UPCOMING PORTLAND EVENT: APPLYING AGILE TO THE NON-IT PARTS OF YOUR BUSINESS

You love agile. You love the iterative approach to problem-solving. You love the way it empowers your IT teams to find solutions. You wish that you could see the same benefits in other parts of your business, but the problem is that agile seems stuck in the world of developers and technical teams. 

Matt Jamison, Tech Services Lead at The Gunter Group, has been thinking about this problem for a few years. In conversations with clients and peers in various industries, Matt has started to break down the principles, roles, ceremonies, and functions of agile into a series of “Whys” that add value in a broader business context. By deconstructing the structures of agile into their purposes, Matt is able to apply aspects of agile to lines of business that fall outside of tech. 

Excited to hear more? Join Matt as he explores how these agile concepts offer a fresh approach to building bridges between strategy, processes, and the realization of business goals. Matt provides examples that illustrate how agile can spill over the boundaries of tech into non-IT parts of the business, providing use cases from HR.

Come join the conversation! The event will take place at Puppet on Wednesday, November 20th from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Click here for more details, and to register for the event! 

Matt Jamison is an experienced solutions architect with a results-oriented understanding of the intersection between reality and architectural theory. He has the ability to plan, develop, and implement large-scale projects while maintaining impeccable attention to detail. With 20 years of functional information technology experience, Matt has end-to-end IT knowledge from layer 1 networking to application API interaction. An expert in mapping technology solutions to business needs, Matt is also able to conform to required regulations while maintaining IT best practices. Matt’s experience spans multiple industries, including healthcare, telecommunications, and security and software. He is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect. Outside of work, Matt enjoys the outdoors and all things bike-related.

CELEBRATING OUR VETERANS

Veteran’s Day at The Gunter Group is pretty special. You see, 16% of our current employees are veterans so odds are good we have a front row seat for the incredible skills and experience they bring to their work as management consultants. When we say, “Thank you for your service,” to our friends and colleagues, we could just as easily be referencing their most recent success with a client or how they stepped up to lend a hand with our last project.

If we include military spouses, our percent of military-connected employees jumps to 22%. Several of us, like myself have direct experience as contractors for the military. In my case, I spent a summer living and working on a navy base in Italy years ago, directing programs for military families. Years later I provided career coaching for veterans and consulted for universities on how to tailor support services to meet the unique needs of military-connected students.

When we include all of the above military experience and affiliation, 27% of our organization has direct, first-hand experience with the United States Armed Forces, and that doesn’t include employees who grew up in military families!

This week, three of our veteran employees will join a panel at Portland State University to share how their military experience prepared them for various roles as consultants across multiple industries. At The Gunter Group, we know that diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives make us better as an organization. Hiring talent from less “traditional” consulting backgrounds has always been a priority for us (e.g., I represent one of two former archaeologists among our ranks!), and we have actively recruited veterans from our beginning in 2011. 

We’ve learned veterans are uniquely suited for the work we do. From operating on imperfect information and having to improvise to solve a wide range of problems in changing conditions to showing up with the utmost integrity, grounded confidence, and the rest of our non-negotiables, in every situation. Veterans have much to offer the business world and they are among some of our most successful employees.

Part of our motivation for continuing to grow our business is that it allows us to provide opportunities for those who have served to apply all that they’ve learned to work in the civilian world. By reaching out to our local community, mentoring other veterans to translate their military experience, we hope to see more veterans join The Gunter Group. We also promote military-friendly practices among our clients. It’s not only serving those who serve but it’s really good for business.

THE WORLD NEEDS GOOD CHANGE MANAGERS

Ebola broke out in Congo last summer for the 10th time in 43 years. Doctors had a powerful toolkit for fighting the disease, but without change management their efforts would have had little success. 

Doctors in Goma Use Change Management to Save Lives

This summer, an outbreak of Ebola raged through the Congo. On July 14th, the first case was diagnosed in Goma, one of the largest cities and transit centers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak an international public health emergency, and the response was an influx of funds, resources, and health workers.

NPR describes what came next. Citizens of Goma “threw rocks at health workers, suspicious that they were profiting off the response… They barricaded roads; they refused to wash their hands.” This was the same response health workers received in the countryside, but in a city of 2 million the stakes were far higher. 

Here’s the thing: in the past couple years, scientists have made significant advances in the treatment and prevention of Ebola. In addition to two new treatments, an experimental vaccine looks to be highly effective. The last outbreak in the Congo was contained in a matter of months. Health workers had all the tools they needed to stop the outbreak, except for cooperation from the people in need of treatment.

Enter change management, stage left. Prosci, an international leader in change management training, lists 7 best practices:

— Mobilize an active and visible executive sponsor
— Dedicate change management resources
— Apply a structured change management approach
— Engage with employees and encourage their participation
— Communicate frequently and openly
— Integrate and engage with project management
— Engage with middle managers

To foster cooperation with the people of Goma, health workers embraced these best practices. “They went deep into the neighborhoods, explaining the disease and the treatments. They talked to leaders. They convinced more than 1,000 people to take an experimental vaccine.” Within months, they were able to control the outbreak in Goma. 

