Why Fortune 500 Companies Are Losing Money with Kipp Sorensen, Practice Director at JourneyTEAM

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today we're talking to Kipp, Practice Director at JourneyTEAM, and we discuss how relationships with clients have to be rooted in trust, why Fortune 500 companies are losing billions to data disorganization, and how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu bolstered Kipp's ability to lead his team. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:33) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:34) This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:42) Tell me a little bit about your journey. How'd you get started in your career?

(Kipp at 00:00:46) In tech?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:47) Yeah.

(Kipp at 00:00:48) Yeah. Unlike you, I stayed in it, right? So I started in that path and stayed in that path. But jeez, I'm an older guy, so I've been in IT roughly a little over 20 years, and I started as a software developer. .NET wasn't even a thing, so I was a Microsoft Classic ASP developer for a number of years. Eventually ended up becoming a developer for a consulting firm down in Phoenix, Arizona, and that's where I got the niche and the value of consulting. And I understand that consulting is maybe not meant for everybody, but if you want high stress and you want challenges and growth and just be on the forefront of technology, consulting's where that's at, right? But when we look to hire new resources, I tell them you can go get a job for, I don't know who, any corporate company, or you can become a consultant. And in a year of being a consultant, you're going to get the equivalent of three to five years of experience of working for someone else because once we're done with our project, it's the next project, right? And it's just new problems, new tech, and it's just a wonderful opportunity to learn.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:58) Yeah. I have a buddy at BCG. Whenever I talk to him, he's like, "Yep, another week of working until midnight every single day." And I think he's designing hospitals in Dubai. It blows my mind because he's just doing it because he's smart. He's not a trained hospital designer. He's just generally a very smart individual, and that just seems like that's how that goes.

(Kipp at 00:02:21) Yep. Totally. And the difference is too, I would probably suggest for your friend and for a lot of consultants, some people might hear that and go, "Oh my gosh, how horrible or whatever." Most consultants are like, "But I love it." You know? It's the grind, and they like that challenge, and they like the stress and the opportunity of growth and opportunity that comes with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:43) Yeah. So you were a developer there?

(Kipp at 00:02:45) Yeah. Software developer. Ran a software development team. Eventually came up to Utah to work for a joint venture between Intel and Micron. Worked there for a few years, and then got back into consulting as an independent consultant. Ended up doing consulting work for the military, for the DOD. Moved back east to consult for them. Ended up in New York, jeez, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, London, Sydney, all over the place, more or less being an independent consultant until that team got bigger. And then eventually I joined the company that I'm at today, which is called JourneyTEAM, which is another consulting firm doing what I do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:28) Nice. Well, how did you meet the team at JourneyTEAM? And I'm curious what the transition was like going from, like, DOD consulting to private sector too.

(Kipp at 00:03:38) Yeah, you know, that's funny. And maybe I should wash my tongue here, but when I took that first, when I had that opportunity to work with the DOD, I was threatened, right? I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be the cream of the crop, man. These guys are going to be so much smarter than me, and I'm the consultant that should know all this stuff." And I went in and I was not impressed whatsoever. What's the difference between government work and the public sector? The public sector has less red tape, and you're more efficient in regards to getting work done. That's the reality. So it was refreshing to get back to the public sector because there's less procedure, there's less red tape and process around everything, and so we could be much more successful. Which is a really interesting concept too, because even in the world of consulting, we've even evaluated that as a consulting firm. It's like, what determines our ability to work with one client and be highly efficient, and another client not be as efficient? And it's actually rooted in trust. And it's amazing what you can accomplish in an environment, on a project team, or within an organization where there's high levels of trust. Now, of course, that trust has to be earned and needs to be given, but nonetheless, when it's there, man, I mean, it's amazing what can get created from a consulting perspective.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:04) So do you have any tips for, at the beginning of an engagement, setting that expectation that we need that high level of trust in order to be efficient? How do you go about that when you're first starting working with someone?

