How Angela Liu Helps Companies Be More Efficient by Caring About People

[00:00:00] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale of Business podcast. My name is Hector Sania Esteban, and I'm your host for today. And we're here with Angela Lu. She is a fractional coo o and she's also a strategic operations consultant. And we're gonna talk today about, well at least we're gonna get started talking about teamwork and a communication and how that, Impacts a business and how that is critical to scaling a business.

[00:00:25] Hector: But before we get into that, Angela, I would love for you to catch us up a little bit on kind of your experience, your background and, and a little bit about what you do with your clients. Now,

[00:00:33] Angela: Sure. so I graduated from North Carolina State University with a bachelor's in industrial engineering, but I ended up deciding I didn't wanna work in manufacturing and went and worked for a small software consulting company in instead

[00:00:47] Angela: and,

[00:00:47] Hector: parents were excited about that.

[00:00:48] Angela: Just kidding.

[00:00:49] Angela: they, they, they were just happy, honestly. They were just happy that I got a

[00:00:52] Angela: job.

[00:00:53] Angela: Yeah. Mainly because this is like, this is at the end of 2008 and the economy was

[00:00:59] Hector: Any job was great. Was great to have.

[00:01:01] Angela: I turned down three job offers on my graduation and my mom was so pissed off. So Yeah. But I ended up going with this organization, And one of the reasons why I chose it was because I wanted to move around in an organization and try different hats on. So while I was there for several years, I actually, I was a QA engineer. I was a software process consultant. I was a project manager.

[00:01:25] Angela: I did operations management. I was in sales. I also helped with recruiting, hiring, and onboarding. You know, so I was all over the place. but after the several years there, I was burnt out.

[00:01:35] Angela: I took a four year break after that to recover and such before joining Unity Web Agency, which is an accessible web development and design, B corporation. And that's who I'm with right now. my consulting work and my fractional co work is also a way I help other small business owners with their challenges in such, in a similar way that I'm able to help Unity Web Agency grow. but during that four year break though, it was actually really pivotal for my step into the direction I'm in now. And, during that time I was doing a lot of personal development. I was decompressing and recovering from my burnout and such, but I spent a lot of time reflecting on what it would take. To work sustainably. And for me, the way I was framing that, it was really about having the energy and the wherewithal, right? Not just the physical energy, but also the mental and emotional energy and stamina to basically to be able to go to work day after day, week after week, year after year. Because the reality is we all have to make an ends.

[00:02:34] Angela: We have to make ends meet, right? and. I got to the point where I realized I needed to be working with people I enjoyed working with, serving a purpose that I felt was making a positive impact, doing work that I enjoyed and felt good at, and also being appreciated for the value that I bring as an individual and through the work I'm doing.

[00:02:53] Angela: So, Unity's been this really great place where I can bring all of that together.

[00:02:58] Hector: I know we have some important stuff to talk about, and I know you have some, you prepared a lot and I appreciate that. But I'm curious if there was a, defining experience, a moment,perhaps even a challenge that highlighted the value of communication, of teamwork. I'm asking this question coming from a, a self-admitted.

[00:03:16] Hector: introvert, you know, so much so that where're, even all of the people around me know how introverted I am. And, and so, so the communication and especially the teamwork thing has always been a, An uphill battle. It's never been something that's come naturally. I see. You know, there are a lot of great communicators and leaders and, and, and so I'm, I'm curious if there was something for you that kind of like was a, a stubbing your toe moment, maybe that, that showed you the power of effective team communication?

[00:03:45] Angela: I have a very strong value, I guess you could say, around teamwork and communication. So to me, these are two. Pieces that have created the way I go about doing things. the communication piece honestly comes from my childhood.

[00:04:03] Angela: And it's not because I was shown good communication, it was actually because I grew up around a lot of poor communicators. and. You know, for better or worse, it made me bend over backwards to make sure that I was communicating as best as I possibly could. and that pushed me to become as good of a commuter as I possibly could.

[00:04:25] Angela: But eventually, and is actually during my time at this, the software consulting company, I realized there was a limit for how far. You know how far I could go or that I had a particular communication style, and it's pretty much impossible to make everybody happy no matter how good of a communicator you are.

[00:04:43] Angela: Right? Like we have people who are CEOs of giant corporations right now in the world. Right. And they, they upset somebody anyway, no matter how thoughtfully they've tried to craft their message. Right. Could they could have, could they have done better? Sure. But there's always better. Right? And after a point, I realized for myself, I'm gonna have to accept what my communication style is.