With sponsorship by the WHO, health workers were able to dedicate adequate resources to the problem. They then engaged with the community and developed advocates for change. They communicated with citizens, educating them on the disease and the treatments. In doing so, they were able to build momentum and encourage enough people to receive the vaccine.

Health workers used change management to provide life-saving interventions to a community that was resistant to change, potentially saving millions. Change management is well-worth our attention. 

Change Management: How Did We Get Here? 

The field of change management is young but complex. How did we get here? It will help to briefly travel back in time to understand the foundations of the formalized practices that flourish today.

Rooted in Psychology

Change management has roots in the study of human behavior. The intellectual beginnings trace to the early 1900’s, into the work of the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. When looking at rites of passage in different cultures, Gennep began to notice common behaviors. 

Even though he was looking at a variety of different cultures, he noticed that there were three overall states that ran common in the experience of social change. The first state was a “pre-liminal” stage, where the coming change was acknowledged and prepared for by the community. 

The middle state was the “liminal” stage, which he defined as a threshold of ambiguity and disorientation. Change managers everywhere will chuckle at the accuracy of adjectives like “ambiguity” and “disorientation” when describing the liminality of change. 

The final state in a rite of passage was “post-liminal,” where the transition in status was recognized and normalized in the community. Across cultures and belief systems, Gennep was able to identify these common movements in the human experience of change. 

By the mid-20th century, when psychology began to blossom into a robust and complex discipline of study, Gennep’s three states gained popularity. In the 1940’s, Kurt Lewin became a pioneer in social and organizational psychology by turning his attention to understanding change.  Lewin borrowed from Gennep’s structure and described a three step process for change: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing.

Business Consulting & Change Management: A Love Story

There was some academic buzz from several sources in the years following Lewin’s work, but no substantial leap from psychology to business had yet been made. This changed in 1982, when a consultant at McKinsey named Julien Phillips published an article in the journal Human Resource Management. 

In his article, Phillips introduced a model for organizational change management specifically designed with businesses in mind. His model defines four steps that were intended to build momentum for change within an organization: creating a sense of concern, developing a specific commitment to change, pushing for major change, and reinforcing the new course of action. 

In the years following, change management took off. Books were published; articles became more frequent; new models were advanced. Businesses were in need of assistance with change, and consultants pursued thought leadership that would help address this need and grow their business. Peters, Waterman, Kotter, and dozens more developed robust philosophies and methods for change, and organizations bought in and helped the field to grow.

Today, there are as many models for change management as there are consulting organizations. Looking for a 4 step process? Try PDCA. Interested in 5 steps? Try ADKAR. How about a 6 step approach? Try Pulse. Need more? Try Kotter’s 8 Steps, or Prosci’s 9 Steps. There are symposiums and communities of practice such as Prosci and ACMP; and naturally a veritable cornucopia of certifications abound. Change management is so saturated with models and approaches that some even try to push “beyond change management,” whatever that means. 

100 Frameworks, 1 Idea

The Gunter Group does not subscribe to any one framework. Our clients are too unique for a single set of steps to be the answer. We proudly proclaim ourselves to be “methodologically agnostic,” much more interested in understanding the organization than blindly peddling a process that fails to fit the people it is meant to help. 

That is not to say that we don’t know the methods. Our consultants have expertise in Prosci and ADKAR; we are trained in Six Sigma; we attend local ACMP events. We do not, however, learn a method to become disciples. Rather, we expose ourselves to frameworks and study methodological vocabulary to leverage those aspects of the frameworks that might be helpful for our work. Our clients appreciate a tailored approach that is grounded in the best practices of 100 frameworks.

This approach to consulting reveals something obvious: all change management methods are basically the same. Decades of scholarship and praxis have not changed the core phases of change, and wisdom that dates back a century still lies at the heart of responsible change. There are 3 basic phases in change (before, during, and after), and every change management framework simply iterates on the approach taken within those three phases.

So what runs common throughout all change management? What activities should you keep in mind as you tailor the process to your specific organization? We’ll run through the basics below.

Step 1: Pre-Change

Change is coming. Perhaps it is a changing regulation, a new technology, an upcoming merger, or a poor quarterly report; whatever the reason, you see change on the horizon and understand that preparation should naturally precede. Though the various frameworks approach this preparation differently, three key activities take place during pre-change: analysis, planning, and influencing.

Analysis comes first. Before you can plan for change, you have to understand the people and processes that will be impacted. Who will be your champions, sponsors, and resistors? Helpful tools for this phase include stakeholder matrices, process maps, and change impact assessments. The change manager must also understand the change itself. Without a powerful grasp on the “why” that is causing the change, planning and execution will absolutely fall short. 

Plans come next. Change management often occurs somewhere between an intersection of strategy, people, and execution, and planning is the bridge that brings these three elements into alignment. This includes planning  for the change itself, communication that will accompany the change, and the training that will make the change possible. 

