foreign [Music] I want to step back and talk a little bit more about maybe some uh some actionable things and some tips and tricks if you will uh like how you know we I'd mentioned organizational change management but do you have any tips or tricks on how to bring an organization along with this or maybe someone's uh uh I don't know it could be a a Enterprise architect or someone that's higher up enough to look at this but do you have any recommendations from what you've seen in the field while you're doing this of how to get organizations to come along with us sure understanding the impact um I think and if you can show people within an organization that you're going to solve problems that they are living on the day-to-day um they're somehow you're somehow going to make their life their work life better um whether it be their swivel sharing from one system to another or they're working on you know components of a process that are you know just repetitive or something that potentially could be automated it's just taking a ton of time or they're doing manual data scans where something could be scripted right helping understand hey when this piece of work is done and I'm going to learn something new these are the problems we're trying to solve you know you you talk to your co-workers you're like gosh there's always something about the organization right that people want to complain about right and if you take the time to do this road mapping up front and you listen to the people that can contribute to your kind of analysis as you're going through and figuring out what you want to fix or Target for maturation right if you tell those same people hey we listen to you and these are our priorities too it's really hard for them not to get excited um you know that that you're trying to make momentum across something that they found to be inadequate or that they thought could be better and I've found that passion across that one it's like hey this is my idea or my leadership actually cares about my day-to-day job or they want my life to be more positive at work it's really hard not to get buy-in in that capacity I mean I know sometimes through Project work can feel difficult because you have people kind of doing Project work and day-to-day work at the same time but hopefully they are championing that to their peers as well and that infectious anticipation kind of spreads as you're going I I've I've seen that with it actually you know when customers like as soon as they start talking to a business unit or a business group they're like oh it's trying to take it over again and what you're talking about is getting their buying and showing you're trying to be a partnership because it really is uh no longer a silo of just technical stuff it intertwines into everything so there's great tips in that um so from an actionable standpoint um what I wanted to talk about next is I know sometimes listeners out there can get stuck on the tech behind the roadmap and what I mean by that is you know there's tools that we use I know that you use tools I use tools for what we're doing but I thought maybe give a little section which we're normally very high level on the podcast but I thought gosh why not feed what we're trying to do here and and what what are some of the tools that we use so somebody's like oh well I can't use a Post-It note that's not good I can't use a napkin I gotta use uh whatever I gotta use illustrator I gotta go buy a Creative Cloud you know subscription or something like that what are you using Megan to find you know have the most flexibility um and what have you seen use besides what you use so that's funny I mean quite honestly what I use most to kind of gather my thoughts is Post-it notes um I I take copious notes um during a uh an interview session right I I like to call it corporate therapy you know like tell me all your problems tell me what you want then I always end with if I was a genie right I could Grant you three wishes within your organization what would those things be and I write those down each one on a Post-It note um and I put them all up on my whiteboard in my office and as I'm going through you can start to group those right you can start to see commonalities and themes emerge from those different things maybe they're words slightly different but you know I really start with kind of just that rudimentary like what am I even looking at before I can put it into some fancy piece of technology um I I need to be able to kind of organize my my mind and for me personally I like to write things down um I kind of see patterns a whole lot more when it's just written down in front of me than I do when it's in technology at that point I really like uh Lucid spark and Lucid um to then take some of those back to a customer and kind of do that digital Post-It note exercise and show them right like the themings that we've come up with and this is is kind of how we've mapped it out um you know and see if that resonates with them as an organization what's great about that is you don't have to be in person um you can do that from zoom and you can do those little digital Post-it notes and just kind of move things around um and really have that kind of interactive experience to kind of theme theme things out and put them together um to build out my roadmaps I I really like PowerPoint and just kind of building them out manually and kind of understanding that but then from a servicenow perspective right there's the portfolio alignment planner that can be a really great tool with this um and we work with a customer that has that it's great to put their whole roadmap in that strategic alignment planner um I think now service now calls it the portfolio alignment plan or portfolio planner um and putting that in there and then being able to kind of map that Journey utilizing the servicenow platform is good but you don't have to have expensive technology and tools to be able to build something like this out you can have a pen and paper maybe some Excel and probably a PowerPoint to be able to put your thoughts together and you can still be vastly successful in that component so you don't need to let technology uh hinder your success or desire to to really get started on something yeah what a great response thanks for that I mean uh I have one last question is remote or on site now I know there's benefits to both some Orcs can't you know do both but I gotta be honest there's times where I've been on site and it made all the difference especially for something like this but I was curious on your thoughts what what have you seen in the marketplace when you're doing these do you recommend remote uh on-site or both or whatever works for the company what are your thoughts ideally it's great to be able to get a group of people into a conference room for a few hours and really strategize something um I think the pandemic taught us that what we thought was necessary wasn't right and that we all learned that we could do good work in a remote capacity but there's something about the relationships that you build with people when you're sitting in a room with them or maybe go out for a drink or dinner afterwards and start building that personal connection so that you can understand and truly partner with the people that you're working with if you don't have that you're only working at the business level and sometimes that can be fine but to truly make something exceptional or a relationship long term and gosh I really want to work with this person right um You you want to know something about them personally and sometimes that's hard to get via only you know digital means um but certainly if that's what's available to you it I guess the the key message is don't let technology or Logistics hold you back from trying something um you can always make something work and the ideal State could be what it is for you and your organization but you know just try um and keep trying keep going back to the well and you'll find there's many different ways to do things um Cask has several you know tools in the toolbox in this capacity and and different approaches and if we see something that's not working we try something else and we're constantly going back to that to make sure that for the specific situation we're in that we're doing the right things right so um again just to answer your question in person is super but digital or virtual is certainly um something that can work across the board yeah great great so Megan I've got one last question for you and it's going to be surrounding like did I miss anything do we miss anything in the questions something else you would like to to share with our listeners on the podcast that that would be valuable sure I think um you know when you hear the term strategic Road mapping or you know business value it may feel intimidating that maybe you need to be a really big organization um or have you know a really high profile name or you know GE or or Kellogg's or you know Zion's Bank Corporation right but you don't need to have a high profile industry placement to be able to make a difference in your organization um you can start small you can work into something that's long-term even if it's very small pieces and a small group of people can do really really good things um and if you can find a great partner to kind of help you with that they can supplement in areas where you might have gaps from a resourcing perspective but don't let the thought um you know that maybe we're not big enough or we can't be strategic because you know we're maybe new at all of this like it's okay um you can grow and mature that roadmap as you go and it's never done it's never finished it's not written in stone you can always change it you can always go back to it um and you know meet your organization where it is right then um and that could be your organization grows or maybe your organization gets smaller and you have to go ahead and kind of revise what it is that you're looking at and it's it's really important to keep in your mind that you don't have to be perfect and don't let good enough or an MVP approach get in the way of something that could be you know just what exactly what your organization needs um and that intimidation Factor can really get in the way and just have confidence in yourself and and your organization and your peers um and likely you'll find success in some capacity yeah you're kind of reminding me of if you're uh you know if you're a small organization and I don't know sing Single admin or platform owner you get a little bit of uh imposter Syndrome again we call these things and you said it earlier is these things are movable they're changeable they're flexible you can't do it wrong and we actually use a term here here at cask and at least for I know for most of our timelines there are I'm sorry our strategic road maps we call them notional because they can move they can change so that's such a great Point Megan thank you and that's that's it for our podcast today but Megan thank you so much for joining us in the insights you brought I'm sure people are going to get a lot of value at the out of this and and I just want to thank you so much for your time it was great Sean for having me it's been great all right take care bye-bye [Music]