(Kipp at 00:05:16) Yeah, that's a really great question. So at JourneyTEAM, we have this distinction that we make, and we call it a flag plant. So our mantra is a little around mountains. Maybe it's because we're in Utah, right? So the way we approach it is a successful project is the equivalent of us summiting a mountain and planting our flag of success. And so during a project kickoff, we'll have the conversation with the client, and one of the questions that we ask during that project kickoff is, what is the flag plant criteria? What is success? And we challenge the typical approach that we often think, right? Like, for instance, if we're doing a Dynamics implementation, we would all assume that success is what? Implement Dynamics CRM. No, no, no, no. That's just the system. Why are we implementing Dynamics? What business issues are we trying to resolve? What's the strategic and bigger picture of what we're trying to address? And that needs to be addressed for this to be a successful project. I've learned through years, you can implement technology all you want. You can implement SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, all these different technologies. Doesn't mean it's going to be successful. And so we want to make sure that we're constantly being attached to the driving business objectives that determine success, not wrapped up in just implementing the technology for technology's sake. And I think when we do that, I think that comes across as like, "Oh, okay. They understand, and we have an invested interest in the real success of this project," not, quote unquote, just doing our part of the job, does it make sense, and then leave the client high and dry. And so, and hopefully it resonates because it's true for us. We're very genuine, and we actually have a very empathetic and care mentality to our projects, and everything's kind of rooted in doing what's best for the client. And that's one of the ways that we ensure that we're doing that properly and that we're communicating that to the client.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:10) Yeah. Let's take a step back. Can you give an overview of JourneyTEAM—

(Kipp at 00:07:13) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:13) For the listeners?

(Kipp at 00:07:14) Probably do that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:15) Yeah, right.

(Kipp at 00:07:17) So JourneyTEAM is a Microsoft consulting firm. We specialize in Microsoft technologies, and I can throw out all the accolades, like, you know, JourneyTEAM's, you know, partner of, you know, has been Partner of the Year multiple years. We're part of Microsoft's Inner Circle, which is kind of a very exclusive partner group within Microsoft. So we're a premium consulting firm that partners with Microsoft. And what that really means is our consultants, we're the best of the best in regards to those technologies. So it's not uncommon that we'll get a large potential client reach out to Microsoft and say, "Hey, Microsoft, we want to implement X, Y, Z, said system and technology. We need assistance." And then Microsoft calls us up and says, "Hey, go work with this client," and then we'll do those implementations, okay? So that's where professional services shop. Now, the technologies that we specialize in are Dynamics ERP, F&O. We do Dynamics CRM, Microsoft's entire cloud, whether that be Azure, right? Implementing MFA, app services within Azure, and identity management, and Intune, and the whole gamut. I mean, Azure is such a broad term, right? There's a lot to that. Then we have a Collaboration and Content Management team that I actually run. So we focus on the tools from Microsoft that assist organizations around knowledge sharing and collaboration and knowledge management. Then we have a change management practice that really focuses on making sure that the technology that we implement gets adopted appropriately. And that's a whole sandbox, you know, sidetrack conversation. We can talk about how critical that is for organizations. And then we have a business intelligence team as well that focuses on big data, data analytics, and reporting, and dashboards, and that kind of technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:10) So what's, like, the company profile? What do they generally look like when they're coming to you for help? Who needs this?

(Kipp at 00:09:17) Yeah, that's a really good question. So I would say the typical client, if you don't mind me being frank and candid, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:25) Yeah.

(Kipp at 00:09:26) If a client signs up for Microsoft 365, and I'm sure you've heard Microsoft's cloud called Microsoft 365, if they sign up for that, it's not overly difficult to configure Exchange for email. It's not difficult to use SharePoint. It's sitting right there. You can just make SharePoint sites and throw documents in there and run, right? And ironically enough, I'm old enough to remember that when someone wanted SharePoint, that meant that we'd have to set up servers and database servers and do all this config. There's not that need anymore, right? And so a lot of our clients, the need isn't a really in-depth technical need. The bigger need is really from the business consulting perspective, someone that can come in, understand their business needs, and then mirror that and map that to the Microsoft technologies so they use and adopt it correctly. That's kind of the secret sauce or really the gap that a lot of our clients are missing. And through our experience of having to do, you know, hundreds of these projects for existing clients, we kind of know where all the pitfalls are, right? We know that, hey, this is a common mistake that a lot of clients make, or this is how you drive user adoption better. Or we might even say, "Hey, that new technology by Microsoft, not really primetime yet, so hold off on that. Don't get," or "Here's some things that you should be aware of, pros and cons in regards to utilizing that technology," to make sure they adopt it and utilize it correctly. Does it make sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:02) Yeah. Yeah.

