"Are you solving people's real problems? Are you doing it effectively? Can you read the unspoken wishes of your own clients? Do you have the best of the best in every position? Answer whether you do and whether you enjoy it. If not, stop doing it right now."
Ján Uriga | Owner @iNNO8 s.r.o.
I don't know. I think. Maybe. Some of the most common responses from business owners and CEOs when we discuss the behavior of their customers and other players in the market they want to conquer.
Tell me then how they want to come up with a product or service that will make them money in a way that makes them happy. Tell me how they want to get out of the rat race for the best price in the commodity market. Tell me how they want to deal with that annoying junior buyer who only wants a bigger discount. How, when he doesn't even know what he wants or why he wants it. And price is not the answer.
Understanding customer behaviour, the so-called customer journey, and being able to deliver a great customer experience is the path to greater profitability. Higher margins. Mutual satisfaction. But hand on heart, who can really do that in the Czech-Slovak space? Especially in an environment of permanently overloaded companies? That's why I invited Ján Uriga, owner of the consulting agency iNNO8 s.r.o. , with whom I discussed practical steps that you can implement in your company without much preparation and investment. For example, I asked...
🔸 What are the peculiarities of the customer journey in B2B?
🔸 How much do we understand what the customer wants from us?
🔸 How to deal with a junior buyer?
🔸 How to kick-start innovation in overloaded companies?
🔸 How to rock a company with existing management?
HOW TO IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT MINIMAL COST (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. If you like anything about what I'm doing or don't want to miss any of the next episodes of Ignition or my newsletter, then run over to my site right now. At www.martinhurych.com you can sign up for my newsletter, which already has over 1,100 owners and CEOs of medium and small engineering, technology and manufacturing companies. Today's Ignition will be about innovation in the customer journey, customer experience and how to get it all properly tuned in. I have a really special guest here today, Jan Uriga. Hi.
Ján Uriga
Hey, I'll say hi.
Why is he an assertive optimist?
Martin Hurych
Jano is the owner of the boutique consultancy iNNO8, also leads the innovation community within Red Button EDU and is an expert partner at PwC. In addition, before the shoot I learned that as of yesterday he is also a global expert on innovation in banking. Before we get started, I found in the preparation that you are an assertive optimist. How should I interpret that?
Ján Uriga
Most of the things we believe need to be done are met with resistance. By not being assertive, we get muzzled, we get muzzled by those who are higher up in those positions who have money, and then those UUs who also have a good idea and can argue it and prove it get convinced. That is why I think I need to be more assertive if all the data and all the experience and all the evidence speaks in my favour. I can't sit in a corner somewhere and wait for something to happen. There is a need to be assertive, we need to be able to have that level of assertiveness, especially when it comes to good things.
What connects all his career steps?
Martin Hurych
You've had a long and quite colourful career, a few changes of industries and companies. You've worked in HR, you have a PhD in psychology, and now you're in business innovation. I'm not interested in the whole career, but what is the red thread that connects all these beads?
Ján Uriga
It's just that psychology. I didn't go into psychology with the idea that I'm interested in helping people, I went in with the idea that I want to understand the Oudis, and through understanding the Oudis, then bring that into the most common thing we do, which is work. De facto 8 to 10 hours a day we are at work, it's part of our identity and that's where I think there is a need to bring the application of that theory that many people despise. I'm such an applied behavioral psychologist, as that's what I've done and just to add, that PhD of mine is in social intelligence research on leaders. It doesn't matter that there are 10 of them or a thousand of them, they have to be able to implement that social intelligence. I've been researching this for 8 years, I understand it a little bit and I'm implementing it very strongly in companies and organizations today.
How legible are we as humans to others?
Martin Hurych
How are we as humans simple animals? How are we externally legible to someone with a PhD in psychology?
Ján Uriga
I can not only predict but control 95% of your behaviour. I've had to be careful not to engage in marketing or advertising things that are over the line of good for Oudie. One has more so-called heuristics or shortcuts and thus can be predictable for many Oudis. What we cannot control as OUDIs is how the environment or conditions will affect us. Therefore, if a great light shines on me, I will react, if the wind blows on me, I would say it will make my hair dry, but I don't have more of it. Those conditions are very important, they affect our behavior and surprise many. Someone will say to themselves as a leader, when a difficult situation comes, I'll handle it, that situation will come and he'll spill the beans. This is what needs to be studied, but not just scientifically, but especially so that as leaders we are partners to those OUDI, not their bosses. This is important.
