Ep160 Steve Keck - When Culture Clashes with Technology: Navigating the Corporate Labyrinth

00:00:05:22 - 00:00:26:17 Mike O'Neill Welcome back to Get Unstuck and on Target, I'm Mike O'Neil with Bench Builders. And whether we're working with supervisors to improve their people skills or it's me coaching a leader one on one, getting leaders and companies unstuck is at the heart of everything we do. And that's exactly what this podcast is all about. Joining me is Steve Kirk.

00:00:26:23 - 00:01:06:12 Mike O'Neill Steve is the chief strategy officer for Bolt Today. They're Salesforce partners specializing in Salesforce consulting, implementation, integration, lightning, migration, development and optimization. There are so many things that Steve and I can talk about. Matter of fact, in our call we discuss a wide variety of things. But what I would like to do is start this conversation with something that he has some really good insights on, and that is this idea of where culture and technology meets, namely how a business culture needs to be supported by that technology and vice versa.

00:01:06:14 - 00:01:07:24 Mike O'Neill Welcome, Steve.

00:01:08:01 - 00:01:12:19 Steve Keck Hey, welcome. So glad to be here. It's great to be here. Thank you so much.

00:01:12:21 - 00:01:28:22 Mike O'Neill You know, when I say where culture and technology meet, those folks are watching their eyes might kind of glass over or you might kind of go, What in the world? Tell us when we kind of settled on that as a topic. What is it about that topic that just lights you up?

00:01:28:24 - 00:02:03:07 Steve Keck I think the biggest thing that really hits for me is that at the end of the day, the technology has to support the way the employee sees and leaders execute, and often that there's a disconnect between the way something is a technology is developed or integrated into a company then and it's disconnected from the way the communication out to the world in between each other, in between employees and executives.

00:02:03:09 - 00:02:33:02 Steve Keck It's just not aligned. And so often this is causing problems, delays, breakdown profits, and it causes a lot of cost overruns. And so I feel that there's just this balance that needs to happen between honoring the culture that the employees execute at a company, at an organization, and lining that up and letting the technology come alongside that as opposed to directing the way it's supposed to execute.

00:02:33:04 - 00:02:58:00 Steve Keck And you've all seen this when you get to technology and it requires you to make all these changes to a process. And it seems like that's not the fastest, best or easiest way to do things. And then you end up frustrated slowing down your process and aggravating your employees when you've turned a five step process into a 17 step process, thinking that you're going to get better insights for the executive team.

00:02:58:02 - 00:03:03:08 Steve Keck And that often doesn't happen because everyone figures out how to cut the corner.

00:03:03:10 - 00:03:26:23 Mike O'Neill Yeah, I know. Bolt today is known as a Salesforce partner. We won't spend all of our time talking about that, but Salesforce as a product, as a service, it's impressive, it is robust, it offers so much. But might it be that in its offerings it can overwhelm an organization when they say, we want to bring Salesforce in?

00:03:27:00 - 00:03:55:24 Steve Keck that's absolutely true. It is, as you said, a robust system. It took me quite a while to actually come to understand that it honestly is just a giant Excel spreadsheet in all you're interfacing through Salesforce is you're interfacing with the right data that you need right now. So salespeople have sales data, finance people have finance data operations have operations data, and you just need to get access to it.

00:03:56:01 - 00:04:21:22 Steve Keck And that's what Salesforce does. How that is designed can turn into a tremendous spiderweb of complexity when you are building it. Instead of architecting it, which is often what happens. I need a system that tracks this, so let's buy Salesforce. And then we put it in and then we start to connect it to things such as marketing tech or operations tech or finance tech.

00:04:21:22 - 00:04:51:18 Steve Keck And we start to put all of those together. And what worked then doesn't keep up. As the company grows and you start adding employees, you start adding more complexity, you start adding more technology and you're trying to grow quickly. You need to have a broader perspective of Salesforce. And so just like with any other type of CRM technology, you can grow into problems or you can architect out of them.

00:04:51:20 - 00:05:25:19 Steve Keck And so I'm, you know, one of the best salesforce is one of the best in when it comes to having the capacity to create sort of a hub and spoke kind of technology system that allows you to grow with it. But it does require you to continually enhance it and build new connections. And so as Salesforce continues to grow, moving from classic to lightning, they're moving into ways that allow for greater efficiencies, both for the customer and for the development side.

