0:03

The power of data is undeniable

0:05

and unharness, it's nothing but chaos.

0:08

The amount of data was crazy.

0:10

Can I trust it? You will

0:12

waste money held together with duct

0:14

tape. Doom to failure. This season,

0:16

we're solving problems in real

0:18

time to reveal the art

0:20

of the possible. Making data

0:22

your ally, using it to

0:24

lead with confidence and clarity,

0:26

helping communities and people thrive.

0:28

This is data-driven leadership, a

0:30

show by resultant. Hey

0:33

guys, welcome back to another episode of

0:36

data driven leadership. Today we're focusing

0:38

on Enersis, a company whose impact is

0:40

closer to your everyday life than you

0:42

might think. While you might not immediately

0:44

recognize the name Enersis, you've likely benefited

0:46

from their technology. Enersis powers

0:48

the systems behind warehouse forkliffs,

0:50

telecommunications networks, and even critical

0:53

infrastructure and health care and

0:55

emergency services. Though I've never

0:57

wondered how does that forklift

0:59

work, you will find out in an

1:01

interesting and well-told story in this episode.

1:03

From ensuring your online orders arrive on

1:05

time to keeping essential communications running, Enersis

1:07

plays a key role in our modern

1:10

world. Enersis has been at the

1:12

forefront of energy innovation operating in more

1:14

than 100 countries and shaping how industries

1:17

approach power solutions. In this episode, we

1:19

talked to Kerry Phillips, Vice President

1:21

of Global Product Management for the

1:23

Motive Power Division at Enersis. Kerry

1:25

shares his journey and offers valuable insights

1:27

for anyone looking to switch industries. He

1:29

discusses how to leverage skills from one

1:31

field and apply them to another while

1:34

building confidence along the way. He also

1:36

opens up about his experience navigating a

1:38

challenging situation without data governance and where

1:40

he stands today. He'll share of the

1:42

key lessons he's learned over the past

1:45

four years while building his company's newest

1:47

application and how each step was focused

1:49

on ensuring the work was valuable. Don't

1:51

miss out on an inspiring conversation filled

1:53

with lessons that could change how you approach your

1:56

own career and projects. Let's get into

1:58

it. Welcome

2:00

back to Data Driven Leadership. I'm your

2:02

host, Jess Carter. Today we have Kerry

2:04

Phillips, the vice president of Global Product

2:06

Management, Motive Power, and Enersis. Kerry, welcome.

2:09

Thank you, Jess. Good to see you.

2:11

Good to see you too. So, Kerry

2:13

and I did have the pleasure of

2:15

working together for a while in our

2:17

careers, which was a gift for me.

2:20

And I think that's the right way

2:22

to put it as it was a

2:24

gift for me. I think it was

2:26

a good for both of them. But

2:28

a lot of leadership lessons. And so

2:30

I want to get into your project

2:33

and talk about sort of what you've

2:35

been working on for a minute and

2:37

talk about you, which I hope doesn't

2:39

make you too uncomfortable. You have this

2:41

like super interesting career. Like even the

2:44

jump from resultant to Enersus, but I

2:46

think at some point we talk about

2:48

like you've had a farm, like can

2:50

you walk me through, make it make

2:52

sense? It's really not just my story

2:55

alone though. I've tried to count before.

2:57

I think it was 11 different businesses.

2:59

And I always work in those growing

3:01

up. So I've done lots of different

3:03

jobs before I even went to college

3:05

and then continued to work in family

3:08

businesses through college. But then once I

3:10

graduated, I had an engineering degree and

3:12

felt like I should use my engineering

3:14

degree. So I went to work for

3:16

a company dates in Chicago. It was

3:19

a private family company and then later

3:21

got acquired by a publicly traded Japanese

3:23

company called Dyfuku. And I worked there

3:25

for a little over 22 years. That

3:27

was a project-based organization. And that's important

3:29

because now I'm at what I would

3:32

call a product-based organization. And this is

3:34

a little different to work in a

3:36

product-based world versus a project-based world. Can

3:38

you like elevator speech? What does that

3:40

mean to you? How are they different?

