Thriving In The Digital Age: Craig Kielstrom and adopting Agile

In this conversation, Joe Crist interviews Craig Kielstrom about the challenges organizations face in adopting agile and digital transformation. They discuss the importance of breaking down silos and fostering communication between different teams and departments. They also emphasize the need for a shared purpose and alignment of goals within the organization. The conversation highlights the significance of customer lifetime value and employee lifetime value in driving business success. They also touch on the role of culture in shaping an organization's success and the future of agile and digital transformation.

Transcript

Joe Crist (00:03.439)
Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us for another Thriving in the Digital Age. I'm your host, Joe Crist. Joining me today is Craig Kihlstrom. Craig, thank you so much for joining us today. Could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

Greg Kihlström (00:16.076)
Yeah, yeah. First of all, thanks for having me here. Looking forward to chatting with you. So my name is Greg Kihlstrom I am the host of the Agile Brand podcast. I also work as a consultant for Fortune 1000s. I work primarily in the marketing and marketing technology spaces, helping organizations with digital transformation, AI adoption, agile transformation, all of the above. So I've done a lot.

I'm former marketing agency owner sold my company about seven years ago and since then really work independently and Between that and you know writing some books and doing some speaking and the podcast, you know, keep myself busy here

Joe Crist (00:57.465)
Yeah, sounds like it. So that's interesting though, right? So you're really focusing in on the Mark tech space. So when it comes like agile adoption, even digital transformation, right? Both are very difficult things. Like what are the challenges you're really seeing out there that not only that you deal with, but your clients are dealing with as well.

Greg Kihlström (01:14.358)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's there it all it all comes down to the there's this cliche about breaking down silos and all that stuff. But, know, I keep saying at least recently, you know, just because it's a cliche doesn't make it untrue. so there are, you know, I'm seeing a lot of process changes that need to happen because, you know, in marketing and I'm sure you can apply this in any area. But, you know, in marketing, there's just so much changing right now.

You know, everything is increasingly digital, even even non non digital marketing is being managed in a digital way. And with AI and increased AI adoption, there's a further need for better data and more access to data. And there there was always a need for data. But so these you know, these process silos, these data silos and just the.

the nature of the marketing role is such that you need to know a little bit more about all of the different areas of the business, not just one specific area. know, the days I think of the purely like social media marketer or SEO or, know, name your name, your channel.

I think there's going to be specialties, but everybody needs to know a little bit more about what others are doing. And that extends beyond marketing into marketing needs to understand what technology is doing and what data is doing and what sales and customer service is doing. know, silos are just, again, it's, it's a, it's a business cliche, but it, it, it's just, it's still happening. And these, these things need to be solved, especially the more that AI and the need to have data.

Joe Crist (02:51.524)
Yeah.

Greg Kihlström (03:00.297)
shared across the org is just increasing.

Joe Crist (03:04.121)
Yeah, no, I'm a million percent agree. And the big challenge with silos, right? It's a lot of organizations that have a really old way of thinking or just been around for a long time, or especially when they grow, they never really figure out that communication, right? becomes, this is my job. This is what I do. I don't really care about anything else. But in reality for a company to really function, like there needs to be crosstalk between different disciplines and the different groups, right? Technology impacts marketing, marketing impacts operations.

Sales impacts operations, everything impacts one another, but when you actually break those silos down, you're communicating faster. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that's really the point of agility, right? Is to break down those communication barriers and give organizations the speed of execution to really make things happen, to make them competitive.

Greg Kihlström (03:55.35)
Yeah. And, you know, I there's there's a lot of things that I like about the agile principles and things like that. but, you know, one of the ones that I like best is just this idea of a shared purpose. And, you know, that that's talked about in terms of like a product team, like a very small team that's all, you know, kind of working together. But I look at that much more broadly in terms of some of the reasons why these these silos continue to exist is the incentive structure.

and the goals that are set for each of these little siloed teams, even teams within departments, and product teams within divisions, however big or small your company is, you're probably feeling this at some level. The incentive structure of we're graded on how many people open an email and these other people over here are graded on how many new sales contacts they get.

