Driving Excellence in Leadership and Technology: Perspectives from Kerry L. Bass

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business Chop podcast where I guest speak on meeting the challenges of entrepreneurship as well as offer tips and advice on business, marketing, technology and more.

[00:00:13] Whether you are a newbie or seasoned professional, this episode is for you. I am your host, Audrey Wiggins.

[00:00:21] Let's chop it up.

[00:00:25] Hello Chop Squad, Audrey Wiggins. Here your host and welcome to another episode of the Business Chop. I'm excited about my guest today, Mr. Cary Bass.

[00:00:38] And we'll learn more from him in a moment and he's hailing all the way from the great state of Georgia, the Peach State.

[00:00:44] And that's where my dad's from so I'm happy to entertain a Georgian here today.

[00:00:50] He is the founder and CEO of Potential to Reality Consulting LLC and an expert in organization transformation and change management.

[00:00:59] Cary specializes in assisting governmental agencies, not-for-profit enterprises and commercial organizations in leading and supporting transformational and major organizational changes.

[00:01:11] Cary's focus is on helping organizations succeed by recognizing the holistic societies in which we exist.

[00:01:18] This recognition helps organizations better align with their stakeholders in his broad experience in business, government and application of faith helps people move beyond the hype to addressing issues and producing results.

[00:01:33] Now we'll hear more from Cary Bass on the other side of this message.

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[00:02:06] Cary, welcome to the business shop. I'm excited to have you here today.

[00:02:10] Thank you, Audrey. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:12] Yes, absolutely. Now before we get into the meat of our conversation, I do want to go over a couple of fun things that you sent me.

[00:02:19] And one is that you are an ordained minister and you talk to Christian business owners and entrepreneurs how to live their Christian faith in business and society.

[00:02:28] And I think that's an awesome calling.

[00:02:31] Great. I have a very interesting and fulfilling time doing that over the years.

[00:02:36] Here in Cleveland, part of it, we're called a Christian business organization as well. So I do find strength and encouragement and it's great to network with some like-minded folks.

[00:02:46] So I'm glad to hear that about you. And you're also the host of a new podcast.

[00:02:51] Yes, the Leadership Illuminaries Lounge.

[00:02:54] All right. Tell us a little bit about the Illuminaries Leaders Lounge.

[00:02:58] The podcast that we created is with my co-host and podcast partner Peggy O'Neill.

[00:03:05] And she and I were having a regular conversation. We were in a workshop together and started having regular conversations around leadership.

[00:03:15] And we had some very different and very like-minded views on things.

[00:03:21] And so we started having a regular conversation about the differences and our complimentary views on leadership and how to help organizations.

[00:03:30] And so we decided that we wanted to engage others and let others join into that conversation.

[00:03:36] So we launched the Leadership Illuminaries Lounge to be able to help others be able to get some significant principles and new practices to be able to help their organizations move forward, help their leaders move their organizations forward.

[00:03:51] Yeah, that's awesome. And we can find that at Leadership Illuminaries Lounge that's on YouTube.

[00:03:57] So folks, make sure you plug into what Kerry and Peggy are talking about as well.

[00:04:02] So let's get real real around it. Yeah, so thanks for sharing that Kerry.

[00:04:07] Now, let's just get in on to our questions here. I wanted to ask you what inspired you to establish the potential to reality consulting?

[00:04:19] Well, I spent a lot of years working in technology and then in government and also in ministry.

[00:04:27] And it seems like that they all kind of converged in my mind on a particular area.

[00:04:33] And that being able to help leaders be able to recognize the potential of what they're trying to accomplish, what they've been called to do with their organizations and how to move that into a practical reality.

[00:04:46] One of the things that I've learned over the many years is that back when I first started into this area, but it still remains today over 70% of organizations fail at their major transformation efforts.

[00:05:00] Wow. Now what comprises transformation? What, you know, what, what spawns that or how does that actually come into conversation with the business?

[00:05:12] The big thing is, is that it's a responsibility of leadership to make sure that your organization is relevant and that you're providing value.

[00:05:23] And so what sponsors transformation and the need for transformation or major change is the leader is either recognizing that and that's the best case they're looking out and seeing the environment in which they exist and the value that they're trying to deliver.

[00:05:40] And they are seeing that there is an opportunity or a threat that they need to address.