3:43

Yeah, so the project organization is you're

3:45

trying to build some project for a

3:47

company, typically in their setting, right? in

3:49

our business it's for their business and

3:51

their sitting business to business still but

3:53

it's it's a project it's a construction

3:56

project you have all the elements of

3:58

a construction issue that you would go

4:00

through and it's in random locations all

4:02

over the world, frankly. That is different

4:04

than I build a product in my

4:07

factory and then I ship it and

4:09

the customer then does something with it.

4:11

I don't typically get to involve post-shiment.

4:13

Sometimes I help install it. I certainly

4:15

service it at times, but it's not

4:17

like I'm integrating it with other equipment

4:20

and I'm reacting to all these other

4:22

trades. Pretty much I sell it. Sometimes

4:24

I ship it directly to an OEM.

4:26

It puts my product directly to an

4:28

OEM. a little different world to have

4:31

a product base. Okay. Thank you. So

4:33

you spent 22 years there. Yep. Then

4:35

I spent four years at a consulting

4:37

firm and that was exciting. That was

4:39

fun. I learned a lot and then

4:42

that I transitioned from there to Intercents.

4:44

Part of what took me to Intercents

4:46

and this is this is part of

4:48

the story. So this is important. I

4:50

was not a battery guy. Intercents is

4:52

a battery company, first of all. If

4:55

you could say unless thing doesn't know,

4:57

we build batteries, industrial batteries. Not like

4:59

double A's, but big battery. The smallest

5:01

battery I particularly make is about the

5:03

size of a kitchen table. Pretty large.

5:06

So they usually weigh enough that you

5:08

have to have a crane or a

5:10

hoist to put them in a piece

5:12

of equipment. What do they do? Most

5:14

typical application for me is forkliffs. Okay.

5:16

Go into forkliffs in the distribution center.

5:19

So they weigh, you know, 2,000 to

5:21

5,000 pounds. Maybe a little more. There

5:23

are some massive forklifts that go into,

5:25

rather, six feet long and four feet

5:27

tall and three feet wide. And typically

5:30

they're so heavy, frankly, because thinking about

5:32

a forklift, when you lift up a

5:34

load that's up in the air, that

5:36

load tends to make that thing, to

5:38

make that thing, that's up in the

5:40

air, that load tends to make that

5:43

thing want to tip over. And so

5:45

the battery that sits in the back

5:47

of that truck lift, acts as the

5:49

counterbalth, and helps keeps it for tipping.

5:51

Of course, okay. Well, if it's any

5:54

consolation, neither did I and so I

5:56

worked here. So it was interesting. So

5:58

I did not come from a battery

6:00

world. What I did is I came

6:02

from the material handling distribution world. So

6:04

their customers in the mode of power

6:07

space, the line of business that I

6:09

work in, were the customers I had

6:11

for 22 years. So I knew the

6:13

customers. And the other thing was, I

6:15

understood a little bit about technology and

6:18

data and how to apply those things.

6:20

And that's really what they wanted. My

6:22

boss, the guy that hired me at

6:24

the time said, you know, I got

6:26

11,000 battery guys, I know the amount

6:29

of battery guy. When I needed somebody

6:31

to understand their customers and understand technology

6:33

and data and how to apply that.

6:35

Because the battery world has changed. So

6:37

batteries for like 100 years didn't change.

6:39

There's literally a clay pot that goes

6:42

back, you know, through the VC5 that

6:44

had traces of citric acid in it

6:46

with two different elements that they think

6:48

might have been an early battery. From

6:50

Thomas Edison's day forward, they didn't change

6:53

for a long long time. A lead

6:55

acid battery with a lead acid battery.

6:57

When lithium came on the scene... that

6:59

really sort of changed the way the

7:01

battery will work. It was a major

7:03

disruption in the battery work. Then they've

7:06

evolved the time after that. The last

7:08

five years in particular has really accelerated

7:10

and they've changed a lot the way

7:12

the way lithium batteries work and they

7:14

become much more widely accepted. So that

7:17

created the need for a product manager,

7:19

not a project manager but a product

7:21

manager, in the motive power battery space.

7:23

And motive power, or just to back

7:25

up on that, motive power in our

7:27

world is basically anything that moves with

7:30

a battery in it. That isn't a

7:32

passenger vehicle or a sports type vehicle.

