Second Anniversary Ask-Me-Anything

FlexPoint JourneyDigital TransformationLeadership
Written By Michael Daehne

To celebrate the second anniversary of FlexPoint Consulting, the FlexPoint team turns the microphone on Michael Daehne, Founder and CEO, for an ask-me-anything episode.

Michael fields questions about his entrepreneurial journey and the first two years of running FlexPoint. The group also discusses working through common challenges in business transformation. Then we close with a lightning round of more casual questions.

Teaser

Michael Daehne: Welcome to Inflect… Wait, should I say more than that?

Kim Ehrman: You should keep going.

MD: What do I say instead of FlexPoint…

Henry Howard: Here, I’ll cut you off. I’ll interrupt you.

MD: You seemed way too excited for that.

Introduction

Michael Daehne: Welcome to Inflect, a podcast about navigating…

Henry Howard: Whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn’t your show today.

Rachel Rubin: Yeah, we’re teaming up today, Michael.

Kim Ehrman: In this episode, the FlexPoint team turns the microphone on Michael Daehne, Founder and CEO of FlexPoint Consulting.

We wanted to thank the friends and colleagues who submitted ask-me-anything questions. We’ll start with questions about Michael’s entrepreneurial journey and then shift into some about working through common challenges in business transformation. Then, our favorite part, we close with a lightning round of more casual questions.

MD: Who approved this?

Entrepreneurial Journey

Kim Ehrman: Michael, our first question is from a former teammate: What has surprised you in your entrepreneurial journey so far?

Michael Daehne: All the little things. I think I anticipated the pressure, the big-picture pressure and stress of being a business owner, and the good, the bad, and the ugly that comes with that. And thinking about building relationships with new clients and growing and developing a team – all of that stuff I spent a lot of time thinking about.

I did not have an appreciation for the number of problems that Microsoft 365 was going to create for our team members. Like when I was on vacation and a team member got locked out of their account because they changed iPhones, and I had to figure out how to update two-factor authentication – Kim! – while on vacation. That’s one example.

But all the little things, like the different types of insurance that we need to have and the intricacies of accounting and tax and how we market our services. All the little things that add up. It’s also what makes it really fun and interesting, but I think that has been a really bit surprising.

KE: Yeah, that makes sense, and gives you a little bit more empathy for when our former CFO would also call himself the IT tech support.

MD: Yes, I am Chief Everything Officer, that’s what CEO stands for, I’ve learned. So that’s cool.

Rachel Rubin: Our next question comes in from a mentor, and I think you touched on some of this in your last response. What are the biggest lessons you've learned in starting the business?

MD: I think one big thing so far for me has been that I can’t control everything. And I mean that in two ways. One, with our team and with our clients, this won’t be successful if I just micromanage everything. Like the “you can go far alone” … no, what is it? “You can go fast alone; you can go far together.” I know that, but I feel like I’ve been living that the last year, particularly as our team has grown.

The other comment on control is, I’m a planner. I built a business plan for FlexPoint, I have growth targets for every quarter and every year, but I cannot manifest some of that. Some of it has to come with time based on our team’s readiness and our clients’ readiness and the way that we build and grow relationships. I think trying to drive something and bring something into existence while also acknowledging that I cannot totally control the outcomes, that has been a big lesson learned.

The other big lesson learned for me that this is very much an infinite game, which y’all may recognize is that reference to a book that our colleague Pedro Cortez recommends, he loves that book [The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek]. What I mean by that is every week, every month, every year is just adding up towards a longer, broader adventure. I’ve learned to try to really value each phase that we’re in, and not look ahead to the next phase too much. Planning for that, thinking about growth, but also appreciating the goodness of the phase that we’re in right now.

RR: That makes sense, Michael, thank you for the valuable input.

KE: Our next question is from a former coworker: How are you dividing your time between working in the business versus on the business? How has that changed in these two years with FlexPoint, and how do you see it changing in the next two years?

MD: Great question, and this is the hardest part of the job for me right now, to be totally candid. I want to spend a lot of time, all my time, working on the business, thinking about how we attract the right people and grow and develop the people we have and building new client relationships and thinking about our branding and positioning and thought leadership and all that.

The reality is that we have chosen, by design, to bootstrap this thing. And part of that means it’s all hands on deck for delivering for our clients, so I spend a lot of my time working in the business. And that’s not all bad, because I love the work that we do.