What does the customer journey look like?
Martin Hurych
I said today we're going to talk about innovation and customer experience, customer journey. We've had a couple of these podcasts here before, but they've all been mostly about the IT environment. Let's introduce the customer journey on something tangible. This podcast is for the tech bubble, for manufacturing companies, for consulting firms, how do I imagine what the customer journey is outside of IT?
Ján Uriga
The customer journey is the sequence of steps that a customer goes through when solving their problem. The very beginning of it all is the so-called customer need. It has a nice definition and that is that a customer need is a problem that a customer has and he has decided to solve it by buying a product or service. That's where it starts. Before somebody runs down that road of figuring out how to solve that problem, they first find out that they have that problem.
Then, when he says he needs a better car, he starts looking for a way to fulfill his need for a better car. That search is the first step on that journey. All he has to do is look at social media, because people are more driven by opinion than advertising, and that's the first step of that customer journey. He then comes to that portal and looks at what others are saying about it and there we are de facto already making a decision under the influence of that majority and we take the car that the people around me have. That is the second step and that is the decision. When I decide to buy it, then comes the buying and then I use the car, so all in all we are talking about the customer journey as some 7 steps. I find out I have a problem, then I find a way to solve it in a particular product or service, I consider from the alternatives which one I'm going to buy, but 95% of the decisions we make are based on the pressure of the social environment. If that car was expensive, I'd make a pro and con, but basically you're sitting in that car, so the color of that car maybe only matters to someone and you need to be inside.
I'll digress briefly, I've now returned from a business trip in Shanghai, where the vast majority of cars are now electric. When you ask those Oudis there what kind of car they need, they say the biggest display and the biggest display. Whether it's red or whether it has acceleration, the average speed of cars in Shanghai is 17 km/h, so when you say you want to tear up the asphalt, you probably don't know where you live. That's where those Úudia people make their decisions based on the fact that the other ones bought it, will that flashlight last.
Then I use it and that's when I need to go to a service center and that's my experience, to know if the same company I bought it from will provide it or if there's already a partner there. Then when there are some insurance type problems, there are already a few other players outside of that coru coming into it and that's where the de facto world starts to get complicated. That's why that customer experience from start to finish needs to be controlled as much as possible by whoever is selling that product, because at the end of the day I'm going to be angry at you, Martin, because I bought a car from you and not from a dealership that has a contract with you. These are the 5, 6 steps at the end of which is the decision of whether or not I'm going to buy a new car from you again or whether or not I'm going to recommend to my colleague that they buy a car from you.
What is the difference between customer journey and customer experience and what are the peculiarities of customer journey in B2B?
Martin Hurych
I heard two things there, customer journey and customer experience. A lot of people around me confuse the two. For me, the customer journey is very strictly what I have to go through to buy the car and the customer experience is how I feel about it. How is that thinking different in a B2B context?
Ján Uriga
Basically, the difference in principle is very small, because at the end of the day, there is still a customer. If I'm selling to someone who is B2B, I still have to remember that the B2B has a customer too.The customer experience of a modern small or medium-sized business can be different in that it thinks about its B2B customers from the start and that's when the solution it offers makes a difference. So it's only different in going one step further. My goal is not to bring you a fleet of 20 cars, my goal is that the families that are going to be driving those cars are going to be able to buy
more cars from that company and give more references. That's why there's stuff for kids, stuff for hunters and I don't know who all. That's where a lot of people get confused, that it's different versus B2C. The good news is that the difference is about 5% or so.
How well do we understand what the customer wants from us?
Martin Hurych
That's good news, because it seems to me that people have such a demonized haze over B2B that everything is very different here. How do Czech and Slovak business owners understand what their customer is doing at all and how do they try to manage what the customer is going to feel or how they're going to feel about it?