7:34

Okay. Like no golf carts, no Tesla's,

7:36

we don't make batteries for automobiles. It's

7:38

industrial things, like four trucks, mining equipment,

7:41

ground support equipment in an airport, four

7:43

care machines, all that kind of stuff.

7:45

That's the mode of power space. Intersis

7:47

does other stuff too, by the way.

7:49

They make... what we call stationary batteries

7:52

which go with like solar power or

7:54

wind turbines they backup cable TV telephone

7:56

networks things like that. Wow. And we

7:58

also make batteries for the department. defense,

8:00

think satellites, tanks, submarine. My responsibility is

8:02

all our products on the motive power

8:05

side global. One other question I had

8:07

for context is when you say globally,

8:09

where is the headquarters, some of that?

8:11

Yeah, we sell our products all over

8:13

the world. There's a handful of countries

8:16

we don't sell to for, you know,

8:18

obvious reasons. But yeah, I mean, we

8:20

sell batteries in all over the world.

8:22

And headquarters is where? Headquarters is in

8:24

Redding Pennsylvania. Okay, okay. So then you've

8:26

got this product to manager. Yep. And

8:29

their focus is what trying to help

8:31

with the modernization with lithium battery is

8:33

that what that is? Yeah it's everything

8:35

it's so it's not just batteries but

8:37

we have three main battery lines and

8:40

again I don't get too wonky but

8:42

we still sell lots and lots of

8:44

flooded batteries. We call them flooded because

8:46

they have water in them and you

8:48

occasionally have to refill them they get

8:50

hot the water evaporate and put more

8:53

water in. Then we have what we

8:55

call thin plate pure lead pure battery.

8:57

But it's a sealed battery. You never

8:59

have to water it. It's virtually maintenance

9:01

free. It gives you a very much

9:04

lithium-like experience. And it's a proprietary technology.

9:06

So less than play pure lead or

9:08

T.P.P.L. You hear me say D.P.L. That's

9:10

what I mean. And then we have

9:12

lithium batteries as well. And then we

9:14

have a whole line of chargers and

9:17

data collection devices. How long have you

9:19

been entered this now? Three three years.

9:21

Three years. Three. Okay, so it's day

9:23

one, week one on the job. What's

9:25

the gig? What are we doing? Yeah,

9:28

so first of all, it was during

9:30

COVID. I went to the headquarters building

9:32

and it's a pretty big building. A

9:34

lot of people that would normally work

9:36

there. There were like maybe five people

9:39

that would normally work there. There were

9:41

like maybe five people there. So it

9:43

reminded me a little bit about being

9:45

at the Shining Hotel, if you ever

9:47

seen the movie The Shining. I expected

9:49

a kid on, and feel my way

9:52

through things. I inherited a team, my

9:54

boss was kind enough to say, you

9:56

know, hey, here's some folks that have

9:58

been doing kind of this role. They

10:00

basically have taken the marketing team and

10:03

the product management group, kind of had

10:05

them all lumped together in what they

10:07

call marketing and product management. So they

10:09

split out some of the more engineering

10:11

techie types and put them with me

10:13

and then the marketing folks stayed with

10:16

me and then the marketing folks stayed

10:18

with the marketing folks, so I had

10:20

these people who quickly learned I knew nothing

10:22

about batteries and were scratching the head about

10:24

why they hired this guy. And started trying

10:27

to figure it out. And I'll be a

10:29

consulting thing. This is a true story. I

10:31

didn't know a lot about consulting. Shocking. And

10:33

I didn't know a lot about tech. And

10:35

so I was literally at a meeting where

10:38

a mutual friend of ours, I was Goobling

10:40

Terms. And he taught me on the shoulder

10:42

and said, stop Goobling. I'll explain it to

10:44

you later. I thought, hey, I learned that

10:46

world. I can surely learn this world. But

10:49

batteries are hard. If you know much about

10:51

the battery space, and there's a lot of

10:53

conversation today about batteries, decarbonization. If we really

10:55

want to try to decarbonize, we have to

10:57

do with batteries, the electric grid is never

11:00

going to support the kind of battery demand.

