Disruption / Interruption

Janell Nelson became an engineer because she enjoyed the individual nature of the work but quickly found herself drawn to leadership. She accepted the challenges of working in a male-dominated field and having few women in leadership positions she could emulate. However, when she was already an experienced and successful manager and found herself pigeonholed based solely on gender, she decided to do what she could to bring more women into STEM leadership roles. 

Currently a Senior Engineering Manager at Canon Medical Informatics, Janell is active in her local community. She works with engineering and STEM programs for girls and young women at every stage of education, from elementary school to college. The future of STEM leadership and global competitiveness is in the hands of today’s students. 

Key takeaways 

• I’ve only had one female leader that was in the engineering side above me in my 20-year career. Changing the status quo means reaching back into the community to encourage more girls to be interested in STEM programming and showing them the career path is possible. 

• Graduation rates for female engineers are around 18%, which makes it hard. There are just not that many young women right now who have a background or an interest. Those who are interested face challenges in an industry where they may have to fight harder than their peers and may not always fit in. 

• Diversity is not just a matter of equality; it’s critical for global success and competition. For example, if you only employ people who live in the Midwest, you only have a very small bubble of thought patterns you’re pulling from. You can’t be a global company if you’re only focusing on how you see the world. 

• If we all think the same way, we run into problems such that the AI doesn’t recognize everybody who might use it. A classic example was AI which couldn’t see the facial features of somebody who wasn’t white. That’s a problem. That’s why diversity is not optional — it’s essential. 

• The soft skills that many women bring are also essential to creating connections and building teams. If you step back and look at the whole reality, it’s never just one team that builds anything. You need to connect to other teams and the rest of the business, not just within engineering but with support teams, install teams, sales teams, and marketing teams. Soft skills are a great asset to making that happen, and that helps the whole company. 

• Suppose we don’t have women in leadership roles, being role models for the next generations and helping to influence how we hire and who we bring in. In that case, we will never be able to increase our diversity and increase the number of women within this industry. 

• To change something as fundamental as what people want to do for their career, you make connections and go to local schools. It’s hard to do it globally. Kids resonate with people who show up for them. 

• Elementary school is the most critical time because middle school kids are heavily influenced by peer pressure, and most of the kids in STEM classes are boys. The solution is to get more girls in those classes and normalize it as a choice. 

• I’ve seen it work, even with third through fifth graders who were economically challenged and going through difficulties at home. The presence of an encouraging adult may be all they need to follow through on their natural abilities and talents. Students who I worked with in elementary school are now receiving academic achievement awards in middle school and following through with STEM classes. 

• You don’t have to do it all yourself. An employee resource group is a change to influence your company’s direction and make a lasting impact on children’s lives and the future of our country. 

• There are great companies out there building leaders. I worked at an Aetna company. The Aetna trainings helped me be the leader that I am today. They focused on building their female leaders, which helped me understand how I should be doing things. 

Quote of the show: 

6:23 “If you don’t have diversity in thought patterns, let’s just say we’re only going to employ people that live in the Midwest, you only have a very small bubble of thought patterns that you’re going from. And you can’t be a global company if you’re only focusing on how you see the world… That’s why you need diversity..."

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janell-nelson-6376794/  

Company Website: https://www.vitalimages.com/ 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emily Gabriele’s fascination with technology and love of people led her to customer success. In her work with multinational corporations, she realized the idea that the “customer was always right” could cause more harm than benefit. She also saw that, for customer success employees to succeed without burning out, they need the right kind of resources and support. 

In her current position as customer success manager at Airtable, Emily helps reps get the support they need to be proactive rather than reactive. She advocates that what is best for the customer is the right solution, but not necessarily the one they think they want at the start of the call. 

Key takeaways 

• Great customer service includes a mixture of curiosity and listening. 

• Everyone has their own unique perspective. Anytime we get into a stance of right versus wrong, we assume our viewpoint is the only valid or nuanced one. Listening and curiosity help us understand the other person’s viewpoint and more about what they truly need and want. 