Ján Uriga
I think we are still living in the era of product focus, i.e. to invent a solution that we will sell, and it will sell itself, is what prevails in the heads of the leaders of Czech and Slovak companies. This is the first place. Second is operational excellence, i.e. making it as efficient as possible, as cheap as possible for me and as expensive as possible for the customer. Thirdly, many people are slowly starting to get to grips with the topic of customer experience. I can understand them having it in third place for now, because we have very few experts who can tell them that this topic helps them meet the 3 objectives. One, when you do customer experience well, you have to grow sales, so you have to have clients return that loyalty, that fidelity. That's the manifestation that increases sales, so that's the first clearly demonstrable element, remember that's also a KPI that's called customer lifetime value, or what they buy from you over the period of time that you have that customer.
Two, you're cutting costs. You're thinking about what the customer needs just right. When you're a medium or small company, you're not creating a rocket, you're creating a means of transportation, and that's why cars are being driven around China or India, which are means of transportation and not status expressions. By the fact that there is 1.5 billions of Oudis, so those Oudis are thinking how I'm going to bring it there and nothing more. That's the other element, to cut costs so that you're competitive. The bigger you are and that's the danger of growth, that you try to service the more creditworthy segment, but you drop that billion and focus on the 10,000, who in a way are still choosing very emotionally, not rationally.
The third place comes down to that satisfaction, so if I'm doing my customer experience right, in that leader's head, that world turns. He's got to order so that all of a sudden what happens is that I'm doing things that increase my sales, at the same time I'm only doing things that make sense in terms of cost, so I'm guarding my margin. In small businesses, we have to guard that margin because that's money for further growth, for further development, for innovation. That customer has to tell you they have an experience and I keep reminding the translation of that word, experience in translation has two words, one is experience and the other is experience. That word experience has both of them in it and by focusing on the product and focusing on what it costs, we forget that there is the customer at the end of it all, but I repeat, those 3 things have to work together.
How often do companies know the customer journey in detail?
Martin Hurych
I'm just wondering how many of these companies I know. How often do you find that your clients really know it all, what kind of experience should a customer have with their product or service? Because many times when I'm consulting, I hear that those people don't know and the whole customer journey is built not around the customer, but around what I think of the customer. But that's diametrically opposed to what the customer really wants from me, in my experience.
Ján Uriga
There is one more such complicator and that is the processes. These companies confuse the word customer journey, which is horizontal, versus processes, which to me are the de facto structure of that organization.I think that these leaders of Czechoslovak companies have a very good understanding of what processes are, how they work, how to improve them. Do an exercise, when you come to a medium- sized company, ask what are your key processes, write them down on paper, all of you who manage it, and then compare the papers. There will be a wake-up call that everyone thinks something different.
Second, does the process have an owner? If there is an owner of that process, does it have improvement in its objectives and does it have 50% variable components? That's a very wealthy man, if he understands that, he has 50% in charge of that component to make it better and more efficient? No. They do, but you see how much room we found in just simple processes. In the customer journey, we're still putting in just that element of that experience, of wanting to do it again, of making it work. When I'm doing criss-cross, that is, when I connect my processes that make my customer experience more effective, I have to be able to beat those other people around by a horse's head. This is a 50, 60 year old topic. It's been around for decades and many people don't even know how to write it yet.
When someone dives in, they get it in 5 seconds. I think anyone who has even a little bit of basic financial IQ in them will say, I don't want to give up money that a customer can take to someone else. I want them to me because that's the fuel of my business, so they'll understand that in 5 seconds. But when you tell them what you need to do to do that, for example, that you always need to tell that customer the whole truth right away and don't obfuscate, then we're getting to the edge of the Czechoslovakian mindset. We'll do it anyway, close our eyes, sell and watch with one eye whether he bought, he didn't buy.
How to deal with a junior buyer?
Martin Hurych
How would you deal with the objection that it's all nice theory, but in the end I'm often faced with a junior buyer in the B2B space and he doesn't care about anything but price, he doesn't want any customer experience?