11:02

Shouldn't say never, but it's years and years

11:04

away, decades away. And so it has to

11:06

be with batteries. It's electricity and it's chemistry.

11:08

And I was a civil engineer. And the

11:11

two classes in college I like the least

11:13

were electricity and chemistry. This was a bit

11:15

of a learning curve for me. And I

11:17

was concerned. I don't know if I can

11:19

do this. But the early days I got

11:22

on a call talking about a project, my

11:24

boss said, hey, come listen to this call.

11:26

They were talking about building an application. So

11:28

Inters has an existing database of different port

11:31

tracks and what compartment sizes they have and

11:33

what capacity battery they need. Okay, keep it

11:35

kind of simple. Yeah. And then we also

11:37

have this application that we use to run

11:39

some algorithms and try to determine what the

11:42

best battery and charger combination is for that

11:44

truck. so we can sort of help our

11:46

customer figure out what they need, right? Because

11:48

you don't want to buy more... of a

11:50

battery than you need, and you don't obviously

11:53

want to buy less because you have to

11:55

give the job net. But it's not the

11:57

most user-friendly application in the world. So this

11:59

call was about building a demonstration tool, a

12:01

figma-based demonstration tool, that would show how the

12:04

application could work if we basically wanted to

12:06

rebuild it. And so despite that lousy explanation,

12:08

that was something I actually understood. I'm like,

12:10

hey, that's kind of like the world I

12:12

came from. I get this power shaking. I

12:15

don't understand like the specific gravity of a

12:17

battery and why that matters, but I understand

12:19

this, I can jump in and help this.

12:21

And so they needed someone to be like

12:23

champion for the project. And so I raised

12:26

my hand. So hey, I'll do this. That

12:28

sounds terrifying. Also, I appreciate your context switching,

12:30

your narration of hey. When you're jumping all

12:32

over, if you don't have 50 years in

12:35

batteries or 50 years in energy or whatever

12:37

it is, one of the things that makes

12:39

you successful is your ability to say, hey,

12:41

that is similar to what I just did.

12:43

I can create some toys around that that

12:46

I've played with before. I remember coming out

12:48

of college a couple years out and going

12:50

into IT, and everyone around me talked over

12:52

me, acronyms, technology, tech stacks, blah blah, blah,

12:54

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was just

12:57

like a bunch of a bunch of words,

12:59

like a bunch of words, like, like, like,

13:01

like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

13:03

like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

13:05

like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

13:08

And I had a few people around me

13:10

that were really important voices who said, hey,

13:12

most people are trying to talk right above

13:14

where you can because it gives them control

13:16

over the conversation and they're not intimidated and

13:19

scared. And I don't think it's on purpose.

13:21

I just think it does happen. But in

13:23

the energy space and the battery space where

13:25

it's 95% of the people who work there,

13:27

probably no chemistry and electricity. It would be

13:30

so easy to just convince yourself that there's

13:32

very little you can do. Do you naturally

13:34

just have the confidence to be like, nah,

13:36

I'll figure it out? Or is that hard

13:39

at all for you? Well, it certainly helped

13:41

coming from the consulting space. They gave me

13:43

two advantages. First of all, I had to

13:45

learn that business and kind of what the.

13:47

firm did. But I also got exposure to

13:50

all these different clients and I had to

13:52

learn about their business too. Right. Why I

13:54

built that muscle and I wasn't as afraid

13:56

to go do that as I, certainly as

13:58

I was the first time I did it,

14:01

right? So that made me a little more

14:03

comfortable to do it. But even then, like

14:05

I said, it was still pretty challenging. But

14:07

I think you just, you learn how to

14:09

learn, right? And so you just learn it.