00:05:25:21 - 00:05:58:02 Steve Keck And I think what I find with companies that they often miss is that they they forget to focus on the front line, needs to have the cleanest experience, and so often it's purchased so that management can get insights. But then they don't do the work it takes to give the sales team or the front line service or success team what they need to move swiftly to respond to customers and prospects.

00:05:58:08 - 00:06:20:22 Steve Keck And so what happens is, is they don't put the right data in. Then you get weak data and so you get weak insights and then you pile on technologies to solve it. And that creates what we would consider a tech debt, a large tech stack that costs a lot because you're constantly having to add and everything's data costs rises, you know, year over year over year.

00:06:20:24 - 00:07:03:13 Steve Keck And as your company grows or acquires new companies, you're throwing other companies processes into your new process, into your system. And it can get really clunky, really fast. And so this is why we have Bolt today. We tend to help companies architect before they build or make changes. And by thinking about it from a what do I need this to accomplish and what are what are the people on the front line and at the executive level need to see swiftly and if you can build it in that direction and build through that type of architecture, you can create something that's more scalable and something that people actually enjoy using.

00:07:03:15 - 00:07:23:23 Steve Keck And that's been a real fundamental shift for from what I've seen before, because I was I was not the guy who who liked using a CRM. I literally got yelled at from a boss because I always kept everything on paper. And she's saying, if it's not in Salesforce, it doesn't count. And I was like, come on, You know, I'm closing deals and I'm top in sales.

00:07:23:23 - 00:07:47:06 Steve Keck She's like, Yep, if it's not there by Friday, I'm right. Yup. And then I started using it and when I realized was, Wow, this is actually really quite functional. All the information can be right there at my fingertips if I just take the time to put it in. And that really fundamentally changed my understanding of how a CRM can help someone on the front line, such as myself at the time.

00:07:47:08 - 00:08:14:07 Mike O'Neill You know what? That caught my attention in our conversation before we set the date to record this, is that your company works with oftentimes growing companies. And what I heard you described see if I heard this correctly, and that is making a decision to bring in Salesforce is a very, very important decision, but it doesn't stop there. And what I think I heard you say is that you have to be mindful of that.

00:08:14:07 - 00:08:52:00 Mike O'Neill Whatever you're bringing in, it has to support the business as it grows, as it scales, but it can't come at the expense of the people who really are using it, those frontline folks. And that really resonates with me because at the end of day, you called Salesforce just a very, very elaborate spreadsheet. And I just find I find the notion kind of compelling because it's when you bring in a CRM, that's one thing, but when you try to pardon the expression bolt on, I don't know if that's what that term comes from.

00:08:52:06 - 00:09:01:12 Mike O'Neill You begin bolting on these other technologies. It could become problematic. By the way, what the name Bolt today, where did that come from?

00:09:01:14 - 00:09:32:13 Steve Keck Yeah, it actually it's a very common Salesforce term that the CEO like to use. It was a common in that the way Salesforce often works is sort of a hub and spoke experience where it can do things, but it really needs to be the the data source of truth for all these other technologies said a lot. So we look at it as a sort of a hub and spoke approach.

00:09:32:15 - 00:09:55:18 Steve Keck And so you're really bolting things on to this so that you can get data in that you don't have or such as marketing information, contact information that you can't find other, you know, I need to look at a group of executives, but I only know one of them. How do I find the rest? Those are other technologies that Salesforce can ingest, but they don't they don't go get.

00:09:55:20 - 00:10:15:22 Steve Keck And then create it in build it in such a way that there's sort of a presentation layer for the person that's appropriate to their role and their needs. So a front line salesperson doesn't need to see half the things a frontline manager does. And I want up the chain to an executive. Like executives don't need to see a bunch of client data.

00:10:15:22 - 00:10:44:02 Steve Keck They just need to see activities that show that we are moving towards profitability or running down the wrong path or areas of which to create efficiencies, to create the reporting structure that they need for access to capital acquisition, targeting, you know, strategic planning for where they want to go and the front line needs to go. How do I find new clients, get them through the process as fast as I can so I get paid a commission.