Influencing should follow. ADKAR describes this as fostering awareness and desire. Prosci speaks of sponsors and champions. Others schools of thought suggest using concepts like vision or need, and still others recommend introducing guilt and anxiety. We have found that a cocktail of all these approaches is usually the best way forward.

Step 2: Change

You’ve spent time interviewing stakeholders, mapping processes, and planning training sessions; now it’s time to introduce the change. This is messy, confusing, and difficult for the people impacted so change managers often rely most heavily on a methodology in this phase. However, mid-change is where a generalist approach could be most advantageous, adapting to the ongoing needs of the situation. There are four activities that always occur in any well-managed change approach: communication, training, changing, and reinforcement.

The most important activity surrounding change is communication. This is where you lean heavily on the results of your analyses. You know who needs communication, what they need to hear, and how it will affect their work flow. Armed with this information, you can plan accordingly, communicating the upcoming movements to the right people, early and often.

Another helpful activity is training. This often goes hand-in-hand with communication, and is best when designed from the viewpoint of those impacted. Recent developments of tools such as Human Centered Design help maximize the value of training.

At a certain point, the change will happen. Kotter recommends an approach of small-slicing the change to create short term wins, but often the change manager is not the one driving the project timeline. When it comes to go-lives, change managers serve a thousand roles. They become SME’s for elements of the change impact; they serve as blockers attempting to remove obstacles from stakeholders; they act as cheerleaders or bulldogs, whatever is called for in the moment. 

As change occurs, another important activity is reinforcement. This activity truly begins in pre-change and extends through the end of post-change, but it becomes extremely important in the midst of the change. There are approaches coming out of organizational psychology that can be helpful here, such as Vroom’s Theory of Motivation, McClellan’s Theory of Three Needs, or McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.

Step 3: Post-Change

Follow-through is a must. As Gennep would say: the new status must be confirmed and the change must be reincorporated as the new norm. This is done a little differently in each framework, but necessary activities include reinforcement and reanalysis. 

As said above, reinforcement is heavily featured in post-change activities. The goal is longevity, driving the change through ongoing champions and dwindling resistance. Success is celebrated, momentum is reinforced, and improvements are consolidated. Through these activities, the new order is anchored in behavior.

One often-forgotten activity that takes place after the change occurs is reanalysis. Throughout this whole process, you’ve generated a mountain of information, from stakeholder input to process metrics. Current-state assessments performed before, during, and after the change are a great way to analyze that information, evaluating the effect of the change. 

Let’s go back to Ebola in Goma. Upon review, we can find the three stages of change management in this case study. In advance of providing saving care, health workers analyzed the neighborhoods they would need to enter, planned ways to connect people with treatments, and influenced communities by winning over their leaders. They communicated the need and effect of the cure, trained communities to embrace treatment through a successful pilot of an experimental vaccine, and built momentum for changing attitudes. After change began to take effect, their efforts were reinforced by positive clinical outcomes and they reanalyzed future need for treatment with ongoing screenings. 

Change management is the study of human behavior. Human beings hate change, yet change is unavoidable. As professionals in change management, we bring a people-centered approach to our work.  This is undeniably good for business, as evidenced by a flourishing market of change management consultants and frameworks. But often the stakes of change management are higher than the bottom line, and the WHO’s heroic efforts in Goma are a testament to that.

THE ADVENTURES OF A GENERALIST

Birds of a feather flock together. 
Like seeks like.
You are known by the company you keep.

How do sayings like these burn themselves into our brains? It helps that they’re short and pithy, but I don’t think that’s the only reason. Perhaps a statement like “birds of a feather” has power because it’s true. And what truth lies beneath the cliches above? It matters who your friends are.

There’s plenty of science to back this up. A number of studies expand on the concept of homophily (coming from the Greek for “love of what’s similar”). Study after study shows that we seek out, consciously or subconsciously, people who are like us. And even when we differ from those around us, we start to mold our actions to be more like them. The people we spend our time with will influence our opinions, speech, music preferences, and even our health. 

All these studies point in one direction: the people around you literally help shape you into the person you are, and the person you will be tomorrow. 

It really does matter who your friends are. 

Looking at how a person spends their time will tell you a lot about that person. If I spend my evenings on hiking trails and in softball leagues, you would call me an athlete. If I get home from work most days and sit down at the piano for several hours of practice, you would call me a musician. If I head to the mountains every weekend with skis strapped to the top of my car, you would describe me as an avid skier. 

But what if I do all of these things? What if I spend my evenings and weekends doing all sorts of activities that don’t have very much in common? What would you call me in that case? 

You can call me a generalist. 

A Generalist Fits Everything Into a Day’s Work

At TGG, we’re generalists. Our consultants come from different backgrounds: some come from healthcare or finance, others come straight from the military or academia. My own background includes a 6 year chunk of time in the seminary. Every consultant at TGG has a unique background, and we bring these backgrounds to our work, no matter the client or industry. 