I got into consulting thinking I was going to do it for two years and then go get my MBA and here I am, a decade plus later, still doing consulting. There’s a reason for that, it's because I really enjoy being a professional problem solver and working with clients and solving their challenges. And I really like that it allows me to work with our team members, hand in hand with our clients.

So, it’s not all bad, but I do feel that tension every day around what I’m spending my time on. Ultimately if we deliver really good work for our clients, and if I personally deliver good work for our clients, good things will come for the business. It will grow, and our team will continue to flourish. So, it’s the right investment.

To answer the question more directly about how that’s changed over time… the first year, I was working exclusively in the business. Year two, it’s become a mix. I think it’s going to stay that way for a while. Longer term, I foresee that transitioning to more growth, strategy, leadership of the business and less direct delivery work.

Common Challenges & Best Practices in Business Transformation

Henry Howard: We’re shifting gears to common challenges and best practices in business transformation with a question from an HR executive we’ve worked with: What are some cultural attributes that enable or help transformations, and that hinder or block transformations?

Michael Daehne: Well because the question is from an HR executive, I’m going to make sure I don’t use any curse words because I don’t want to get in trouble.

Henry’s not laughing, he didn’t think that was funny.

It’s a great question. I think every organization is unique and different – organizations are kind of like people in that way – that each and every one has its own DNA and its own unique mix of what makes it tick. That being said, there are some attributes that I’ve noticed, common attributes, that position an organization to handle change and transformation more effectively than others.

A few that come to mind are adaptability and a comfortability with change. So, if an organization is always evolving and they have years of experience changing, more change just feels natural. It still might be uncomfortable, it still might be hard and painful and there will be bumps, but there’s kind of a “this is what we do” attitude. “We need a new service offering or line, or we need this new technology, or we need to change the way we’re organized.” So, adaptability and level of comfort with always changing.

I think another big thing is resilience. Organizations that have been through some tough stuff and come out the other side are well positioned to deal with the inevitable hardships that come with big transformations and change. And I think most organizations, if they’ve been around long enough, have had one of those moments, or multiple moments, that enable them to double down and say, “yes, we’re doing this for a purpose, and we’re going to continue and find a way to succeed at this.” I think that resilience is really important.

The flip side is attributes that can hinder success in transformation. One is stubbornness. We associate stubbornness with individuals, but organizations can become stubborn if leaders, for too long, exhibit that trait. Stubbornness and transformation don’t play well together. Stubbornness is what forces organizations to deliver a subpar product just to hit a deadline. Stubbornness is what keeps organizations from making leadership changes when they have the wrong people in certain roles. Stubbornness is what keeps organizations from changing the way they work to embrace a new opportunity or a new technology. I think stubbornness is a really challenging trait to work with in business transformation.

The other one is arrogance, which again, feels like a personal trait, but organizations can take that on. Transformation by its very nature requires humility and curiosity about how the world could be better if you embraced different ways of working or different tools or different ways of being organized. An arrogant – “we’re the best, we know how to do this” – attitude doesn’t play well with transformation.

Those are a few of my thoughts. I welcome thoughts from the rest of the group if you guys have experienced other traits that you think might help or hinder transformation.  

Kim Ehrman: I’m thinking about the difference between stubbornness and perseverance, and what brings them apart. I feel like the curiosity you were mentioning, the willingness to be wrong, some of those continuous improvement practices that we know from Agile of “okay, let’s take a step back, do a retrospective, what is and isn’t doing well” are potential differences. What else feels like it puts a little bit of space between stubbornness and perseverance?

MD: I love all the comments you made; they all resonate with me. The only additive I would share is that some of it is the difference between the what and the how.

Perseverance is commitment to an objective, to a purpose. “I’m going to solve this problem. I’m going to reach this goal. I’m going to succeed at this.” Stubbornness shows itself as “we have to do it this way because this is the way the plan dictated. We have to get to this goal on this timeline or through this mechanism or way.” That’s how I like to think about it. Commitment to purpose is awesome. An unwillingness to change your approach is where problems arise.

KE: That makes sense.

Rachel Rubin: Love that. Thanks, y’all.

We have our last ask-me-anything question now, from one of our client CEOs, and I quote: Michael, you’ve helped us on both strategic and tactical aspects of our journey. What has been the biggest challenge you have seen in taking the strategy from “talk” to “action”?

MD: The messy middle. The strategic conversations are at the 30,000-foot view, and the tactical action steps are at the 10-foot view, and understanding each of those is relatively doable. Folks that play at the high level get the high level, they can think through the macro picture of what we’re trying to do. And folks that are living and working in the business every day know the ground level intimately. The connective tissue between those two rarely exists naturally in an organization. So, I think the really hard part is descending from 30,000 feet to 5 feet without crashing the plane.