14:12

And you learn enough to be, to be

14:14

helpful and know when to get out of

14:16

the out of the way. and when you

14:18

can go insert yourself and a lot of

14:20

times it's just they know what to do

14:23

like my team is great the company is

14:25

great first of all I had a guy

14:27

on my team who he just recently retired

14:29

after 43 years so there's a lot of

14:32

longevity there they understand things but they just

14:34

needed sometimes a different perspective or someone we

14:36

could just say yeah you're right go ahead

14:38

let's keep doing that that's awesome seems like

14:40

the right thing to do so between that

14:43

and this project I took on That's how

14:45

I started to add value until I learned

14:47

enough to be able to have a good

14:49

conversation around batteries and chargers and that kind

14:51

of stuff. Yeah. Did you ever come back

14:54

to your wife and say, hey, I can

14:56

talk about batteries? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it

14:58

was a period of conversation. You know, are

15:00

you going to make it? You know, is

15:02

this going to last? Do I need to

15:05

think about something different? You know, yeah, it's

15:07

awesome. So I think it took a while

15:09

where we're good. and I've had a I've

15:11

had a boss change my my boss my

15:13

first boss is getting promoted and so he

15:16

will be our new CEO wow and so

15:18

I have a new boss now and he's

15:20

promoted up as a year and so we

15:22

already knew each other but you know I

15:24

thought okay am I gonna have to sort

15:27

of go through a learning curve again but

15:29

he gave me all the freedom in the

15:31

world so I feel like okay at some

15:33

point in time I've they've figured out they

15:36

could trust me it's gonna be okay That's

15:38

another meter of thinking, we spent a lot

15:40

of time trying to figure out if we

15:42

can trust other people. I was just talking

15:44

to my husband about this, like thinking about,

15:47

do the people around me at work see

15:49

me as trustworthy? and with what things are

15:51

they trusting me with? That's a good read

15:53

on where am I situationally in my job

15:55

security? Right, right, right. Well, so tell me

15:58

about the project. Like, so what happened after,

16:00

you know, I'm jumping in, I'm saying yes.

16:02

This application that they're trying to replace, that

16:04

they're gonna build this demonstrator for, I don't

16:06

even know what that is really. I mean,

16:09

I get conceptually, right? And in fact, I've

16:11

never used it to this day. But I

16:13

went to the one of the people who

16:15

trained people on how to use it. And

16:17

I will never forget this conversation. He's running

16:20

me through it. And I'm like, okay, this

16:22

isn't so bad. It's not the most user

16:24

friendly thing in the world. Like, you know,

16:26

the UI is not great, but it's manageable,

16:28

right? It's a little dated, but it's manageable.

16:31

So I'm not sure what the problem. I'm

16:33

saying, okay, okay, okay, okay, what's the one,

16:35

okay, okay, what's the one, what's the one

16:37

of the one of the one of the

16:40

one of, And I started to select the

16:42

battery that's going to work in this application.

16:44

And I picked this one. And I said,

16:46

wait a minute, how did you pick that

16:48

one? And he sat there saying, he goes,

16:51

well, I mean, I've been doing this a

16:53

long time. I just kind of know, well,

16:55

that's going to be a problem. I've never

16:57

going to know. I'll be spending days trying

16:59

to guess the right battery. And so, you

17:02

know, we had this, this application that worked

17:04

great if you knew how to use it

17:06

wasn't going to help you. And one of

17:08

the things we really wanted to do with

17:10

the application, one of the purposes was to

17:13

what we call democratizing the sales process. So

17:15

we wanted to be able to hire great

17:17

salespeople and not necessarily people with 30 years

17:19

of industry experience. So that was one of

17:21

the benefits. There's many others that are more

17:24

important than that one, but it's contextually important

17:26

to understand sort of where I came from.

17:28

Well, and I think even in that, you

17:30

know, as we talk through these different stories,

17:33

people hearing reasons for technology modernization, that it's,

17:35

it's it's not all. These like hey we

17:37

got to figure out how to use AI

17:39

We've got to figure out, there's a lot

17:41

of conversations we have about enterprise data warehouses,

17:44

and that's cool. That's good. There's a place

17:46

for those. But there's also just, how do

17:48

you leverage business strategy and execute it using

17:50

technology? So to your point, if you don't

17:52

want to have to hire salespeople who have

17:55

30 years battery experience, you have to go

17:57

figure out where are all the holes that

17:59

that experience is filling and build this demonstrator.

18:01

That took about, let's call it, six months.