TGG also houses a diverse set of perspectives and approaches to business environments. We aren’t just project managers or data analysts; we do these things with a holistic perspective, one that spans industries, business cycles, and clients. 

Here’s an example. A client in healthcare might hire us to perform the work of a business analyst, collecting requirements and mapping processes for a new service offering. The person we place, however, is never just a business analyst. We provide someone who also has experience in change management or project delivery. The client benefits from having a generalist instead of a specialist, because the result (such as requirements gathering, in our example) is better tailored toward successful delivery. We perform work within context, bringing together lessons we have learned in a variety of environments to maximize the value of our present work. 

Generalists excel in all environments without having to master them. At TGG, we cultivate individuals who can thrive in ambiguity, rather than in any one particular familiar system. And the way we spend our time after the work day has a big effect on how we do that well. 

A Generalist Networks Broadly

You can tell a generalist by the shape of their calendar. As a case study, let’s take a quick look at mine. 

Over the past few weeks, my calendar shows a rather adventurous exploration of topics. This is the story of a generalist. Outside of working hours, I’ve had a number of networking events crammed into the margins. Here are a few examples: 

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture on artificial intelligence in medicine. My colleagues and I have recently been working on articulating the impact of AI on the future of business, and were excited for the chance to reflect on advances in AI and machine learning in the healthcare industry. 

A week later, you could find me drinking coffee with change managers and discussing ways to use change management as a tool to better serve strategic planning by business leaders. Consultants in our People Practice have recently been synthesizing varying perspectives on change management to identify the key phases and activities that all good change management engagements must include (look out for a thought leadership piece on our blog soon!). This was a great chance for us to carry this conversation into a community of change management practitioners. 

A few days after that, I spent my evening at a talk by Kevin Ciccotti on the topic of how good leadership inspires good work. After Kevin finished speaking, I sat at a table with professional mentors, small business leaders, product owners, and project managers and discussed how we could put Kevin’s words into practice in our various industries and positions. Conversations like this spill into all the work that I do as a TGG consultant. 

Two days later, I swung by an early morning roundtable discussion on project management in manufacturing environments. Everyone in the room had experience leading projects, and we went around the room for an hour asking questions and sharing advice about how to make projects better. At TGG we recently created an internal bank of resources to help our consultants who are managing projects; roundtable discussions like these are a good way for us to test drive our resources with a group of experienced practitioners. 

Artificial intelligence. Change management. Strategic planning. Reflecting on Leadership. Project management. Why all these different things in one month? Because that’s just what we do at TGG. We specialize in quickly immersing ourselves into new contexts, bringing in a new perspective that adds value to the system. 

Our time inside and outside of the work day is an adventure. We get to learn about a hundred different topics and thrill at the chance to make connections between them. This enables us to bring a broad, integrated perspective to our work. 

At TGG our success comes from schedules like mine. It matters who you talk to. As generalists we talk to everyone. Spending our time like this helps to form us–speaking with such a wide array of professionals and therefore, helps shape who we are.

Interested in learning more about the life of a generalist? Check out this book on the subject. Want to hear more about how our generalist approach benefits our clients? Check out a couple case studies of how we successfully bring a broad perspective to our clients’ challenges.

OUR NON-NEGOTIABLES: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

At The Gunter Group, the leadership traits and characteristics that define us are our Non-Negotiables: Collaborative, Integrity, Intellectual Curiosity, Thrives in Ambiguity, Emotional Intelligence, and Grounded Confidence. These traits and characteristics guide us every day in our interactions with clients, each other, and our community.

At the Gunter Group, we consider EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, or “EQ,” essential for understanding and solving complex problems. In short, emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage emotions in yourself and others. For us, it’s about more than accurately reading and adapting to social cues, although this is an important part of EQ. It’s pulling from the depths of our intelligence, experience, and heart to show up fully for ourselves, each other, and our clients. It’s an approach that not only feels great but gets the best possible results.

While emotional intelligence is often referred to as a “soft” skill, we think of it as quite a hard one – both in terms of tangible value and difficulty to master. I recall taking an EQ assessment early in my career for a job in the hospitality industry. What I thought of as sophisticated and mature responses at the time I now think of as cringeworthy. “Where was my self-awareness?!?” I think now, after gaining much experience and insight in the years since. It certainly didn’t come easily or overnight. I’ve learned that other skills can be taught, and as consultants we’re accustomed to a steep learning curve, but EQ requires serious commitment to truly master and cannot be built overnight, hence why it is one of the most important traits we look for when growing our team.

As stewards of our client relationships, our consultants must demonstrate the highest degree of emotional intelligence. With this in place, we can trust them to assess and respond to situations appropriately, enlist support as needed, persevere through challenges, and moderate their own impulses, especially during times of stress. Exceptional EQ also means being aware of potential burnout, building individual resilience, and integrating work into a fulfilling and healthy life. When our consultants thrive in and out of the office, they deliver outstanding value for the long haul.