[00:05:46] What often happens though, is that the world changes around the organization and all of a sudden they realize that they have a problem that causes them to basically face a challenge either they change or they die.

[00:06:01] And so that's when it gets to be really serious for the organization to be able to make that transformation and get to that next level of performance to be able to continue to survive.

[00:06:13] Okay, so could that cover like the culture of the organization or maybe it's time to drop or add a product of service? Or is it?

[00:06:24] Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

[00:06:26] The culture of the organization again is another leadership responsibility and really that should continue to remain. I'm a little bit careful of the term conservative because I think everything changes over time.

[00:06:42] But one of the things that should be foundational and fundamental is the culture of the organization and that needs to reflect what the culture of the leader and what their integrity, what they believe is the value that they're trying to deliver with that organization.

[00:06:59] Now, what can change and often does is the products and services that an organization delivers because the world changes and opportunities change technology economies. Lots of things changes and so an organization to be able to survive needs to be a depth of being able to make that

[00:07:19] transition into what's the next thing that fits within my culture that I can do my skill set to deliver value.

[00:07:27] Okay. And with that we use my world changes automatically course I'm thinking about 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic coming along and you know businesses, you know had to adapt so that would also be considered transformational like forced transformation.

[00:07:45] Absolutely. And you know, I did some writing and some some blog articles on that and some some writing.

[00:07:54] But the pandemic really produced a fantastic opportunity for organizations and leaders to look at what they really are doing. And what's really important because it fundamentally changed the way that people look at what they're doing and what they're what

[00:08:14] what did they value and that was really transformational. And one of the things that that people stopped valuing was the idea of going to work and being away from home and doing things and so we had a and continue to have a major transformation in the way that people

[00:08:35] work and leaders that were not capable of being able to offer value for their their associates to be able to come to the work location and be able to to separate themselves from the family and maybe consider taking on the risk of being in a different environment.

[00:08:58] Then they needed to reconsider what's the value that I'm offering my associates for being here. And for those that decided hey you know I just like for my folks to be here so I can see them and touch them.

[00:09:10] Then they had to reconsider is that really a value and is that providing the value for my workers and for my organization and many have to go to an outsourced work environment. And so that's a major change that we still continue to deal with.

[00:09:27] Okay yeah major you said a mouthful there. Now how do you know you have your lean six Sigma master black belt and certified manager of quality. How does that drive excellence within you know how to use that to drive excellence within organizations.

[00:09:43] Well generally quality management has to deal with the idea of reducing defects and limiting variation you want to be able to do the right things repeatedly and continue to improve lean six Sigma has a methodology around it where you define what is good.

[00:10:07] You measure yourself and then you adjust your processes and systems to be able to continue to adjust to good and continue to improve.

[00:10:17] One of the other concepts though that I really have bought into that goes beyond even just the simple lean six it's not simple but lean six Sigma approach is the value of strategic quality.

[00:10:31] And there's a Japanese term I won't use those those Japanese terms because it's not very good but bottom line is is that the leadership can produce waste from a bad strategy or a bad direction that middle management cannot eliminate by fixing the systems and the workers on the frontline cannot reduce the defects to get it out.

[00:10:57] So the bottom line is is that the whole organization has to be aligned from top to bottom on a strategy that's implementable provides value and then everybody needs to do their part in being able to make sure that they're delivering goods and services that fulfill value in that strategy.

[00:11:18] Awesome.

[00:11:19] Yeah there is one little favorite Japanese word though that I like when I'm just some leadership training was the kai zan so you can say that one.

[00:11:27] It was a little it was a definition of was that that's definitely relevant.

[00:11:33] Absolutely.

[00:11:34] You know the Toyota is one of the world recognized leaders of quality and organization and strategic quality around the world.

[00:11:46] They started what they call total quality management and those things but they continue to evolve that and the idea is is that the organization needs to think of itself beyond justice services and products and they need to think of value in terms of what are we delivering.

[00:12:04] To our clients and our stakeholders.

[00:12:07] Thank you for explaining that.

[00:12:09] Now what are some of the key strategies that you employ an organizational change management and you may be drawing from your diverse career across government nonprofits and and commercial.

[00:12:19] Well there is a framework that that I got taught by a gentleman named Dr. Robert Miles he was one of my professors in business school at Emory University and then I work with him on a model that we we incorporated using it in government is called the accelerated corporate transformation act model framework.