00:10:44:04 - 00:11:08:21 Steve Keck And so we kind of look at it that way and work towards bolting all of that on to Salesforce in such a way that allows the, the user, the end users, to have a minimal requirement to get their job done, meaning they don't have to go. What we typically see is you have four or five tabs open and you have to go to four or five places to get a certain amount of information.

00:11:08:21 - 00:11:41:23 Steve Keck And it's like, Well, you're dealing with one customer. You should be able to have 80% of what you need to do on one page. And so we build wireframes and architecture in such a way that allows for that to happen so that any person, any person who's interfacing with Salesforce gets what they need quickly and doesn't need to, you know, tab around trying to compile an answer or compile an activity so they can move, move the ball forward for whatever it is they're working on.

00:11:42:00 - 00:12:13:14 Mike O'Neill You know, Steve, I introduced that the topic we're going to use this where culture and technology meet. We spent a lot of time thus far kind of on the technology side. Let's kind of switch over to the culture and that is I know that you have an interest in how this technology is going to be used and in what way does the culture influence it into in what way will these decisions impact leadership and the executive team and alike?

00:12:13:14 - 00:12:38:08 Mike O'Neill Can you kind of can it help me transition to that aspects when you're when you own a company, you're running the company and it's growing and you're trying to bring in technology. Have you found there's some kind of rules of thumb that one should follow as to is this technology that we're talking about? Does it fit us? Will it support the culture of the organization we're trying to build?

00:12:38:10 - 00:13:09:08 Steve Keck Well, yeah, I'm I'm a huge proponent of culture. I do a lot of talent management work from from my past history. I did a lot of that. I still and I see it consistently running into into had headfirst into the technology and but the way I see culture, there's there's two different things. There's the ping pong tables and, you know, happy hours.

00:13:09:10 - 00:13:45:03 Steve Keck That's not really culture, culture is to me is how you execute the way you the things you value. And what the way I see that is how you handle conflict, how you listen to each other, how you handle new ventures and change. Yes, it's these areas that affect how people approach both technology and decision making and what companies tend to do, even though they may sell the same two companies may sell the same thing, but they have a vastly different approach because they value things differently.

00:13:45:09 - 00:14:15:11 Steve Keck And that's why the customer service of one fast food chain, their customer service focus, is one reason people, you know, eat there and then the others are because it's fast and cheap and both are not. And neither are like better or worse and just different, even though they're essentially selling the same thing. And so the execution side of things is where people are connecting to each other, collaborating with each other.

00:14:15:13 - 00:14:57:09 Steve Keck They are making decisions either together or independently, and they're managing their sales processes, they're managing their marketing processes all in a way that reflects how a customer or a employee is going to be responding to. And so if you don't take the time to get a general sense of how you are executing those values around conflict, listening new of new ventures and change, if you if you don't work together to actually figure that out, what you find is you'll have departments that have loved new things.

00:14:57:13 - 00:15:19:23 Steve Keck I would say this is always a marketing department. They love technology. We love MarTech. You go to tech, you know, they go and they can think they can get all this information, all this data, and then they go and buy ten technologies and then they tell the the Salesforce team we need to integrate it. And it's like, have you considered whether five of these actually do basically the same thing?

00:15:19:23 - 00:15:44:12 Steve Keck And you can get you know, there there's never been a tech rationalization versus someone else who's like, I'm very cautious and I don't want to put something else in there. I take a lot of time and you have to look at that. And if those if those competing cultures come together, it creates resistance. And so the resistance is whether things get built or not, whether things get integrated or not.

00:15:44:14 - 00:16:09:20 Steve Keck How how is it being expressed? So, for example, if a particular let's say a VP of sales wants a lot of data, but the team before that is commissioned to, you know, basically all commission and all the sales guy doesn't do a lot of data. They want to run and hunt. They just want to go hunt and do as little as possible to get the deal right.

00:16:09:20 - 00:16:33:12 Steve Keck That's so the culturally are just against each other. And so what this person in leadership is going to say to the technology team is, I need all of these fields, I need all of this data on every client. We got to have the what was it that matches, you know, swimming with sharks. It's like there's 66 things a customer you got to know about a customer in order to own this customer.

