Podcast Interview with Morgan Smith the CEO of Kalm with Kava

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Sante Esteban and I'm one of your hosts. We're here today with Mr. Michael Kavanaugh and we're going to talk aboutsome things that we've touched on a little bit, but I'm curious to get his take and that is getting things done or maybe not even getting things done but specifically change management and getting different things done, improving, growing, evolving as a business.

[00:00:25] Hector: And I'm excited for our conversation today, Mike. Thanks for hanging out.

[00:00:29] Mike: Thanks for having me. So just a little bit. Oh, sorry. You're probably gonna see me up.

[00:00:33] Hector: Yeah, just give us the background on the inside. I know right now you are in a very kind of button up. At least if we look at your LinkedIn profile, you're a very button up job. You work the Stanford Healthcare, but you right now, you've got a very lax, laid back kind of vibe shirt and the whole thing.

[00:00:50] Hector: So I'm very curious you got into the space that you're in. And then tell us a little bit about that journey and then also catch us up on what kind of what you're doing now.

[00:01:00] Mike: Sure. All right. So my journey is an interesting one. And I can probably safely say you'll never have a guest on my show quite like me. I come from a performing arts background. I was a stage manager for nonprofit theater companies for 15 years. My undergraduate degree is in stage management.

[00:01:19] Mike: And then I went to grad school. For puppetry. I'll say that again because that usually takes people a second to hear. I have a master's degree in the puppet arts and then I went to clown college on top of that and I

[00:01:33] Mike: spent a

[00:01:34] Hector: I was just gonna say I'm sure you've heard some jokes about any and all of those. continue

[00:01:38] Mike: so then I went toclown college for a year after that. Going back to the puppet school, I always like to joke that mom told me to go to school and make friends, and so I did

[00:01:46] Hector: that was me too. I had that many friends too. we're right there.

[00:01:49] Mike: Very non traditional project management background, as you might imagine or piece together, but even in the performing arts projects got to get managed, things got to get operations day to day and week in and week out need to happen, and there needs to be a plan. We've got to follow that plan and adapt when necessary.

[00:02:06] Mike: Fast forward, my long career in the performing arts and education, and now we're looking at spring of 2020. I'm in a production of Chicago, the musical in San Jose, California, when this virus hits, we showed up for our Thursday night show. And we gave everybody their paycheck and sent them all home.

[00:02:27] Mike: And we actually had to close with four performances left in our run. as we all know, fast forward, that was not the short stint of stay at home that we thought it might be. Myself, I was unemployed for 60 weeks, six, zero,

[00:02:41] Hector: Yeah. And especially in your area, you had it pretty tough.

[00:02:43] Mike: right? Absolutely. And I don't know if the arts will ever truly recover without changing their way of working.

[00:02:48] Mike: But even before that, I was already starting to looking at like, how do I get out of this? Realm. And how do I take my skill set that I'm good at time management, communication, monitoring and managing expectations. And how do I apply that to something that might pay a little bit more because the performing arts is not a pay well.

[00:03:05] Mike: And I was actually having a clown resume in the clown reunion on zoom. And that's just so fun to say, and I was talking about my journey and my.struggle with some of my clown classmates and this guy who I wasn't even that friendly with and now he's like he's changed my life and I want to let him know much he's changed my life.

[00:03:21] Mike: He says to me, have you ever heard of the PMP? No, what's that project management professional, the stage manager is just a project manager in the real world really tell me more. Have you ever heard of PMI? No, I haven't. What's that? Same time the next day. I've signed up for PMI. I'm in a PMP training program, deep into really just the differences, which is vocabulary and lexicon. Okay, you call it a stakeholder register, I call it a cast list. You call it a project management plan, I call it a prompt script. So on and so forth, but. Other than that, other than the vocabulary, the job is the same. We have schedules, we have budgets, we have baselines, we have stakeholders that are impacted and affected.

[00:04:03] Mike: We have change requests, we build something, we get feedback, we put it in front of we open it, release it to market. The difference being that theatrical life product has a very short shelf life. Six weeks if it's lucky and then we scrap it we saw start all over again and in that same journey of Getting my PMP and understanding that everything that I've been doing for the last 15 years is actually a professional One the highest paid professions in the world I started to delve into the Agile world, right?