(Kipp at 00:11:02) And there's, of course, in-depth integrations with other systems and customizations that our developers can do and those kind of things. But I think the majority of our clients, they know this technology. They have a good enough understanding of Microsoft stack that they want to consume it, but they're not sure the best way. They're not positive the best approach, and that's where we come in as kind of business technologists first and technologists second and be able to marry those two things together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:25) That's interesting. I like the distinction between business technologists and technologists that you make.

(Kipp at 00:11:31) It's so true. I mean, when we hire, that's kind of what we're even hiring, right? It's that business side of it is just as critical, if not more critical, than the technology side. The technology side, you can ramp up on that, as you know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:44) Yeah. Well, when you were listing out all the stuff you do earlier, I made a mental note on, what is knowledge management? That was one of the things you mentioned, and it sounds, I don't know—

(Kipp at 00:11:56) It's a vague term. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:57) It's a little vague. Yeah.

(Kipp at 00:11:59) Well, and let's be frank, not all companies have a knowledge management department. But some organizations, once they get big enough, there's a formalized KM team that specializes in this definition, right? And so really, what knowledge management is, is the creation and the managing of processes to get the right knowledge to the right people at the right time. So what we're really talking about is efficiency around access of knowledge. Let me give you an example, and I don't know, maybe it's not the best example. You can tell me if it's not the good example or not, but I've used it for years. So on my honeymoon, my wife and I, we went to a beach town, and we went surfing. My first time surfing. She's been surfing before. And to be honest, I was scared, right? I saw these waves, and I was like, "I'm going to die and drown on my honeymoon," right? But I had some pride, and I was like, I don't want my new wife to think I'm a pansy either, right? So I got to toughen up and hop out there and go surfing. So we're getting ready to hop in the water, and it was super funny because we're getting ready, and she's like, "Oh, I almost forgot." I'm like, "Oh, what?" And she goes, "If you get disoriented in the water, like you got tumbled around in the water and you're disoriented, reach down and grab the leash, the cable that's attached to your foot, and follow it to the board," right? And I'm thinking, "Jeez, like, it made me more scared," of course, right, because I think I'm going to die out here, right? So I go surfing. I eventually catch some waves. And at one point, I just get eaten alive. And I remember swimming, not sure what's up, down, left, or right. And I started panicking a little bit, and I'm swimming one direction, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to run out of breath." And I remember what she said. I thought, "Oh my gosh, if I get disoriented, grab the leash." So I grabbed that leash, and that leash took me the opposite direction that I was swimming. And so all of a sudden, I'm following the leash, and that's taking me up to the surface where there's air. That's effective knowledge management. I got the information I needed when I needed it. Now, if we take that same example and we put it in the typical corporate world, that would have been an email I would have gotten six months earlier, and it would have been, "Hey, by the way, if anyone happens to go surfing, remember to do X, Y, Z." What would I have done with that email? Well, I'm not surfing. I got work to do. I'm busy right now. I don't even know when I might need this. So the good person might take that email and drag it over into a folder inside their email called "surfing" or whatever. But most people just delete that because why? Not relevant. Not timely relevant to what I need at the moment. So it's just noise to me. And so I get rid of that information. And we live in an information age where information overload is our number one problem. We don't need more data, but we need the right data at the right time. So if I'm working on a task X, Y, Z, man, I need the details on X, Y, Z, not yesterday, not a month before, but when I need it in this moment. And knowledge management is the practice of how do we organize data in a way to make that possible. Does it make sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:12) Yeah. Absolutely.

(Kipp at 00:15:13) And I have some statistics around this that I always put out there. And so if you don't mind me sharing these because this is a problem, right? So Fortune 500 companies, they estimate that this is a $31,500,000,000 loss yearly due to people not being able to access data that they need to be effective in their jobs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:33) 31.5?

(Kipp at 00:15:35) Billion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:35) Whoa.

(Kipp at 00:15:35) Okay. This is a major, major issue. And one of my favorite quotes around this subject, and I think we can all relate to this, and it was an old CEO of HP. I think his name was Platt. But he said, "If HP knew what HP knows, we'd be three times more productive." The problem isn't, and you think about it, the problem isn't that you don't have the people that have the knowledge. That's not the problem. The problem is accessing it so we can be efficient, right? And that's what we try to address within knowledge management, and that's what we address on my team within the Collaboration and Content Management team of JourneyTEAM.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:14) So, I mean, how do you do effective knowledge management?

(Kip at 00:16:19) That's a good question. You have to call me up. I was just joking. So not to put you on the spot, but what's our primary age group, probably, of your podcast, would you say?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:29) 30 to 50.