[00:12:42] And the bottom line of that is is that you need to start at the top and be able to align the organization from the top and all the way through to the bottom on a few key things that the organization is going to deliver in the future state.

[00:13:04] And you need to move through that change relatively quickly usually within less than two year period in order to be able to deliver that value.

[00:13:15] One of the things that I found that really is key to that and we and modification and customization that I focused on is the alignment at the very top and it starts with the leader looking and evaluating themselves.

[00:13:31] You need to be true to yourself and have a high level of integrity about what you believe and what you are aligning your organization to do based on those beliefs.

[00:13:43] Thank you.

[00:13:44] Now how do you integrate your expertise in project management.

[00:13:48] And again this is still a wrapped in quality and you know your talent optimization.

[00:13:52] Yeah.

[00:13:53] And that kind of gets that view that I came to over the years and that you have to have a little bit of all of it to be able to make make it occur.

[00:14:03] Oftentimes you can get the leadership in courage you can get the senior leadership team ready to go but you have to be able to go from step to step to step to get away from part a from the vision to actually implementation at the frontline.

[00:14:18] And that requires project management a consistent systematic approach of being able to set tasks accomplish them and then manage the risk to those changes along the way.

[00:14:30] Yeah.

[00:14:31] You talked about you know quality and I think about you know having worked at GE then you think about you know the folks in the plant.

[00:14:38] The quality management you talked to you mentioned TQM and and then you you talked about you know starting from the top so.

[00:14:47] The folks you know in the middle this is everybody has to be involved it's not just the person's fault on the assembly line or you know in production where quality fails.

[00:14:58] Absolutely.

[00:14:59] You know and it really boils down to why do you have those people in those roles and the concept of operational excellence in which quality is a part of is and should be embedded in all of that.

[00:15:14] The reason that you have management above the frontline workers is that they have to enable those workers to be able to do their jobs.

[00:15:23] They need to provide the systems they need to provide the tools they need to make sure that the resources are good though the input products are ready for the workers to be efficient and effective in the work that they do.

[00:15:37] And if the middle management doesn't do that then then the workers can be successful.

[00:15:43] And if the leaders of the organization did not decide that strategy and that we're in the right place all of the efforts of the middle management really would be wasted because they're working on the wrong thing.

[00:15:56] It's kind of like being in the buggy whip business in today I mean you know if you're just other than a novelty business it really does not make sense for the leaders inside that we're going to focus our business.

[00:16:07] On making buggy whips and we have a thousand middle managers and 5000 workers on the frontline to produce something that people really don't have a value or need for it.

[00:16:19] Yeah, that makes great sense.

[00:16:23] Now how can how can our organizations get to change faster?

[00:16:27] Well again that that really has to do with the leader first of all deciding that they're needing to go to somewhere else.

[00:16:37] And so one of the things that I spend a good bit of time with when I work with organizations is being able to get that leader first of all to recognize reality.

[00:16:47] You know that what you're doing today will not be successful going forward or does not get you to where you want to be.

[00:16:57] And so what then does the future look like and so that's a visioning piece of exercise that the leader needs to go through to be able to envision the future.

[00:17:07] Then the next thing they need to do is find out do I have the right people with me to be able to get there.

[00:17:14] And that requires an evaluation of your whole team to see do I have the people with the capability and the willingness to get to where we want to go.

[00:17:26] And if they don't, if they're not there then you have to do that hard work of aligning your organization and making sure that the right people are on your team.

[00:17:35] And is more fun to bring in people.

[00:17:41] But you have to also select some people go that don't have the willingness and don't have the ability to get to where you want to go.

[00:17:49] You have to carefully be able to manage that transition too because those people were part of your organization before and they will continue to exist afterwards.

[00:17:59] And so you want to make sure that they have some fulfillment and whatever they're going to do beyond your organization.

[00:18:07] Yes, yes. Now we're talking about the people element or the human factors. We want to transition this conversation into technology.

[00:18:16] Now how does how does artificial intelligence fit into two organizations in a helpful standpoint or even a hurtful standpoint along with this quality and project management.

[00:18:29] I've been looking particularly at artificial intelligence for a while and on my podcast I had a few conversations and we'll have a few more with some leaders regarding artificial intelligence.

[00:18:42] And the big thing about artificial intelligence is that it does what we normally have been doing over the years much, much faster.