• No one walks away from a conversation where someone tries to understand their viewpoint, thinking, “that person really stinks because they tried to understand me.” 

• Customer service reps face ridiculously high burnout rates. They need work-life balance and appropriate work boundaries to succeed long term. 

• An employee’s well-being is powerfully impacted by company culture. 

• Truly effective customer service includes the time and presence of mind to think proactively and reactively. Sometimes, that’s as simple as leaning into a pause. 

• Customers are strategic partners to a company. Customer service needs to position itself as a strategic partner to a customer. If a customer is upset or disgruntled, it’s essential to remember that it is transitory. Of course, the same applies to a happy customer. Every interaction counts. 

• Airtable offers its customer service reps supportive benefits, including mindfulness apps, professional coaching, and therapy. Reps have someone to listen to and be curious about them, just as they are to the customers. Talking about situations has also been hugely helpful in relieving stress and uncovering solutions. It strengthens the muscle they use to do their work well. 

• Another way to improve employee happiness is to simplify their tools for basic and repetitive tasks, like timecards. Airtable reduces employee stress and improves their happiness by making all of those functions easy and accessible through one dashboard. 

Quote of the show: 

5:35 “It’s helpful to slow down to speed up. And what does that mean? Well, a customer can come to you with these fast and hard deadlines, which may not align with what you can produce or provideare capable of producing or providing in that short turnaround time. And if you go outside of your advised timeline and the customer is pushing you to do so, then maybe you end up with a band-aid fix instead of a fully functioning and appropriate solution.” 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-k-gabriele/  

Company Website: https://www.airtable.com/ 

Emily Gabriele’s Music Website: https://www.egmusicnyc.com/ 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shane Anastasi has been working in project management for over 40 years. Now, as the CEO and Founder of PS Principles — an organization focused on helping service providers and their customers achieve more successful outcomes from implementation projects — Anastasi is disrupting the way in which professionals approach project management. 

Through his own professional experiences and his willingness to push the envelope, Anastasi is transitioning away from the age-old approach to project management. Now, Anastasi is leading the way in training a new generation of project management leaders to approach projects with a higher level of transparency, encouraging tough conversations and improved decision-making. 

Key takeaways 

• When it comes to the main ingredient of disruption, the intent must be kept pure. Too often, people become distracted by the excitement of the disruption itself. Thinking up new ideas and revolutionizing methods is only as successful as the focus on the pure intent of the disruption. 

• Historically, project management has upheld the tenant that projects must be on time and on budget. However, this fails to encapsulate the intent of what a customer-facing project needs to achieve. The pure intent of the project has been lost. 

• Project management strategies that are being applied in the world of software development and tech are standards handed down by the construction industry. While these strategies make sense when applied to construction projects, they begin to fall apart when you try to directly apply them to software development. There are simply more unknowns in tech development than in constructing a bridge. 

• Customers will force project managers into feeling guilty for not meeting their expectations, and project managers are not being taught how to deal with that. As such, project managers are basically trained from day one that the objective of a project is to stay on time and on budget. 

• Projects in software development are actually journeys of discovery. No project actually knows what it’s doing when it starts. It has a very feebly worked out idea based on the loose requirements that a customer provides when they know nothing about the realities of trying to execute that thing. 

• It is critical for project managers today to set the tone for a project from the start, showcasing to customers how projects are a learning journey. Decisions about budget and time will need to be continually made as a project progresses. This changes the mentality of a customer and their expectations. 
• With the right, pure intent at the core, a new approach to project management is not about trying to gain more money or more time from a customer, but rather ensuring that the end result of the project brings value to the customer. 

Quote of the show: 

10:43 “People don’t really care about time, as much as we say that they do, because at the end, what they want is a quality outcome... And if we focus on time, and I've seen this before in post-project reviews, I’ve seen teams basically say to me, we gave the customer a crap result because what they wanted was the deadline. And when I asked, did you go back and ask them about that choice? Which is it that you want? The answer is always no.” 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneanastasi/ 

Company Website: https://www.psprinciples.com/ 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At age 19, Lauren Randall was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Her doctor told her she would be on medications for the rest of her life. Refusing to accept the life sentence, Lauren became the CEO of her own healthcare. She researched all the information she could and made radical lifestyle changes. After six months, the disease had disappeared. 