(Kip at 00:16:31) 30 to 50. Okay. So this is perfect. And so I'm talking to that group. Adam, you're probably younger than 30, so you'll have to let me know if you know what I'm talking about.

(Kip at 00:16:41) So old school, in the old school world, the way we addressed this was files, file servers, and mapped drive letters.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:50) I've heard of these things.

(Kip at 00:16:53) So what we used to do, right, you'd have a file server with all these files. And to make it easier for the users to be able to find their data, we would do a group policy in Active Directory that would auto-assign a drive letter to Windows Explorer. And we would assign the drive letter, let's say, H for home drive. Or no, no, let's do P. P for personal drive. And so when I open up Windows Explorer, I'd see a drive letter P. And if I clicked on P, I'd see my files, my personal files. Now, on the same server as your files, by the way, but I only have access to my folder, and we mapped it to a letter to make it easy for me to get to it.

(Kip at 00:17:33) Make sense? Yeah. Okay. And then we did the same thing for other content. Right? If I was part of the HR department, maybe I'd have an H drive, and that H drive was my department's home drive. And I'd click on there, and there's the HR files. And then there might be an S drive for the shared drive. And whatever's there, everyone has access to it because it's shared. That was a poor man's version of knowledge management and information architecture.

(Kip at 00:18:00) And ironically enough, now, we didn't do that initially. Right? Back in the day, it was like, it's on the file server. Figure it out. Right? And you'd have to navigate through folder structures to try to find what you need. Eventually, we started mapping drives. And then new cloud technology comes out—Box, Dropbox, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and whatnot. We have the same problem. Not all data is the same.

(Kip at 00:18:23) Right? Data that is related to the HR department is drastically different than the data that HR presents for consumption to the rest of the company. Or that data that you and I might be on a project team is different, is way different than the HR. So where, how do we make these silos, these collaborative silos within Microsoft 365, to allow users to get to the data they need to be effective? Right? Do I have my HR hat on right now, or do I have my community hat on or my community of practice hat on or my project team hat on? And how do I navigate those structures to get to that necessary data? And so a lot of it, the way we approach it, is really from a conversation of, to be frank, how does a company function? Right? Is the company broken down by department?

(Kip at 00:19:14) Is there other collaborative groups that make up your organization? Are there communities of practice? Is there committees? Like, what's the language you even use? That even matters. Right? I'm not sure if you've been exposed to Microsoft Teams, but Microsoft Teams, think of it as kind of a collaborative group. Well, we like to disrupt that and say, well, not everything is the same. Right? A social group is a different type of group than a committee versus a department, and we'll promote that language for our clients as part of their information architecture.

(Kip at 00:19:45) So you and I can have a conversation around it. Right? When you say, hey, where's those files? I don't go, it's in Microsoft 365. I don't say that. I say, it's in our department team. Right? Or it's in our project team. And now that term has context that allows you to get to the data that you need to effectively find it.

(Kip at 00:20:06) Does that make sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:08) Yeah. So it's like a pretty creative job in terms of figuring out the best way to structure these data, and also there's a large educational component of making sure everybody knows how to talk about these things.

(Kip at 00:20:22) Yeah. And what's the language we use internally when we talk about those things? And what's the meaning that we want to create? So if you really think about it, the terms that we use have meaning. When I say department, you just don't think department. You think, oh, well, I know what a department is, and it functions like this. Right? That word has meaning, and we can create meaning through the classifications we use within our organizations. So let me give you a perfect example. If you go to Washington, D.C., and I think it's the Veterans Memorial—someone's gonna get mad at us here if I mess this up. So if you go to the Veterans Memorial monument, I think, it's the monument that has all the black marble and has all these names and dates, all those—

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:04) Isn't that for Vietnam?

(Kip at 00:21:07) You're right. Yep. It's for Vietnam. So when you look at that, what order do you think that data is in? How is that organized?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:15) I would suspect dates.

(Kip at 00:21:17) Now I would have assumed alphabetically. Right? So I could go look up my father's name, right, and find him on the list. But it's actually organized by death date. And if you think about it, that creates meaning. Now when I go to that slab and I see, maybe I find my dad's name or whatever, and I see all these other names. What does that tell me? Man, something serious happened on that day. Right? And so it adds meaning to what we're doing.