18:03

It worked great. The demonstrated looked great. So

18:06

we built the demonstrator and we did like

18:08

a video snippets of it and we had

18:10

a long video with a voiceover. I like

18:12

to sound like I was smart and say

18:14

this was the plan all along, but I

18:17

just sort of stumbled into the idea that

18:19

this actually is a really great selling tool

18:21

for doing the actual project. People looked at

18:23

this, this video and they looked at the

18:25

figment tool and said this is great, I

18:28

want to fund this. And then the other

18:30

thing it was good for, it became this

18:32

great change management tool. Because you could go

18:34

to the folks who were using it and

18:37

say, this is what the new tool will

18:39

be like. And suddenly the idea that their

18:41

life is going to change and this tool

18:43

that they used maybe 20 to 50% of

18:45

the time is going away and being replaced

18:48

by something new, they could see an idea

18:50

of what something new looked like and said,

18:52

yeah, okay, I'm good with this idea. from

18:54

an Osseum standpoint it was it was critical

18:56

and and like I said I'd like to

18:59

say that that was the plan all along

19:01

but we just happened to get lucky and

19:03

it worked out that way. I think that's

19:05

also leadership is you're constantly thinking there is

19:07

some level of scarcity or constraint and your

19:10

project budget and things and so for you

19:12

to be like we just built this incredible

19:14

thing it's getting this great response we can

19:16

probably continue to use it in these other

19:18

ways is also a testament to thinking through

19:21

the things that you're developing right? That's an

19:23

important distinction. Let's step up to the side

19:25

for just a minute because from a product

19:27

management standpoint, there's never shortage of great idea.

19:29

I mean, the bad. The battery world is

19:32

booming right now. There's tons of things we

19:34

could do. There's lots of things we want

19:36

to do. The problem is, we can only

19:38

do so many at one time. Even if

19:41

we had all the money in the world,

19:43

the organization can only absorb so much stuff

19:45

at a time. My biggest job, frankly, is

19:47

deciding what not to do, not what should

19:49

be. Because there's plenty to do. It's what

19:52

not to do. That's tricky. That's why this

19:54

tool became important too, because it's important. one

19:56

of the biggest jobs is deciding what not

19:58

to do. I love that. Yeah, awesome. Okay,

20:00

so we had this demonstrator, right? We got

20:03

everybody excited and they said, okay, great, let's

20:05

build it. Can you build it in like

20:07

three months? We've been, no, it's going to

20:09

take a lot longer than that. You know,

20:11

if you say, this is going to be

20:14

years in the making and you're going to

20:16

take a lot longer than that. You know,

20:18

if you say, this is going to be

20:20

years in the years in the making years

20:22

in the making the making the making the

20:25

making, a software application, a software application, a

20:27

software application, that, a software application, a organization,

20:29

that's organization that's, a software application, that's an

20:31

organization that's not a software application, that's, a

20:33

software application, that's, a software application, that's, that's

20:36

not a software application, that's not a software

20:38

application, that's not a software application, that's, that's

20:40

not a software application, that's So we had

20:42

to sort of break it apart into pieces.

20:45

We're going to build an MVP, we're going

20:47

to launch, and then we're going to build

20:49

a product, and then we're going to have

20:51

to do iterations on the product. And so

20:53

we had to break it in the sort

20:56

of digestible chunks for the organization to think

20:58

about. And in each time, intercedent, by the

21:00

way, is a publicly traded organization, and we

21:02

have shareholders, and they kind of like the

21:04

stock to do well. You had to make

21:07

sure that each time we did a piece,

21:09

we did a piece, it provided a piece,

21:11

it provided value, it provided value, it back

21:13

through the organization. So that's how we started

21:15

to look at it. We started to break

21:18

in part into those pieces and we began

21:20

work on the movie. The devil's in the

21:22

details, right? That's where things started to get

21:24

really complicated. And probably the second terrifying moment

21:26

in my four-year airships career hit, we realize

21:29

that, hey, we have a lot of issues

21:31

here. So let's start with the one that's

21:33

probably most pertinent to our discussion today, and

21:35

that's the data. It was a mess. I

21:38

give everyone there all the grace in the

21:40

world because I didn't live through it. I

21:42

don't know what brought them there and I'm

21:44

sure that there was a lot of good

21:46

reasons that brought them to the state they

21:49

were in, but there was no real data

21:51

government. It's all the things. would expect, right?