Lauren’s experience drove her to a career in employee health benefits, where she consults with CFOs and CHROs on their people and risk strategies to get the best care and rates possible. She does this while meeting cutting-edge needs such as addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace and providing value and mission-aligned benefits to attract and keep top talent. 

Key takeaways 

• Over 50% of Americans have a chronic illness. The whole concept of insurance is that the many will take care of the few, and that starts to erode if all of us are carrying chronic conditions. That is one reason we struggle to maintain healthcare costs. 

• The insurance industry has changed over the past 30 years. The Affordable Care Act added layers of compliance and penalties that changed the landscape for employers and insurance brokers. It created a need for analytics that wasn’t necessary before. 

• Technology can serve the health benefits industry in several ways. It helps estimate costs and identify quality service providers. It can help measure the impact of the benefits plan and give employers and brokers insight into how to support employees in better health and productivity. It can also help employers and brokers identify benefits that attract and keep the specific demographic of talent they need the most. 

• For example, attracting highly qualified women into a predominately male industry may include offering things like rich fertility benefits, childcare benefits, and equal paternity leave. 

• Productivity during the pandemic was higher for employers with employees who aligned with the mission and vision of the organization. 

• The mission and vision, and culture of your organization can drive lifestyle outcomes, maybe more than a wellness program, but they’re all tied together. Creating a culture around taking care of people can go a long way toward improving productivity, reducing stress, and decreasing burnout. 

• You may not be a doctor. You may not have an M.D., but you are the only one who can make decisions about your own health. If one in three knee surgeries are unnecessary, are you getting a second opinion? There are programs we can implement with employers to allow employees to get world-class, peer-reviewed second opinions. 

• You must be CEO of your own health because nobody else has the same skin in the game.  

Quote from the show: 

8:56 “20% of America’s GDP is healthcare. It’s this big sort of behemoth that encapsulates everything from private equity to hospitals and providers to our government. Everybody, including brokers, has their hand in the pot of this profit center. And that creates a lot of inefficiencies and waste...”   

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenrandall1/  

Company Website: https://www.marshmma.com/us/home.html 

Women to Women Exchange: https://www.womentowomenexchange.com/   

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Deep Trikannad, a former sales engineer, pivoted away from his role and started his journey into disruption when he experienced firsthand the frustrations around how productivity and quality are measured in the world of sales. Now, Trikannad is disrupting the status quo by using a new technology that combines data science and business intelligence to provide leaders with better insights into who their top performers are. 

Key Takeaways 

• There are all kinds of inefficiency in business with respect to the process. A one-size-fits-all approach often leads to business mediocracy. 

• Currently, there is a lack of true insight into sales rep performance. For example, is a higher performing rep leaning too much on product marketing? How much is the rep individually bringing to the table? And how much are they leaning on other people in the organization? 

• Collaboration in sales is not a bad thing. There is, in fact, a sweet spot for the right amount of collaboration, both internally and externally. The key is how does one measure this? 

• Typically, the data that sales leaders use are lagging indicators, such as revenue or closed deals. The problem is that when a sales rep is struggling, sales management doesn’t know they’re struggling until the quarter hits and the lagging indicators are measured. 

• Sales teams are still using the status quo to measure success. Management is looking at calls, emails, and simple touchpoints. They aren’t peeling the onion back and trying to figure out the quality of those touchpoints. 

• Another key factor that indicates the success of a salesperson is the hierarchy of their contacts. For example, getting a janitor on the phone is easier than getting the CEO on the phone. Therefore, measuring a hundred calls with the janitor is not really an indicator of success. 

• The future of measuring sales success is one in which business owners and leaders are looking to see what total contribution an employee is making to the company rather than measuring performance-based metrics alone. 