Ján Uriga
This is a very good point, because at the end of the day, price is the first and fundamental reason for making decisions. But I should add right away, not the only one. Quality is a close second, even when I mentioned that China I came back from, now consider that 44% of a Chinese person's salary is savings, he is putting that money away. That money is in accounts, but it is not being spent and now how that businessman, especially the small and medium-sized one, wants to pull it out, because he knows that the cash is there, how he pulls it out. Believe it or not, they are starting to talk about quality, they are really talking about quality and therefore they are laying claim to a higher price. But the customer doesn't want a higher price, back with that junior buyer, how do you earn that price, well just by that customer experience. Here we are in that triad, price first, explanation of quality second and then customer experience. The statistics are relentless, 2/3 of customers even in B2B business are willing to pay up to 15% more for a commodity if on the other hand that customer experience is what it should be. There are moments of truth that are confounded, like response time, problem solving. If companies have this figured out, I will not hesitate at all about the quality of the company that works for me, but the quality of the company that works for me. All those things that we have today, those well-known companies, there are 10 Oudis, but he's a global business. Go to Sweden and when someone starts a company there, they think globally from the beginning and we want to think Czechoslovakian here. So my message is not to be afraid from the beginning in medium and small companies to think about markets that go beyond Czechoslovakia.
Martin Hurych
The vast majority of my bubble can imagine that to build some customer experience people like R&D, technology, sales, CFO fail at that buyer. He tells them that while it's nice, the price isn't nice at the end, so you're done anyway. What do you do with that?
Ján Uriga
You have to remember that the buyer is such a lowercase god, there's always somebody who's in that production or who's the CEO who's like, this is what I want, this is what I need. We know what that buyer's KPIs are, they have to chop 20% down, they have to bleed that market, but even those buyers today operate under certain rules. Do you guys want to take it upon yourselves to buy that brake part of that plastic in that car and drive the kids home? That's a bit of a borderline manipulation or threat tactic, but I think it's worth pointing out. Many people at the bargaining table forget about the stuff they are actually buying. I have to remind that buyer, firstly, of his responsibility, secondly, of his accountability, and thirdly, of his responsibility.
How are we doing with innovation in the Czech Republic and Slovakia?
Martin Hurych
So ideally we have a customer journey, we know what is expected of us, we want to surprise somehow, ideally in a positive way, so that the person concerned has some experience of it. These are all change projects, very probably some form of innovation, because I have to change something in the company to adapt. How are we doing with innovation as Czechs and Slovaks?
Ján Uriga
We do it as a happening, we don't do it as a system all the time. Just as we have birthdays and birthdays and Christmas and Easter at home, innovation happens in companies as holidays. Now we announce a hackathon, we have money left over, some problem has arisen, some new manager has come in with an idea, competition, so we do it in a terribly ad hoc way and that's what bothers me the most.
Martin Hurych
It's still at the point where we are very likely to be in the biggest trouble and the company has neither the mood nor the time to innovate. Is that right?
Ján Uriga
That's the myth, because the company that came out of the crisis successfully is that the money that it doesn't have, it just finds the money to get out of the bottom in the crisis. A lot of other companies will slash marketing, slash everything, lay off 10 oudis and there will be an assistant chauffeur and oudis who are loyal but unnecessary in their own way and this is the sin that is going on there.
Martin Hurych
For those you describe who start to really think forward offensively in a crisis, fingers crossed. What I mean is that what I'm looking at is just that we turn off the taps, have an innovation brainstorming session, and come up with something amazing in 2 days that will pull us out of a jam.
Ján Uriga
This is very naive and I say, even if someone invites me to such projects, I don't do it. The English get drunk on Friday to work out the week, but on Monday they still go to the same job. The fact that you manage to come up with something is a sign that you're up to it, and I ask them, if you're able to deliver a solution in 48 hours that really kick starts your cash flow, why don't you do it every other week? Because they have enough. They're like homeless people, when a homeless person finishes their work shift, when they've earned what they need that day. I need to buy food, I need to buy something, I need something to enjoy in life, and I'm gone. If he had sat there for 2 more hours, he still has another 50 dollars, euros, crowns, but he's finished his shift. That's how those companies think and we call it the fiscal year principle.
Martin Hurych
We learned that in the corporations.
Ján Uriga
We learned this because of tax returns as well, I don't think it's a disease of corporations. I want to be a little bit on the side of the corporates, because it is not always appropriate to kick them, because take the fact that all those innovators who are changing the world today grew up there.