[00:04:31] Mike: The different Agile venues, because that was popping up a lot. And what does this mean? Agility, with a capital A. And so I did a handful of workshops and certifications. I'm a certified scrum master now, a product owner, et cetera. And in there, I realized what they call Agile, this new thing from Snowbird circa 2000 is not new at all.

[00:04:55] Mike: We've been doing it in the theater world for two, three thousand years. So let me describe something to you. We have two weeks. We build something. We're not sure what we're making, but we're gonna, take what we think is important. We're going to build it. We're going to put it on its feet. At the end of two weeks, we're going to put it in front of people.

[00:05:10] Mike: We're going to get their feedback, what works, what doesn't. We're going to go back and we're going to build something for two more weeks before we do that all over again. What did I just describe to you?

[00:05:18] Hector: I feel like that's like the sprints, right? Those are agile sprint sessions. But I'd also imagine that's a season in of a production, right? Or a stint of a production.

[00:05:27] Mike: Exactly right. That's exactly how every theater company I've ever worked with makes a play. take two weeks, sometimes three weeks, but we learn our lines, we give it what's called blocking. You enter here, exit there, stand over here, say your line there, etc. And then we put it in front of our Designers, our board members our crew, anyone, our stakeholders, right?

[00:05:46] Mike: It's sprint review. We get feedback. Okay. Then we have a sprint retrospective where we're like adjusting our way of working. what's been working well for us? What has, and what do we need to adapt? And then we go back and we do the same thing for another two weeks, but that we don't really have another sprint review at that point.

[00:06:01] Mike: Then we add lights, costumes, sound sets, open it to the public, release product six months or six weeks later. The product is dead, scrap it, and start all over again. So in that Scrum workshop, you're absolutely right, I described the sprints. I described a basic Scrum framework. But that's Not new to me.

[00:06:20] Mike: I've been doing that for 15 years. the industry that I came from has been doing that for decades. So how is this all of a sudden this new thing coming out of the digital world in the 2000s? We also like to joke in theater particularly in puppetry that sometimes things become so old that they're new again.

[00:06:36] Mike: So I've said a lot. I'm sure you've got lots of questions. So I'll pause there and let you interject any thoughts or questions you might have.

[00:06:42] Hector: yeah. I'm trying to go backwards in my journey and think from our listeners perspective and a lot of them get into business because they were the artists who made really good art. And then all of a sudden someone asked them to, they were the carpenter who made good, shelves and someone asked them to build a shelf for them.

[00:07:00] Hector: So they got one customer and then they got another. And what ends up happening is that they oftentimes don't build the foundation that a lot of these big businesses or big corporations have or are built upon because they're coming at it from this solopreneur freelancer, world.

[00:07:16] Hector: And so I guessthe premise that want to come from is how do you help someone who's going from such Unstructure right from, so many people, they get into business because I want to be my own boss. I want to be my own thing on my own schedule.

[00:07:30] Hector: And it's almost at least on the surface, the antithesis of structure and what you're talking about. And what I know about agile is that it's on the other side of that spectrum. So how do you help someone cross that bridge or see the value in I was talking to my wife and maybe she's not the ideal.

[00:07:48] Hector: Okay. Client, but she's I hate when people send me calendar invites and I'm like, what are so it's just like this different mindset that people are coming from. How do you help them walk, closer to that place of reasoning.

[00:08:00] Mike: Sure. I would often start with a question of do they need to, right? So I'm sure your listeners will be familiar with the terminology waterfall, right? Or predictive model, right? Waterfalls are traditional project management style and then agile. being our new iterative approach.

[00:08:18] Mike: One's not necessarily better than the other, depending on what you're doing. So for me when the scenario that you just proposed, I would start with the question of, do you know what you're making? Do you know what you're trying to build? Do you know what the problem that you're trying to solve?

[00:08:33] Mike: Because if you do, probably a waterfall approach is, might be the best one. If you know what you're making, you know you're building a plane. You're building the pyramid, you're building an iPhone, you can plan around that. You're going to have a schedule, you're going to have a budget, you're going to have resources, you're going to have, if you can plan it on paper then do that.