[00:05:05] Angela: And I, I like to be straightforward to the point. I'm not gonna beat around the bush too much. I don't really like a whole lot of fluff. So, you know, if I'm going to work with somebody, well, I need somebody who can also understand me, right? Like, to me it's really about. Giving grace to each other is what I would call it.

[00:05:23] Angela: Right? You have to give grace to yourself for being who you are. You are good at certain things and you're gonna do those things well. Other people are gonna have different strengths. They're gonna do different those things differently, and they're gonna do those things well. But you have to give each other grace.

[00:05:36] Angela: that does play into the teamwork piece, Because you can't have a good team if you can't get along with the people that you're working with. And that means that you have to have space and allowance for other people to be who they are, to bring the strengths that they have, to have differences from you and the way you like things done.

[00:05:50] Angela: Right. I can give one example from my time at Unity where. and there's a team member and I, we have very different communication styles. not sure if you've heard of the Colby assessment. It's a great assessment if you've never heard of it. It's a great way of looking at people and understanding people and their innate differences.

[00:06:10] Angela: It's not exactly like Myers-Brigg because Myers-Briggs is a personality test. the Colby focuses more on the innate natural wiring and natural tendencies that people have. So the more you work with this, the more you're. The less you're fighting against the grain of who they are and the way they're gonna naturally do things.

[00:06:23] Angela: Right. So on the, in the, according to the Colby, I'm what's called a high fact finder. this other team member is what's called a low fact finder. And. Because of our differences. We have a tendency to have different appetites for, for details and information. I'm gonna want a lot more. This person's just like, just gimme the skinny, the one-liner.

[00:06:42] Angela: I don't want more than that unless I need it. And so in our com communications, we were having some tensions arise on occasion. I would communicate with this person and say, Hey, just fyi, da da da da. And I would just share some information to help them understand why I was making the request or making the decision as such, right.

[00:07:02] Angela: The person would respond sometimes kind of agitated and it was really confusing to me at first, and this is before I had ever taken the Colby. Later we took the, Colby discovered this difference, right? And eventually at some point we had a conversation where, I shared with this person, I was just like, look, I'm doing my best to keep things as brief as possible with you, and it might not be good enough for what you need or ideally would like.

[00:07:28] Angela: Right? But I need you to recognize that I am trying. Here's an example of a situation where I was trying, you know, and where that conversation resolved well, because I realized that messaging online with this person wasn't. An effective form of communication. They were more of a talking kind of person. So we got on a video call and then it cleared up a lot easier. and I basically said, I was like, you know, I need you to lean in towards me. Communication, I believe is a two-way street. You know, I'm giving what I can and I'm doing my best, but I can't close this communication gap alone. I need you to lean in towards me and give me some grace around these situations, you know, and.

[00:08:08] Angela: Since then, things with this team member have been a lot better. It's been really smooth because there is now an understanding of we do have differences and we just need to have some flexibility and tolerance for those differences. And that has allowed our teamwork to have to, to go be a lot better. there's a lot less tension like unintended in.

[00:08:25] Angela: Attention and such happening in the organization around communication differences as well. so I mean, there's so many little stories of how these things play out and how they benefit, but is there one big thing I'm like, I don't know if there's one big thing that showed that to me. I think I've just always valued, at least from a teamwork perspective, I've always really valued, you know, If we are going to be a team, this is about us succeeding together.

[00:08:53] Angela: Right. And if anything, I probably learned that more from my video gaming days than anything else. If I were to be really honest, I always loved playing, team oriented games, and working together with the people that I was on the team with for us to have a joint success in whatever the, the mission might have been.

[00:09:11] Hector: Angela, this has been a fantastic conversation so far and I'm really glad that you gave some context.

[00:09:16] Hector: what's. Even probably more important now is that the conversation is starting to happen. We're starting to see, corporations start to realize that they need to do and give more to employees and do things to, cultivate this communication and teamwork. But what we've talked about off recording is that you think that this is not quite enough.

[00:09:36] Hector: That there's, that there's kind of more to the conversation. And so we're gonna get into that. right after this break.

[00:09:47] Hector: Hey y'all, thanks for tuning in today. Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media and we are a podcast and content production company.

[00:09:53] Hector: So if you have a mission, a message, a passion and purpose, something that you wanna get out to the world but don't have the time or the tech skills to do it, we can help. Go to amplify media.com. That's amp l a fy media.com, where you can check the show notes for details. And with that, let's get back to today's interview.

[00:10:13] Hector: So, Angela, we talked about teamwork, communication, workplace, you know, burnout. All these things are kind of creeping into the, into the lexicon and businesses are starting to wake up, but, It seems it might just be like a, like treating the symptoms, right?