Martin Hurych
I can't stand the corporation. I say that the problem with the corporation is that many times, as big as it is, it can leave humanity behind at individual levels. But just as an apprentice used to go out into the world, today every future entrepreneur should go to a corporat for 3 or 5 years to learn how to run their future company.
Ján Uriga
Ideally abroad. When you combine that with going to a different culture and seeing how it works and immersing yourself in it, you're awfully smart to handle those situations that normal business will bring to small, medium-sized companies. That's the thing, there's no time for innovation. Imagine you're a small business and you're in charge of clients who are complaining about something, a product that isn't perfect yet. You've got 10 Udi's, you're happy for them to come into work in the morning and after yesterday when that Sparta draw in Germany to puff up the ideal. So you've got a lot of problems, and now 10 hours go by like this in the operative and you say to yourself with a crawl
tongue, what are you going to do about it. There's no time for innovation in small companies and that alibi is bulletproof, justit's fatal.
How to start innovation in SME companies?
Martin Hurych
So if you're consulting like this, what are you doing about it? Theoretically, we have also discussed several times here at Zazhe how to start an innovation culture and how to maintain it there. When you come into a company and these theories collapse there, what do you do with them practically?
Ján Uriga
There's nothing to collapse because those theories aren't there. These Udiots say we are practitioners and while somebody says they are a practitioner, they are actually saying to me below the line, I despise theory. Everything that works has been created based on some theory that has been tested. Let's get into that production. Ask the guys on Friday, before they throw their overalls in the laundry basket, what was the biggest obstacle to you delivering the performance you wanted to deliver this week. He'll beautifully tell you this, this and this at 1:45pm on Friday with great nervousness. You let him go for that weekend, saying you've got the material, but I'm deliberately doing it at 1:45pm, because in that guy's head, he's going to be left with this idea that there was something terribly slowing him down or distracting him. Only 3% to 7% of innovations that come as ideas come during working hours. That's why I let him go on a weekend with a problem in his head, which he then experiences buddies somewhere at a soccer game or with family. At that point, that imprisoned mind of his, which I programmed with that problem, begins to be confronted normally with that ordinary life. Since he's not stressed about some thing falling out of his belt and squeezing him, he THINKS about it, and on Monday morning at 5:45 I'll bring them a donut and ask them, lest what happened last week happen to you again, what can you do? He'll come up with something that will cut 5 seconds or 5 pounds off his time. Then you ask him the second question, what can I do? He'll tell you, Martin, I need you to do this. If you just do that, you've already basically zinovated the things that the employee and you are in charge of. When the week goes by, the company is more efficient with that employee's input and your input. Just don't need to teach those Udi's there about money, I mean straight up, so that for someone giving that idea, that it's not honoured because they learn it.
Martin Hurych
I'm very fascinated by that little bit of subterfuge, I'm going to program you to think about your own work in your private time, on the weekend. What I like about it is that there are no innovation kiosks or innovation boxes anywhere with tickets of what we should improve, which then languish there for the next six months.
Ján Uriga
I have done this in one production. The German owners came in, I came in with a project for a few tens of thousands of euros and I calculated the payback. They said to me, Mr Uriga, you have not understood, you are in a company where the people contribute, prove it to me now. The manager got angry and he put up these white boxes all over the production, which was not big, and he wrote idea box. They understood about as much English as I understand Swahili, so the Audience didn't even understand it. Then we said that on Friday we would collect the boxes together and see how many ideas we had. So we gathered up used tissues, found apple peelings and a few vulgar messages. I said, let's move on, you want to escalate this marasmus? He understood that no.
Sometimes we take Úudí in a bus somewhere in the Tatra Mountains or somewhere in the mountains and leave them there to think. I give them 2 hours so that they all have 1,5 milliliters already on the bus, then they get a little cold water, they think of something, but it's very conventional. Once you pull that innovation away from that environment, you're gambling. That means it either works or it doesn't work, whereas if you do it systematically at home, we are much closer to success than some innovative visioning, innovation has to be planning, not visioning.