And I think there is so much intangible soft skill stuff there. It’s not like you have some spreadsheet that maps high-level strategy to ground-level action. It’s “what are the human relationships between the folks that occupy those levels, what’s the language used?” We have a former client that jokes all the time about how, years ago, I used to use every word in the consulting dictionary of bullshit. (I don’t know if we’re allowed to say that on the podcast, but I’m going to take privilege and say it.)

If you look at all the slideware, the presentations at the strategic level, they have words like “robust” and “synergies” and “bifurcating the business” and all that stuff. If you go try to tell someone that’s actually doing the work to serve the customer that you need them to “leverage a robust process to drive synergies,” they’re like “get out of my face, you have no idea how my job actually works.” Language is really important.

And trust, building that trust throughout the organization. I think that is the hardest part of going from strategy to action. It’s not some plan or some artifact or some magical process map. It’s “how do you get folks at all levels of the organization to trust each other and to listen to each other, so that they can translate what each other is saying in a way that ensures the high-level vision is brought to life in a more realistic way?”

The other quick thought around this is that strategy sounds simple most of the time, and execution is very, very, very complicated and complex and messy. I think sometimes strategic thinkers lose patience with the details. So, the really effective business and technology leaders we work with are persistent not stubborn, Kim. They are persistent in seeking to understand the perspective of the frontline worker and communicating to a model what they’re trying to get across so they can get to a common understand of how the strategy should come to life.

RR: Thanks so much Michael for all the awesome AMA insights.

Lightning Round

Rachel Rubin: Moving on to what I’m super excited for, our lightning round. First lightning round question, we know you love to go on daily walks. We know Georgia goes along with you on those. What are you doing on those walks? Are you listening to podcast, music, silence? Tell us more.

Michael Daehne: All of the above. Yes, to your point, about two years ago, about a year into covid, I realized I was just sitting in my office chair all day, getting no physical activity, so I decided to start walking. Since then, my rule has been, I have to get 10,000 steps a day. Most days I get 12,000 or 15,000, but I don’t let a day go by with less than 10,000.

The first walk of the day is my most social walk of the day because it’s with Georgia, my Golden Retriever. I you know Georgia you know that she loves the people. We just walk around the neighborhood, and all the kids want to pet her, so that’s the most social walk.

The other walks in the day are usually podcasts or silence. I love HBR IdeaCast and How I Built This [with Guy Raz] and Wisdom from the Top [with Guy Raz], those are a few of my favorites. And then, at least one walk a day, I don’t listen to anything and I just think. Sometimes it’s about personal stuff, but oftentimes about the business.

I came up with the name FlexPoint on one of my walks.

Kim Ehrman: Yeah, tell us more about that. Where did that FlexPoint name come from?

MD: I love the concept in business of inflection points, basically that organizations don’t grow linearly, they ebb and flow in terms of their growth patterns, and that at those inflection points, that’s when they have to reinvent themselves.

My vision for FlexPoint was that we help our clients at those inflection points and don’t latch on forever. But rather, help them at those points, position them to thrive, and then trust that if we do good work and make them successful, they’ll call us back at the next big inflection point in their journey.

Henry Howard: What is your favorite cuss word?

MD: My favorite cuss word is a cuss acronym, which I think you’ve all heard me say, which is FFS. I will not spell out what that means. I will give credit to my dear friend Michael Chafin, who taught me FFS, and I might use that from time to time.

RR: I love when you say it. It cracks me up every time.

KE: Speaking of cuss word acronyms, has anybody watched FUBAR yet on Netflix? It is with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

RR: I haven’t watched it; I just saw it was him.

MD: What is it about?

KE: He is a retiring CIA agent, and he’s going on one last mission. It turns out that he’s saving his daughter. And then there’s family drama, CIA drama. It was good, my sister and I watched four episodes back-to-back.

RR: Nice.

HH: Has anybody seen Jury Duty on Amazon?

MD: Is it good?

HH: I think it’s very funny.

MD: I just started Suits, which is older.

RR: I watched that whole thing, but I was watching it live when I had cable. It’s good at the beginning, it kind of…

KE: It makes me vicariously embarrassed and nervous. It’s like “he’s going to be found out!”

