That's right. Okay.
Nick Foy
00:21:59
And you know, you'd be surprised, right? you know, even even in my business, I will turn up and I'll go down to the factory floor and I'll speak to a production supervisor. And I introduced myself and they're like, yeah, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I'm a year because we're working on a, you know, we'll do implementation, like, what do we do? And like, oh my God, here we go. Right. Like they haven't even communicated what's going on. Right. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:22:21
that's where that's where you wear the t shirt that says ask me about it.
Nick Foy
00:22:25
Exactly right. You know, it's exactly right. And it's like, oh my goodness. We were trying to do some of that work for the client. And that's okay because it's not natural. And a lot of companies surprisingly. Right. So so that that awareness don't take it for granted. Don't assume just because you know, the been talking about it in the, you know, in the boardroom or in the management office for the last three months everyone's been talking about don't assume that everybody else knows what you know, right? so, you know, so the first thing is awareness, right? Do they know they should be doing it? So once people know they should be doing it.
Nick Foy
00:22:59
The next thing to look at is do they know how? Okay. So have you trained them right. Do they know how to do the thing right. Have you taken the time to actually show them how to do it right? Have they had an opportunity to practice that they had an opportunity to press the button that you want them to press, right. so giving people the training, okay. is the next part of the adoption. Now, once you've given the training, the next step is, you know, have you given them the access? And what we mean by access is, you know, both in terms of, you know, security groups and whatever, and in the system itself. Right. They get access to the button. Okay. but also is about the right tools. Right. So have you given them everything they need? Have they got the right barcode scanner or have they got the right, you know, tools to actually do the thing they've been trained to do, right? because if you haven't done that again, don't be surprised.
Nick Foy
00:23:52
They can't do it. Okay. I didn't give you the barcode scanner. Don't be surprised. They're not scanning using the barcode scanner. Yeah, right.
Lee Murray
00:24:00
I mean, you sound like all logical things, but I think sometimes the simple, logical things are the things where you fumble it. I mean, that's where it just doesn't. Doesn't happen.
Nick Foy
00:24:10
Yeah. And, you know, I'll tell you. And when we first started at Silverdale five years ago and, one of our very first projects, we were doing, an implementation for a client of ours down in Mexico. And, you know, we done all the we did all the great technical work, we did all the customization, we did all the coding, all that great stuff. Right. And then we got to the shop floor. Day one go live is like, hey, we're all good, we're all good. And then it's like, okay, so you scan, you're going to scan the label and they're like, what label? I'm like, okay.
Nick Foy
00:24:39
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. We didn't tell you. Print the label. Okay, I clicked the I clicked the print label button. Okay, great. Take your label and attach it to the box there. Like what label? The label that came out with the printer. What printer? Oh my.
Lee Murray
00:24:52
God.
Nick Foy
00:24:54
Okay, you start realizing where we. What? What happened there? Right? you know, and sometimes it's. Oh, we've got. Oh, the printers way over there. Oh my goodness. Right. Okay. So you know, again, you said it right that sometimes these symbols seem really obvious, right. but you know, when you're in the thick of it and you've got a couple of hundred people and you've got customers to satisfy your orders to do, right? These things, you know, having these sorts of checklists as you go through your mechanism is incredibly important, right? Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:25:25
You know, this for some reason, this brings up in my mind there's a book I read a long time ago.
Lee Murray
00:25:29
I can't remember the title, but it was essentially like there's five levels of employees. The, you know, level five being kind of fully autonomous. They owning the role. They're thinking for themselves. This is your typical executive level. And then level one there's levels in between. Level one is like here take this. Go to the copy machine, make me a copy and come back. Right. And I sounds like what you're describing. Is it? Maybe not in every environment, every situation. But these systems need to be developed at grade level for the employee who's going to be using them. So, you know, the example of get the bar barcode printed, put it on the box. Well where's the box? Where's the printer, where's the barcode? Where. Right. that's a level one employee. And that's okay. It's just that's the person who's in that role. The system needs to be tailored to that role.
Nick Foy
00:26:18
Absolutely. Right. You know, and, you know, it's kind of interesting we actually refer to that here at Silverdale.
Nick Foy
00:26:24
We actually referred to as a, B, c, and what we mean by a, b, c is sure it's ambiguity breeds creativity. Right. So you know, so when your process is ambiguous, right. you're going to get a lot of creativity now to use your, your phraseology on a level five employee. That's okay. Right. Creativity is good.
Lee Murray
00:26:48
That's what's productive.
Nick Foy
00:26:49
Level five. That's what they're there for, right? From a level one employee, that's the last thing you want is people being creative okay.
Lee Murray
00:26:56
Well because that creativity is not going to lead to your production in your company. It's only for their production for themselves.
Nick Foy
00:27:02
That's right. Exactly. That creativity may be completely unwanted in your process. Right. So so ambiguity breeds creativity. Right. And again that's where we're looking at, you know, is is the process is the tool. Right. Is that awareness and is the training. Is it removing that ambiguity okay. All right. and you know, if at all it's ambiguous.