00:16:33:12 - 00:16:57:20 Steve Keck And you're like, okay, is it really 66 things to close the deal with somebody if, you know, maybe, maybe not. And it requiring all of that means you're still you're literally standing on the break of a salesperson desire. And ultimately what they're going to do is one of them will get frustrated and leave or several of them will leave as the VP of sales is winning.

00:16:57:20 - 00:17:23:24 Steve Keck Right. And so what you see is if you if you the way I see it is if you haven't actually taken the time to honor the outcomes and the desires in the way they want, someone wants to communicate with you. You run the risk of building technology that doesn't that doesn't enhance the your team's capacity to connect outside.

00:17:24:01 - 00:17:50:10 Steve Keck It actually slows it down or doesn't give you what you need to take care of them in the way that you ethically felt like you should. Right. And when when that happens, you've got this breakdown between the technology and the culture. And so I spend a lot of time with executives as when we're talking about architecture, it's really about what's there's a there's a big implementation questions around the why are we doing this?

00:17:50:12 - 00:18:16:12 Steve Keck Why do you need this and what is this doing to the main vision of what you're trying to accomplish for your clients? Because ultimately that's where you know, that's the key to revenue. It's solving good problems for clients in a way that they want and your clients grow to expect the culture that you give so that they take that fast food example where you expect a good experience because the experience is more important.

00:18:16:17 - 00:18:35:07 Steve Keck It's more valued at this this fast food joint. You have a much higher expectation when you when you go through the drive thru, walk up to the counter. Then you do over here where you realize I'm just getting the cheapest thing I can find. And then they don't give you the experience that this one does. And you're like, Well, I wasn't expecting it.

00:18:35:07 - 00:18:55:16 Steve Keck Well, you, you know, as a customer, as you just make the decision which ones you're going to repeat, which ones you really need or care for, and and what to expect when they walk in the door. And this is the same for you, the employees who want to live with purpose. They want to work for purpose. They want to have a purpose in their lives.

00:18:55:16 - 00:19:35:00 Steve Keck They got to see why it's happening. And if all they're doing all day is interacting with the technology that's requiring them to get data and not really showing them why this matters, you disengage the employee from the very thing that would could bring them life. And so that's where I see technology and culture so critical, critically integrated. And the last thing I would say about it is there's a there's a line I always quote to my clients is called Conway's Law, which is that the tech, the code, the culture of a company is ingrained in the in the code of the technology.

00:19:35:02 - 00:19:55:06 Steve Keck So if you have a SAS company that wants to do I give you an example. I had a company that had a it was full of self sufficient individuals. They like to do things by themselves. They would decide that we're going to do this and they all go to their offices and then they build and then they come back together and then they show up with what they have.

00:19:55:08 - 00:20:18:07 Steve Keck Well, their code, basically their technology is built so that you buy it and don't have to call them again. Like it just works all the time and you don't ever there's minimal maintenance and other stuff like that because that's how they build it. And it's like, well, that's your culture coming, coming to fruition. It's self-sufficient. We make code that is self-sufficient.

00:20:18:09 - 00:20:34:06 Steve Keck And so you're ultimately going to develop the way your culture is expressing if this is what they care about, this is how we want to communicate and this is how we want to connect. It will show up in the way you design your technology, both for the customer and for the employees.

00:20:34:08 - 00:20:58:24 Mike O'Neill Steve You're exploiting things in a way that one is Mashable because I followed you and I'm growing in my appreciation of the criticality of when you're making an important decision, such as what we've been talking about, bringing in a solution, like we're talking about this as robust as it is, it has profound it can have profound effect on the organization.

00:20:58:24 - 00:21:35:08 Mike O'Neill And that alignment that you're describing, You know, I, I know that you have a background also that kind of lends itself to you love leadership, development and executive development and creating culture. It sounds as if you would take those passions and kind of work that into your role as chief strategy officer within this organization. And that is you're able to kind of see things and see potential connections or disconnections that others oftentimes miss.

00:21:35:10 - 00:22:16:00 Steve Keck Yeah, I think the thing I have come to believe is that at the end of the day, it's going to have to hit technology. Like some behavior has to be recorded, some behavior, some information has to be gathered, and then some information has to be managed and dealt with right. And so the the the most the freest expression of that, the easiest flow of that is when you honor what's needed, like you honor what the customer needs, you honor what the salesperson is, what the front line needs in order to execute at the tip of the spear.

