“Getting your team to embrace and believe in new ways of doing things” with Keith Murley, Business & Technology Executive

As a Technology Executive, Keith Murley knows that getting your team to love and embrace new technologies and processes can be challenging.?

Oftentimes people fear that the new way of doing things will actually complicate things or even take longer than doing things “the way we’ve always done them”. And leaders are met with resentment.

In this interview by Rosa Ponce de Leon, learn how you can get buy-in and support from your team...

Keith Murley is a multi-talented entrepreneur, business and technology leader, and philanthropist, with a proven track record of exceptional performance. Graduating early from high school, he studied computer information systems and completed further specialized training in the areas of strategic business management, disaster recovery / business continuity, and network administration. Keith speaks English and Spanish fluently, having had the privilege of living with his family as a child in Ecuador.

Keith, welcome! I’m so happy to have you. Can you tell me about your background?

I started my career in healthcare technology and dealing with a very diverse group of people. We were working with more advanced technologies and a large group of people that were a little bit more comfortable with different technology solutions, software and applications and how it benefits them.?

Down the road, I pivoted to the construction industry, and I realized that there was still that true need and desire for technology. The people on the construction side, they wanted us from the technology side to prove to them how we can make their job easier. And that was a challenge that I very much enjoyed.?

It makes you become a better technologist and focus more on the solutions because there tends to be more push back. That's a great challenge when you don't have the immediate buy-in for brand new software, this shiny new piece of hardware, whatever it might be. And what ultimately led to me getting into consulting was being able to roll out software to construction guys who are used to just using tools using their hands and seeing what that produces. It feels great when you're able to deliver solutions that truly help their job. And when you tailor it in a simple way, they see that you've put the effort into making something that complements what they do. And you're not just ramming it down their throat.?

The adoption was phenomenal and they really enjoyed it. That was an eye opening and exciting experience because I truly believe that at the core, people want to use technology, if it works for them. They want to ask for help if something isn't working. But you have to have that personal touch. That personal approach, as opposed to “...this is what we're doing. And your feedback is negligible.”

Yeah, I can totally relate to what you're saying from the end user perspective. In my industry in law enforcement, we contract out a lot of our services for information systems, and problem solving.?

One of the simplest things is you have this computer inside the car that you have to manipulate while you're driving. And that from an IT perspective, they want to create this fancy thing with bells and whistles. But you're sitting there thinking, “I'm driving, I have one hand, I don't need all those things. I want something simple.”?

Now when you have people out there, trying to build things or construct things or just simply be efficient in their jobs, the computer solution shouldn't be slower than if I just did it with a pen and paper.

You're dead on and that's one of the advantages that I brought to the consulting side, having lived in that environment. For example, if I was in a different industry, I would be in the car, I would see and know how things work. And I think having that level of context with a business to just feel it, there's so many intangibles that so many times as a consultant, if you haven't had that experience, it's far too easy to get so caught up in everything that you can do with the software and give it to the user. And it's just too much, or it doesn't really fit in with what they're trying to do.?

One of the things that I was encouraged to do in my other positions, is to go into the field, do your projects on site as much as you can just to feel that energy. There's a different flow, there's things that don't come up during meetings, there's things that don't come up in structured conversation. When you're just sitting there working, you pick up on some of the cross talk.?

That's even something that we're experiencing now. Transitioning to the virtual side is, all the sudden we're missing out on some of that, just that random contextual conversation, or just passing somebody in the hallway and, and reminding, or something reminds you to, you know, to have a conversation with them, or bring something up in a very ad hoc way. And that's absolutely invaluable.

You're talking about just reaching across the aisle and talking to the other person, the end user, and being able to speak their language. From the beginning, you're saying, “Hey, I have this great solution.” But if they don't see it as a solution, it's not going to be great.

In the early days of technology, when I first started getting into it, you took what the IT department provided you. That's what it was. There were no ifs, ands, or buts, there was really no complaining about it. You were just stuck with it.?

Now in this day and age, we see so many more department heads and team leads, doing research on solutions, or coming to the table and saying, “This is our challenge. How do we solve that? An off the shelf solution that doesn't fit our goals, it just doesn't work now.” And what I love about the tech field now is there's so many solutions that you can truly find a very close fit to what you're trying to accomplish. Back in the day, you were only able to get that with custom applications.?

When I went to college, there were a lot of applications that were custom made, because there just wasn't the availability that we're seeing nowadays. It's really exciting, but at the same time, one of the challenges is really honing in on your focus. Because there are so many options, if you just go on to an app store, if you just go on the web and look up, it could be cybersecurity. It could be people management, HR solutions, project management, etc.?

There's many times we found that clients that own software that has the ability to do what they're trying to do but they're just not aware of it. And it's really exciting for me to work with companies to say “Hey, you have this challenge. You actually own the software that does this. And you don't have to spend more money.” There's this aha moment where IT consulting isn't a four letter word. It's looking at what you have and solving the problem with what you currently have. It gives you more faith down the road in investing in solutions when you actually need it.

One of the challenges that I've seen most often is that you buy all this fancy stuff, but then they don't “talk” to each other. How have you seen an improvement in that?

Absolutely. There's software out there that's been developed that its primary function is to actually bridge the silos of data in the silos of software that tend to be out there. Because there's much more of a standardized process and technologies that are being used, especially in the database side, where if you have a couple of great pieces of software that you really like the interface, it does everything you need, but but you needed to talk together, there's there's software connections that can be made.?

We're doing more of that on the dashboard side, where you can bring in data from your production management system, which is one software, we can bring data in from your accounting package, etc. And now on one nice, clean dashboard, you can see everything, as opposed to logging in here, logging in there. That's really exciting, because again, different teams, different departments, they have different needs.?

Back in the day it used to be that there weren't those connections. So you had to find the software that gave you the most pieces to keep all that information together. And invariably, some departments suffered and where it propagated going outside of the system and creating your workarounds because it just, it worked for some. And as long as it worked for the boss or the owner of the company, a lot of the other departments were just stuck. Adapting.

That creates a lot of resentment because nobody wants to come to work and bang their head against the wall with software that doesn't work.

So it sounds like you've created more ability for different divisions to be autonomous in the way that they carry out their dealings. But it's actually more integrated than it was before.

Absolutely. Now we've gotten to the point with technology where department leads can actually start vetting their own software. They can go out there, start reviewing it. And there's so much integration that it doesn't become that initial roadblock of just because your department wants to use this, it's going to cause chaos everywhere. That's not the case now.?

It's really encouraging because what we found is when people find a solution that they like, especially department leads, because the success of their department obviously comes down to people and processes and the software supporting that. So if they find something that accomplishes that, and we on the technology side can say that's fantastic. That's 90% of the battle, right? There's finding something that works for you, we'll take care of the 10% and get it to integrate where it needs to be. And it's it's very rare situation that we can't make that happen with where technology is nowadays.

Catch the full interview in Powerful at Work Radio podcast episode #53, “Getting your team to embrace and believe in new ways of doing things”. Click here to tune in…

Connect with Keith:

LinkedIn: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/murleyk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/keithmurley

Website: https://maappen.com/

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