You can pick any team within the org and they all have different incentive structures and different goals. Why would there be any alignment between them if this continues?

Joe Crist (05:05.413)
Absolutely. You know what? Nail on the head right there. And that's a big challenge I've seen where it's you have people in leadership roles because they are going, they're being created against whatever metrics, you know, it's how does this help them and their department if some other team is like whatever they're doing doesn't actually directly impact them. Right. And a lot of that, right. It's, you know, how these individuals are being great on success.

Greg Kihlström (05:25.134)
Yeah.

Joe Crist (05:31.147)
It's just totally different everywhere around. And because of that, it's hard to speak the same language. It's hard to have the same goal because everyone is evaluated totally differently.

Greg Kihlström (05:31.384)
Yeah.

Greg Kihlström (05:40.032)
Yeah. And I think this is where, you know, to be honest in my, I've read a fair amount and I've written a fair amount on, on agile and different applications of agile. But I think one of the areas that is the least well -documented and the least well -defined is this concept of business value. And right. So like the, the product owner is supposed to interpret requirements. know I'm preaching to the choir here, but like, you know, they're, they're supposed to interpret business.

business value in terms of requirements and all that kind of stuff and prioritize, but there isn't a very clear definition of what exactly business value is. And I think from organization to organization, definitely it can vary. know, business value is going to be very different in a healthcare organization versus financial services or, you know, a retail company, of course. So like there's going to be variation, but I don't think that there's,

often a clear definition of what business value is even within a single organization. so again, another, another one of those siloed things of like we're, have incentive structures, we have, we have teams kind of working against each other and we don't even know what we're all working towards.

Joe Crist (06:55.429)
Yeah, and I mean, how could you be aligned? If you don't even have the same agreement of terms of like what the journey looks like, how could anyone even begin to get aligned? Right? He's like, we're doing this, we're doing this. And then if things aren't working, you start blaming other people. like, we can't do it here. it's, that misalignment early on, it's catastrophic down the road. And it makes it even harder to get.

Greg Kihlström (07:17.346)
Right. Yeah. And I mean, again, in turn, in the context of agile, you these product owners are charged with interpreting something that varies depends depending on who you ask. mean, you know, we know that a corporation is going to want to make money, but how they do it and how they interpret overall success.

I mean, you know, I'm, I'm a huge proponent of looking at customer lifetime value as, one of those key KPIs, but not every organization is there yet. You know, they, they, everybody says the customer, you know, customer experience is important and you know, more and more companies are competing based on the experience they provide to their customers. But, there is not, again, you could, you could ask 10 different organizations for their definition of customer lifetime value.

I guarantee you they calculate it differently and they value it differently in terms of priority. I think I think that's it's a missed opportunity. I think there's some really smart leaders out there that are that are getting on the on the right train here as far as as looking at that. But there's still many that are that are lagging behind.

Greg Kihlström (08:56.132)
can you hear me?

Joe Crist (08:59.459)
Yeah, sorry, I think I lost you for a second. I'm back now. Sorry about that. I can edit that out.

Greg Kihlström (09:02.282)
Okay. Sorry. Yeah, it's for a minute. I don't know if it was me or

Joe Crist (09:09.475)
No, it's okay. It doesn't Yeah, no, but customer lifetime value is a really big deal. Right? It's understanding really, is everybody cares about, you know, having that great customer experience, right? Everybody wants their customers to be happy. But what I've seen with a lot of companies is they only get to the point where it's okay, hey, they're happy now and they bought from us. Let's just move on to the next customer. I was like, no, you want to stick with the same customer and keep delivering value because

If they're making more money or they're more profitable for what you do, you can still benefit from that. Right. And now they already have the relationship established. But yeah, I do see a lot of companies, they focus more on the going wide as opposed to hunting, right. Of new customers where really you should be farming, right. Continue to grow what you already have.