• Becoming a successful sales rep is similar to getting to the top of a mountain. There are multiple paths to get there. 

• Most underperforming employees do not want to be poor performers. They are simply lacking the road map they need to become a top performer, which is where the right data sets can help leaders leverage every employee’s strengths and help them overcome their weaknesses before it becomes an end-of-the-quarter sales number discussion. 

Quote of the show: 

15:47 “Unfortunately it happened to me, which is how I founded Acceledgy. Like I was on the losing end of a political battle. And because of that, I left. After I left, I was thinking this was the third time that happened to me in my 24 years. This is common. If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to everybody. And it’s hurting the business. When someone who’s a high contributor is making a strong impact when they leave, it’s hurtful to the business.” 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deeptrikannad/  

Company Website: https://www.acceledgy.com/  

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neeraj Satija has been an innovative disruptor for more than 25 years. With extensive startup experience in many countries, including the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, Satija is a passionate technology leader, constantly looking for ways to push past the status quo. Now, Satija and his co-founders are building financial products people are familiar with, but in the metaverse — powered by both digital assets within and outside of the metaverse. Through this innovative technology, Satija is ultimately on the path to providing financial education to consumers while also offering improved transparency in the management of consumer financial data. 

Key Takeaways 

• One of Satija’s core beliefs around disruptive innovation is that it should be something that propels a space forward while helping humanity. 

• Throughout his career, Satija has been driven by the urge to educate customers by demystifying some of the most complex concepts. 

• The current status quo of financial services is that they are still very centralized. There is usually a middleman — or a number of middlemen — in between the customer and the service provider. 

• Middlemen are sometimes a legal requirement, but most often are simply there to facilitate trade and make it easy for the end customers. Because financial literacy is poor, end users are reliant upon middlemen. 

• Centralized financial services are error-prone and time-consuming. While consumers need to be offered these products and services, the controls remain with centralized entities. This allows these entities to jack up prices when they feel like it and allows them to have access to more of a customer’s data than they need. Additionally, there is a lack of disclosure around how that data is being sold and shared with third parties, including marketing agencies. 

• Control is not with the customer. It’s a lopsided equation. 

• Decentralization of financial services means that there is no centralized entity. Two peers, the customer, and the service provider can now deal with each other directly without needing a middleman. Each person decides who gets to access their data and how much of that data needs to be accessed. 

• Decentralization is at the foundation of the new metaverse. Instead of viewing the internet as a collection of different websites, apps, and micro sites, the metaverse envisions a virtual world which is interactive. It’s 3D and places each user at the center of that universe. Because it’s built on blockchain technology, the metaverse will allow users to take their assets with them wherever they go. 

• He sees the metaverse as the perfect opportunity to create a company where all the financial products and services that he wants to offer to customers are available in a transparent way that simultaneously enables learning. 

Quote of the show: 

42:40 “It’s not like this is something hidden, or this is not a secret sauce, but when you apply those principles of educating your customers of being fair to customers and your partners and your employees and yourself… When you apply those principles, you build a business where your brand represents trust. It represents openness and transparency. And that invariably leads to customers coming along and customers sticking to you. And customers then bring their friends and family into the fold…” 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neerajsatija/ 

Company Website: https://lucrisma.com/ 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Laura Munkholm has been a yoga teacher, studio manager, and studio owner who knows firsthand both the joys of helping people improve their lives and the technical and business challenges faced by boutique fitness studios. She and her Walla co-founder integrate their passion for fitness with cutting-edge behavioral psychology research and technology tools to empower studio owners and teachers to attract and retain motivated clients.   

Key Takeaways 

• Existing studio software is not equipped to handle the complexity of the fitness business. Studio owners struggle to get the data they need to understand the profitability of individual classes, students, and teachers.   
• Few people understand how complex many fitness business models are. Clients can select from various packages, each with a different per-class rate. Many studios offer a free unlimited period to attract new clients. Without detailed attendance and profitability tracking, it’s impossible to understand the financial impact of many business decisions.   