Nick Foy
00:27:26
And again, don't be surprised that it's going off in all different directions. So yeah, ABC is a is one of the phrases we use a lot here. And we even use it internally. And actually here are people in our calls actually saying, oh, ABC. I'm like, oh yeah, you're right. We're being ambiguous. Let's be absolutely.
Lee Murray
00:27:42
Clear what we're.
Nick Foy
00:27:43
Talking about. Right.
Lee Murray
00:27:44
So that's that's great. Okay. So adoption that one I didn't see coming. And that one is pretty, pretty important. I mean, as I think the first two, process and tools, that's easy, easier for companies to do because it starts in the right leadership room. Right. They're already talking about this. Okay. We're going to put this in place. We're going to do something. When they do something, they end up with a tool. But the adoption part is where it leaves that room. And it has to go to the actual people who are going to be using it. And if they weren't in that room now, there's a big gap.
Lee Murray
00:28:16
So that's a huge piece. Adoption.
Nick Foy
00:28:18
That's exactly.
Lee Murray
00:28:19
What's next.
Nick Foy
00:28:20
After that, there's one more piece of adoption we didn't cover.
Lee Murray
00:28:22
So. Oh that's right okay.
Nick Foy
00:28:23
Yeah. Yeah. So there's the there's the awareness that she talked about. Did they know they should be doing it. The next one is do they know how to do it right. The third one is do they have the tools to do it. Okay. And then the fourth part of adoption is do they want to do it now this is always the most ambiguous ambiguous right. It's always the most contentious. One of these is do they want to do it right. You never really want to think that your employees are deliberately not doing something, I'm sure. Now where that really comes in is they want to do it is really making sure that people understand the importance of doing it right. Like it may not be obvious to them. Just like my story about the production line right when I got fired is it might not be obvious to someone that their job and their thing that they're being told to do may be affecting someone 1015 steps down the line, and they might have no visibility of that.
Nick Foy
00:29:14
Okay. So you have to explain the importance of what they're doing, right. And it doesn't have to be. Again, you know, you want to keep this again, level one employee to use your terms, right. You got to make sure you're, you know, you're not saying about, oh, it's really important you press this button. Otherwise we don't post the Cogs entry in your accounts receivable. I mean yeah, that's not what we need. What we need to say is, hey, it's really important you do this. Otherwise what happens is we can't create the invoice and then build the customer and get paid. Right. So you've got to be thinking about it in terms of, oh, oh, I didn't know that. Get great. Press the button please. Right. So understanding the importance is that last part of of adoption okay.
Lee Murray
00:29:52
So importance. But you know what hits me is, is making it, to where it will be adopted because want is sort of like I want to do this because it, it's it they've made it easy for me.
Lee Murray
00:30:05
Yeah. maybe it's removed some pain because I know that if I do this, then I'm not going to get in trouble in this way. or it's actually if I do it the way that they're asking me to do it, I am delighted in doing that. I like to do it that way because of what it affords both the maps to what you were saying to the company, you know, alignment there or to something that is delightful for them that if they do it this way, it actually is easier.
Nick Foy
00:30:28
That's right. Exactly. It's easier and quicker. And you don't have any reworks and you don't have any frustration. Right. so that's what we're going to be focused on.
Lee Murray
00:30:35
That's ideal.
Nick Foy
00:30:36
Cool. So that's that's adoption. Okay. and you're absolutely right. that's when things tend to leave the conference room and, it's very, very often forgotten about, right? Yeah. then there comes the last piece, okay, of the mechanism, which is audit. Okay. Now the audit part of the mechanism is really about saying is the process is the tool and the adoption.
Nick Foy
00:31:01
Is it still happening. Okay. So this is is it still in place. So you know what it's like we've all been there right. You put something in place, you walk away. Right. And then six months later something happens, right. Client complains or whatever. You're like, wait a minute. We fixed this months ago. How is it happened again? Right? And then you go back and you realize, oh, wait a minute. Suddenly there's a new employee. Someone leaves, someone else came. Maybe the training didn't happen. Maybe someone's barcode scanner stopped working or the printers being moved or, you know, suddenly things aren't happening as they should. And that's why the audit is incredibly important, because that is making sure that the thing is still happening in the way you expect it to happen now. Or All examples of good audit tools. And I mean, it could be somebody in a white jacket and a hat with a clipboard could be okay. but more likely to be, for example, it could be alerts, notifications.