Greg Kihlström (10:02.304)
Yeah, definitely. mean, you know, any anybody I've done sales too much in my life, you anyone that's done sales knows it's, know, it's a lot easier to keep an existing customer than it is to win a new one. But I mean, again, this kind of goes back to that, that incentive structure of, you know, sales teams, if they're incentivized by new customer acquisition, then, you know, what are they going to do? Like that's if that's how they're graded, they're going to bring in new customers and.

not necessarily check all the boxes to make sure they're going to have a lifetime loyal customer. They're just going to bring in, they're going to sign new people up. we have, we've probably seen high profile examples of how that can be problematic and, you know, financial services and other areas. But, you know, it just, it's not smart business when you have the opportunity to bring in great customers, keep them loyal and, and keep build their value over time. And I think another concept that

leader, know, leaders that I'm that I know of and work with are adopting as well as this idea of employee lifetime value as well. So thinking about the value of, you know, there's there's a cost to losing an employee, anyone in HR or, you know, any hiring managers know that, you know, it takes a lot to replace someone to replace an employee that leaves and so

retain it, there's knowledge loss, there's just productivity loss, there's all kinds, there's morale loss for the, for the existing team. So, you know, there's, there's a cost to all of this, the stuff. so, you know, thinking about customer lifetime, employee lifetime, it kind of all builds up to this idea of like the business lifetime value as well, which, you know, I, I don't, I don't know that a lot of organizations are thinking like that yet, but I hope that they will, because that also, that also

include some things like how sustainable an organization can be over time, whether that's sustainable with people or other resources or, you know, pick a category. But, you know, there's a lot of ways of looking at business value again. you know, the more nuanced you can kind of make it, the better.

Joe Crist (12:23.3)
Right.

Joe Crist (12:54.649)
Yeah, know, with that, I found to be interesting too, it's when you really do focus on employee engagement and customer engagement, right.

Joe Crist (13:13.317)
You still with me?

Greg Kihlström (13:15.564)
Yeah, yeah, I'm here.

Joe Crist (13:17.39)
Okay.

When you focus on employee engagement and customer engagement, of the biggest things people don't think about is everybody wants better talent, everybody wants better employees. It's the whole idea of maximizing. But in reality, when you focus really on having good quality engagement on both sides, it really does help the business. It also lowers your acquisition costs.

the all the confidence you may go to or all the hands you may shake or all the dinners you may take somebody out to like the that adds up. Right. So by treating somebody right like managing their expectations, giving them what they want that to provide value. You know, that's huge. Right. And that's what keeps, you know, good customers, great customers hooked. And the same thing with great employees. Right. They want to know they're going to be taken care of. So obviously,

Greg Kihlström (13:53.9)
Right.

Greg Kihlström (14:11.18)
Yeah, I mean, it's also.

Joe Crist (14:12.675)
been in industry for a while.

Now you're fine, go ahead.

Greg Kihlström (14:18.19)
No, I was just going to say, mean, it's also, you know, even from a data collection standpoint, I mean, it's a lot easier to learn more about what, you know, an existing customer wants and needs and how they value your product or service than it is to continually kind of go out and try to win new, win new customers and hope that they sign up in the first place. So, I mean, you know, there's ways to look at retaining customers as a way to continually improve your

Joe Crist (14:26.14)
What?

Greg Kihlström (14:46.264)
your products and services as well. Again, it doesn't mean by any means that you should not try to acquire new customers. It's just the mix, I think, is often off of the focus of sales and the focus of marketing is often on acquiring new versus retaining, you know, and understanding loyalty.

Joe Crist (15:00.131)
Right.

Joe Crist (15:09.093)
Yeah, absolutely. So, I obviously there's a lot of different things organizations deal with, What steps can organizations start taking even today to really start improving their position, like when it comes to agility and even really working in the digital age?

Greg Kihlström (15:24.396)
Yeah, I mean, I think given how I mean, I think AI is like the the thing that everybody's focusing on a lot right now. And there's there's some hype. There's a lot of hype, but there's some some really good reasons why, you know, it's so many people are talking about it. But I think in order to use it best, it also solves some of the problems that we're talking about as well. And so it's it's kind of a twofer in the sense of.