MD: The embarrassing admission is, I do really enjoy watching Bachelor in Paradise. Not the real Bachelor or the real Bachelorette because there’s not enough drama there. But BiP is where it’s at. I started watching it early in covid when I wanted to go the beach and couldn’t go to the beach. And I am both embarrassed and not at all ashamed to admit that I love Bachelor in Paradise. So there you go, sue me.

RR: That’s hilarious. I also watch that show, ashamed to admit.

Michael, what’s your favorite way to relax after a long day?

MD: I love to cook. Cooking is, most weeknights, what I do. I think I lot of folks, my wife included, feel like cooking is a chore, like “ugh, who’s going to cook tonight?” I don’t feel that way at all, most of the time. I love cooking and hate baking, because I like the creativity of cooking, but baking is a little too scientific for me. So I find, after work, opening the fridge – I usually meal plan at the start of the week, but sometimes opening the fridge and trying to figure out what I can make for dinner from what we have is a really good creative outlet for me.

KE: What job did you have in high school?

MD: Two primary jobs in high school, very different. One, I played the piano for a Catholic church. I played five masses a weekend, so by the end of every weekend, I could tell you the priest’s homily almost verbatim. So, yeah, good times. I do play the piano, so I did that in high school. Made good money, saving up for college, that was a good job.

The one, I worked in a barbecue restaurant. You all know I love barbecue. I found out, while eating at my favorite barbecue restaurant when I was like fifteen, that if you worked there, when you were on duty, you could get all-you-could-eat, whatever you wanted, for $4.00. So that was enough for me to apply for a job. I loved it there. And I ate a ton of barbecue and I still love it. I thought maybe I would overdo it, but there you go.

And I did once have barbecue sauce thrown on me by an angry customer, so every now and then, when some of our clients are a little bit difficult, I just tell them “I’ve seen worse, and I can handle it.”

HH: If you couldn’t be a consultant, what would be your dream job?

MD: Two answers, once relates the last question. I would love to own and operate a barbecue restaurant. That’s a pipe dream I’ve always had.

The other one would be high school math teacher. I think, at some point down the road, that might be my post-FlexPoint job.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in Austin

Henry Howard: Where can I find the best chocolate chip cookie in Austin?

Michael Daehne: Oh my gosh, that is a great question. I feel like this changes for me every few years. My current favorite is Tiny Boxwoods. I think there are some great cookie options in Austin, and if you’re talking about variety of cookies, different kinds of cookies, there are other compelling options. But if you’re just saying best chocolate chip cookie, Tiny Boxwoods hands down right now.

What do you think? We’ve got some other cookie lovers on the call.

Rachel Rubin: As a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur, I can validate this response, Michael. Tiny Boxwoods has a very solid chocolate chip cookie, but you’ve got to eat it fresh, when it’s warm. I think the Spread & Co cookie, right across the street, is fantastic. It’s a brown butter chocolate chunk. So if you’re going to be at Tiny Boxwoods in Austin, just cross over 38th Street to Kerbey Lane and get yourself a second or third cookie from Spread & Co.

Kim Ehrman: Bravo.

HH: I also agree. Tiny’s is my favorite. In fact, it was a criteria for selecting a neighborhood to live in Austin. I needed to be in walking distance. For a while, I was going several times a week. I have not continued that, thankfully.

MD: What do we think about the Crumbl craze?

HH: Not here for it.

RR: I was pretty impressed when a friend sent them to me for my birthday. Very, very good chocolate chip cookie. Texturally very, very strong.

MD: I do love a borderline undercooked/not cooked cookie, which Crumbl meets that criteria. I like the texture. I think some of their other cookies are good, and some of them, I’m like, this was unnecessary. There was a line and you crossed it. I don’t need to eat a dirt cup cookie. That was aggressive, and it had a worm on top. Okay, I hope this makes it into the teaser, because it’s the most important part of the conversation.

RR: What’s going to happen is we’re going to have a bunch of people from around Austin listen in to this podcast because of this last part.

MD: Here’s the deal. If you live anywhere in the central time zone and you want to give us feedback about where to get good cookies, you can do that if you give us a referral for a new client. Give us a referral, I’ll hear your cookie feedback.

KE: The comments section blows up.

RR: Yeah.

Closing

Henry Howard: Well this was fun, I enjoyed this.

Michael Daehne: This was fun. Thank you for asking the questions, thanks to those folks that submitted questions beforehand, this was lots of fun, to do something different for our podcast. Thank you for the time.

Michael Daehne
Previous

Solving New Business Challenges with Generative AI
Next

Introducing the FlexPoint Community Investment Program