00:22:16:02 - 00:22:41:11 Steve Keck And when you do that, the strategic decisions of we're going that way, we're selling to these people and you honor that with the technology. It doesn't it creates that environment for you to be able to. They say, okay, we're going this way or we have to make a change, or we're, you know, as a company grows, we we work towards bigger and bigger clients and things like that.

00:22:41:13 - 00:23:19:18 Steve Keck As you do that, it allows a customer that allows the company to stay on target without having to go back and find out months and years later that, we've been selling to the wrong people. And I'll give you an example. They I was working with a growing company on trying to re-architect their salesforce and when they did a review of the frontline sales team, the average sale of the frontline sales team was like $50 a month in SAS revenue.

00:23:19:20 - 00:23:24:04 Steve Keck The expected average from the leadership team was 20 $500 a month.

00:23:24:04 - 00:23:24:21 Mike O'Neill My goodness, we're.

00:23:24:21 - 00:24:05:12 Steve Keck Selling to the wrong clients. They were selling quick and easy. They were not being trained. And so all the things that were happening both in the management, the sales training, rev, rev ops, everything wasn't, you know, and even the marketing tech on the other side, bringing the wrong clients to the front door weren't and then a limit and then not giving that sales team the whatever it needed to chase down the right client to eliminate the $50 client to no because and they spent I can't tell you how much money they spent on this frontline sales team for all the technology and for all the all the stuff that they did.

00:24:05:12 - 00:24:29:15 Steve Keck And they found out a year after that, we basically got a whole bunch of $50 accounts when we needed 20 $500 accounts. And so it's that is what the technology was supposed to have set a signal flare off early on. They just didn't know until they were able to get their arms around the right architecture and get that data.

00:24:29:17 - 00:24:53:03 Mike O'Neill Steve As I kind of reflect on what we've discussed thus far, we've covered a wide variety of things, but it all kind of it kind of fits in a way that makes sense to me. However, I want to give you an opportunity to kind of reflect on what you shared in this conversation. What do you want? Are viewers and listeners to have as takeaways?

00:24:53:05 - 00:25:21:06 Steve Keck Well, I would say first is that you're not alone in in these problems. Part of the reason we are both today work so well with hypergrowth companies is that they all know that they don't have time or capacity to turn around and figure out whether we did this right. And at some point they find out, well, we just solved for what was in front of us to get us through this problem.

00:25:21:08 - 00:25:49:00 Steve Keck And that's a common problem with hypergrowth, you know, in growth companies is that we don't know until until we start to systematize. And a company that's moving from a business owner to becoming a formal company to becoming, you know, turning that person into a CEO and then finding a bigger CEO that can run the company to hypergrowth and then turning it into an automated system is all the time you're building in process.

00:25:49:02 - 00:26:12:20 Steve Keck Yes. And so ultimately your process needs to be reflected in your sales and your salesforce. It needs to reflected in your technology. Does what we say needs to happen on a step by step basis that we've never managed before. Can we reflect it in and some way create sort of a a gantlet that everyone needs to run through?

00:26:12:20 - 00:26:47:10 Steve Keck Because I can't have everybody just deciding to do something different when it comes to as the company grows. Per example, if you've got 50,000 employees and you let them all just make good make decisions they feel good about, you will not be profitable, you'll have a lot of creative ideas, but you will not be profitable. And so as a company grows and it gets more and more employees, it it turns into automation because that's what keeps it generating revenue and that's fine.

00:26:47:10 - 00:27:10:04 Steve Keck So the people that move you from hypergrowth don't always get to be the people that run the process. I am not a I'm not as good of a process person as I am a designer and a let's find a new path. So I'll use my innovative thinking to find new paths for customers on. Okay, we've tried this every which way.

00:27:10:06 - 00:27:38:05 Steve Keck I don't know how to do it. I usually can walk in and go, Well, have you thought about X, Y, Z? And they're like, that's a great idea. And I'm like, It's only because I've been standing out of it that I have this, you know, capacity to to help. But I think what I also want people to understand is that there's never a time where you're going to be able to stop and go, okay, let's just take a three month break and just re-architect this thing.