21:53

Five different words for the same word. We

21:55

had dimensions that were literally a millimeter difference

21:57

for things that we couldn't even build to

22:00

a millimeter tolerance. In one particular case, we

22:02

found 84 instances of what was essentially the

22:04

same product. We had to clean up the

22:06

data. Then we have multiple ERP systems, all

22:08

the things you would expect, right? I mean,

22:11

I don't have to go through the laundry

22:13

list, but basically all the all the IT

22:15

sends that you would expect, you know, we've

22:17

had multiple acquisitions. everything you would expect, we

22:19

had. And what we thought was going to

22:22

be difficult was going to be really, really

22:24

difficult. And we had to be really careful

22:26

about the scope creep. Our job was to

22:28

build an application, not to correct all this

22:30

into the path. Well, and is this all

22:33

in the MVP? Well, I would say we

22:35

discovered it in the MVP. We hit a

22:37

major roadblock with the MVP. And like I

22:39

said, this is where, you know, we sat

22:42

down and thought, I don't know if it's

22:44

going to work. We got to figure this

22:46

out. And we got to do it in

22:48

a way that we can actually deliver something.

22:50

We made some de-scoping decisions, and we made

22:53

some simplification decisions, and we got back on

22:55

track. It helped, too, that we brought in

22:57

a couple new partners and realigned around it

22:59

with some external partners. We were going to

23:01

try and do everything ourselves. I think leaders

23:04

have a hard time realizing they have permission

23:06

to de-scope, that in order to be successful,

23:08

most projects that I've observed in my career

23:10

required. us to realize we got more than

23:12

we bargained for and if we want to

23:15

be successful with the budget we already agreed

23:17

on we have to either d-scope or you

23:19

can say protect from scope creep whatever it

23:21

is was the organization open to that was

23:23

that a hard conversation was that a hard

23:26

conversation or was that a hard conversation or

23:28

was that a hard conversation? You scope something

23:30

and you fund it then you have to

23:32

go back and say hey look I know

23:34

you you bought a car but it's not

23:37

going to be okay? It's what I can

23:39

do, you can send it. you can listen

23:41

to the radio, it's not so bad. But

23:43

it's, we had to, we had to cut

23:46

it out or we wouldn't get anything done.

23:48

What we did is we got through the

23:50

MVP piece when we demonstrated that, hey, this

23:52

works, and it does what we said it

23:54

was gonna do to about 80%. That was

23:57

enough then that we went to go get

23:59

funding to actually build the thing. And that's

24:01

when we said, okay, we've learned all this

24:03

stuff from the MVP. We were probably a

24:05

year late. at that point. We weren't terribly

24:08

over budget, but we were late. And so

24:10

the organization naturally had a little bit of

24:12

concern. They know what they're doing. Everybody believed

24:14

in the vision. We had to sort of

24:16

go back and think about the savings it

24:19

was going to provide, the opportunities it would

24:21

create, why was strategically necessary, and sort of

24:23

repackage, and say, look, we can do this

24:25

piece first, and this is what it's going

24:27

to do, and this is why it's valuable.

24:30

But we want to get you this piece

24:32

first. We owe this to our customers, number

24:34

one. We owe it to the people on

24:36

our team. We owe it to our coworkers

24:39

to make their life easier. We owe it

24:41

to our shareholders. You know, it's important to

24:43

them that we're delivering back some value. When

24:45

we approve those three things, get all the

24:47

numbers to line up, then we got funded

24:50

and we were back off to the record.

24:52

That is really impressive. It's helpful to hear

24:54

you unpack. And that's kind of what I

24:56

was looking for too. the process of managing

24:58

the de-scoping, like one of the things that

25:01

you had was the North Star, that whole

25:03

training video, hey, this is where we're headed,

25:05

you're still going to get here, you're expediting

25:07

the value that you can. Yep, 100%. So

25:09

where are you today? Where are we today?