(Kip at 00:21:47) And so the same thing happens when we talk about how we organize data. And if you really think about it, you can only organize data really one of five ways, ironically enough. Right? Location, geographically. Right? Alphabetically. And for those that kind of want to play with this idea, think about a dictionary. How effective is the dictionary if it's not organized alphabetically? And jump over—waste.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:12) Yeah.

(Kip at 00:22:12) And sometimes we do that in our organizations. Right? It was like, we throw the data out there, but we don't make it easy to get to it. Right? It's just unfindable. Right? And so alphabetically, timeline, category or some type of classification like I'm sharing with you, as well as hierarchy. We purposely do that where we might say, oh, how do you find payroll data? Oh, it's in the sub-area underneath HR. Oh, what does that tell me? Payroll is part of the HR department. It's a sub-team of another group. And you know what I mean? Like, we understand some hierarchy of how content gets organized.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:50) That makes sense. Yeah. When you mentioned the dictionary example, it reminded me of, have you ever heard of the Library of Babel?

(Kip at 00:22:58) I have heard of it, but I don't know details.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:00) It's a website that has every single possible iteration of 4,000-something characters randomized. So it has like every work of written art ever created or that ever will be created. Yeah. But it, I mean, it's not organized, so it's not really worth anything. It's just kind of a cool experiment.

(Kip at 00:23:24) I'm totally stealing that for the next time I talk about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:27) Yeah.

(Kip at 00:23:27) But to your point. Right? Like, the information is only valuable if it can be consumed efficiently. Right? And a lot of data, I think, in our organizations never get consumed because they're not findable.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:40) That makes sense. Yeah. So I know it definitely sounds like a highly creative task to come up with the best way to organize data for a given organization. But as you work with more and more organizations, do you see commonalities between them that could lead to being able to automate knowledge management effectively?

(Kip at 00:24:02) Totally. Yeah. We see so many trends. I mean, I'll give you an example. So part of the knowledge management includes, in most cases, an intranet. Right? As we move from that file share, I said there's an, I get, one of the examples I gave you was shared data. Right? Well, what's shared data in a modern workspace? That's an intranet. Right? Corporate-approved content, news, communication, finalized information, and it's really for the dissemination of data to all employees. Right? That's really kind of what a corporate intranet is. I could probably design a company's intranet without ever talking to them because we've done this so many times that we know the common pitfalls.

(Kip at 00:24:41) Right? And so as an example, organizations will come to the table and they'll say, you know, the best way to organize our intranet content is we're gonna have this top menu item on our intranet, and it's gonna say department. And then you're gonna mouse over department. It's gonna list all the departments. And then I click on HR, and then I see HR's content for the intranet. And how is that organized? Based upon who owns the content. Right? That's an example of organizing data based upon who owns it, which is not always ideal for who's consuming the content. So as an example, I'll use like a restaurant as an example.

(Kip at 00:25:16) The dining area of the restaurant is the consumption of the restaurant. The kitchen is the producer, right, of the services and the product. Just because IT organizes content, just because IT is working a certain way, doesn't necessarily mean that's how IT should present themselves to the rest of the organization. So instead of me, let's say that I'm a typical employee, and I wanna read about my benefits and my life insurance and, I don't know, see my gym reimbursement policy. Now I have to go, well, who owns that? Like, who makes that for me to know what department to go to? And obviously, human resources are a really no-brainer example. But how more effective would it be if my intranet's content was organized in the front called my career and employment? And that's it. And when I want to manage my career, guess what's there?

(Kip at 00:26:08) Data from HR, data from accounting, data from leadership, employee onboarding—it's all in one spot because I'm focused on managing my career within the company. Why organize it based upon who created it? That's not effective.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:22) Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of in music production, a lot of the time, a band will have their tracks recorded at one studio and then mixed by someone else. And as the mix engineer, it can be a really annoying, small, little quirk where the recording engineer, it's a really social environment working with a band recording. Yeah. Some recording engineers will name their tracks by the name of the person who did it. So if they're buddies with the guitarist, they don't call it guitar. They call it Jim Bob. Yeah. And then you get a session full of tracks that are all like 50 first names, and that's just a nightmare to sort through, and you can't get started on your actual work.