[00:18:52] Being able to go through information that's available in our databases and documents or whatever and being able to simulate that and present it in a fashion that makes it makes it available to users and even started applying that in delivering information products that are from it.

[00:19:12] And that gets to be where the big change is going to be is how are you dealing with the idea of being able to build information products and services based on the data that you have available in the past.

[00:19:30] Those jobs and those roles that really just had to do with assimilating data and managing it to be able to be presented in a different form.

[00:19:42] Those are the ones that are going to change the most what's really going to be added though and the value that AI does is for those folks that are able to think through a situation or identify an opportunity and be able to say if I need to know that.

[00:20:00] What are the elements and what are the drawbacks and what are the risks that are associated with this other opportunity.

[00:20:09] And so where it has spent tremendous amounts of time and energy going back and doing research and providing reports and those kind of things that those are the things that AI is best at and applying that technology and those tools to these people that are thinking through strategic problems or delivering new services or new value or

[00:20:30] creating other things. Those are the areas that it's going to be the most beneficial. I'm really excited about AI fixing some of these long term problems that we have, although it has the ability to make those problems worse because of the people in the bias that you know that are that are in the data and in the algorithms.

[00:20:55] But imagine being able to analyze the data that's available and say that I want to be able to take every person and know how to build a income and investment portfolio so that they will never ever be poor again.

[00:21:13] That's the capability of what we have facing us or opportunity that we have to do with that.

[00:21:19] The other thing though the danger of it is we can turn that same technology loose and say I want to be able to automatically figure out how to exclude people from opportunity.

[00:21:32] And I want you to define these are what those people look like those characteristics and I want you to find ways that it will exclude those people from the opportunities that I want to have.

[00:21:44] And now you can make that happen at computer speed.

[00:21:48] Wow, that's that's that's crazy.

[00:21:53] The bottom line though is is we can't just turn technology loose.

[00:21:58] It has to be under control of people that are purpose driven that understand the value that they're trying to deliver.

[00:22:07] Absolutely.

[00:22:08] Nicky, how can we get in touch with you?

[00:22:11] I'm available at the website www.makingitreality.com.

[00:22:18] Look forward to being able to get a opportunity to chat with anyone that's interested in looking at their organization.

[00:22:26] You can email me at info at makingitreality.com.

[00:22:30] That's our general mailbox for the potential to reality company and be happy to chat with you.

[00:22:38] Right.

[00:22:40] Nicky, is there something cooking up in the future for you?

[00:22:43] I know you're talking about writing blogs.

[00:22:45] Is there a book on the horizon possibly?

[00:22:48] Well, I got a couple of things in the works.

[00:22:53] One of them is at my age I lost my mind and decided to go back and get a doctorate at business administration.

[00:22:58] Hopefully, if I stay on track, I'll get my dissertation defended in 2026.

[00:23:07] But the reason that I'm doing that, I'm looking to build a framework and start writing some areas and some books on societal excellence.

[00:23:17] Where we take those principles of operational excellence from an organization level and apply it to a society level so that we can be able to have sustainable success.

[00:23:28] At a broader level and less and less people are experiencing being on the short side of the stick of our existence.

[00:23:38] But as we get ready to close out, is there a drop of wisdom you'd like to offer?

[00:23:43] Well, the thing that I always tell folks, a couple things.

[00:23:48] One is to know yourself and be clear and honest with yourself.

[00:23:52] Because if you can't be honest with yourself, then you can't produce a honest organization and you can't deliver value.

[00:24:00] The other thing is don't wait.

[00:24:02] Tomorrow is not promised and time is not your friend.

[00:24:05] So you need to move forward with what you're trying to accomplish now because it's not promised that you'll get there waiting for it to be accomplished.

[00:24:17] Awesome. Thank you so much again for chopping up with us on the business shop.

[00:24:22] And we look forward to hearing from you again soon.

[00:24:27] Great. Really appreciate you having me. Enjoy chopping with you.

[00:24:30] Thank you and the business shop going out and make sure you get in touch with Kerry Bass, his email, his website and definitely tune into his podcast.

[00:24:40] Alright, take care.

[00:24:52] Be sure to plug into our guests. Go through their website and social media channels to see how they can help you further through their products and services, as well as plug into our website, all together dot biz, where we will help you expand your brand.