Martin Hurych
What I really like about it is how you say that you're not aiming for some crazy big innovation, but that it's really a culture of incremental, step-by-step, day-by-day improvement.
Ján Uriga
We have the wisdom of the old Oudí, grandmother to grandmother, there will be drops and we will be very surprised when we do this.
Martin Hurych
I actually generally realize that common sense has been there for a long time and when you pull it out you get surprising results.
Ján Uriga
I am struggling a bit with the word Solzsky reason or in Slovak peasant reason. A peasant is one who has observed nature and taken something from his Oudis, but he has no education in himself. I say it is great that we use peasant reason, but beware of its limit. Many say what innovative processes, what systems, what technologies, they despise it, we have both peasant and peasant reason. But if we can't upgrade it, today we call it upskilling or reskilling, or learning new things, we will be stuck in very conventional worlds. Those who watch and listen to us in those small or medium sized companies need to find distinctiveness in what they do right from the start.
Martin Hurych
I rather meant that as a human being you should use what nature has put around your neck and not blindly apply lessons from books that don't necessarily fit you. You never know what situation the person who wrote it was in.
Ján Uriga
I know what you meant, I was just misusing that sentence of yours to say that I need to educate those Oodies. Consider that I do these little innovation audits that can take a day to 3 and one of those activities is, show me a list of the Oudis that you have trained in what in the last 3 years. Most of the time it's a 5 second exercise, we don't have that list and then they find out there's fire protection and driver training and OHS. When the Uudis have been on some training, I ask them what did it deliver, do I find something there that's worth 5k or 100k? I don't want to chase the person, I will call him up and ask him what he has learned and he will tell you the information. How did you translate it into skills? What's missing in those organizations today is to transfer that information into a skill and to force that skill to produce a result. It's the mid-sized companies that are in a position to do this much more effectively than anyone else.
Martin Hurych
The typical response to this is that I didn't have time to do it because there are not enough of us, there are no people, we are permanently understaffed. I actually enjoy learning something, but then implementing it, changing something here, doing some mini change management, I don't have the time or courage for that anymore.
Ján Uriga
Okay, then you just need to tell them that there's a clock at the top and that's where the countdown begins. The only thing I can tell you for sure, I don't know how long it's going to take, but it's going to end, because that way you're going to exhaust yourself and you're going to get to the edge that you're not going to last. You will be overtaken by others who have done exactly that. Now, I'm going to jump a little bit into the big world, those companies that are ruling innovation today are the best at being able to just put that learning, that learning into practice and they take it terribly seriously.
How to build a culture of continuous learning at SME?
Martin Hurych
So how would you recommend building it in a company of between 50 and 100 people to incorporate a chance for some learning, moving forward?
Ján Uriga
I would start by defining what I call moments of truth, that is, in the processes that I do, there are certain moments that are more important than others. I would make sure that in those positions I have Oudis who are capable of learning, that is, not those who say I have been doing this for 10 years.
I would expose these Oudis to about 5% to 7% of the quarter by meeting someone who understands it better than they do now. The second is to let them choose for themselves what they will read or listen to, and the third is that I put them in charge of the project of improving it. He will thereby use that educated or that encountered, and those Studies on those so-called moments of truth or on the differentiating parts of those processes must and many want to prove that there will be something differentiating. That, to me, is the message of this particular company size where you can accelerate very quickly.
Martin Hurych
So does it mean very pragmatically to look for bottlenecks where it squeaks and to push the improvements, the innovations there?
Ján Uriga
This would mean that I am improving myself, but I still have to remember my triad. This may help me adjust the cost, but I need this same solution to not only adjust the cost, but to increase the sales assumption and satisfy the customer.
Martin Hurych
It's okay that if I see my bottleneck is that I'm not generating leads, I'll rush in there, if I find out that the bottleneck is not understanding the customer, I'll rush in there. I didn't mean purely into production. This may have a chance of success because at the same time each of the owners are watching budgets very closely and by improving where it's really needed, you also get the fastest returns.
Ján Uriga
Hey and it doesn't matter if it's a big company. There's a rule called critical few, that is, only a few people are critically important, even if it's a big company, there will still be three of them pulling, and those three need to be exposed and watched very carefully what they do for those 8 hours. Don't put them on 10 hours because they will fall under the weight, so you have to keep a very close eye on what is going on in their 8 hours so that their skill set is at least 70% utilized. We have to keep a very close eye on this and these guys are going to drag it on and we have to look after them.