• COVID transformed consumer expectations, and now 60% want a hybrid approach that allows them to take classes at the studio or online. This further complicates the tech demands on each studio owner.   
• Without better insight into what motivated individuals to stick with a program, studios relied on discounts and deals. These have limited benefits and can be difficult to sustain financially.   
• There’s a whole behavioral psychology movement around fitness, wellness, nutrition practices, and how people can ultimately create a habit.   
• Skillpower is a company that worked with leading behavioral psychology researchers from MIT, Stanford, and Penn State because changing your nutrition, fitness, and wellness habits is a mental effort before it’s a physical one. These researchers identified four personality types that are each motivated differently.   

• Walla integrates this research into its studio software. Clients take the survey. Teachers can see each student’s photo and profile and use it to communicate more effectively. Studios can adapt their marketing to match the individual’s motivation style.   
• Another pain point for studio owners is easy access to critical data. They need to track the profitability of individual classes, teachers, and students to inform important decisions. Existing software makes this data collection very challenging. Walla brings it all to you.   

Quote of the show: 

10:27 “Can we adopt this [behavioral psychology research] in a boutique fitness studio when people are walking through the door? And the answer is absolutely because it’s really based on customization, how you communicate, and how you motivate the individual. And we all need different types of motivation… It’s not necessarily what makes [clients] go to the gym. It’s what makes them come back [and] what makes them stick with it. That’s the challenge. So that’s the key.”   

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauramunkholm/ 

Company Website: https://www.hellowalla.com/   

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dimitri Yatsenko, CEO of DataJoint, already had an M.S. in Computational Engineering and Science (University of Utah) when he got his Ph.D. in Neuroscience (Baylor College of Medicine). This put him in a unique position to solve a significant challenge in neuroscience research. 

The data neuroscientists have collected on the brain exceeds the technology, resources, and frameworks available to analyze and model it. To maximize the data’s potential, they need to collaborate across departments and teams. With DataJoint, Dimitri delivers a solution to bridge social and technical gaps in the research process. 

Key Takeaways 

• Obama’s 2013 Brain Initiative has directed a lot of research into mapping the brain, but neuroscientists now have to apply and model that data to understand the live brain and how it functions. 

• Neuroscientists have historically worked alone, but the tsunami of data now available and the complexities of the problems being solved require they collaborate across departments and teams. 

• Without a comprehensive framework for data analysis, collaboration, and communication, much of the software engineering and systems engineering falls on graduate students. 

• When a graduate student leaves a project, continuity is lost because someone else has to come in and understand what they were doing and may not be looking at the same problem or taking the same approach. 

• Neuroscience can help solve several severe medical problems, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, depression, and traumatic brain injury. However, the research is hindered by a lack of continuity in modeling, collaboration, and data analysis. 

• The process of repeatedly engineering frameworks for data analysis drives up research costs through inefficiency. 

• Understanding the brain requires a systematic approach to data and modeling.   
• A commercial company can provide researchers with the tools and technology they need to execute things more efficiently and effectively. They can provide computation as a service, rather than having each lab reproduce the same computation with graduate students. 

• A commercial approach can provide continuous fluidity in one unified framework. 

• DataJoint started as an open-source project and evolved as different neuroscience teams adopted it in their labs. 

• Using DataJoint for collaborative, multi-institutional projects, researchers can organize a computational data pipeline that spans multiple labs. 

• DataJoint is cloud-compatible, containerized, and web-accessible so that it can be deployed across multiple labs simultaneously. In this way, it bridges both the social and technical gaps currently limiting neuroscience research. 

Quote of the show: 

20:16 “The only way we can solve the brain is … to bring the molecular people, the computational people, [and] the electrophysiology people into … solving the same problem.” 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitriyatsenko/ 

Company Website: https://www.datajoint.com/   

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With a background in business and investment banking, Oleg Teterin is ready to transform the biotech and anti-aging industries using AI to track 400+ essential health parameters. The emerging technology of AI has been applied to marketing, business, and software tasks, but it can also help individuals avoid disease and prolong their lives. 