Furthermore, emotional intelligence is essential for our other five non-negotiables, enabling and amplifying our most important traits. For example:

— Self-awareness, a component of EQ, keeps the ego in check (grounded confidence).

— We can sense when someone feels unheard or steamrolled and adjust accordingly to cultivate trust within a group (collaboration).

— Connecting to our own emotions keeps us rooted in a strong moral compass (integrity).

— Giving, receiving, and integrating feedback makes continuous learning and improvement possible (intellectual curiosity).

— High EQ people are better able to maintain optimism and intrinsic motivation in the face of uncertainty and rapid change (thrives in ambiguity).

Research shows that emotional intelligence in the workplace helps establish the psychological safety proven to increase group intelligence which then drives innovation. As one of our non-negotiables, EQ enables us to challenge the status quo and deliver success without pushing too hard or coming in like a bull in a china shop. 

Finally, when we enter a new engagement, understanding perceptions is crucial. I’ve been on the other side, when your company brings in an “outsider.” It can feel like a stranger who knows nothing about you or your work telling you how to do your job. We understand a degree of skepticism or even resistance to partnering outside your organization. Our clients have tremendous ownership and expertise – they are right to be protective of their work! It’s from a place of empathy and self-awareness that we navigate the at times tricky role of “third party” to eventually become true partners and trusted advisors. With emotional intelligence as a cornerstone, we know from experience that our non-negotiables will always lead to the best possible outcome for everyone.

TGG RANKED AS #4 BEST SMALL FIRM TO WORK FOR BY CONSULTING MAGAZINE

This month, The Gunter Group was recognized as Consulting magazine’s #4 “Best Small Firm to Work For” in the nation.

TGG Partners, Mike and Ashleigh Gunter, attended the Best Firms to Work For gala awards dinner on September 19th at the University Club of Chicago. “Mike and I were honored to accept this award on behalf of our firm,” said Ashleigh Gunter. “This is a wonderful accomplishment and recognition of our supportive team culture and values-based approach to leadership.”

The Best Firm rankings were based on an annual survey of 11,000 consultants, representing more than 300 firms. The survey measured six different categories of employee satisfaction including: Client Engagement, Firm Culture, Firm Leadership, Career Development, Work/Life Balance, and Compensation & Benefits.

TGG ranked #1 in the Best Small Firm’s Leadership category as well as a top five firm in the Work/Life Balance, Compensation & Benefits, and Career Development categories and in the top 10 for the Client Engagement and Firm Culture categories.

“We are building a sustainable firm, and in it for the long-haul,” said Mike Gunter. “We will continue to grow and build in a way that is consistent with our values.” 

Learn more about TGG’s rankings in Consulting magazine’s September 2019 issue.

The Gunter Group is a management consulting firm headquartered in Oregon, serving the west coast with offices in Portland and Bend, Oregon, and Reno, Nevada. Learn more about us and the services we offer here.

TGG COMPANY RETREAT: A CHANCE TO CONCENTRATE ON WHAT COUNTS

Employee satisfaction is a tough nut to crack. 

Keeping employees satisfied is worth it: Forbes found that satisfied employees are more productive and profitable, and more likely to stick around. Everyone can agree that increased output and limited turnover are consequences that are worth investment.

To help companies understand their employees, there are a number of organizations that try to quantify what makes employees happy. If you were assuming that the sole factor in employee satisfaction is good pay, then you would be incorrect. Pay usually doesn’t even make the top of the list. 

Don’t believe me? Look at the data. The Conference Board polled 1,500 workers and found that the single most influential component in job satisfaction was “People at Work.” Wages factored all the way down the list at 11th. Your coworkers contribute more to your job satisfaction than your paycheck.

Other studies corroborate. Boston Consulting Group surveyed 200,000 people around the world on a number of topics, and found that the 4 categories that contributed the most to “happiness on the job” were: Appreciation for Work, Good Relationship with Colleagues, Work-Life Balance, and Good Relationship with Superiors. Gallup found almost identical results in their survey.

The point is this: to keep your employees satisfied and engaged, you have to treat them well. If they like being around one another, like being around their boss, and feel valued for their contributions, then they will be happier and more engaged. 

This is where The Gunter Group shines. 

Focusing on What Matters

Last week, The Gunter Group hosted its annual Company Offsite Retreat. Consultants gathered in Sunriver, OR with their partners, children, and pets, and enjoyed a weekend away from work reconnecting with their colleagues and their families.  

In addition to a number of social activities, TGG also used the Offsite Retreat as an opportunity to reflect on what matters. Mike and Ashleigh Gunter, the Founding and Managing Partners of the firm, created a new award internal to the firm. They decided to periodically highlight individuals who exemplify the TGG’s Non-Negotiables. This time around, Mike and Ashleigh highlighted 3 consultants: Ande Olsen, Beth Woods, and Kara O’Connor. 