25:12

Yeah, great question. So we are right on

25:14

the edge of launch. We're right in the

25:16

final pieces of it. We'll start doing the

25:18

live launch with users. And again, we learned

25:20

our lesson about breaking things up in the

25:23

smaller bits. So we're even going to roll

25:25

out to users in small pieces. And then

25:27

in the fall, we'll launch into Europe. and

25:29

other parts of the below. I know we've

25:31

done a good job, we have a great

25:34

team, our OSCE implant is strong, you know,

25:36

we have at the elbow support, ready to

25:38

go, we have a way to track issues,

25:40

you know, we know how to categor, we're

25:43

set, we're right. I'm not too worried about

25:45

that. We're set, we're right. I'm not too

25:47

worried about that. Now we got to build

25:49

all the rest. We watch it, we bring

25:51

that voice of customer back, we make that

25:54

we make that we make that product, and

25:56

we make that product, and we make that

25:58

product, and we make that product, and we

26:00

make that product, and we make that product,

26:02

and we make that product, and we make

26:05

that product, and we make that product, and

26:07

we make that product, and we make that

26:09

product, and we make that product, and we

26:11

make that product, and we make that product,

26:13

and we make that product, and we make

26:16

that product, and we make that product, and

26:18

we make that We have that mindset, which

26:20

is what you're going to need in this

26:22

application as well, just like you will with

26:24

any software application. Yeah, absolutely. Anything that we

26:27

have not discussed about this experience. This is

26:29

probably worth mentioning real quick. One of the

26:31

challenges we run into in a global organization

26:33

in particular is that there's just different ways

26:35

things are done, right? I mean, just the

26:38

simple thing like inches versus centimeters. But there's

26:40

also different standards, there's different rules, and then

26:42

there's what I would call more of like,

26:44

like, like, If you're going to build an

26:47

application that's going to work globally and you're

26:49

trying to simplify it, and I think Inters

26:51

just has a tendency that it's one of

26:53

our what I would call accidental value, which

26:55

is the term I know you'll understand. We

26:58

overcomplicate things. And so part of what I

27:00

have to call accidental value, which is the

27:02

term I know you'll understand. We overcomplicate things.

27:04

And so we over complicate things. And so

27:06

part of what I know. You try to

27:09

do that as little as possible because you

27:11

want everybody to be heard, you want their

27:13

voice in, and you want a tool that

27:15

they're going to embrace. But sometimes you got

27:17

to narrow it down, or you're just not

27:20

going to get that. And people get super

27:22

passionate about it, right? I mean, what I

27:24

think minimum weight means versus what you think

27:26

minimum weight means versus what you think minimum

27:28

weight means versus what you think minimum weight

27:31

means versus what you think minimum weight means,

27:33

that's what you think minimum weight means. Part

27:35

of what I have to do. Part of

27:37

the roll we play. It's awesome. Okay, well,

27:39

so there are going to be people who

27:42

listen to this, who think, I want to

27:44

follow that guy. I want to hear how

27:46

the story progresses. If people want to follow

27:48

Kerry Phillips, how do they find you? I'm

27:51

on LinkedIn. You can probably be on LinkedIn,

27:53

and I will occasionally post things about intersice.

27:55

I'm sure I'll post about the launch of

27:57

this. I'm sure I'll post about the launch

27:59

about intersice. I'm sure I'll post about the

28:02

launch about inters, I'm sure I'm about inters.

28:04

I'm about inters. I'm about inters about inters

28:06

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:08

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:10

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:13

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:15

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:17

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:19

about inters about inters about inters about inters

28:21

about inters about inters I encourage everybody to

28:24

take a look at nurses as well. It

28:26

sounds like a really cool company and I'm

28:28

so glad that you're bringing your skill sets

28:30

to bear at a company that is doing

28:32

such important work. Gary, thank you for doing

28:35

this. Thanks for joining us today. This is,

28:37

it's nice to get another chance to chat

28:39

with you. Really good to talk to you

28:41

again. I appreciate the work that you do

28:44

as well. Guys, thanks for listening. I'm your

28:46

host, Jess Carter. Don't forget to follow the

28:48

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28:50

if you will, rate and review letting us

28:52

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28:55

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28:57

hear about. We can't wait for you to

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join us on the next episode.