00:27:38:07 - 00:28:01:17 Steve Keck You're fixing a plane as it's flying and understanding that you, the people that you have who have gotten you to where you are may not be able to have the best vision about where they're supposed to be going. You're in the trenches and you look to ask them to look up and see what's going on. They're not necessarily going to be able to do that.

00:28:01:20 - 00:28:24:21 Steve Keck I haven't worked with a company where I interviewed all the top executives of a particular group, and not a single one of them could tell me what they needed in three years because they couldn't have a vision. More than a month ahead. And that's not a problem. It just means if you need a company to make a three year decision, none of these people can give you an accurate assistance when it comes to that.

00:28:24:23 - 00:29:00:04 Steve Keck And so that can help you as you're starting to move forward. That as company grows and as you're starting to put in layers of layers of management and executives to help steer the ship as it grows, as it gets bigger and bigger, that's a it does require you to be able to think about what can I do? And so one of the advantages of having Salesforce is that it's robust enough to grow and be a change in flight, whereas if used something smaller, then it has limited integration capacity, it's got limited support from the company.

00:29:00:06 - 00:29:35:23 Steve Keck They don't have enough people to help you. They don't understand how to how to do things at a level when you move from mid-market to enterprise, like, well, that gives you that's part of the reason we work mostly in Salesforce is that as a company grows into it, they will need to do this. And this is this is one of the best systems that allows you to catch up in mid-flight and so we come alongside companies all the time like that that can help them unravel what we would call the spaghetti of all these connections and these integrations that were built in architected.

00:29:36:00 - 00:30:01:21 Steve Keck And that's not a judgment on somebody's capacity. And what even happens is as the company grows, technology, people come in and go out and so each person comes in with their own Conway's Law of How to Develop. And so they there's like five different development methods built into your current system, and you've just learned to work with that when it breaks this or when that breaks that.

00:30:01:21 - 00:30:19:14 Steve Keck And you're like, Well, this is just how we fix it. And but at some point you're like, okay, all I'm doing is fixing and I have to have an entire staff to fix. We have to think about this in a new way. And this is where both today and I come in and help them sort of visualize what is it, what is the purpose of this?

00:30:19:14 - 00:30:56:13 Steve Keck What is the point of working through these all these executive decisions? And how does that impact the people you're trying to serve as employees and your customers? And once you can figure that out, it starts to lay the groundwork of why this architecture needs to look the way it does. What kind of data, what type of security protocols, what type of marketing, you know, how do you manage the flow from one side to the other As a customer finds out about you, engages with you, begins to talk to you, and then buys from you.

00:30:56:13 - 00:31:25:03 Steve Keck And then after that, what happens and when you think about it from a culture perspective, it lays lays out a lot of that decision and it honors the way they've currently they consistently do that. And so you'll see companies, they can begin to honor what they what they say they profess and what they experience. If they've accurately communicated that, that this is what we value.

00:31:25:05 - 00:31:35:21 Steve Keck And then you'll see the technology start to align to that. And then everyone is working in a way that they feel they can execute at. They're at their best.

00:31:35:23 - 00:31:59:02 Mike O'Neill Steve I can see why you would be very good at what you do. Chief Strategy Officer is a perfect title for you. It's clear that that you excel in that role. And I just want to say thank you for sharing insights about things that I would never have thought about if you had not brought them up. So thank you.

00:31:59:04 - 00:32:03:01 Steve Keck you're so welcome. It's a real pleasure to be here.

00:32:03:03 - 00:32:32:00 Mike O'Neill I do have a question for our listeners, and that is, are people following you because they have to or because they want to know as a leadership coach, I work with executives who have a track record of success behind them, but now they're feeling stuck. They're frustrated because they're finding with each level of success that follows, the bar gets set even higher and they get discouraged because what worked in the past is no longer working.

00:32:32:02 - 00:33:02:15 Mike O'Neill My clients, despite all those successes in the past, they're lacking the clarity in the competence needed to make the decisions to get to that next level. So through coaching, we work together to kind of unravel those hidden blind spots, to challenge the limiting beliefs and establish a strong sense of accountability. So if Feeling Stuck describes you or someone you know, let's talk go to bench dash builders AECOM to schedule a call.

00:33:02:17 - 00:33:22:24 Mike O'Neill So I want to thank you again for joining us and I hope you have picked up on some quick wins from Steve. They'll help you get unstuck and on target.