Earlier this year, this team came together outside of the workplace. Ande ruptured his Achilles Tendon in an accident. After surgery, Beth offered to let Ande stay with her family for the first few days of his recovery. Once he was back on his feet, Kara offered to switch cars with Ande so he didn’t have to drive a stick shift with his left leg in a boot. On top of this, Mike and Ashleigh helped Ande with some delivered meals and allowed him to be flexible with his work hours during recovery. 

To the client, things remained business as usual; behind the scenes was a team of individuals that supported and cared for one another in ways that extended beyond the office. 

Mike and Ashleigh set out to create a company that puts its people first, and the Company Offsite was yet another example of their success in doing so. And as the polls suggest, an environment like this contributes to success. TGG not only continues to grow year after year, but they consistently rank among the best places to work. TGG has been recognized by the Oregon Business Journal as one of the Best Places to Work in Oregon for five years in a row. Just last week, Consulting Magazine placed TGG 4th on the list of “Top Small Firms to Work For” in the country. 

Interested in learning more about The Gunter Group? Check out our recent features in Consulting Magazine and the Oregon Business Journal. 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & YOUR BUSINESS: 3 THINGS TO KNOW

For Starters: This is Not Skynet

Artificial intelligence is all around you. You have been using it for a while, probably without even knowing it. Gmail finishes your sentences. Your phone corrects your spelling and grammar. Instagram decides what to show you next. Spotify creates perfect playlists of new music. Advertisements know exactly what you’re thinking. You use AI hundreds of times a day.

For some of us, this is an uneasy truth at first glance. We imagine computers ruling our world with cold efficiency, slowly robbing us of our freedoms. But AI is not the villain from our favorite dystopian movies. As fun as it is to get lost in the world of Terminator‘s Skynet, I,Robot‘s VIKI, or Captain Marvel‘s Supreme Intelligence, AI is far less sinister in real life. 

AI is a tool, helping to solve problems that require enormous computing power. It’s lines of code that process millions of haystacks worth of data to pull out a single needle in a matter of seconds. 

The point: AI is everywhere, and it’s not the far-off villain of Isaac Asimov horror fiction. AI is a tool that is seamlessly integrated into hundreds of your daily experiences. It’s not just for nerds anymore. 

Especially in business, there are a few things you should know about this tool if you expect to remain competitive in the coming decade.

3 Things You Need to Know:

(1) AI is Now a Commodity

Until recently, artificial intelligence was mostly the subject of science fiction writers; today it is the subject of your average software engineer. The application of AI has come a long way.

The business community has witnessed an integration of AI on a grand scale. Ubiquitous in all markets, it is written into many of the functions that we use on a daily basis. Furthermore, companies like Amazon and Google have used unimaginably large collections of data to perfect AI tools, and have commoditized them in the form of products like AWS and Google Cloud.

Some have chosen to ignore AI, not seeing value in tools they can barely understand. Meanwhile, fields that lean heavily on AI (like data analysis and business intelligence) have expanded rapidly in recent years. For example, CIO.com lists “BI Analyst” as the most in-demand tech job of 2019. AI is changing business.

A great example comes from an interview with the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan School professor Erik Brynjolfsson. He describes an AI program that reviewed recorded conversations of successful sales, and then listened in on active conversations between salespeople and potential customers. While they were on a sales call, the program used the data from successful pitches to make suggestions about words or phrases that the sales person could slip into their conversation to help close the sale. This small application of AI boosted sales by 50%.

Brynjolfsson strongly believes that the only thing holding businesses back is a lack of imagination by business executives on how to use these new tools in their businesses.

(2) Your Competitors Are Using AI

Even if you have a few data analysts on staff, you’re most likely not getting the most out of your software. Since AI is everywhere, it’s hard for CIO’s, tech leads, or business owners to find and use the full range of the tools that are available to them. For instance:

your CRM could be generating leads for your sales department in places they wouldn’t have thought to look

your supply chain solution could be dramatically cutting waste by ordering supplies to be delivered for the lowest shipping cost at the exact moment they are needed  

your security solution could be identifying fraud and malware threats before they strike, saving you the time and money you would have spent recovering from one employee clicking one email

your ERP could be spotting spending trends and suggesting campaigns to your marketing team 

You might ask yourself, Is it worth all the hassle? Do I really need to do all this? I’m getting along fine without AI, why would I change? If you’re asking yourself this question, you’re looking backwards, not forwards. Failing to make the most of AI is not just a missed opportunity; failing to utilize AI is an increasingly significant liability. 

The proof is in the numbers. Netflix claims that a machine learning tool saves it $1 billion a year. Amazon used AI to influence the decision-time of online shoppers and cut it by more than a third. HBR found that companies using AI for sales were able to increase their leads by more than 50%, reduce call time by 60%, and realize cost reductions of 40%. If you don’t take advantage of AI, you will lose out to someone who is.

AI is now a necessity; it’s simply integrated into everything you do. Your CRM, ERP, website, and applications are all using AI. If you aren’t making the most of it, then this low-hanging fruit is spoiling inches from your hand. That is, if it’s not being snatched up by your competition.