People need to understand what the person sitting next to them does a lot more than they ever did. need like humans, the more that we have machines and AI doing repetitive tasks and you know, kind of the lower level tasks for us, the more that we humans are gonna have to understand, you know, what are the more strategic things? What are the bigger picture questions that we should be asking? And that means...

kind of getting out of the corner that you may be in and just focusing on the tactics and tasks at hand and really understanding from a bigger picture what needs to get done. And that also happens to solve some of these silo issues of, know, if we really understood what the person next to us was doing and we're able to empathize with our coworkers first, then we start understanding, okay, well, if I do this a little bit differently, it becomes smoother for...

that team that we deal with every day, but I don't actually know what they do or what or whatever. And then if we look at that as empathizing with the customer as well, like there's teams that their job, you know, customer services job is to deal with customers, but everybody's job is customer experience. Like that's, I think if everybody wraps their head around that, whether you're sitting, whether you're writing code or whether you're directly talking with customers, if you're frontline employee at a

restaurant or retail or whatever, like everybody's job is customer experience. And so it comes down to a little bit of curiosity, a little bit of empathy and a little bit of just, you know, let's, let's learn a little bit more about what, again, what the person next to us is doing.

Joe Crist (17:32.697)
Yeah, absolutely. And that brings up an interesting point, though. And it's something I've kind of adopted over the years. It's identifying who that customer is. The customer may not always, to me, may not always be that person who's buying the product. It could also be the team you're working with, right? Because they are stakeholders as well. So by like, hey, this is the person I'm trying to help here. It could be the guy on the marketing team. It could be the guy in ops. It could be the girl who's writing code.

It could be all sorts of people, right? But it's, you really need to be taking this approach where it's like, Hey, you're doing this for this person. You need to understand their, their wants and their needs, right? Like how, like, and also how they work and what they care about, right? It's, it's got, God are the days of saying, Hey, we made something. We hope people want it. Like you need to be customer centric in nature where it's the same. This is what this person cares about.

Greg Kihlström (18:01.954)
Right? Right.

Joe Crist (18:30.041)
This is what I can deliver to them, right? Because the value is not just felt by one, it's felt by everyone, both upstream and downstream of that person.

Greg Kihlström (18:38.274)
Yeah. And yeah. And I think when, when leaders, good leaders understand, I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying here. You know, it's good leaders understand that concept as well of, know, they're definitely there's internal customers and, there's external customers. think, you know, again, at the end of the day, everyone needs to serve that end customer. But to your point, like there's a lot of other, there's a lot of other collaboration and internal customers and success that isn't just

how am I doing on my job for me? It's like, how are we doing as a team and how are we as a team supporting others to that end goal? know, it's a lot of, you know, understanding that you're part of a much bigger system and caring that you're much, you're part of a much bigger system. You know, that's a lot of that falls on leaders to, kind of engender in their employees is.

Why do we care? You know, if all you care about is your paycheck and showing up for and, getting a bonus at the end of the year, then I don't think your leader is instilling the right things in you and your team. And, you know, that's that's a short term churn kind of situation. But if you're doesn't mean like salaries, bonuses, all that stuff hugely important and people should get paid what they're, you know, what you know, what they need and what they want. But they also need to be working

Joe Crist (19:51.853)
So, yeah, that's it.

Greg Kihlström (20:03.731)
towards a common goal or else a company is just going to keep turning through people and you know, employees are going to be unhappy and customers are going to feel it.

Joe Crist (20:06.725)
Thank you.

Joe Crist (20:12.707)
Yeah, know, yeah, culture is one of the most important things for any leadership, like structure in a company. And then I think it's actually one of the most important jobs of a CEO, right? To have the right culture. it's something that's very overlooked, right? Because if you don't define the culture, it will define itself and it may not be what you want. Right. So is there anything you've tried in the past or really like shift culture? Because I know it's no easy task. But have you found anything in the anchor that works?