[00:10:25] Hector: It might just be like a cough drop kind of thing. Not, not really, you know, making the organization healthier per se. So talk to us about, a little bit about what, what you're seeing or maybe what you're not seeing from, corporations out there, or businesses in general.

[00:10:41] Angela: Yeah. I love what you just said there because it's a lot, like, a good analogy I think would be like our health as human beings, right? There are things that we can do on a regular day-to-day basis that will help support. Us being healthier, right? And then there's things that we can do on occasion or with some regularity that also contribute to that, but that's maybe an after the fact kind of thing, right? And taking that kind of analogy into and applying that towards a business. Right. What I'm seeing is, you know, I think it's great that organizations are thinking more about corporate social responsibility, how to get their team members more engaged, feel more purposeful with work so that they are more productive and more successful and, and healthier and whatnot.

[00:11:27] Angela: they're improving benefits such as healthcare benefits, maternity, paternity leave, things like that. Right. so there's a lot of stirring happening, you know, and especially. In the last year or so, especially since the pandemic, you know, with the great resignation and all that fun stuff, we see a lot of people starting to speak out more about their mental wellbeing, about burnout, things like that, and sort of how work is playing into that for them.

[00:11:54] Angela: Right? There is something that I'm not seeing organizations thinking enough about. I haven't seen this in dialogues. I haven't seen articles around this, and this is something I'm hoping to bring more out into the open so that there can be more conversation and there can be better changes and improvements.

[00:12:13] Angela: And it has to start with the top, because the people at the top are the ones who set what the bar and the expectations and the standards are. Well, basically this gap that I feel like I've been seeing has really about how work is being managed, right? I'm not talking about just like having a project plan, right?

[00:12:30] Angela: I mean, I have a project management background also. I've managed projects, work tasks, assigning them, having dependencies, all that fun stuff. I'm not talking about that level. What I'm talking about is actually managing the capacity of your team members so you're not overloading your team members. People can get stressed out just by having too many things.

[00:12:49] Angela: Thrown onto their plate without having enough clarity on what is the priority, when should these things be getting done, and what's the expectation for how hard they should be working to get these things done in a reasonable timeframe? Right? That alone can stress a person out if they don't have the that clarity, right?

[00:13:02] Angela: So when you have somebody who's just like, oh God, I got these 10 things and each one of these 10 things is gonna take anywhere from five to 20 hours to get done, and you have zero clarity on how quickly you gotta get that done, this person might start thinking, oh God, I gotta pull like. Really long nights for the next month just to get all of this in.

[00:13:21] Angela: Right. And that's not good. That's not healthy. Right. one of the things I've been able to do at Unity Web Agency has been to bring. A deeper level of work management to the team, in a way that helps minimize that kind of stress while also optimizing productivity in a way.

[00:13:44] Angela: when I first joined Unity, didn't have good project management practices. We didn't have any time tracking and work was not really being managed if you ask me.

[00:13:56] Angela: Not from my perspective. It wasn't really being managed. I mean, it was being delegated, but there was not a lot of clarity of how much time things were supposed to take or what the priority versus for one project versus another project task would be, things like that. and so there were times where. We had idle times because nobody really had thought that through before proceeding on various steps.

[00:14:20] Angela: And now we were just waiting on a bunch of clients to get back to us, for example. Right? And, you know, from a cost perspective, that's not a profitable way to run your business, right? You gotta make sure that you have something for your team to be working on. And keep, you know, keep the dollars rolling in, otherwise you're gonna start to sort of suffer financially.

[00:14:39] Angela: Right. And when I first joined, unity was suffering a little bit in that department where it was kind of feast and famine a little bit. At some point I was, I'm gonna scrap that. So at some point I started to take on more of a role with helping improve our business operations and our processes. One of the first things I did was we need to start tracking time. Now, the entire team was resistant to this. I mean, most people don't like tracking their time, but the real reason why time tracking is so important for every business is one.

[00:15:11] Angela: You have to know what is the cost of you delivering your service or your product. And you won't know that unless you know how long it takes, because every single person you're paying to do that work as part of that whole thing, costs something, and you need to know what that cost is. So that's the first.