(3) The Catch: It’s Not Magic

AI is certainly low-hanging fruit, and it doesn’t take an enormous investment to get more out of it. But it’s not a magic solution that will fix everything. AI is a complicated tool, and getting the most out of it requires knowing how to use it. Utilizing AI takes work. And worse, if you don’t use it correctly, then AI could actually lead you in the wrong direction. Ray Dalio put it best, “Be cautious about trusting AI without deep understanding.”

AI is a tool, and just like any tool it can be used improperly. With AI, bad input means bad output. There’s an art to using this tool.

Here’s a simple illustration. At one time or another, most of us have used the online radio service, Pandora. The process is simple. Tell Pandora a song or an artist that you like, and it searches an enormous music library to play a song that is similar to your input. You rate the suggestion in order to help Pandora hone in on your taste. This is AI at work, learning from your preferences.

But a tool is only as good as its users. If you vote thumbs down on your favorite song, then Pandora won’t play it again. Or if Pandora hadn’t invested in a large and diverse enough music library, it wouldn’t be able to return songs similar to the ones you like. The tool needs to be used properly in order for you to get the most of it. 

AI solutions in business are no different: you need to use the tool properly in order for it to work properly.

So How Do I Do it Right?

There are three main components of a good AI implementation in business: know yourself, know what you need, and use the right data. If you don’t have all three of these components then at best you’re not getting the most out of AI, and at worst the tool will lead you in the wrong direction.

First: Know Yourself

An AI solution isn’t worth the investment if it doesn’t solve the specific problems facing your business. This makes sense in theory, but is hard for executive leaders to get right in practice. 

The reason for this is not hard to grasp. CIO’s or VP’s of Sales have deep knowledge of their own departments and the business verticals relevant to them, but good tech integrations require organization-wide implementation, and this always pushes beyond the knowledge of a particular individual or department. It’s hard to see beyond the boundaries of your silo.

We begin every project with a current-state assessment. This seems like a logical first step, but it’s often overlooked. It involves gathering requirements that clarify the current-state needs and processes that are affected by a solution. This gives you a clearer understanding of what you need in the future. Many executives assume they already know this, but even the best leaders have blind spots. 

A current-state assessment is the best starting point for any kind of project work, but it is especially important with AI. If you don’t have a crystal clear understanding of what you need from an AI solution, then all that will change is the speed in which you receive unusable or incorrect answers to your business problems. 

A worthwhile software integration must always begin with a careful look inward, with an up-to-date assessment of requirements gathering and process mapping. Failing to do this has its consequences. If AI is integrated into an organization’s workflow without this look at your current-state, the result is solutions that don’t fit your business or market. 

Second: Use the Correct Inputs

What sets real-life AI apart from fictional AI is one key aspect: general intelligence.  AI can solve some problems faster and better than humans, but it can’t think for itself. 

For example, AI programs have bested world champions in Chess, Go, Texas Hold’Em, and Jeopardy!. But there’s an important detail: the same AI that beat champions in chess can’t even play the game of Texas Hold’Em. Another example: an AI program has to sample tens of thousands of photos before it can identify animal pictures with any reliability, whereas a 2-year-old can correctly identify cats after only seeing one example. 

But it’s not just games and image recognition: there are darker examples of AI falling short in big ways:

Developers at MIT were excited about the accuracy of their AI facial recognition software, until they realized that they forgot to build inputs into the software that could identify darker skin tones.

Biases built into AI solutions in law enforcement yielded inaccurate results with huge consequences, such as falsely singling out minorities for recidivism or counseling police to target ethnic neighborhoods. 

Amazon used an AI recruitment tool that spent 4 years sorting out the resumes of female applicants, even specifically flagging the word “women” as cause for downgrading a resume. 

AI tools are narrow, specialized solutions: you can’t expect to solve problems without teaching it how. It takes work to shape the tool to work correctly. Well-defined and clearly-articulated problems are inseparable from successful AI integrations. The payoff comes once a computer knows how to do a task properly, and can do it at a speed and volume that humans could never achieve. The good news: this work is absolutely within your reach, and most off-the-shelf software has easy-to-use feedback loops built in to help you!

Third: Use the Right Data

Imagine searching through a deck of playing cards to find the midday market report. Or searching through a 4-pack of crayons looking for an exact match to Robin’s Egg Blue. If your data set isn’t large enough or doesn’t fit your questions, then you aren’t going to find meaningful answers. This is especially true for artificial intelligence. 

This can be daunting for someone new to AI. How do I know if data is high-quality? How do I know if I have a sufficient quantity? Without the help of experienced input, executives might be making data purchases that are unhelpful, or even harmful. The consequence of using AI with insufficient or bad data is inaccurate solutions and misdirection. 

One Last Consideration: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Your business is unique, but your problem is not. Why spend time and money custom-fitting an AI solution to your business when a tool has already been developed for just that problem? Finding the right solution might just be a matter of having someone who knows the market helping you find the solution that fits your business.