(Kip at 00:27:06) Yeah. And here's a perfect example. I'll relate it to Microsoft 365. Right? So, yeah. Let's say small company signs up for Microsoft 365, and they have one person that represents HR. Now, they might be tempted to do what? Well, I don't need a department site for HR because there's only me. So I'm gonna store all my data in OneDrive, or I'm gonna store it on my local computer, or whatever. Well, that person leaves and we hire someone new. Now what do we do? Oh, man. Now we gotta ask whoever is in HR where all the data is and put it back into here, and it's like, just organize your data. Yeah. Right? And get it into buckets that make sense, whether it's a team of one or whether it's a team of 20. It makes sense. Right? So then that way, we can grow intelligently, right, as we get more data into the environment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:54) You know, as you were earlier talking about how you could build a company's intranet by yourself, it occurred to me that I haven't asked you what your actual day-to-day is as practice director. What, like, what are your responsibilities?

(Kip at 00:28:11) Yeah. So I'm the practice director over the collaboration content management team, which is ironic. We could be called the SharePoint team or the Teams team or whatever. But agnostic of tech, right, our job is how do we implement technology around collaboration and content management? And that happens to be intranets, collaboration, document management, enterprise search, data governance, and data retention for policies and all that kind of jazz. Right? So I have an entire team that focuses on that. So as a practice director, my job is around practice delivery. Right? Supporting my team from a leadership perspective of, do they have the resources and the information necessary to be highly successful consultants?

(Kip at 00:28:55) And then they're focused on engaging with our clients and ensuring that we're implementing successful solutions. That's it. And I'll jump in and help the team when necessary from a technology perspective, but my number one priority is to help them. Help them grow, ensure that they're getting what they need to be successful. And at JourneyTEAM, we take a lot of pride in our culture, and our approach to this is never to create red tape. You kind of got a gist of how much I hate that. Right? So the approach is being self-directed. Our employees are self-directed to do what's best for the client. We're committed to that desired outcome. How they get there, that's up to them. They're professionals, and we're here to support them to accomplish that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:39) Gotcha. Cool. Yeah. Well, I wanna make sure I get to ask you a couple leadership questions because you seem like a guy that thinks a lot about that kind of stuff.

(Kip at 00:29:47) I at least have opinions.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:48) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing that I was interested in when I was kind of stalking you right before this interview—

(Kip at 00:29:56) Uh-oh.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:58) Was I saw you're a black belt in jiu-jitsu. I am. Which I know that takes an incredible amount of like time, commitment, and effort to get there. And so I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how that affects the way you are as a leader, having gone through that.

(Kip at 00:30:16) Yeah. Without a doubt. In fact, Adam, you probably shouldn't have asked this question because I could go on for hours about this. So first off, for those listening that might be tempted to go, oh, he has a black belt in jiu-jitsu. That's awesome. My kid does karate and he is a black belt. It's not the same, so don't insult me. So first off, in jiu-jitsu, a kid can't ever be more than, they can't even get a blue belt before the, I think, the age of 18. So this is a very slow process. It took me 14 years of training. Probably over, I don't know, 2,400 hours of sparring. You know what I mean? To, so this is, I just set the precedence that this is not an easy thing to accomplish, ultimately. Not to talk myself up, but to explain how hard to get myself.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:02) Yeah.

(Kip at 00:31:05) Yeah. Look at me. Yeah. That's why I wear the earbuds, so that way you don't see my cauliflower ears. So now jiu-jitsu is so amazing. You've heard of flow state before, Adam? Mhmm. Okay. So it, Rise of Superman, there's a bunch of books around getting into flow state, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu actually does that. And the reason why it does that is it forces you to get into fight-or-flight mode. If you and I were grappling on the ground, right, and I'm trying to get on your back and choke you, you're not thinking about anything else. Yeah. You sense the feeling of someone controlling you. You can't, you know, you're trying to get loose. You can't. You know, I might be reducing the blood flow to your brain, and you might be freaking out. And that's what we're doing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It is a ground martial art where it, think of it as wrestling with submissions, right, which would mean joint manipulation, hyperextending an arm, choking a neck. And but we have these rules, and we have this nice little rule that says, if I tap, you let go. Right? And so we're not hurting each other per se, not always, anyway. But it allows you to really get present in the moment.

(Kip at 00:32:16) And so a lot of guys will actually do Brazilian jiu-jitsu really from the perspective of flow state and just releasing stress and everything else that might be available in their life. Now from a leadership perspective, on that backside of suffering and difficulty is the benefit, and it's no different in the workplace or even in life in general. Right? You wanna be good at something or you want to have confidence in something, guess what it requires? A price.