[00:15:29] Angela: The first thing. The second thing is to make sure you're not underpricing yourself as a business or you know, like whether it's your service or your product. You gotta know what that floor is like. I cannot go below this because otherwise I'm not making a profit. I'm not even breaking even. Right? So that was the first thing I did was I brought up, I, I was like, okay, we gotta start tracking time. one of the other things I. The ne, one of the next things I did was I pretty much overhauled our project management. We were using, we were using more of a task management platform prior. I'm not gonna name it, just, I don't wanna throw any shade at anybody. but we were using a more, what I consider more of a task management platform, even though it's marketed as a project management platform, but what it lacked, I.

[00:16:16] Angela: In terms of why I didn't consider a true project management platform, what it lacked was the ability to actually track dependency relationships between various tasks that needed to happen. It also lacked the ability to understand resource capacity and plan intelligently around resource capacity. So when you're dealing with a team of, say, five people and you have maybe 15 projects, understanding capacity starts to become a really important thing.

[00:16:41] Angela: Because you know anybody who says, Hey, you got 12 projects, get it done. You know, the team members working on it are just be like, oh God, which one should I be working on first? Right? It's not as easy as, okay, person A, you're gonna work on Z Z project and person B, you're gonna work on Y project. You know, and then they're just heads down on their one thing, right?

[00:17:00] Angela: No, the, these people are literally jumping between projects week to week, you know, and it's day to day even. So, I switched our team over to a better project management tool, and then I was just like, okay, we need to understand how long it takes us to get these various tasks on. And this was the hardest part for the team at at the beginning because nobody knew how long it took them to get anything done.

[00:17:24] Angela: And I was like, that's okay. We just need to start somewhere and then we'll tweak our estimate as we become more informed and better at estimating the work. Right. But what this helped us understand was from start to finish, how long does it take us to deliver a whole project of various types, right? So now we could actually give some level of clarity to clients and prospects of, okay, you want this kind of project, it's gonna take a minimum of this much time.

[00:17:53] Angela: You know, just hands down, if you're asking for us to deliver this in one month, we know we can't get that done based on our delivery processes and the estimates that we have already put forth for how long it takes us to get that done right. So it helps start setting really good expectations and boundaries with clients, which is going to of course, improve your relationships with your clients.

[00:18:12] Angela: Of course, there's gonna be the clients who are just like, No, I still want it this short. That's fine. You know, at least you're not gonna be stressing yourself and your team over their very tight deadline. Right. but,

[00:18:24] Hector: Well, it seems like, like there's a, a, what you're doing is you are introducing these. When you talked about like cohesive ways to work together, right? Where, where the system and the people, there's, there's an acknowledgement of each other and, and there's a, there's a, a symbiotic relationship where, you know, the system can't run without the people and also without understanding the true capacity of those people within it, and vice versa, the people without the system.

[00:18:53] Hector: Are not able to give priority or they're not able to give, you know, or understand, you know, what and when things are due. And so you are, I think you're really humanizing these, these systems, by, by bringing in this ability to track and quantify how, how long or how much it takes to, to complete something.

[00:19:15] Hector: And I think there's a lot of, you know, insights in that.

[00:19:18] Angela: it's definitely that in project management there's a, a, what I consider like a subar, or one of the aspects of project management is called resource planning, or can be called resource planning. and this is really, This is what I was really applying to the Unity team.

[00:19:37] Angela: it allows our team members that are doing the work itself to focus on more on doing the work rather than trying to figure out what is their prioritization,

[00:19:45] Angela: managing their

[00:19:46] Hector: to be done?

[00:19:47] Angela: exactly right. as well as how am I gonna fit all this time in to this timeframe or whatever like that while I also have these other projects I need to juggle.

[00:19:55] Angela: Right. So it's removing things that they probably don't. Want to be thinking about. Some of them don't wanna be thinking about it. Some of 'em aren't good at thinking about it, right? It's removing that from their mental load so that they can actually stay focused on the work that they are good at. And that helps with improving business efficiencies.

[00:20:12] Angela: And so that's going to also improve, of course, your productivity, therefore your, your profitability and your success and as your organization. Cause now you're not asking people who aren't good at things to do something that. They just aren't good at. That was kinda redundant, but now you're not asking people to do things that they aren't good at.

[00:20:31] Hector: Do you have any like resources, whether it's things that you've created or things that you like to, to point people to when, when kind of getting into or just thinking about this, right, because I think that. At least for me, I came from the sales and marketing world and project management, you know, teamwork, like leadership.

[00:20:49] Hector: Those are the things that like, oh, you, you kind of find out that you have to do. Once you're in it, you know, it, it kind of comes as, as the, the last, last thing. so do you have any favorite resources for someone who's getting started in this stuff?