Nick Foy
00:31:57
It tells you it could be a dashboard, it could be your daily stand up meeting. It could be a report that you look at. It could be whatever. Those things might be, a combination of those things depending on the severity of that mechanism. Right. But you need some way of being alerted or to make it obvious when the thing is no longer being happening. Okay. And again, you know, a good phraseology from my lean days is, you know, all processes degrade over time, okay. It's a natural, you know, processes have a half life. Okay. Right. So don't be surprised when you look away from it. You know, it's suddenly going to go wayward on you. And that's what the audit is there for, is to make sure one, if it's not happening, you need to see it. If you can see it, you can deal with it. Go back to your adoption. Figure out what's going wrong. Right. and it generally it's going to be in the adoption area, right? that something's gone wrong.
Nick Foy
00:32:51
But the order is an incredibly important way to make sure that your mechanism, okay, isn't just a good intention that actually is still going after time.
Lee Murray
00:33:01
Love it. This is this is amazing. I mean, you know, focusing on the adoption piece, it's like it kind of gives you a roadmap for I mean, that's what this is, the four essential pieces. But like it's a roadmap to say, okay, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel before we even start this project, because if we start the project, okay, we know pretty quickly what we want to do is map this out and put some tools behind it. That can happen generally pretty quickly. Now we want to get to adoption and and then let's go ahead and build the system for audit. And then let's just focus on adoption right. And then optimize as you need. Like there's going to be changes that need to happen. You're going to get feedback from the people actually using it. And that's going to happen probably in your audit.
Lee Murray
00:33:43
but then all your time gets shrunk down to that. It's sort of that adoption phase. You keep coming back to that through your.
Nick Foy
00:33:51
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You keep rattling your way around that. And of course, you know, with that kind of continuous improvement kind of mindset as well, your audit's going to tell you as well. Well, wait a minute. We could make this better. Right? Look, hey, this is still a gap here. We could go back around the process. Yes. All right, well, wait a minute. Why is this still not being done? Well guess what? Because maybe the tool isn't reinforcing your process correctly. So maybe there's some more work to do in the tool. Or maybe there's a different, slightly different process you need to do right? In which case you go through the whole thing again. Right? Yeah. But you know, breaking these things down into, you know, you refer to it's systems we refer to as mechanisms, but essentially the same thing.
Nick Foy
00:34:28
you know, in most companies, what we tend to see, right, is just a lot of good intention. Okay. you know, and it's very frustrating, right, in a lot of companies because half of what you talk about never actually happens. you know, and, you know, having these mechanisms and honestly having that, the empowerment, and expectation, I would say and that's certainly how we do things here at Silverdale is there is an expectation from our team to actually call us out on it. Okay. So if you're in a meeting and we say, hey, yeah, let's do something about that, that there's an expectation that somebody in the room is going to say, wait, is this just a good intention or are we actually going to do something? Okay. Right, right. And if we you're right, we are going to do something great. Now we've got to make sure there is a process to tool adoption or we need a plan to make it happen. It's not going to just happen on its own.
Nick Foy
00:35:24
It's just because we want the will it to happen. That's not how it works.
Lee Murray
00:35:28
Yeah. Nick, this has been great. Thank you so much.
Nick Foy
00:35:32
Great. Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think it's something we're really passionate about here at Silverdale. we use it every day ourselves. We use it with all of our clients, and, everybody enjoys it until, we actually tell them, hey, is this a good intention or are you going to do something with it?
Lee Murray
00:35:46
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold this. Like the, like a workout trainer. Yeah. There's a side of me that's, like, very strategic. And there's a side of me that's very systematic. And so I love when those sides come together. And that's sort of a I'm looking at this sort of 50,000 foot view to like, you know, every quarter sitting down and from a strategic standpoint that the outcomes that can happen from a business metric standpoint are huge. When you start looking at your organization this way.
Lee Murray
00:36:12
I mean, I'm just thinking just in terms of unique, competitive advantages in the market. I had, Lewis Cook on, months ago, catapult print. And he was talking about the ways that they're winning in their market. And, and, and essentially this is the large piece of how they were winning. You know, they were really dialed in on their systems. And they had all of this in place, and it gave them a huge competitive advantage in the market where they're winning market share very rapidly. That's what comes to mind.
Nick Foy
00:36:46
And I'll just say that it's absolutely spot on. And what I would say is that I'll tell you right now, no organization or business is going to win based on good intentions. Right? Okay. All right. And if you think about that, right. If you're in a meeting and all you're hearing is good intentions, okay. Don't be surprised that you're not winning, okay. You got to build mechanisms around it.
Lee Murray
00:37:10
Love it. Thanks again. And oh if we want to send people your way where do we send them.
Nick Foy
00:37:16
Yeah absolutely. So folks can come on to our website at Silverdale US. They can also find us on all the socials at Silverdale tech is our handle across all the socials and people can always email me direct. It's Nick at Silverdale US.
Lee Murray
00:37:31
Cool. And what about LinkedIn? Are you over there?
Nick Foy
00:37:33
Absolutely. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm one of the very few. Nick Foy's over there. I'm the only one with a Scottish accent.
Lee Murray
00:37:39
There you go, I love it. Thanks again. Nick.
Nick Foy
00:37:42
All right. Thank you. Lee.