(Kip at 00:32:47) A price must be paid. And so are you willing to do the reps? Are you willing to be uncomfortable? Are you willing to do those things to then put yourself in a position of growth? The other thing about jiu jitsu is that I think relates to business quite a bit: we get guys who will come into jiu jitsu, tough guys, right? Meatheads or whatever. They're like, "Yeah, I'm here to prove how tough I am." And they'll come in, and because they don't know jiu jitsu, they'll get humbled.

(Kip at 00:33:04) They'll lose, right? They'll have to tap. They'll have to say mercy. You got me, right? To someone probably smaller than them. Maybe someone that's like thirty pounds lighter. And this identity that they've held onto, like, "I'm a tough guy," all of a sudden, it gets destroyed.

(Kip at 00:33:35) And we get a lot of guys that will walk in and they'll quit. And they'll quit jiu jitsu because they're not willing to put their ego in check and go, "You know what? I don't know. And I'm gonna be humble, and I'm gonna sit through this and get beat up, and I'm gonna learn until eventually I get to a spot." And growth is not available to any of us, right, if we're not humble enough to consider that we don't know something that we may not know or there's something for us to learn.

(Kip at 00:34:03) And it's no different in an organization. When we hire individuals or when we're looking at helping our team grow, checking our egos and making sure we're humble is critical, right? Because there's no growth in that. And that even includes for us that work with our clients. If I always come to the table, Adam, if you're a client of mine and I'm always like, "I'm right, you're wrong," and I'm not seeking to understand first, understand what your needs are and learn how you guys work as a company, and I just make all those assumptions, then I'm never gonna deliver the right solution to you. So that humility is so, so important in our quest of improvement, whether it be leadership or whether it's our employees or any other aspect of business or personal life for that matter. I don't know. I can keep going, man, but those are the main things that come to mind.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:47) So when you mentioned how critical it is to be able to check your ego at the door and be willing to learn, when you're hiring, obviously, you get such a limited exposure to a person before you have to commit to having them on your team. Do you have a check that you use internally, or how do you recognize that this person has that quality?

(Kip at 00:35:09) Yeah, I like that question. So we use this book, "Ideal Team Player," as one of our primary resources during the hiring process. And in that book, I'm paraphrasing, we will look for the following qualities: hungry, humble, smart, and care. And I've added kind of a fifth of just X factor energy or whatever. I don't know what it is. Conviction, maybe. Now smart, obviously, that's a quick one, right? Why do we care? Well, because we're consultants. And although I may be an expert on SharePoint and Microsoft Teams today, guess what? Tomorrow, it's changing. So I better be quick to pick up and learn, you know, the next tech constantly, right?

(Kip at 00:35:51) Care? Why are you here if you don't care, right? And that's so important to us as a company. We want our employees to love what they do. When you love what you do, you show up in a powerful way. You're a better person at home when you leave the job. I mean, it's life's too short not to love what you do. So we constantly are asking our employees, "Do you love what you do?" And if you don't, then you probably shouldn't work here, and let's find you something that you do love doing, right? Or let's get you in a different department or whatever, but that care is super, super important to us.

(Kip at 00:36:15) And then you gotta be hungry. Continuous improvement, focused on always trying to become better, be more polished. We're a boutique, white glove, best of the best firm. There is no complacency, right? I can write a document a hundred times, and the next time I write it, am I trying to make it better than it was the time before? I am. Better. Every Internet project is the best one yet, right? And so that's our focus is that pursuit of excellence, right? It's part of our mission.

(Kip at 00:36:44) And then that last is hungry or it's humble, I mean. And why? Because you're not gonna have a growth mindset if you're not humble enough to consider that there's something to grow. And part of that humble is extreme ownership from our perspective. We're huge fans of Jocko Willink and his book "Extreme Ownership." If you guys haven't read that, I'd highly recommend it. But the idea is that when there's a problem, there's so much power, Adam, in me saying, "I could have prevented that problem. Let me evaluate how I showed up." Be humble enough to go, "Hey, if I did X, Y, Z instead of A, B, C, we could have avoided this problem. I'm gonna own that. I'm gonna make necessary adjustments, and I'm gonna grow." That is at the pivotal of humility.

(Kip at 00:37:26) Now how do we ask? I'm always asking for past experience, right? What's something in your previous job where you were wrong? You implemented something, and you were totally off base. And then I ask the kind of question, and then what did you do, right? Or what don't you like about your job? Because that's the other telltale sign. Why are you leaving or whatever? "Oh, my boss this, and I hate this, this, and this." And then if you hear all victim and no ownership, that doesn't tell me you're humble because they're not even considering their role that they played on that team that they, quote unquote, didn't like, right?