[00:08:48] Mike: But if you can't plan it on paper, if you don't know what you're building, if you don't know the solution, the problem, then you might want a more agile approach, right? Or even a hybrid of the two right now. So we're getting a little bit ahead, but right now. I am the Change Management Lead at Stanford Medicine, and we are currently doing an ERP transformation, ERP, the Employee Resource Planning, right?

[00:09:12] Mike: big technology that we use for all of our resources, whether it's procurement, receiving, requisitioning, finance related, etc. So that's a huge initiative, but we're doing a bit of a hybrid approach where though it's mostly waterfall, because we know what we're building and we know the people involved, we know the time and the budget that we have, there is an element of we don't know some of the solutions that we're creating because we're able to build this fresh out of the box.

[00:09:41] Mike: So within our waterfall framework, we have a series of sprints. We have, I think, four to six sprints designed to help build what we don't know what we're building, to help solution the answers that we don't know. All of that coupled within A waterfall framework of A leads to B leads to C leads to Z eventually.

[00:10:02] Mike: So to that scenario of how do we make that change? How do we even begin to answer the question, I don't know what I'm making? Cause sometimes that's a hard thing to admit. I don't know what I'm building. I don't know what I'm making. That doesn't suggest that I don't know what I'm doing.

[00:10:17] Mike: Right? There's a difference there. I often use the allegory of cheesecake. You, sir, Hector, are the owner of a restaurant, and you come to me and you say you want to add cheesecake to the menu. Okay, so waterfall mindset. I said, great. I know how to make cheesecake. I'm gonna go do the recipe for cheesecake.

[00:10:37] Mike: We're gonna budget out the items that we're gonna need. We're gonna hire the cheesecake chefs that we're gonna make, that we're gonna need to make the cheesecake. We're gonna allocate space in the walk in to keep the cheesecake fresh and all the supplies that we're gonna need. We're gonna take pictures of our cheesecake.

[00:10:50] Mike: We're gonna send it to the printing press. We're gonna send the copy to the printer to get it on the menu, et cetera, et cetera. 18 months later, I roll out to you. It's opening day. Cheesecake on the menu. Finally, I bring it out to you. You say to me, that's the wrong cheesecake. That's not what I want. Okay, so 18 months wasted all that time planning wasted because I brought you the wrong thing.

[00:11:10] Mike: Okay, so let's go back. Now we're going to try this at agile approach. You come to me. You say you want to add cheesecake to the menu. I say, great. What is the most important part of cheesecake to you? Is it the crust? Is it the flavor? Or is it the texture? So Hector, what is it?

[00:11:25] Hector: For me, it is the flavor.

[00:11:28] Mike: Okay, it's the flavor. Great. So I'm going to come me and my crew, we're going to spend two weeks. We're going to make a bunch of different cheesecakes. We're going to find the one that we think is the most flavorful. We're going to present it to you at the end of two weeks. Hector, here is this cheesecake.

[00:11:39] Mike: Do you think this is the most flavorful cheesecake you've ever tasted? Yes or no?

[00:11:43] Hector: No.

[00:11:44] Mike: Okay, great. Two weeks, two weeks. We're going to go back. We're going to try some other recipes. We're going to expand our palates. What is it? Flavor? We're going to ask you a few questions about its flavor.do you like umami, sweet, salty, savory?

[00:11:55] Mike: What's your palate like? What are you looking for? Do you want a more cheesy cheesecake? Do you want a more sugary cheesecake? We'll find out. Two weeks later, we put this delicious cheesecake in front of you. Is this the most delicious flavored cheesecake you've ever tasted?

[00:12:06] Hector: Yes. Nailed it.

[00:12:08] Mike: Boom. Four weeks. Not 18 months.

[00:12:10] Mike: Now we're going to repeat that same process for the other two areas I mentioned, crust and texture, right? Delivering value quickly. Instead of disappointing you every 18 months, I'm going to disappoint you every two weeks. Now, I answered the question that I wasn't asked, but for me. Like I said, starting with the question, do you know what you're making

[00:12:27] Hector: Yeah.

[00:12:28] Hector: I feel like so many businesses today don't though, right? Software, SaaS, even, a large part of what we do is service providing. I would imagine that at least in our, Business. Yes, there is some waterfall properties, right? But I think there's so much value into doing these shorter sprints because we're constantly looking to iterate and improve our processes.