[00:21:04] Angela: if I were to, gonna be completely honest, I would say it's more just because I'm not really a book reader. and a lot of my learning has really just been trial by fire. when I was working at the software consulting company, there were a few times where I had the. Resource planning role.

[00:21:23] Angela: You know, I mean there's also the official project manager role, but there's a different role in the organization for resource planning. And what I do now with Unity is actually at another level of detail than what I used to do. Because in the other organization, you just assign one person to a project and that's it.

[00:21:38] Angela: You know, you might assign two people to that project and that's it, but you're not having. A single team member needing to juggle between several projects all at once. so this may not necessarily feel as relevant to some organizations, but I still believe that it will still help all organizations because. There's sometimes a lot of bloat in time estimates, especially when you're in the sales level. You know, people in the sales level usually don't have an idea of how long it's really gonna take because there's so many details they don't know yet that the team members working on the project will finally discover once they just get into it.

[00:22:13] Angela: And when you start having your team members start estimating out, okay, what do we need to do? Da, da, da, da, da, right? You start getting them to think through step by step, what do we need to do? How much time do we need to to get this? Done. And are we gonna stay within budget? Do we need to go ahead and start asking for a change request?

[00:22:32] Angela: You know, things like that, you know? And, like I said, a lot of my experience is more trial by fire. I am hoping to write a book about this sometime. in the next few years, this is still a very new thing that I, For me, this is a, a new passion that I've started to realize that I want to get out there more to help businesses run more what I like to call humanely.

[00:22:59] Angela: it does to some people, my approach sounds like micromanagement, but to me it's actually about helping. Your team members focus more on what they are good at. And there are some people out there who are just phenomenal planners. Those people would be the best people to have as a resource planner because that is what they love.

[00:23:19] Angela: That is what they swim in. So honestly, if somebody's just getting started, They should, one, get real with yourself first about what are your real strengths, right? If you don't know what that is, maybe try considering getting a Colby assessment, because I find that assessment to be really meaningful. There is a, There are, four different categories and such.

[00:23:39] Angela: Some of them are more forward thinking, some of them are more like whole big picture thinking and such like that, right? my guess is somebody with a high follow through score is gonna be better at considering what is going on now as well as what's gonna need to happen in the future and what has happened in the past.

[00:23:55] Angela: So, If you have somebody with a strong follow through score, they're gonna be more circumspect in the way they're thinking about things and may be able to do the resource planning a little bit better for that reason, because resource planning is really thinking about the whole thing, not just only thinking about the future, not being stuck in the past, not just being in the present.

[00:24:14] Hector: this is great stuff. Angela. If people want to go and get more connected with you or follow up with you or go deeper in your world, is there anywhere that they can do that?

[00:24:22] Angela: so people can follow me on LinkedIn. my handle is Angela Lu three, so a n g e l a three.

[00:24:30] Angela: or you can find me@ecoconsulting.com, which is spelled I K A r u c o n s u l t i n g.com. that's my site for my consulting work. so if anybody's interested in, having me help them improve their business operations in that kind of way as well, or any other type of, Support, for their small business.

[00:24:54] Angela: they can definitely reach out to me there that way.

[00:24:56] Angela: I love helping small business owners, be their sounding board, you know, share my expertise, my perspective. I definitely believe I bring a more holistic approach and thought mindset to how to run an organization. some business leaders are very good at their craft, but. They maybe are not as good at running a business or they, maybe get overly focused on sales and then neglect the delivery and operations side of their business.

[00:25:20] Angela: But all aspects are important for building a successful. Business and organization in the long term. and you really can't have success without long-term sustainability. Right? And so that's one of the key things that I tend to think about and keep in mind whenever I'm, you know, either advising Unity or any other clients and such, is really thinking about that whole picture and keeping it all in mind, including the individual human beings that are part of that business and making sure that they are part of that equation for long-term sustainability.

[00:25:52] Angela: there's a lot of costs that come. When a organization loses team members who have been working with them,

[00:25:58] Hector: well, very insightful conversation, Angela. some great perspectives and, and some things that I think you're right, need to be talked about more. So I'm, I'm excited that you're starting the conversation. I would encourage you guys to go and get connected with Angela on LinkedIn. Go check out our website and if you guys.

[00:26:14] Hector: Enjoy today's conversation. We would appreciate a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. if you know someone who is in the midst of scaling their business or is thinking about starting one, please send 'em this episode and then go out and take action on, on something. Implement one thing. At least reach out to Angela or I.

[00:26:29] Hector: Let us know how it goes. We would, would love to hear about your successes, but thanks as always for being a part of the tribe. We appreciate you being here. We'll see on the next one later, y'all.