(Kip at 00:37:59) And so I'm looking for evidence of them saying, "Hey, I didn't like this. In hindsight, I realized I could have showed up more powerfully or whatever, or I did this thing wrong. How did you address it?" Instead of going, "Well, they're wrong, so we just split, you know, went our separate ways." I'm looking for something like, "I was wrong on this, and so I asked questions so I could not make that mistake again and make necessary adjustments," et cetera. But it's so tough, man. Like, I'm doing some interviews right now, and it's like, "Oh, how do we vet this? Like, how do we find this?" And we're so fine tuning, and in our pursuit of excellence, we're always trying to figure out how do we do this better.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:50) Well, what are you hiring for? Give it a shout out.

(Kip at 00:38:53) Oh, hey, yeah, I'm down. So actually, at Journey Team, I'm making—I'm totally giving you all this backstory that's probably not necessary or valuable. So I'm a practice director today, but as we grow, I'm actually stepping in as the Chief People Officer over people and culture. And you could probably see how that's resonated in how I'm talking about how the company shows up, right? This is something really passionate that I have. And so we're filling a position on the people and culture team. Someone that can really step in and be part of a disruptive HR mentality, right? Not a pandering department, but a department that looks for an opportunity to help people grow, for us to level up and avoid the typical mistakes of most companies of, "Let's implement process, process, and process. Why? Because we don't trust our people."

(Kip at 00:39:22) Why don't we actually just trust our people and then give them the tools to make the right decision? And when someone makes the wrong decision, we chalk that up as an investment and awesome. Now Adam understands this and even better versus, "Oh, let's implement a process. Let's implement a procedure. Let's implement red tape that now so some other employee doesn't make that mistake." Let's actually trust our people to bring their best foot forward and get out of their way and support them in doing so. And that's kind of what we're trying to create at Journey Team.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:16) Yeah. I love that mentality of it. Like, if they make a mistake, that's an investment because—

(Kip at 00:40:21) Because we're all gonna make them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:23) Yeah. I've had some company investments in me that have yielded great returns, and like, I've learned a ton and been able to implement positive change in my organization as a result of the stuff I've learned. Yeah. So as it has shaped me as an individual and a leader, I've watched it affect our company and other people at our company. That is huge. I'm super into that.

(Kip at 00:40:48) Well, and think about, like, we all know this. Like, we've probably all had bosses that believed in us in a way that others didn't. What is that? That's trust. That's allowing people to be empowered in what they're doing. And the last thing that we wanna do is dampen the possibilities of our employees, right? Our employees are amazing and probably capable of things that we don't even know about. So let's not dampen that, and let's just empower them to bring the best foot forward. And we do that by making them part of what we're doing, so they love their job and they're committed to what we're doing, and we're just support mechanisms, right? Leadership is, anyway.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:24) Yeah. Well, Kipp, before we wrap up, is there any extra shout out you wanna give for Journey Team or whatever you wanna get out to the world?

(Kip at 00:41:32) No. I mean, I think the key thing, the main thing I wanna get out there is we're shaking and moving the consulting industry, I believe. And we're doing it through our culture of our employees being self-directed and really the center of us, like—and I'm not saying this superficially. Like, it's so rooted in how we are as a company that we actually care. This isn't about like revenue and all that kind of stuff. That's a byproduct of actually doing good business, and that's how it should be done. The perfect example of this, sorry for the quick tangent, but it's the wonderful restaurant, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that's on a bad street, and it looks horrible, right? I lived in New York for a few years, and those exist. And there's a line out the door. Why? Because their product is awesome.

(Kip at 00:42:14) Business will come when you do the right thing, right? And that's our approach. It's like, we don't have to market you and smoke and mirrors and convince you of something. No, no, no. Our work speaks for itself. Our clients speak for ourselves. Not that we're perfect, right? But we even own those mistakes, right? And we're focused on always doing what's right for our clients. And so I think for companies that are looking for like that refreshing kind of consulting firm to work with, where it's actually genuine and it's realistic and it's not smoke and mirrors, it's not half truths or spun truths, but they want consultants that are experts in what they do, and they're committed to actually help that client succeed. Journey Team's the right organization for that. And if you're in the technology sector and you're like, "Man, I wanna work for a company like that." Well, go to our website and join us whenever we have those openings because we're always looking for the right people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:12) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.