With his global startup, Longevity InTime, Oleg and his team of engineers and scientists are adding to 50+ years of G20 big data to amass the smartest, most complete online diagnosis technology to detect the early stages of diseases. Their goal is to help prolong individual lives to 95 to 120 years of happy, functional experience. 

Key Takeaways 

• Each person’s health risks include genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that the average individual or medical professional cannot accurately track. 

• Diagnostic and blood tests are often expensive and only examine up to around 20 factors, while AI technology can track over 400. 

• Even with diagnostic equipment and experience, doctors can make mistakes, miss problems until they progress, or diagnose incorrectly. 

• AI powered with vast, global data and an individual’s medical history can aid doctors in their analysis and provide a valuable second opinion. 

• By tracking over 400 factors and applying an individual’s medical and genetic history, an AI database can make 100% personalized predictions. 

• What you don’t know about your health can kill you. Medical institutions are not implementing lifetime health tracking in the way current technology can. 

• Predictive technology will help people live longer, healthier lives and reduce healthcare and insurance expenses. 

• Oleg Teterin and his group are developing a longevity scientific resort in the Maldives. Customers will be able to visit for a month of scientifically based, longevity-focused treatments. 

• The longevity tracking software is available through a mobile app to make it easy and accessible to people worldwide. 

Quote of the Show: 

36:35 “Lots of scientists are … losing this war with death. They’re underfunded... nations and governments … don’t understand that they need to invest in that. … So our mission is to make our own healthy life [and] earn on it, [so we can] invest the fruits of these revenues into fundamental science to get the product, which can really extend life.”

Links:

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/olegteterin      

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TETERINOLEG  

Website: https://t.me/LongevityInTime 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With more than 20 years of experience leading global organizations, Ray McKenzie knows a thing or two about workflow management, operational inefficiencies, and digital transformation.

The founder of Red Beach Advisors and StartingPoint, McKenzie, works with private and public sector organizations to optimize performance and drive transformation in all areas of business. His workflow management and customer operations platform are changing the way companies connect and support their clients and employees. 

Key Takeaways

• STATUS QUO: The phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it,” creates an environment that lacks innovation and hinders the forward progress of a business. 

• The problem with doing things the way we’ve always done them is that technology disruption keeps happening, and things change too rapidly in today’s society. You set yourself back if you don’t keep up with the pace. 

• Innovation and disruption are happening across almost every industry, in part because customers want newer products, and they want them faster and easier to use. 

• Adapting to changes doesn’t always require massive organizational restructure. Sometimes a quick fix is enough to shift practice, move quicker, innovate systems, expand markets, and pass the competition. 

• Small companies can implement change more easily, and they’re developing and experimenting with technologies that can launch them to the front of the competition. 

• The challenge for small businesses is overcoming their natural disadvantage when competing in the marketplace. They don’t always have the tools they need or the time to develop them. 

• StartingPoint’s workflow management platform lets clients and team members of small- to mid-sized companies see all activity on an account, upload files, ask questions, and manage tasks. 

• More than a project management platform, it combines service management ticketing, workflow automation, file storage, and CRM in a streamlined platform that can be set up in 20 minutes. There’s nothing to code, and everything can be done in five clicks or less. 

• Companies are looking for ways to do more with fewer people, while employees want better work/life balance. If they can save two hours a week completing tasks at work, they have two more hours to spend with the people and activities they love. 

• People want to be more productive and work more efficiently. The four-day work week is gaining traction, and companies want to keep employees happy while still meeting the needs of the customer and client. 

• The good news is that there's always an easier, more efficient way to do things and achieve better results. 

Quote of the Show 

37:59 – “Employers almost have to equip their employees with the right tools to be successful, so they’re not spinning their wheels or doing as many redundant tasks. Instead of it taking 30 minutes, we could do this in three minutes, and so employees dictate what needs to happen inside of companies.” 

Links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymondmckenzie/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RayMc209  

Website: https://www.startingpoint.ai/ 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

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