What are the social competences of Czech-Slovak leaders?
Martin Hurych
Now I'm thinking of a donkey's bridge to what you said at the beginning, that you studied the social competence of leaders. What are the social competencies of leaders? What we've described here adds fuel to the boiler in a lot of companies. What I observe is that the business owner would like to, because he realizes that potentially the company is burning under his chair, and these people are so overworked today that they have to be careful not to work 12 or 14 hours instead of 10. So how adept are Czech and Slovak managers at managing this?
Ján Uriga
They don't have this control mode enabled a lot because they know those things have to be done, but they don't know when enough is enough, and that's why there are acronyms like MVP, minimum viable product. If the thing is 60% done and it meets those basic prerequisites, you just have to go outside and then supplement that 60% just based on that customer's feedbacks. The first thing that is needed is to get rid of the idealism in the mindset of those individual leaders.
The other quality, when I ask about that social competence, is the courage to work with uncertainty. When your input costs are not controlled by you at all and you're some smaller manufacturing company and you're buying some raw material from somebody, you have zero control over the price. On Friday you walk away with 10 and on Monday he tells you it's 20 and he what to do. The ability to be able to work for a period of time with the uncertainty that that 20 can fall to 10, that's what immediately starts to trigger the processes of what's called creative destruction in that leader's head. He starts to mentally dismantle his own business because he's questioning it and creating a whole new business.
I have a habit of working with clients on something we call, set up a competitor that will beat you within a year. That's my usual exercise with knowing all the data. Imagine if 5 of your Oudie's get angry, get up and start their own company, they know all the numbers, the data, the secrets. I'm actually simulating this on those Oodies. Just the fact that they can take that and unlearn that new concept helps them tremendously, and that's called working with uncertainty, which I put into certainty. Let's look into those 5 steps. I have a fresh experience with one client where we worked this out in 4 hours. Mind you, this isn't that I need 4 days or 100k there, this is a four hour exercise with the fact that they have to come prepared, they have to control that data. That's the ticket, they get a quiz, if they don't master 4, 5 pointers, we'll dissolve it, but the person pays out of their paycheck. There's a clear condition, you don't have a ticket, you don't go. They actually create that practical assumption, which will destroy that uncertainty from 4 hours ago, because they make the new concept very real.
Martin Hurych
I actually see that what these leaders are capable of, what I may have asked about in terms of the social competencies, is they can't then translate that into the gears of the company. Do you see that too?
Ján Uriga
I want to stand up for those leaders because they are not polyhistory, they cannot know everything, but those at the bottom are ordering it. That leader should be the sponsor, the leader is supposed to pick a quality Udi team and then that Udi team is supposed to deliver the rest of that organization. The leader's dog's duty is to say every week, do I have enough quality Oudis on my immediate team to deliver what I've promised the customer?
How to rock a company with existing management?
Martin Hurych
We're at the coal face of the problem here, because a lot of people were building those teams into a completely different era. You and I here can say 5 years from Covid is a long time to redo the whole thing. Realistically, a lot of companies are struggling now and you can't actually throw out half the company within that market and the existing spare capacity in the market. What I'm referring to is that in those small and medium sized companies you have to work with the material you have. I see the double-track there where the owner very quickly realizes that something needs to be done, he's going to gobble up this podcast and I'm going to send you celebratory e-mails as we speak our minds to them. But since you're also involved in leadership and crisis and change management, how do you squash this with a team that wasn't hired and isn't ready for this? How do you not transfer that nervousness that something is happening to them, and in the context of engagement, how do you slowly push them and show them that all of this stuff that I'm already seeing makes sense and that they should join in?
Ján Uriga
The company needs to be rebranded every year and that's a ritual and I'm not at all about budgeting now, but to see if my skills really match the requirements and needs of that customer. I build that company around competencies that fulfill a need. So we have to look at what that market really needs. Now, there are several scenarios. The first is how much time do we have to bridge that gap between what the market needs and what you know. If that gap is short, then we're looking at whether you can find someone to help us with that kind of inflatable sourcing. We'll call somebody in for 3 months, they'll do it and you'll learn, that's the first scenario.