[00:12:50] Hector: And instead of doing it on a quarterly basis or an annual basis, you're talking about these smaller bite sized pieces. Michael, this is great. When we get back from break, don't know if you can do this, but in as concisely as we can, I love to give our business owners and our listeners some sort of toolbox to get started.

[00:13:08] Hector: Or this is getting this direction. These are the steps. And so we're going to do that when we get back from break.

[00:13:14] Hector: Hey guys, thanks for tuning in today.

[00:13:16] Hector: Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media and we are a small group of genius makers. If you look at our title, we're a podcast production company, but our goal is to help you bring out your passion or your purpose. Or if you have a mission or message that you're trying to get out to the world, we're here to help you.

[00:13:29] Hector: But don't necessarily have the time or the tech skills to be able to do it. We can help go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. And you can find all the details, check the show notes as well. And with that, let's get back to today's episode. Okay, Mike, you've got me fired up here because I'm like, this is the answer both for us.

[00:13:49] Hector: And I'm sure that a lot of our listeners are realizing that The framework, the operating system that they're bringing to their business, right? That so many of the daily activities that they're doing can be enhanced and upgraded by this operating system. So if someone is starting from scratch, or I think about us, we've got some of the basic things going, we've got a team, we've got like a communication place, we've got Slack, we've got some rituals and habits, routines, but otherwise.

[00:14:15] Hector: we don't really have a whole lot of project management. Nis, where could, or should we go from here?

[00:14:20] Mike: often do you as an organization or you as a person stop and reflect on your way of working and make sure that it's the best way or make any changes to that approach?

[00:14:31] Hector: I would imagine that a lot of people are. An ad hoc kind of thing, I know I try and do it as often as I can write on the intervals, the weekly, the monthly, the whatever, but it ends up it because of that. I find it being pretty sporadic

[00:14:45] Mike: So that would be first answer to that question is building in that inspect and adapt feedback loops to any process, any system, whether it's creating your podcast or running your organization or running waterfall project or an agile project,

[00:15:00] Hector: Can I jump in and maybe talk about something that you glossed over that I thought was, man, that's really the thing that's missing is the data we're looking back on stuff and we're just reflecting on whatever we're just reflecting on what did we think go well but I think a very subtle, but critical point that you talked about was, okay, over two weeks, you're able to gather real data.

[00:15:22] Hector: You're able to have some real data that you can analyze, make some decisions on, and then chart a new path for the next two weeks, and then do it again. But without that data, you're just, not that you're flying blind but almost.

[00:15:34] Mike: without data, without any insights, you are flying blind. You're just making it up or you're flying by your best guess. One person's best guess, right? But getting usable feedback from actual people that are going to be using your project or are interacting with you and your communications, whether it's a podcast or a newsletter I do that myself.

[00:15:54] Mike: I put out a podcast for supply chain, I put a newsletter too, and I'm constantly asking, is this the right? Vehicle. Is this the right approach? Is this the right audience? Am I telling you information that you find valuable and useful? If not, please let me know, because I don't want to squeeze this orange if the juice isn't worth it. gathering data and whether that's sometimes you gather the wrong data. But you don't know that until you start gathering, What data is useful is very dependent on your organization, on what you're doing within that organization. But if you're not gathering anything, then you have nothing to work with,

[00:16:26] Mike: I want to put a hesitation because there are two schools of thought when it comes around gathering data and information I find to be more hurtful than helpful. And the one is that Age old saying you can't manage what you can't measure. I'm sure you've come across that.

[00:16:41] Mike: Your listeners is probably well familiar with that. That is a archaic mindset from days gone before capital, A agility hit that hit the streets. That's a manager's drum to beat you.You can't manage, what you can't measure. cry bull to that, Some of our best practices have been abandoned.

[00:16:58] Mike: I don't say our best practices. Some of the very pioneering practices, particularly in the agile world, have been abandoned by their creators. Yet everybody still practices them things like story points. You familiar with story points?

[00:17:12] Hector: I'm not familiar with story

[00:17:13] Mike: Oh, thank good. Good for you. Stay away from that one. What about burn rate

[00:17:18] Hector: Burn

[00:17:18] Mike: for burn down rate?