Greg Kihlström (20:38.06)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's there's some relatively easy things that that any leader or manager can start doing, which is, I mean, one thing I recommend is to look at your team's, you know, everybody has a job description, right? And it's this like laborious task of like, you know, make sure it's accurate to what you do or whatever. Managers should look at the job descriptions of their team members and find a way to make it align to.

the end goal of the organization and find a way. mean, there's that classic story of like the janitor at NASA that was like, you know, cleaning toilets or whatever, but like he, his job and his mind was to help send people to the moon, you know, and that was a hundred percent true. Yes. He also cleaned stuff and whatever, but like everyone in that organization was responsible for the mission of the organization. And I think

To me, that's such an inspiring story. And that means that anyone on any team, you you could be in marketing, you could be on any, any part of the organization. Like if you can't see your way and, know, a straight line to the, the mission of the organization, your manager and your leader are not doing their job. So that, think that's just the, that's one way to start. And then the other is to just always reinforce what the mission of the organization is, even if it's a

to make money. Like as long as everyone knows what that mission is, could be, it could be a very simple one, but at least everybody's working towards the same goal.

Joe Crist (22:15.013)
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I've seen that a lot too, where there is so much like misalignment on like what the actual mission is. it's, you know, I've heard this, what's it called? The perfect problem statement, right? So it's a who, what, when, where, who, yeah. What, when, where an impact. So what is like the definition? We are doing this. It occurs in this location. It happens this many times a year. And here's the actual impact.

has, but when everybody can agree upon what that definition is of what we are trying to solve here, here is our problem. If we do our jobs right, we're going to have a decrease in location. We're going to have a decrease in frequency and we're going to have a decrease in impact. Or we want to do the other way, right? We're going to have an increase in frequency, increase in location, increase in impact, right? But it's, but having that like agreement from the get -go is such a big deal because the further you like, if you start misaligned,

Greg Kihlström (23:15.106)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are so many decisions that have to be made in the course of a day that, you know, to your point, you get you, you start diverging and then all of a sudden you're, you know, you're one team is like one hand doesn't know what the other end is doing basically. So the easier that a leader can make, I mean, that's just like practical common sense. That's not even, I mean, it's also building a good culture, but it's just, it's, it's even like self interest of just

get your teams doing the right thing. like, again, the less someone has to second guess or question, what am I supposed to be doing? The better results you're just going to get anyway. And then, you know, additionally, you're also going to have people that are aligned like culturally and, know, and aligned to the overall success of the org. So, you know, it's a win -win.

Joe Crist (24:06.511)
Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, like that alignment is a big deal is once you once you become misaligned, then. You know your strategy begins to fall apart.

Greg Kihlström (24:16.216)
Right, right, yeah.

Joe Crist (24:17.925)
So, you I'm curious, right? Because I know, like I said, you've been in this for a while, right? You've seen a lot of different companies experience a lot of different challenges and I've seen a lot of things that do work. When it comes to the future of like adopting agile and even like digitally transforming a business, like where do you see the future headed? Like for those who are taking the steps and those who aren't.

Greg Kihlström (24:38.732)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's I think there's there's a number of schools of thought on, you know, how strictly you adopt some things or not. I've talked with people on all sides of that debate. so I I tend to not think of myself as a

So much a purist that there's only one way to do things and you know I've I've talked with with some others at very large orgs as well where you know some of these things like there's there's principles to follow and then there are Things that different organizations just need slightly different things, but all that said When you pick a way to do things everyone should

Align to those ways and not have 20 different interpretations of agile within the same organization again how you do scrum and how you know or whatever whatever flavor you're doing like I think there's there's interpretations of what works best and all those things but As an organization like the more you can all align on this is the way we do it This is what works for us the better alignment you're gonna have I I don't know you know as far as I think they're

some organizations are not going to go like full agile. think a lot of, a lot of companies call themselves agile and they're really just what I would call reactive, not agile. and that is not, you know, just being, being nimble and reacting quickly to things is like a setup for chaos. Often not, you know, not, I mean, I, I look at agile as a scientific process. mean, it's,