The second is, do you want to? I'm not saying lay it off, I'm saying give up those Oudis sometime and say to him, go for six months, I'll give you the electricity and the beer and the gas because he's done some work there. That's not severance pay, he keeps getting this health insurance and what goes for it. Go for six months and I need to hire someone here in the meantime, but when you come back you need to find another position with the company. Now I can generate x number of these scenarios, but each one has the same starting point, 2 things that fit together. The thing that complicates it all is relationships, that loyalty is something, but that's what I tell those managers. Look, that's what my boutique that I have here is for, to help you do and execute something very quickly that you already know. This is not meant to be an advertisement for my work, because I'm not proud of it, but there are some things where you just have to approach it that way. You save face one way, another way, you work it off, the company gets a kick out of it, those people get a kick out of it because when you do something you're not supposed to do, you get stressed and at the end of the day it looks very interesting.
Martin Hurych
I'll sign that, because when we talk about things from my area, after a few minutes you can see that the person you're talking to is disconnecting and already thinking about Maruska and Franta, already projecting those faces and actually looking for reasons why it's not possible.
Ján Uriga
Sometimes I still play with the offer, become a shareholder of that company when you can't work for it. We're talking about small money here, I'm not talking about having to pour millions into it. You can't do it anymore, come co-own that company. You have a partnership share and you don't have to work for it, that's not your goal, because that's not what you're there for, you worked to get there, but being there, again, that's what somebody else has to work for. I sometimes offer what I call phantom options to those people who say, borrow, pull the sock out of the sock at home, or sell the unnecessarily big car and bring that million crowns as an entry level investment in a growing company. Come on, treat it like a shareholder and I'll pay you out based on that million, which I have to prove to you that I can use it effectively, that I can find a new person and start capitalizing on it. It's an entrepreneurial risk, of course, but I'm actually giving that person a chance to become an entrepreneur, not an employee.
I think that's one of the avenues you can go down and that money will circulate, so I just wanted to give some extra guidance.
Summary
Martin Hurych
It's a shame we have to end, because we've only touched on three topics by scratching them from a very high place. I'd like to see you back here again sometime if I get a chance. In closing, I'd like to ask you one thing. If there were to be three to five sentences left of this podcast within the internet and information noise, some sort of conclusion, something that we're going to set in stone, what would that be for you?
Ján Uriga
The first thing is whether the company I have is solving real problems for the People, and it doesn't matter if it's B2B or B2C, so I'm still asking if I'm solving problems for the People. Second, am I doing it more and more efficiently and effectively, can I look into my costs from quarter to quarter, can I be more efficient? Third, can I read the needs of those customers that they don't at first good. I need to be able to observe the Oudis, not ask them. When I ask you, Martin, what would you like, you say a helicopter and a yacht, I don't think I'll give it to you, but what you're really saying is you need freedom, you need freedom on the water, you need freedom in the air. I, when I understand that you're telling me about freedom, about independence, autonomy, I'll actually offer those customers of mine, for example, a no-strings-attached service. Fourth point, always hire those who are the best, who you can afford, for key positions in the company, and don't be afraid to give those people vision, co-responsibility and vision. Fifth, if you stop enjoying it, stop doing it immediately.
Martin Hurych
Jana, thank you so much. It was a nice chat and I'm really looking forward to having you here again sometime.
Ján Uriga
I am enjoying this very professional calm conversation. If anyone sitting here at this microphone will confirm that I have not had the kind of professional preparation that I had before this podcast and I have had several. Thank you for preparing me to not make stuff up here, but to talk about what is responsible, factual, and I guess practical.
Martin Hurych
Thank you very much. If you got something out of today's podcast that you can apply in your company and start innovating from tomorrow, we did our job well. In that case, I'll repeat my request, if you don't want to miss any of the future episodes or any of my blog articles, then run over to my website, www.martinhurych.com, and sign up for my newsletter now.
If you add subscribing to this podcast to that, you'll make me even happier because it will allow me to invite even more great guests like Jano. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.