[00:17:20] Mike: We're familiar with that. Good. Good for you. These are two concepts that were very pioneering in early agile and people who came up with them wrote books about them. And now all these consulting organizations live and die by them, but they never read the second book. Where the creators abandoned that approach because this is just top down management applied to a unmanageable process.

[00:17:43] Mike: Agility makes people uncomfortable because we're working on an Agile project and you're the organization that's hired me to bring this Agile project to fruition, you tell me how long is it going to take? I'm going to say, as long as you're willing to give me time. And you ask, how much is it going to cost?

[00:17:57] Mike: As much money as you're willing to throw at it. And these are answers that people do not like.

[00:18:02] Mike: And it makes you very uncomfortable. Oh, I need to plan. I need to know when we can release. We'll release when it's done.illustrated those two dangerous phrases. So the one you can't measure, you can't manage what you can't measure and the other, and I'm sure everybody's heard this one.

[00:18:14] Mike: That's the way we've always done it and nothing will drive an organization down. Nothing will stop them from scaling faster than the mindset of this is the way that we've always done it. So this should work adapt or die the ability to adapt. I look at my own personal journey. Yeah. I transitioned from stage management.

[00:18:32] Mike: puppeteer clown, and now I'm Senior Training Specialist and Change Management Lead at Stanford Medicine. And podcast host and newsletter guru and yes and soon to be father.

[00:18:43] Hector: Congratulations on that

[00:18:45] Hector: that it will be your toughest test. I know it. Okay. So you talked about reflecting on and I would imagine that just building in the habit to reflect on your business, Being willing to do that because that's so much of what this process Is the billing being willing to check in actually observe like what's going on?

[00:19:05] Hector: Is there anything else, any other actionable things that someone might be able to get started with or some easy low hanging fruit that someone can do to get going down this path?

[00:19:14] Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I was jotted a few thoughts down. So some from my own personal journey, but just get out there and see what people are teaching, right? LinkedIn learning. Not that expensive, but a great resource for even intro to project management, intro to agility, intro to scaling courses, intro to lean and or six sigma.

[00:19:33] Mike: You can separate them. They're not mutually exclusive. Or they don't have to be mutually exclusive. So LinkedIn learning is a great You to me or you to me or whatever that online learning Academy, I went through a couple of those as I started to wet my whistle and understand where in the world I want to try to see myself as I understood more about, scrum and agile frameworks that I understood more about waterfall approaches and then, Getting some basic certifications, you can get a scrum master certification in two days. that would give you the vocabulary to talk intelligently about the framework. You might not be able to go out and say prove that yes, I am a good scrum master, but you'll understand the vocabulary. Which is huge. If you can't keep up with the conversation, then how could you ever be a part of it?

[00:20:15] Mike: Basic certifications a yellow Lean Six Sigma belt basic scrum or product owner certifications. Volunteer with organizations. PMI has got that's the Project Management Institute. They've got chapters in every major city, and they're all those chapters have different teams within them.

[00:20:33] Mike: I remember when I was first starting, I volunteered to be a project manager with the sustainability team on the San Francisco PMI chapter, and all that did was just get me to meet some people and talk about Practices and flushed up my resume a little bit, networking is huge. So that's the next, the other side of volunteering is finding some sort of project management or agility or whatever your sector may be.

[00:20:58] Mike: Find a group, whether that's on LinkedIn, whether that's in Just locally on whatever platform you might have, find some sort of networking group that might have a monthly meeting where you can go online or in person and you can go and see people and shake hands or fist bump or wave through the camera.

[00:21:14] Mike: And then eventually you'll meet in person at that local community gathering or go to that national gathering and start putting names to faces. So yeah, find those local chapters within your town, within your capital city, if you don't live there currently. anD yeah, look for those conferences.

[00:21:31] Mike: What else can I speak to, Hector?

[00:21:34] Hector: I think that you've laid out a great foundation and I think that only other thing that I would think that is maybe you could help us with is helping us to see around a corner, right? I think blind spots is something that I've become really fascinated with, especially in doing a lot of these shows is that, in spending so much time and doing what you're doing, you're able to see a lot of the mistakes that people make when they try and get started, or a lot of the, what I would imagine is the false beliefs or assumptions or the incorrect perspectives.