It's, it's very closely aligned with the scientific method of like, you know, let's do something, let's test it. Let's, let's analyze the results and then let's improve. mean, that to me, that's the scientific method. So, you know, when agile is done well, it's, it is that, it is, it does make you more nimble. does make you able to move more quickly, but it doesn't make you just move on a whim and, you know, pivot this way and that, and whatever, like there is structure to it when it's done well. And so.

Greg Kihlström (26:57.334)
I think, you know, the more organizations can do that, the more successful they're going to be. The ones that kind of, you know, blow with the wind or whatever, they're going to have a rough time. I mean, we're already seeing this reckoning of all these digital transformations that were like halfway through whatever that even means, because I don't think transformation is ever done, but like they were halfway through some like five year thing. then

chat GPT and generative comes out and all of a sudden everybody's scrambling to like, well, we didn't think about AI when we started our transformation. So now what do they do? Well, the agile organizations, the actual agile organizations are actually having a much better go of it because they had adaptability in place. And the rigid, the waterfall, the agile in name only kind of organizations, they're struggling because

They did some waterfall type plan three years ago and now they're like, I don't know, let's throw chat GPT on it and hope for the best.

Joe Crist (28:02.125)
Yeah. And I, I, what I see a lot with them too, it's, those who are kind of late to the party where they're like, here's a quick fix. can do this, but they don't understand the technology at all. Right. Like my approach, right. With digital transformation, it's, people process then technology, right? They have to have the right people, the right skills in place to build the right processes that make sense. And then once those processes are built, you have the right technology to support it, but it has to be in that order.

Greg Kihlström (28:12.172)
Right.

Joe Crist (28:29.101)
right? don't have like that. It's chaotic. It's expensive. And it's it's heartache for everybody.

Greg Kihlström (28:34.862)
Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, yeah. You end up if you focus on technology first, you end up with really expensive licenses for things that you may or may not actually need or use more than 20 percent of or all of those things. And then, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I don't have the most recent stats in front of me, but like the the reason why most of these transformations fail, mean, technology can always be implemented. I mean, there's a cost to it, but like

Technology can always be implemented at some cost where they fail our people, you know, to your point people not either knowing or being willing to adopt the processes that it takes to adopt those platforms and maybe they weren't the right platforms in the first place, especially if you approach them first. So yeah, agreed.

Joe Crist (29:25.817)
Yeah. So Greg, you know a lot, and then I really do appreciate everything you're able to share with us today. So I do have one last question for you, though. Based on your life and all the things you've experienced, the audience could walk away with one piece of information or advice today, what would that be? Yeah. I would say experience.

Greg Kihlström (29:46.242)
Yeah, I mean, I would say be curious about something that is tangential or, you know, related to what you're doing, but not directly related. Just be curious about that and learn about it. I think it will help you. It might lead you down a path of learning something that you never knew you'd be interested in, but it might also just make you better at your job or make you more empathetic to

the person or people that you're working with that are depending on you. So yeah, I would just say I try to live that in my own life. I try as much content as I put out into the world. I try to consume as much as well because I always need to be learning myself.

Joe Crist (30:31.689)
I like that. I really do. Yeah, be curious is you know, got it. You got to have keep growing in life, right? And if you have that fixed mindset where you're like, well, this is as far as I'm going to get then obviously, you'll never grow. Okay, great. Thank you so much for joining us today. And to those out there listening, I really hope you appreciated this as much as I did. Definitely learned a lot here. Definitely feel a little more comfortable agile myself. And for those who have any questions, yeah, feel free to reach out to us. I'm going to add

Greg's LinkedIn to the description. So feel free to check him out. The guy is an expert and agile in a lot of other things. Yeah. Once again, everyone, thank you.

Greg Kihlström (31:09.699)
Thanks so much.