Using Artificial Intelligence Well: A Case Study

A client of ours was experiencing stagnation in their financial and customer growth for the first time in their history, and couldn’t identify the reason for the slowing growth. They turned to The Gunter Group to help them revamp their digital strategy in order to expand to new customers.

This client had years of data on their customers that they didn’t know how to leverage. They offered great service, but they didn’t understand their customers’ behavior. So we started there.

We began with collecting their data, which consisted of several different types that needed to be aggregated into one system. We helped them build a unified repository, so that any insights they sought maximized the value of their data. In addition to helping them improve the quality of their data, we also helped them refine the insights they hoped to gather. At the beginning of the process, we engaged our experienced Business Analysts to help them integrate their knowledge of their organization’s structure and business goals into the process. 

With the 3 important ingredients in place, we were ready to make the most of an AI integration to explore the data. Our team helped craft complex algorithms to create customer segmentation, cohort development, churn prediction, and market share analysis. They were able to use these insights to launch highly effective marketing campaigns, and began a path to predictive analytics to enable real-time interventions in the future. 

This kind of example abounds in the business community today. Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a commodity, available to all. You can’t afford to stay behind the curve. 

The Gunter Group partners with organizations in Portland, Vancouver, Bend, Salem, Reno, and Sacramento, helping them to know themselves and seize the low-hanging fruit of AI. If you are interested in learning how we can help you to do the same, reach out today! 

USING AN ARCHEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DELIVER TRANSFORMATIONAL DATA ANALYSIS

Archeologists seek to understand human behavior through stuff – physical stuff. These artifacts of human existence are often ravaged by time, leaving the subtlest of clues for us to examine. Without context, archaeologists piece together the puzzle and hypothesize why humans of the past made certain decisions and how they interacted with each other and their environment.

As a former archaeologist, I’ve transitioned from the academic world into management consulting. At first glance, the two may seem unrelated but I’ve discovered that my background gives me a unique perspective and a surprisingly transferable skill set. I certainly know my way around a transected excavation pit and a trowel, but the skills I’m talking about are more akin to business intelligence, behavior science, and organizational development. Additionally, the academic discipline itself, like most in the liberal arts, provided an incredibly strong interdisciplinary education and honed my ability to learn new things and synthesize complex data quickly.

Archaeological education, training, fieldwork, and research commonly incorporate a wide range of disciplines, from botany and geology to sociology and economics. One day I might read a dense medical journal and the next study climate data, all while making novel connections to illuminate meaningful patterns. By now, I’m sure you can see how this would translate to a more corporate setting where business analysts, data scientists, and market strategists regularly flex the same muscles. What I love most about consulting is taking these insights and the scientific method and turning them into action so clients can better predict, understand, and adapt to their customers’ behavior.

For example, I recently helped a client understand how wait times impacted the customer experience and subsequent loyalty. Their assumption was that lower volume would reduce wait time thereby increasing volume again. I rolled up my sleeves to excavate their data and find out if this proved true. It turned out to be more complicated than that so I dug deeper to uncover the sweet spot at which wait times, volume, and customer loyalty could work in harmony to optimize results.

Such a dynamic situation can be difficult to articulate so I leveraged a commonly used framework developed by in-depth ecological research: the predator/prey model. When applied to the above business scenario, our analysis revealed a pattern that led us to actionable insights. We determined the retail equivalent of “ecosystem equilibrium” which indicated an ideal range for how long customers could be kept waiting without negatively impacting loyalty. We are currently testing our hypothesis of the maximum theoretical wait time in the real world. By engineering specific wait times, they will be able to collect additional data which will then be fed back into our model and drive continuous improvement.

Another recent example of archaeological expertise adapted to the business world comes from our work with a large retailer. This client was puzzled as to why one location showed double the sales compared to another only a mile away. Customer profiles, inventory, staffing, etc. were all so similar so why the disparity? 

For this scenario, I invoked another scientific model: least cost pathways. The least cost pathways model essentially helps us determine the path of least resistance using weighted costs associated with various routes. In archaeology, this model might help explain seemingly odd trade patterns or dietary choices. In a modern business scenario, the same approach can be used to map human movement, both physical and virtual, and optimize location of brick-and-mortar stores, button placement on a website, or product placement on a shelf. 

Through this lens, our analysis revealed that the under performing store required a U-turn and a left hand turn across four lanes of traffic. Meanwhile, the other store required only an easy right hand turn off a freeway entrance. Given this information, which location would you choose to do your shopping? Suddenly customer behavior made complete sense and store managers were able to direct their attention to the right issues and avoid unnecessary time and expense trying to solve the wrong problem. Going forward, executives have revised their strategy for key real estate and business decisions to incorporate these insights and avoid costly mistakes.

The potential of data analysis, especially in this age of “big data,” is immense but it’s important to use appropriate models to help explain that data and to ask the right questions in the first place. By thinking like an archeologist and working like a data scientist, I’m able to solve puzzles that save clients time and money.