Listen to the story about doing it the client way: Highlights from LeapFrog Systems: Strategy and Delivery Practices
Selections from our Frogger Friday calls centered on our strategy and delivery practices, and kicking off our next series diving deeper into these topics.
Lisette Diamant : 0:01
Welcome to Digital Froggers, a podcast brought to you by LeapFrog Systems. I’m Lisette Diamant, LeapFrog Systems’ Digital Brand Manager, and I’ll be your host. Today starts a new segment for a series on showcasing our strategy and delivery practices at the firm. We will be taking you through Frogger spotlights from our very best on the convergence of how interconnected our work is for Digital Business Transformation. To start us off, one of our leaders in enterprise transformation, Greg Ladas, will be taking us through our model and process that we go through to engage our enterprise customers.
Greg Ladas : 0:39
We want to start with defining the core executive action team and transformation core team that we’re going to work with. And that’s kind of job one, is to make sure that we have, with our customers, the ability to execute on a backlog. We talked a lot about the backlog, being boss. But the backlog is only boss if there’s a team that’s associated with delivering to that backlog. We’ve gotten effective at working with executives, to help get them engaged, to break down those walls for their teams.
Lisette Diamant : 1:16
Great insights from Greg, on getting set up with success with our partners. Furthering this discussion, Michael Pullen, on how we approach the work alongside our clients.
Michael Pullen : 1:25
Well in the beginning with the selling of the project, we convinced them that this is going to be their way. We’re not going to come in and just tell them “this is how you have to do it”. You’re going to work with us, we’re going to take our expertise and all of our experience across different projects and all the different Froggers, and we’re going to put it together and work with you in order to make it your way to transform. The only way to make it your way is you have to actually make some decisions. You need to think about it hard and embody that, and we put forward all sorts of stuff to help you. But ultimately you need to make decisions. And so when I say “you” as the client, having a team that is dedicated to doing the work of the transformation, what I mean by doing the work is that circle that is sitting there of insights, all the way through the roadmaps and backlogs and the communication plans and all that sort of stuff. Having a group of people within the organization, who knows the organization, who can help make those decisions, and then help make the action happen is what the core transformation team is about. So they are doing the same work that we’re doing at the same time. We’re just leading them along the way. We’re also doing the work.
Lisette Diamant : 2:55
Thanks, Michael. Really important to showcase the customization of our model to ensure that client’s needs are at heart for the work we execute. This next segment continues with Michael Pullen, alongside transformation Player/Coach, Luba Sakharuk, on team insights alongside the leadership level and the value it brings to the work.
Michael Pullen : 3:14
So the team insights are at the team level. We all know, then you have all the middle management and you have the leadership level. So what we did in addition to the team insights, is we did a series of structured interviews throughout the organization at the leadership level, and really got them to start focusing on how they were operating inside of the organization too, giving us a little bit from that perspective. So the reason why I wanted to bring that up is the insights, really at the team level give us an opportunity to introduce ourselves, get the teams talking about the work they’re doing and tell us how they work together. But then the key here, because we had the core transformation team that we were working with, we also had to understand what they were looking for in all of this.
Luba Sakharuk : 4:10
You know, when people hear, “Oh, there’s Agile transformation”, they start asking questions, they start talking to each other, and then then the questions come up, “Well, how can we get involved?” Right? And then based on those executives, and people getting pinged, then they ask questions, they bring something up, and next thing we know, you have to enter a story for rolling out the Agile Center of Excellence, you know, scheduling lunch and learns, whatever that may be. So stories come out of just collaboration with them as well.
Lisette Diamant : 4:41
Next, I’m bringing in VP in Account Management, Chris Rupert, on leading success to transition one of our engagements moving to a product model.
Chris Rupert : 4:50
How we started, and where we’re at now, there’s been a lot of changes. And a lot of it actually came about from one of the workshops that we said we were going to lead, really to help transform to a product model. I think from trying to move towards a product model, that’s where we saw the opportunity to really form the executive action team and core team to move things along.
Lisette Diamant : 5:10
Thanks for these points, Chris. A strong sample of the way we’re able to make change happen alongside our clients to ensure excellence. From a final segment on today’s highlights, I have a piece bringing back Greg Ladas, alongside Player/Coach, Danielle Correia.
Greg Ladas : 5:25
Danielle, how important is the playbook to the execution?
Danielle Correia : 5:29
Very important, Greg.
Greg Ladas : 5:30
And getting the playbook, right?
Danielle Correia : 5:33
Yes. Getting the playbook right is number one! And that’s what we’re kind of finding through the first phase and the second phase that we had done. We’re always ever changing it and improving it. And we’ve found some improvements as we’ve gone through this acceleration at the same time. But I think it’s great that we’re having those discussions and how can we improve, not just for each individual meeting, but as the process as a whole. I think we’re doing a great job with that.
Greg Ladas : 6:04
Agreed, and we’ve got a great platform and Confluence, to help to deliver on the playbook changes and manage the versions.
Lisette Diamant : 6:14
A great point to end on. Thanks to all of our contributors for today’s episode of Digital Froggers. We look forward to furthering the conversations on our expertise in Digital Business Transformation with our strategy and delivery practices, with deep dives in the following weeks to come. Digital Froggers is a podcast brought to you by Leap Frog Systems, produced by Taylor Hawkins. The music you heard was Do Ba Do, by Otis Galloway.