[00:22:06] Hector: I would say that if there's someone out there. Who's charged up like me and I'm like, I think it's a skill share thing. I'm going to go and download a bunch of, courses and I'm going to fill up my Kindle and I'm going to be all revved up to go down this rabbit hole because you've really inspired me.

[00:22:19] Hector: And so I guess my question is there anything I should be any cautionary, any, but, things to be aware of or, be mindful of as we're going through this journey?

[00:22:30] Mike: I'll give some advice that I read when I was coming out of high school. Do you know the director Robert Rodriguez?

[00:22:36] Hector: Yes.

[00:22:38] Mike: Love him, right? Sin City, his work on the Mandalorian, great director. He kept a journal. During his first film, El Mariachi, pretty much what

[00:22:48] Hector: By the way Spy Kids, if I'm not mistaken,

[00:22:51] Mike: Oh, yes, that's definitely Spy Kids.

[00:22:52] Hector: is his, Is the best one for me. But carry on.

[00:22:55] Mike: So he kept a journal during making his first film and tells stories of, selling blood for plasma for money so he can go buy his camera and, selling his body to science so he could buy his editing equipment and meeting Quentin Tarantino at Sundance in 1994 after Quentin had just released Buzzword Dogs and all, he tells you stories.

[00:23:16] Mike: In the back of that is probably one of the most influential things I've ever read in my life. It's Robert Rodriguez's 10 Minute Film School. And the very first lesson in the 10 Minute Film School is, start calling yourself a director now. the sooner, the quicker that you can call yourself a director with a straight face, is the sooner people will believe you and take you seriously.

[00:23:40] Mike: And I say this to answer your question, because I think it applies no matter what arena we're in. If you can say with confidence, I am a project manager, I am an agile professional, I am an agile coach and scrum master, you believe yourself, then the person listening to you will believe you too. So making this journey, trying to go down this path, if you can get away from that, I want to be, or I'm looking forward to be, or I'm gonna, and you just tell people that you are.

[00:24:07] Mike: The more confidence that you can deliver that line with, I am Michael Kavanaugh and I am a project manager. You don't know that I have a clown background and a clown nose in my pocket, a pair of puppet eyes on my desk. And I used to have a seven inch electric blue Mohawk, but you don't need to know that yet.

[00:24:24] Mike: If we get working together, then I'll let you know that because that might be contextually important, but I am a project manager. You say that with confidence or whatever. I'm a change management lead. I'm a change management professional. I make podcasts for a living. Sooner you say it. With sincerity, sooner people will believe you and want to latch on to that sincerity. How's that Hector?

[00:24:47] Hector: good. So good. You've got your show of your own, which I'm not surprised that you've been able to deliver such value here. I'd love for you to share what the show is and then anywhere people can go and get connected with you online.

[00:24:57] Mike: suRe. The show is it's an internal podcast that I put out for our supply chain department at Sanford Medicine. We try to do an episode a month, usually deep dives into the people or the processes that are making the magic happen behind supply chain. We keep it unlisted, but I do post it to my LinkedIn page.

[00:25:15] Mike: And so people can meet or follow me on LinkedIn. It's just my initials, MT Kavanaugh. That's my LinkedIn profile or Michael Truman Kavanaugh, PMP, CSPO, ACSM. If you're looking up my name.

[00:25:28] Hector: That's where we connected. Mike, this has been really fun guys. I encourage you guys to go get connected on that as well. And how cool that you get to be a podcaster as part of your job. that's awesome.

[00:25:39] Mike: get to flex some of those artistic muscles every now and then.

[00:25:42] Hector: yeah, how fun guys, I want to thank you for sticking around and being a part of the tribe. If you guys got any value from today, please leave a rating, a review wherever you get your podcast. If you know someone who is going through this journey, who has a business thinking about starting one, send them this episode and take one thing.

[00:25:59] Hector: I've got a whole host of things that I'm gonna take, but I'd love for you to implement and execute one thing. Let us know how it goes. We want to hear about your successes. But like I said, thanks for sticking with us. We appreciate you being part of the tribe. We'll see you on the next one. Later, y'all.